Tagged: teachers

Those were the days Part 23

 

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Junior Driver

Watching the current crop of sixth formers trying to park their cars as close as they could to the school the other day made me think back to a lad I taught who always tried to park his car well away from the school gates, rather than close to them.

This story starts with RM* and I, who were both teaching GCSE Science to Year 10. We always shared groups others did not want; it became a sort of trademark. RM had a “way” with bottom sets; he had defined rules and unbelievable classroom management. His philosophy was based on issuing those that stepped out of line with a “good whelping” and sticking to his lesson planning of “if in doubt, copy out.”

In the lab next door I just got work out the kids through chivvying and cajoling and could only dream of having our shared groups under the same short leash as RM. But our partnership worked.

One day about half way through the school year a new lad arrived in my class. It turned out that he was an Iraqi refugee who had entered the UK via transit from Hamburg. Just because I could speak German it meant the powers that be dumped him in one of our shared GCSE wagon load of monkeys.  I quickly found out that his lad could not speak much German and RM only spoke estuary English, so next day my “old school” colleague tried a different tack in his lesson.

Whilst the class silently copied out the notes on Plant Cells from Jones & Jones ‘O-Level Biology’ RM wrote down “6CO2 + 6H2O = “ on a piece of paper. He pushed the paper over to the lad who quickly scanned RM’s message. The lad knew a bit more about photosynthesis than his new peers, because he wrote “= C6H12O6 + 6O2”and slid the answer back, whilst holding RM’s cold stare. The class scribbled away in silence. RM tried a few other equations and quickly found out that the lad knew far more than an ordinary Year 10 student.

It took a while for the school to realise that the lad in question was older than originally claimed until he was sighted on a number of occasions driving to school in a Vauxhall Cavalier. What caught peoples attention was the fact that the lad was behind the wheel whilst still wearing regular school uniform! It turned out that he just used the school as a means of getting some qualifications whilst he sold cars from his “Uncle’s” car lot in West Harrow.

*  RM – aka Richard Michaels the old school Biology teacher and my erstwhile mentor.

Physics – in a minute, it can be done

There are some things that you just experience as part of life. Now the study of life processes is Biology – everyone gets that. You can have first hand experience of most biological actions. Hey, think about it, you can summarize most key concepts of Biology on a A3 poster, bit of colouring in and there you go!  That is why girls love Biology, and also why I can say that without being rude, anyone can (and have done in my experience) teach it.

So Biology is the study of living things. Great.

So what is Chemistry? I was once told by a Physicist that Chemistry was “advanced cooking” – ‘So what was Home Economics then?’ I retorted.

‘Oh, that’s just dough bashing!’ came the reply.

My response was ‘Ok. So Physics must be Black magic then! – the study of things you cannot touch, feel or explain, such as magnetism and quantum theory” He took that as a badge of honour that he wore with pride.

He was the best A-level teacher I have ever worked with.

There is a different level of thought required to study Physics. That is why most girls do not choose it as an option. I will never forget the time when that same teacher came and unravelled the mess that I created in trying to explain the ideas behind Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle to a very bright 15 year old girl (as it happened).

I had rambled on and tied her in knots, she did not even need to know this theory for her exam in the first place. Grabbing the Master of Black magic from next door’s classroom I shoved him in front of her. About a minute of time, a broken pencil and a mug of tea was all he needed to model his the ideas that he explained. All fixed. Panic over. A true master craftsman had done his work.

Anyway here are two sources of other great Physics teaching – click and enjoy. There are only two of you left now reading this anyway!

First up Sixty Symbols ………….

Then some inspiration in a ‘Physics in a minute’ video

Those were the days……….. Part 22

Escape from INSET

My first ever September inset day convened in a small library that was laid out with rows of chairs pushed back as far as the bookshelves. I do not know where the venue was, being new to the school, so arrived late and had to tiptoe my way to the back where there were some spare seats. Little did I know that I had landed amongst the hardcore members of the tea club one of which was MM the music teacher with the optics. As the proceedings started the hubbub died down and introductions were made, notices given out etc.

