Superwines and not-so-super-whines

 This week seems like the first week of real winter. It gets dark early* (it was dark before Staff meeting finished on Monday - whine) and the evenings have become so cold that hot milos and dunkable cookies have surpassed ice cream as the dessert/supper of preference.

My favourite dunkable cookie of the moment is the classic Superwine. It used to be Girl Guide biscuits but after buying several packets this year I have decided that they don't make 'em like they used to** and now they are definitely inferior to the Superwine.

The problem is that dunking Superwines is entirely too addictive. At first I started out sensibly*** just with one or two Superwines a night. Gradually my cravings increased, just one more cookie each evening. However, last night things got out of hand.

I ate at least 9 Superwines. Possibly more. I lost count. I only stopped when Matt took the packet away.

It was such fun when I was eating them but the consequences were severe. It started at first with a sight sense of seediness which soon developed into full-fledged queasiness.

The symptoms of a sugar overdose started to kick in when I tried to go to sleep. Pointless giggling and twitching. Most disturbing.

I felt ill yet I still was tempted to sneak down into the kitchen and eat more cookies. Admittedly in my hyper and noisy state, it is unlikely that it would have been a particularly stealthy sneaking.

I became more Cookie Monster**** than human.

Now I do not know if I can stop. Is it possible to drink a hot, delicious milo and not want a little (or a lot of) cookie on the side?

* Well I do not entirely object to Winter I find this aspect of it depressing. There is little in life that saps my will to go to work more than the getting up in the morning while its still dark and then not getting home until after sunset. It feels like all the daylight hours are spent trapped inside classrooms.

** Sadly this is a fate that has befallen many a cookie the most obvious being the animal biscuits which are now dry and do not have enough icing. I suspect that there is some sort of make the world less happy conspiracy whereby childhood memories are scarred by the substandard biscuits. The cookie companies are deliberately making their cookies drier and less delicious so that when adults eat them they think, "oh no! Even cookies aren't as good as they used to be. Life is getting worse!" and get depressed, and in extreme cases, jump off tall buildings.

*** Sensible! Sensible!! SENSIBLE!!! Do other people still think of that whenever they hear the word?

**** This is old-school ravening-for-Cookies Cookie Monster not healthy diet "cookies are a sometimes food" Cookie Monster.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?

 Today has been an interesting and surprisingly enjoyable day at work, largely because I haven't done much teaching I suspect.

I generally angst quite a bit about low-productivity lessons where Learning Outcomes aren't met, but sometimes they can be fun.

With my year 11s the girls came bouncing in as it was one of their birthdays today. Apparently with some teens this means that you should give pressies at school but the girl in question had presents dumped on her as she walked through the door and was already carrying one of those ridculously cute plush sleeping sheep toys. Rather than make her put all the stuff away I wrote a large "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" on the whiteboard and insisted she unwrap her other pressies. Then another student wandered in with a ukelele* so I got him to play 'happy birthday' on it while the class sang along. He didn't know how to play the tune obviously but fortunately few members of the class knew how to sing it, so it didn't ready matter. I alone tried to carry the tune and the result was, I think safe to say, one of the loudest and worst renditions of happy birthday ever.

I bought a class bundle of yesterday's newspapers for Article analysis for Reading Logs only to discover that each paper had a free Star Wars poster. The kids were pretty excited when I said they could keep the posters from their newspapers. Unfortunately, one (the strange ukelele kid) started sneaking extra posters out of other newspapers and taped them over his uniform. He kept waiting for he to tell off him but I said that he felt brave enough to wander through the school as a walking advertisment for Revenge of the Sith, he should go for it.

After a while he realised what the rugby-head type students would be likely to do to a skinny student carrying a ukelele with star wars posters taped over his T-shirt and shorts, and he removed the uniform-breeching posters.

My good mood continued into Year 10 English. The kids were carrying on with their Poetry assignment so little teaching with needed. I didn't bother telling the 'off-task' kids off I just wandered around with my Excellent stamp so once and a while and stamped the diaries and hands of students who were working well. It was reasonably effective and about 3/4 of the kids got a fair bit of work done (which meant some had over four stamps).

