CORRIDORS OF LIFE

Working in a school of more than two thousand kids, my life is bound to have its share of highs and lows - thankfully the highs outweigh the lows or I wouldn’t still be working there.

This last week has been incredibly busy for lots of reasons – I am still struggling with having one member of staff less than I should have. When it pours with rain outside, inside it pours with ‘herberts’ (silly children) - these 'herberts' normally stay out in the playground and amuse themselves by ganging up on other kids or finding things to smash up – the library is not a cool place to be. However, when the rain comes tumbling down even the ‘herberts’ are not averse to entering the geeks domain and they flock together like sheep, rush down the corridors and descend on my hallowed place of work, like a swarm of ravening locusts, wreaking havoc in their path. These children are around 14 – 15 years of age and are growing like weeds and I am only five feet tall!! I spend most of the breaks and lunch hour, spreading my arms out as wide as I can and herding them back to whence they came. Remarkably they are quite pliable and the only resistance they offer is ‘Why’re you chucking us out Miss, we ain’t dun nuffink bad?’ Ah, the joys of a good British education!!

Yesterday I was working in the lower school, when some bright spark thought it would be a good idea to show a video on ‘Body Image’ – this was for a PSHE lesson (Personal & Social Health Education) – mm, yes I know what you are thinking! Anyway, it would have been more than enough having a class of 30 in a room with 35 seats, but the bright spark decided to have two classes of 30 = total 60 = absolute bedlam!!!! We had them sitting on tables, chairs, floors and even shelves – and to make things even more chaotic the teachers, who were assigned to look after these little darlings, were what I can only describe as wimps. These pupils had no interest in the video and talked all the way through the half hour presentation – we also had the pleasure of witnessing two lads running the length and breadth of the library, knocking over books and chairs in their wake. What were the teachers doing – well watching the video of course? I snapped, I shouted, I very nearly cursed – and all of a sudden the teachers woke up and realised that it wasn’t a dream and that they really were being paid to do some work.


DISCLAIMER: This is not an attack on all those good teachers out there, of which there are many, this is however an attack on those who call themselves teachers and take the tax payers money and give absolutely nothing in return.

On Wednesday, we had a welcome lunch for all the new year 12 students – these students have come from schools all over the borough, which maybe don’t have a 6th Form (year 12/13) – it’s a chance for the staff to get to have a chat and introduce themselves and find out a little more about them in an informal setting. We had a lot of great characters there and more reserved students – some of them were finding it difficult to settle in as they had left their friends behind in other schools. One young lady was having a particularly hard time and burst into tears – some of the teachers were trying to comfort her by patting her on the shoulder and saying ‘there, there’. Super Matron (that’s me) – swooped on her giving her the biggest hug I could possibly give her, she snuggled right up to me as if she had never had a hug before – I really felt for her - I later found out that her Mother had recently died – she obviously needed that hug.

Big hugs and kisses for anyone who needs them.

Jo xx



PS. You might be interested in knowing, that I have started reading again – I haven’t read a books since the beginning of the Summer. My book of choice is ‘Ugly’ by Constance Briscoe – it is a book about a mother’s abuse of her child and how the child deals with this abuse – I’m only half way through it, so don’t really know what is going to happen.