Secret Diary of a Teacher: Registration

The bell rings for the first time... it's an alarm bell, isn't it?

Let’s pretend that I’m not writing this to shock or offend. Let’s suggest that this is a middle ground between keeping my job and shameful dismissal. You want the inside scoop? I’m not sure I’m that amoral. There are some things that remain inside the classroom walls, boxed in, like some sort of teacher-student confidentiality oath has been taken. Sacred things, words. I wield my whiteboard rubber like a wand, wiping the slate clean after every lesson. Hear me, this is only halfway to a confession.

I am writing this as a means to some sort of sane end, to release some of that stress you imagine I might be under, depending on your own perspective on me and my much-maligned profession. I am writing this so I don’t bend my housemate’s ear constantly, so that my mother does not have to merely smile and nod, now she’s reached the happy pinnacle of retirement and I can no longer swap ‘work moans’ over the evening telephone. I am writing this for the kids who have to listen to us, for the parents who expect so much from us, for the teachers who have no time to read this, for the government, who is trying to reduce us. No, actually I am writing this for me.

Don’t get me wrong. I ain’t done nothing stupid yet. I haven’t physically dangled a child out of the window of my second floor classroom on the end of his peanutted tie. I haven’t screamed at my subordinates or at my superiors. I haven’t accidentally slept with a sixth former. But I have fallen over my own feet backwards to end up sitting in a bin while making horse noises during a rendition of ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. I have had an argument with a Year Ten class over my controversial usage of the word ‘crap’. I have openly laughed at a decision taken by Senior Management, and I have gained only seventy-eight correct answers out of eighty in a Year Seven spelling test. I have responded ‘Bollocks!’ to a Year Nine child who told me that the dog ate his homework, but nobody overheard, so it was blatantly his word against mine, as I went on to inform him. I have phoned a parents’ answering machine and talked politely, time after time, week after week, without ever gaining a response. I have laughed at a student falling off his chair; I have spilt red wine on homework that never did make its way back to the child who produced it; I have bribed and manipulated with the aid of vast quantities of tinned and individually-wrapped chocolate and I have openly looked up facts I should know on W…Easypeasier.

Hands up, I’m human. Don’t tell anyone: the children would never believe it. They caught me in Tescos once, in the chocolate and crisps aisle.

“What are you doing here, Miss?” they asked, genuinely surprised.

“Buying food.” I thought that stating the obvious was sufficient reply, but it was clear they thought me a liar. Teachers all live in boxes in the staff room, don’t they? They don’t get drunk with their friends at weekends. They have babies without having sex and they don’t know what students get up to on the Internet.

These days, it’s cyberbullying. This is a modern phenomenon. Laptops and mobile phones, Blackberries and i-Phones, i-Pods and MP3s, online gaming and porn-for-free. They have it all, you see. Generation (American) Z. This job only gets harder. Half the girls of the school in tears, it’s like an episode of Gossip Girl, only without the designer clothes and the money and the top-shelf drinking.

Year Eleven. PSHE. Personal, Social and Health Education. Sex Education Module…

“Talk to them about contraception,” was the instruction from my Head of Year. “Here are some worksheets.”

It’s always a good lesson when the teacher learns something. I knew a straight face was an impossibility, so we giggled through it.

Embarrassment’s catching, isn’t it? And Viagra makes you wee more. And “Did you know, Miss, that if you soak it in hot water first, you can stretch a condom over a phone box?” Well no, quite frankly, I didn’t, but now that I do, I’m actually quite keen to try it.

The best advice is to be honest. Well, as honest as you can be. So I grin, and tell them: “I’m not going to tell you not to do it, because there’s no point. But I will say this: just be careful what you’re doing, and, more importantly, who you’re doing it with.” Because some of them are the consequences of rash teenage actions. Of doing without thinking. The unplanned results of underage drinking. They seem more worried that I’ve reached the grand old age of twenty-seven without a husband or children. I dodge the virgin questions and hurry through the STDs. They don’t train you for this on the PGCE.