After lunch, my classroom decided to become ridiculously hot. The students came in and started complaining about the stuffiness of the room and then one suggested we went outside. I said "OK, great idea. Let's go outside and read books on the field for the hour". She stared at me a while and then asked if I was mocking her. It actually took me a while to convince the students that I was letting them go outside to just read for an hour. I must normally be grumpy or harsh or something. Their astonishment did not really disappear. After about 45 minutes I noticed many of them becoming restless and not reading anymore so we came inside. I explained the due dates and what we would be doing next lesson (Friday Fun with Play-doh lesson). There was a certain amount of uncertainty but the students who were in my class last year assured them that I do actually get them to make play-doh sculptures of short stories.

I was trying to work out why I feel so unstressed and chilled out about goofing off with students today. I think partly it is the sunny weather after so many days of rain and wind. I also suspect that I am just at the point when my tiredness from the 48 hours of film-making has gone but the happy wamr fuzzies remain. I think also the hilarity of Staff meeting this morning helped. Staff meeting is usually a dull if not depressing time of day to help teachers get into a grumpy mood to be surly at students**. However, today an amusing confession from one of the older male teachers in our school lightened the tone. The teacher in question, Mr X as I shall now call him, has a broken arm. Mr X stood up and announced that he was going to tell us how he broke it as it was embarrassing and he may as well admit it. I suspected that it would be some falling over story but it was so much better...

It seems Mr X decided that an arm wrestle would be an effective way to sort out a disagreement he was having with one of his Year 12 students.

He claims that the student started before he was ready and forced his arm with "the ferocity of a student who has fantasised about breaking a teacher's arm for four years of high school". Apparently there was a loud cracking sound. Several spectating students thought it was a watch broken. Mr X tried stoically to conceal his agony and apparently continued to teach for the rest of the lesson.

He later snuck off in search of medical attention.

I'm not sure if the ridculousness of the situation comes across enough when you don't know the teacher in question. Try to imagine the most boring looking, conservative, vest-wearing maths teacher you can and you might be close.

Craziness.

Now I can feel safe that no matter how odd or weird a teacher I am, I will never arm wrestle a student, and as such, will not be in running for the 'most insane teacher' award.

* Yep, I've got the weird class. This one student is always carrying around random musical instruments. He usually has to put them up the front of the class each lesson so as to not be tempted to stat playing. I heard him play the harmonica once and I am not convinced he knows how to play any of the instruments.

** At least that is what I have come to believe the function of Staff Meetings is.

Bonding, books and bananas... Oh so many bananas

 Well the 48 hour film competition is over now but it was an incredibly fun and rewarding experience.

I learned many things, probably more than I can fit into one blogpost, but I shall try to cover a few.

1. A lack of sleep removes cynicism and alters your perspective

Yes, enlightenment through sleep deprivation. It is now my firm belief that there would be fewer wars in this world if leaders and politicians were forced to make Disney family movies in 48 hours. The experience left me feeling all happy and thoroughly convinced that people were lovely, most particularly the ones I had just made a film with, but I was well disposed to people in general. I really wasn't even disappointed about missing the deadline after viewing the movie. Without sounding too much like a fortune cookie, the experience itself was its own reward. Just being there involved to varying extents in the process of going from having a genre, character, prop and line on Friday 7pm to watching a short film we had made on Sunday at 7.30pm was genuinely and incredibly fulfilling.

I found myself close to tears on many occasions. The story of the film felt genuinely touching - I _really_ wanted Max to get back his imagination and found the ending of the film quite moving.

It was weird because when I initially heard the genre, my reaction was to make a spoof Disney film with a trite and heavy-handed message. It now seems really sweet that although there are hilariously funny moments of parody and ridiculous absurdity, the underlying theme is one that I sincerely feel quite charmed by and the characters were lovely.

2. My friends are even more awesome than I knew and you can get to know people more in 48 hours of insane madness than in years of not making a film in 48 hours

Yeah, bonding with some great people is a pretty great way to spend your weekend. I was just so impressed that people remained so kind and supportive to one another, and even though we were tired and some people were doing ludicrous amounts of work, I did not see anyone get rude or surly. People kept their sense of humour.

I found out that many people I know are extremely talented, something which I had hitherto only suspected.

It was great getting to know people better. I feel now that I can add many of your names to the 'friends' list of my life* (man, I feel like I'm still oozing the Disney, only in a geeky kind of way). Many of you were already there, but maybe you guys get gold-card membership or something...