As time went by I noticed MM who was sat near me start to shuffle his chair away from me towards a line of bookshelves. He did this in stages, sometimes coughing whilst shifting the chair of further and further away. As soon as he made the cover of the bookshelf he jumped up and stood out of the view of the people of the front of the meeting.

He then started gesticulating and pointing at me. One thing I did notice was that he pointed a fire exit which he now had direct access to. He beckoned me across to come and over to him, at this point in time I did not even know who this bloke was, and nevertheless I followed his instructions. He quietly popped the five door open whilst I shuffled across to join him. The last few feet I covered by crawling on my hands and knees using a bookshelf of periodicals as cover, but we got there in the end.

We both ducked out of the meeting via the fire exit went for a cup of tea in the music room until the meeting went for a break. I was later to learn that this is typical behaviour of MM, an old school legend.

A play and miss at baseball is still a………………..

There is a certain uniqueness about Billy Bragg. He is clearly no political giant, but well thought of enough to be invited onto Question Time by the BBC. Cannot see that happening for many other people who have played live on Top of the Pops!

It was interesting to hear his response to the question posed by a member of the audience at the live show which was along the lines of ‘what would you do to solve the current economic crisis?’ After suggestions from politicians to cut public spending, stimulate small businesses and ease pressures on world economies by essentially printing more money, Billy said  “I would pay the ordinary workers a decent amount of pay by increasing the level of the minimum wage.”

I will leave you to think that how that compares with George Osbourne’s ideas on quantitative easing.

My mind goes back to Billy Bragg as I first saw him play during the miners strike. Strike is a word that has become metamorphosed into ‘industrial action’. Not too sure about that one.

A strike is still a strike in my book.

Those were the days part 21

Weirdest Parent Appointment

At some parents evenings you get some kids that bring Mum, Dad, Gran, the dog etc. Yeah, I have had dogs on leads, that were being puppy walked, introduced to me. As if Fido would be that bothered about what I had to say.

Sometimes you had an older brother or sister that rocked up to be the interpreter for the Mums and Dads who do not have a great command of English. On the odd occasion you could kind of tell that the brother/sister was watering down the bad news which you had to give when the folks nodded appreciatively and mumbled “thank you very much” to my comment that “I  am afraid to say that Sunil has not done any homework this term.”

A Mum who will remain anonymous used to come and sit down at my desk regularly without making an appointment. I taught or had taught most of her kids over the years. But even if it was a night for a year group of one of her kids that I did not teach, this Mum would always park up with me for 5 minutes.

The reason being was that the rows of desks were set out alphabetically and my spot gave a prime viewing position at which to gaze at CJ (Clive Jarvis) This is precisely what this Mum would do. She had an enormous crush on CJ and would tell me quietly what a wonderful teacher he was and how she would like to repay him for his professionalism!

The weirdest entourage I dealt with concerned two families that had wife swapped.  Both families were very amicable and in fact all four parents turned up for the appointment for the kid I taught. So extra chairs were brought out and it was always most confusing trying to talk to four faces about one student. Very weird!

And the molecule at the top of this post?

Well for a while a few staff used to dress up their desks in not quite a “Pimp my Ride” sort of style. One maths teacher covered his desk with green poster paper and put loads of pot plants on or around the work top. It looked like a display from the Chelsea Flower show. A CDT teacher rigged up some Christmas lights to his desk that pulsed all evening long in a really annoying way. I used to make Molymod© molecular structures and leave them on my desk. Ethanol looked like a little dog which caused much amusement, but little opportunity for teaching and learning!

Those were the days Part 19

The shutting of Slough Ice Rink

Once I took over the form tutoring role of a tutor group that had had four form tutors in three years. As a consequence of the constant changes they were a bit feral when I took them over in year 10. The group turned out good in the end, in fact they won the overall form Sports Day Trophy in that same year.

At this stage I had worked out what method motivated them – bribery. A girl in form won the 800 m, literally by beating the only two other girls that turned up, due to the fact that I promised her a bottle of vodka if she ran.

