me against the masses

The fear of returning to London teaching was almost enough to make me stay in AUS. Imagine my surprise then, when yesterday as I walked trembling through those familiar doors, I heard shouts of happiness of my return. Not only this, but the students were close to lovely, almost all day! To my complete astonishment, I left feeling pretty good and comfortable about being back. My walk to the train station was brisk and almost positive, except for reality sitting in the back of my thoughts telling me it would be different tomorrow. How right it was.

Today was back to the usual, except the clarity I had on the situation slightly different. Is it any wonder that the kids are feral, when the system and more disappointingly, the teachers fail them. Being a 'cover teacher' you accept the crap: the abuse, the room changes and lackness of knowing anything about the way the school is run. However, one thing that I cannot tolerate, is the ill prepared teachers and their lack of exciting or even relevant work for the students. Twenty-three students in the class and 5 text books is apparently appropriate to read and work from. How does this work? It's called drama people, and we are going to adapt it to this subject. Extensive research questions when the kids can't even type in their own name, let alone try and read mass amounts of text to decipher and analyse information. Do they not know their students after 9 months? Do they not realise what is realistic and suitable?

Don't get me wrong, I get the stress of teachers in the job and trying to create cover work that relates, but the hurdles I have to jump become insurmountable when I don't even have the basics resources. I then have to try and keep the kids under control and invent work that is relevant and exciting to keep them entertained for an hour and a half. Is this my job? Maybe that's what a 'crowd control supply teacher' does. I must be mistaken. Is it really so wrong to want to try and help these kids, to want the best for them. Should we all not be on the same page then and work together - not against each other for the sake of being fucking incompetent and delusional.