I didn't really learn this but I want to say it anyway, we should make a 'It's a wonderful library' Calendar. There were some amazing shots that deserve to be hung up on our walls and fridges for at least one month a year.

My suggestions so far (please comment with others):
1. Lee as Fairy King surrounded by gorgeous lady fairies
2. Max covered in bananas
3. Bodil peeking out from umbrella 'the monkeys are angry'
4. Lee 'smuggit' shot from the duel
5. Violet, Max, Bodil and Bear on steps
6. Violet handing flowers to Max
7. Max tied up in snake rope
8. Violet and Max reading to cute kiddies at the library

* It seems strange to use a LiveJournal metaphor for real life when I have a Blogspot blog.

Want Weekend... NOW!!!

 Whoa! The triple exclamation pointage in the title? Will my post live up to the expectations set by extreme exclamatory punctuation? Am I setting hopes too high?

Almost certainly.

Of course I pretty much always want it to be the weekend* because I am slack and sleeping in and doing things I enjoy is more agreeable than working. However, this week my desire is many times greater for several reasons. Firstly, I am hugely and impatiently looking forward to the fun and hectic challenge of being involved in the 48 hour film festival. Secondly, Matt birthday was last night and whilst it was a nice evening with yummy food and such, to put it simply, more fun must be had. Birthday fun involving cake and delicious food. Thirdly, school is becoming entirely too stressful.

I just received an email that one of the students in my form class, Daniel, is in hospital suffering from toxic shock. He had a burn on his leg last week and it went bad. Very bad. He has had to have a large skin graft and is still in very poor condition. I've been trying to get hold of his mum but I don't have my cell phone here and the stupid school phones don't let us call cell phones.

I feel absolutely awful about this. I saw the burn he had last week and it was huge. The bandage he had fell off in class and it was a pretty gross looking burn - very weepy. I sent him off to the medical room to get it cleaned up and he came back with it covered up. I should have phoned up home to check up on it that day or insisted he saw the public health nurse when she came in or even just asked to make sure that it had been cleaned, not covered with a bandage. I guess I am guilty of just passing on/ignoring a problem. Arrghh, guilt.

Another parent phoned up to say how their son is unhappy in my class. Not because of me but because they feel left out and excluded by the other students. I feel guilty about that too. It is a nice student but he is really quiet in my class. I guess I should have tried to create a more inclusive atmosphere or put students in assigned groups and so forth. I do not really know what to do about it. I think I have been way too focussed on trying to keep control of the class and get the slack/disruptive students to work. Now it seems the nice kids are suffering.

I went and observed a Year 11 French class yesterday afternoon. It seemed noisy (particularly given there were only about 15 students there) but all the students appeared to be happy and friendly with each other. They were smiling and joking, but also helping each other.

Today I shall try to create a friendlier and happier atmosphere. Maybe if I pretend I like I'm friendly and having fun, it will rub off the on the students.

Or maybe I'll just hide in front of the computer and wait for the weekend.

* Except when it is the holidays.

In case people do not realise how icky real students are...

 I did not see Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby (or however it is spelt) last Friday as I went to see Kingdom of Heaven. I do not regret missing it from the reviews I have heard. There was some discussion around the classroom of how the writers have clearly not been anywhere near a NZ high school in the last 4 decades or so and have no idea what modern NZ teenagers are really like. Apparently the really BAD students drew unseemly pictures on the whiteboard in the show. Seems pretty tame to me.

I thought I would list just a few of the grotty behaviours of real NZ high school students. Remeber that my school is decile 8 (10 being the highest decile - meaning that socioeconomic factors of the area mean that the students should not in theory be as 'difficult' as others in a lower decile). I should also state that the majority of students are nice, decent human beings who might sometimes do low key 'naughty' things like talk in class and forget their homework, but nothing I deem shocking or antisocial.

Disturbing incidents of a icky nature (from today):

1. A year 9 student reported that someone had defecated (although he used less polite language to describe it) all over the seat of one of the toilets. Apparently this was true, I personally did not check it out but a teacher said it was. It seems the pooper in question must have gone to a reasonable a amount of effort. The entire turd was , it seems, carefully spread across what was a disturbing large amount of the seat. I puzzled for a while at how it might have been achieved (seems jolly awkward to me) but then became too grossed out and had to stop thinking about it.