I was good to my word, but I do not let her have the bottle until she was 18!

One promise to them that I later regretted slightly was a trip to Slough ice rink – a reward for good behaviour. On the big night we piled the kids into two minibuses and drove down the A4. We left the kids to it and then swiftly retired to the bar.

Not long after we had settled down an announcement came on the PA system:

“Could the teachers from QM School make themselves known to a member of staff as we have to close the rink?”

What had happened was mass pileup that made a hole in the ice which had to be repaired by the ice machine that was duly rolled out.

Fortunately no was injured, but the cause of the crash was Celine Dion. Titanic was the blockbuster that year and when “My heart will go on” came on for the public to skate to one lad decided he was Leonardo DiCaprio and tried to hold his girlfriend up as if he was on the bows of the doomed ship.

His girlfriend was not going to have any of this, and when the boy did not put her down when she asked she decked him with a neat right hook.

Both of them came down in a heap causing complete carnage.

Those were the days Part 18

Sports & Social

5 a- side was played at lunch in a sixth form/staff league, as well as after school on Fridays

There was an 11 a-side staff football team too that played other schools and the Year 12 & Year 13 teams. We used to play Year 11 at the end of the year only if they behaved themselves over the year. It was a good carrot to dangle in front of any meatheads that you taught that were in the Year 11 team – “behave yourself, or you won’t play in the Staff game”. The staff team had a bit of a reputation for being a bit ‘rough house’ and had difficulties at times in retaining fixtures against other staff teams in the Borough after some ding dongs with the opposition.

The team did about three weekend tours (in the school minibus) every year to play other schools around the country that we had contacts with – Bolton School for Boys/St Bedes Grammar Bradford was the big one. The nightclubs in both towns have to be seen to be believed. The team even had its own kit sponsored by Snickers. These shirts were supplied by the chocolate bar company after the school sold 50,000 units from its vending machines – the Healthy Schools programme was still to come!

The day before one tour away the bloke who normally played in nets on tour injured his hand. The only last minute replacement we could think of was the lad who played in goal for the sixth form team. He was in my Year 13 tutor group, so after an invite in Friday morning registration and the “what goes on tour…..” pledge he turned up next day with a note from his mum and was on the bus. He is in his 30’s now and still claims that was the best weekend of his life!

Another great sporting event was the renowned crazy golf tournament on the field which was organised by the PE department. You had to chip over benches, hack out of the long jump pit and lob the ball over hockey goals around an improvised course. Mr Old School himself, Matt Morse – a teacher that called girls by their Christian names and boys by their surnames, used to carry a 7 iron around along with a plastic carrier bag of 9 bottles of Beefeater G&T mixers. He would tee off and have a scoop on each hole. This was a man who had a set of optics bolted to his upright piano in his music practice room.  He would regularly spike his tea with a shot of the good stuff from one of the bottles fixed in front of him whilst tinkling away on the piano as he accompanied a scratchy Year 7 violinist. A legend.

Pastoral

Form trips were all the rage then. I took some of my tutees ice skating, bowling and sailing, even down to Loftus Road to watch the football. I always had a form Christmas meal out when I had a sixth form tutor group. They were often more fun than the departmental meals out. Green forms had only just started to come in then and risk assessments were unheard of. One Year 13 tutor group night out bowling ended in Zenith’s nightclub in Park Royal and I only had two kids in registration the next day!

Tippex

This stuff used to be banned. One reason in particular was that the organic solvent used to thin down the correction fluid was abused by kids. The situation got quite bad for a while where students would put a few drops of the solvent on their blazer sleeve and sit and sniff it during assemblies. It became the latest craze. One could argue that the assemblies were so bad that the kids got driven to solvent abuse in order to get through them. It is ironic that these days we bang on at kids to wear their blazers in assemblies, whilst then the students were told not to wear them for fear that they would be “on the sniff”.

