Functional Skills

Well, the group that had to work on this paper this afternoon DEFINITELY represent my greatest challenge so far. In fact, it was the kind of group where several kids wandered in and out who shouldn't even have been there - they'd just heard there was a new teacher on the loose and decided to come to cause some aggro!

Things settled down considerably after I got them removed though, and fortunately I'll only have that group once a week, so I'll have lots of time in between lessons to think what to do with them. It doesn't help that there isn't a scheme of work either! Hmm!

Other than that, I SURVIVED THE DAY! My legs ache MASSIVELY from standing up all day. I didn't have access to the electronic registers for the first 2 lessons. I didn't have a key to get into my room 2 minutes before the first class arrived. I had to spend most of my non-contact time running round the school searching for someone to provide me with a key. I still haven't had long enough in my room to work out how to make the laptop and SMART board chat to each other. And, my year 10 GCSE group don't know how decimal points work yet - some of them seriously believe that 0.134 is BIGGER than 1.34!

And, at the end of the day, one of my colleagues said to me "please come back tomorrow"! Apparently several groups have had about 6 or 7 different maths teachers since the start of the year!

I'm told if I can manage a month the kids will start to trust me and will believe that I'm staying - permanent contracts hold no sway with them - it's just a matter of having the same face in front of them for half a term and actually getting them to make some progress.

The staff were all BRILLIANT!

I shall go back tomorrow.

But I shall have a mighty big glass of wine tonight! ;-)