2. A fight broke out near C block at lunchtime when one student tried to forcibly shove a piece of rotten rubbish down another student's throat. Possibly they were a little too enthusiastic over the school's new anti-rubbish programme.

3. During Period 2 rubbish collection (we now have clean-up spots assigned to each classroom for 5 minute rubbish collection during Periods 2 and 4) several students from rival classes decided to start a litter fight by flinging decaying and stinky rubbish at one another resulting in some dirt, stinky uniforms.

I could also go into the nastiness of bullying, drug problems, fighting (kids with broken noses, arms, and one kid pushed through a safety glass window ending up with over 20 stitches), verbal abuse, vandalism and arson that we have had happen this year.

I guess I did not fully realise how bad things were until I started teaching (I was quite surprised when the police showed up with a sniffer dog to find the students with drugs at school and when a students set fire to the B block toilets because they got angry in class), but it kind of annoys me that they portray students as 'little rascals' level naughty.

I do not think we are quite at the '21 Jump Street' level where we need undercover cops at schools (althought that would be pretty cool - maybe we do. Some of the Year 10s look entirely too large), but it is not exactly Enid Blyton like either.

"Oh bother, Fanny*. I seemed to have left my essay at home! Gosh, what will the teacher say."

"Gosh Dick, you are frightfully forgetful. I shall have to tell on you of course, and won't you be in a jolly lot of trouble."

"Yes, I expect I might be in a bit of hot water but if I don't own up, I'll jolly well only make it worse for myself!"

* Note: in a modern NZ high school any student named Fanny would have either changed her name or left due to a nervous breakdown.

In case people do not realise how icky real students are...

 I did not see Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby (or however it is spelt) last Friday as I went to see Kingdom of Heaven. I do not regret missing it from the reviews I have heard. There was some discussion around the classroom of how the writers have clearly not been anywhere near a NZ high school in the last 4 decades or so and have no idea what modern NZ teenagers are really like. Apparently the really BAD students drew unseemly pictures on the whiteboard in the show. Seems pretty tame to me.

I thought I would list just a few of the grotty behaviours of real NZ high school students. Remeber that my school is decile 8 (10 being the highest decile - meaning that socioeconomic factors of the area mean that the students should not in theory be as 'difficult' as others in a lower decile). I should also state that the majority of students are nice, decent human beings who might sometimes do low key 'naughty' things like talk in class and forget their homework, but nothing I deem shocking or antisocial.

Disturbing incidents of a icky nature (from today):

1. A year 9 student reported that someone had defecated (although he used less polite language to describe it) all over the seat of one of the toilets. Apparently this was true, I personally did not check it out but a teacher said it was. It seems the pooper in question must have gone to a reasonable a amount of effort. The entire turd was , it seems, carefully spread across what was a disturbing large amount of the seat. I puzzled for a while at how it might have been achieved (seems jolly awkward to me) but then became too grossed out and had to stop thinking about it.

2. A fight broke out near C block at lunchtime when one student tried to forcibly shove a piece of rotten rubbish down another student's throat. Possibly they were a little too enthusiastic over the school's new anti-rubbish programme.

3. During Period 2 rubbish collection (we now have clean-up spots assigned to each classroom for 5 minute rubbish collection during Periods 2 and 4) several students from rival classes decided to start a litter fight by flinging decaying and stinky rubbish at one another resulting in some dirt, stinky uniforms.

I could also go into the nastiness of bullying, drug problems, fighting (kids with broken noses, arms, and one kid pushed through a safety glass window ending up with over 20 stitches), verbal abuse, vandalism and arson that we have had happen this year.

I guess I did not fully realise how bad things were until I started teaching (I was quite surprised when the police showed up with a sniffer dog to find the students with drugs at school and when a students set fire to the B block toilets because they got angry in class), but it kind of annoys me that they portray students as 'little rascals' level naughty.

I do not think we are quite at the '21 Jump Street' level where we need undercover cops at schools (althought that would be pretty cool - maybe we do. Some of the Year 10s look entirely too large), but it is not exactly Enid Blyton like either.

"Oh bother, Fanny*. I seemed to have left my essay at home! Gosh, what will the teacher say."

