Grahamstown to Gravesend

You could say I have jumped from the pan into the fire. Despite all that I have heard and read up on teaching in English state schools, nothing could have prepared me for the reality of facing mobs of unruly children. It is utterly exhausting.

I wake up at 5 am and get to school just after 7. My first class each day only starts at 8:40 but I need the hour and a half before hand to mentally prepare myself for the noisy, chaotic onslaught that lies ahead.

Picture 25 kids at a time all yelling and carrying on. My job starts by getting them to enter the classroom in somewhat of an orderly fashion. Then comes the far greater challenge of getting them to sit down and actually listen to anything I have to say. This usually takes up the remaining 50 minutes of the lesson.

I like to think that as times goes by I’ll develop a rapport with the students and they will stop giving me such a hard time, but at times I feel it is a lost cause. Some of the teachers I work with face the same problems I do after years at the school. Perhaps the discipline problems are so deeply entrenched that it will require a long period of time and exceptionally dedicated teachers to work itself out the school.

This is unlikely to happen though considering that in my department alone at least half the teachers are openly looking out for other posts and the other half probably doing so in private. It doesn’t surprise me. I am sure that even by English standards this particular school is a tough nut to crack. Only a crummy inner city school could be harder. Then again I heard about a past teacher now working in the kind of inner city school in London where kids carry knives who said that the school I am in is what really toughened her up. It’s worrying to think that she found an inner city school a step up.

Every morning on my way to work I wonder how I’ll make it through to the end of the day with my sanity in tact. Every evening on my way home I wonder how I am going to get myself back to the school the next day. It is torturous to be in a job where you are not only unappreciated but abused left right and centre. Sometimes when I am at my wits end during a lesson I feel like throwing in the towel right there and then. Any other job, even working behind a MacDonald’s counter, seems more appealing than trying to teach kids who wouldn’t even notice if you dropped dead in front of them.

The only way I can keep going at the school is to constantly keep the things I wish to achieve there at the forefront of my mind - gaining qualified teaching status in the UK being the main one. The teaching experience I gain in the process will pad up my resume nicely too.

So in a year from now I will have either made a niche for myself at my current school or I will be at another more congenial school. Either way I’ll definitely be in a better position - I just have to ride out the storm to get there.