annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Swearing at children So the other night I managed to get to a meeting about this volunteering thing I'm probably going to do, and we were asked to bring a piece of our own writing to share. Well, only two people turned up and I felt like I'd missed out somehow, so this is what I was going to read, from my blog a while ago. I told my friend MH about it today and she thought I was referring to another incident which I had conveniently forgotten, so I'm adding that at the bottom:
There was also, I have been forced to recollect... 4. In my defence I was not well and shouldn't have been back at work - being mental while teaching large groups of year 9 kids is always going to be crap, especially last lesson of a long day. It was around the time of the Gulf War (or the invasion of Iraq, depending on how you see these things) and quite a few of the boys in this group had become alarmingly bloodthirsty and jingoistic - I won't repeat the things they said - straight from The Sun and The Mail, shockingly ignorant, and over several weeks or months I hadn't been doing well at staying calm and unresponsive. After the massive anti-war march I had assured them that we would not go to war, because that was how democracy in this country worked. We voted a government in on their manifesto, then if issues came up that weren't covered, we could protest or petition and it would be listened to. I know - naive, or what? So when we did go to war, my word was proved useless and they gave me hell, day after day, lesson after lesson, for weeks on end. Again, I can't remember who said what on this particular afternoon, but it came out of the racket of thirty children doing whatever they liked, as if there were no teacher in the room at all, never mind one trying to get them quiet. On hearing it, this forgotten remark, I had a sudden epiphany. I didn't have to do this. I could walk away, get a job in Tescos. Go down the mines, sell drugs - anything would be better than this. I would get the sack, then I wouldn't be able to be tempted back to suffer more humiliation at the hands of these vile brutes. "Ah, fuck it, I'm off," I said, and started packing up my things. That aroused the interest of one or two in the front desks but most carried on, so I carried on too, gathering my own books off the shelves while muttering about what a bunch of vile cunts they were, determined to burn my bridges. Eventually I had their attention, the bastards, and I unleashed a full list of their shortcomings in the frankest possible terms, including that c word at some volume, before storming out and into the Head of Year's office, to tell him that I'd left the class without a teacher, I was going home and that he would never see me again and I was fucking glad, did he hear? FUCKING GLAD! And off I went, full of exhilaration, lighting a fag before I left the building, ready to start a new life free from marking and endless guilt over jobs undone, free from 14-year-old fuckwits, free, just free! Woo hoo! Soon after I got home the phone rang. It was the headteacher. "Anna, are you all right? Do you need the rest of the week off?" Nooooooo. And I did, I took the rest of the week off and went back the next Monday. And those really are the ONLY times I have sworn at children while at work. I am grateful for: not being a teacher any more; walking in the evening sun; YD buying me lunch; getting up the nerve to do sketching outside; tomorrow being another day. 10:49 p.m. - 26.10.16 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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