"Gosh Dick, you are frightfully forgetful. I shall have to tell on you of course, and won't you be in a jolly lot of trouble."

"Yes, I expect I might be in a bit of hot water but if I don't own up, I'll jolly well only make it worse for myself!"

* Note: in a modern NZ high school any student named Fanny would have either changed her name or left due to a nervous breakdown.

Need more Fry in my Friday...

 I survived my first PRT observation of the term. It was actually the first one done by the HOD as he was away last year so my associate did them all. Very intimidating. Well, intimidating enough to give me stressful teaching-gone-bad dreams last night.

Actually I have been feeling pretty down on my teaching ability this week. I was incredibly upset about some rather rotten lessons I had on Wednesday and Thursday*.

I had been fearing that I in fact had no teaching superpowers, or rather I had anti-teaching superpowers. It seemed like the only power I had was to take great literature and make teenagers hate it**. Even goods kids had started moaning about the novels, stories, poetry etc they were doing.

However, the lessons I taught this morning went remarkably well, a noticable lack of students complaining about work and a high percentage of engaged, productive work. Yay! The students did not necessary enjoy all of the work, but they appeared to be thinking and trying, and they all got a lot of work done. Woot.

The awesome success have having not-entirely-terrible lessons led to a ravenous hunger. I guzzled my sandwich (aPB & J that was meant to last until Lunchtime) at 11.45am! I deduce that not only my emotions (see *) but also my teaching powers are linked to food.

I currently crave something fried and salty. Hmm, greasy.

I suppose I shall have to go and find some exceedingly unhealthy food to eat, afterall the success of my period 5 Year 11 English class may depend on it!

* Although Matt has Sherlocked out that the days I come home upset and depressed about teaching are also the days when I don't get a chance to eat my lunchtime sandwich. It seems that my emotions are ridiculously simple: full stomach = happy Debbie. Empty stomach = sad Debbie.

** Which really is not a desirable superpower for any one, especially not an English teacher. I guess it could lead to being a good supervillain. The Literaturinator - a twisted and dastardly villain who sneaks about in libraries and schools blasting innocent teens with her 'hate reading' ray gun. Soon she would render an entire generation moronic and illiterate as they threw books away in disgust - no wait, isn't that the work of reality TV shows?

To rhyme or not to rhyme?

 Teaching poetry is always challenging. Students have many misconceptions about what poetry is and many seem to have issues* with the idea that they are expected to read, write or in other way, consort with verse.

It is always disheartening to a poetry enthusiast to hear the collective groan rise up in a classroom when you announce that you are doing poetry. I have considered a stealth approach. Maybe hand out about a bit of Tennyson or Byron without telling them and treat it like prose. Or when setting a creative writing assignment tell them they are writing a special kind of short story with minor sentences, meter and rhythm.

“But isn’t this poetry, miss?”

“No, definitely not poetry. It’s rhyming prose.”

I guess I’m just not that devious.

The peculiar thing is that they seem fine with learning poetic terms and identifying them in isolation. They happily will do my simile/metaphor/personification quizzes and even my year 10's enjoy making up onomatopoeia or alliterations**.

My year 9's started their poetry portfolios today for the Tangata Whenua unit. The first poem they had to write was one about an attack on a Pa. I decided to let them do any form and make it fairly open structurally (which meant most chose Acrostic because they seem obsessed with Acrostic poems – easier I guess?) but they have to include at least one simile and one metaphor.

Most of them wrote pretty good poems – some of the boys did particularly gory ones (at least they were paying attention when I taught the traditional Maori weapons it seems).

However, it did start a bit of an argument when students started reading and critiquing each other’s poems. There was a disagreement between several students as to whether a poem was better (or as the students put it “more poetry”) if it rhymed or not.

“Real poems rhyme!”

“No, not rhyming is so more poetry!”

“Is not!”

I tried to reassure them that both rhyming and non-rhyming poems are valid and that they were allowed to do either. The objective was to create mood and atmosphere through effective imagery.

“Yeah, but rhyming is more poetry.”

I gave up.

* no doubt arising from some sinister event in their past I imagine. Although it is hard to imagine what the harrowing experience with poetry was exactly, possibly they were bullied by an ode or mugged by a sonnet when they were younger.