Those were the days Part 17

Teacher Vices

Staff smoked in the staff room when I first started. When the smoking legislation came in and things tightened up my erstwhile mentor (Richard Michaels) would have a snout in my lab under the fume cupboard hood, whilst sat on a student stool. This saved the hassle of trapsing off to the smoking room.

Staff went to the pub at lunch. Some went every day – no joke! It was the norm for these teachers to have a liquid lunch. Mind you, lunch was an hour long break then, not these modern 40 minute “lunch hours”. In fact the local boozer used to take the TES on a Friday along with the regular order of tabloids for customers to read, as so many of us went down there on that day.

There was also an elite drinking fraternity, which was an off-shoot of the tea-club (see previous posts). “The 335 club” was as the name suggested based on a time of day when members had to be in the Black Bull by. This was the only rule of the 335 club. The “Bull” suffered at least one suspicious fire and had its windows shot out by one disgruntled patron. It has now become run down, but is still being used as a film set!

Back to the booze……..We used to knock back a wine box at every Science Department meeting, regular. The booze and nibbles were supplied by our HOD, who would always bring a decent red and high end bar snacks. Wine was also served with a hot meal on all INSET days and some of the hard core drinkers would regard it as a personal challenge to make sure the wine was all consumed before going back to their work, even if it meant minesweeping the unfinished bottles from other tables.

Smoking Room

When I first started teaching the smoking regulations had yet to be introduced and staff were allowed to smoke in the staff room. Members of the tea-club would not think twice about smoking in the workshop where the club members met. When smoking in the workplace became more restricted a smoking room was set up. This room changed location over the years. It eventually ended up being put in the office space between two mobile class rooms. This mobile hut sat in one of the school carparks detached from the rest of the school. The smokers were a tight bunch who always made the room as homely as possible. It had a TV, fridge and microwave and some comfy chairs to sit in.

One day a Year 11 class was waiting for a cover teacher to turn up for their lesson in one of the classrooms next to the smoking room. The teacher had not arrived and the hut was empty so the class let themselves in. After 10 minutes or so an impromptu game of football broke out amongst some of the lads who were clearly getting bored. Things got more organised, chairs and desks were cleared and the boys started playing “headers and volleys” using the whiteboard as the goal. One stray shot got belted too hard and it burst a hole in the flimsy plywood wall between the smoking room and the classroom. A head got poked in by a student to investigate, the hole was made bigger and a lad shoved through to open up. By the time a teacher eventually got there the tea had been brewed, the fridge had been raided and the fags had been smoked!

Those were the days Part 16


Chalk

When I first started teaching SATS had not been invented, whiteboards (the ones with dry wipe markers) were considered to be truly cutting edge and nearly everybody still had blackboards. There was an art to writing with chalk, you used to get a callous on the tip of your index finger from writing with it – your fingertip used to hurt at the start of term, but hardened up in time. Also the dust chalk made was murder, it got everywhere.

Reporting

When so much is asked of you, it’s time you asked more of your management information system…

This is a direct quote from the company that has spawned the favourite friend of all teachers these days – SIMS. But what are they on about and what have we come to? Equally are there two words in that statement that could be removed and all of a sudden it makes so much more sense!

It is all about SIMS these days, but back in the day reports were hand written once a year by subject teachers on carbon paper, no crossings out or tippex corrections were allowed; statement banks and ctrl C ctrl V were things of the future. The reports themselves were really short – not even A5 in size. The form tutor report was shared with the Head teacher’s comments on the last page.

Yes – he wrote a brief report by hand on every kid in the school after reading all of the subject report pages and checking them for errors. He actually read all of the reports over a weekend and flagged up any errors that he found. This was incentive in itself not to stuff up. I used to sweat bullets writing the form tutor report, as if you buggered it up after the Head had done his bit, you would have to go to his office, cap in hand, and ask for him to write it out again.

The Head always used to teach a foundation English GCSE class and follow them through the two year course. No quibbling, nor favour asked for, the Boss got what he was given when groups were allocated. He rarely missed a class for a “meeting” – just chalked and talked and got the kids through their exams. Old school!