** Although yesterday the reason they enjoyed it so much was because they were trying to make offensive long alliterative sentences about their friends and classmates. Year 10s have extensive smutty vocab (particularly with the letters L and F) and know many synonyms for body parts. There was a bit of concern though when I threatened that they might have to hand their work in to be marked.

Doing stuff I don't want to - yep it's back to work...

 Hmm, it looks like today's post might be morbid and self-pitying with perhaps a smidgen of ranting.

Anyone not interested in my bile-filled discourse on School systems and the evils of Management approach to education, please skip to the bottom of the post. I'll put in a joke or something nice, I just cannot think of one yet. Must get the bile out of my system first.

I never enjoy returning to school and starting a new term. I get used to the relaxed pace of holidays and find the transition back to being exhausted really difficult. However, having said that part of me does get a little enthusiastic and optimistic about all the things I'll do well (or at least better) in the following term.

It is does not take long for this optimistic attitude to die. In only two days my enthusiasm for my classes and the new units we are starting have been snuffed out like a hedgehog meandering in a daze across a road in Eketahuna.

Our illustrious Principal decided to start the week with an inspiring Monday morning speech about how the school's grades were dropping, especially with regard to Literacy credits, and read out a string of depressing statistics. The HOD of English was particulary miffed because the stats were somewhat misleading - the standards for certain Literacy standards changed between years and courses changed and so year by year comparisons weren't exactly representative. He also went on to blather on about how disgraceful Uniform standards were at the end of last term and how things had to be picked up this term. He finished up with some statement about the 'untapped potential' of students and how we should 'inspire them with our passion for our subjects' which didn't ring so true after the lecture on Uniforms.

Personally I just do not care about uniforms. Older teachers and management seem disproportionately concerned with uniform down to the smallest detail like regulation socks. I follow the rules insofar as I feel I have to - it is my job to make sure that students follow the rules, so I make sure my form class and students are basically wearing the correct uniform and are not too scruffy but I don't think I could spot non-regulation black socks. I just do not care enough to be able to tell the difference.

There was another before school meeting today grouped by Year groups in which form teachers were again told to monitor uniforms. They photocopied off pictures of the correct uniform and went over the exact details. Apparently non-regulation socks can be grouped into several categories of 'incorrectness'. They are as follows:

1. Colour - in previous years it was black socks only for boys but white or black socks for girls. It has been changed now so that girls may only have black socks. White socks are being 'phased out'. Female students who started college before 2004 may still wear white socks. If they started after 2004, then there is no excuse for white socks.

2. Length - Socks are to be knee length for both boys and girls (unless the girls started before 2004 and have the old ankle high white socks. White socks cannot be knee high). Girls may also wear full length pantyhose but only if they are compliant with the 'opacity' (3). Stockings which come over the knee but then stop mid-thigh are definitely prohibited.

3. Opacity - If girls are wearing stockings, they must be opaque. No sheerness is allowed. The exact denier figure was unclear but we were told if you could make out skin beneath the fabric, it was no good.

There were further instructions as to jewelry restrictions and not wearing t-shirts underneath the uniform but my brain started to wander elsewhere during these.

It was a particularly dull and depressing start to the day. I feel vaguely guilty that I don't care but I don't. I don't really care if students wear polyprops under their tops - it's cold. I don't care if their jacket is non-regulation.

There are some times when I feel like my mindset is too close to a student's and I am not teacher-like enough.

Of course then I wander off to class and soon come to realise that some students are irrational alien beings and I'm morely likely to have a meaningful conversation with the rubbish bin than the average Year 10.

I just don't get them. Well, some of them anyway.

For example two of my Year 11 students. They are lazy. They did not complete their assignments last term (only did about half of the work required). They did not pass the assignment. They act surprised. I explain that their work was of an acceptable standard but that they did not do all of it. If you don't finish an assignment, you can't pass the assignment.

They immediately started whinging about it being too hard and that they couldn't read. They started claiming they wanted to move to the alternate English class. I explained that you had to finish assignments in the alternate English class too. They got angry and stormed off to the deans demanding to be shifted into the alternate English class. Now I have to waste some of my time after school having a meeting with the dean about whether they should move into an alternate English class. Very sucky. I kind of don't mind if they leave my class because they are annoying but really I have to say that they shouldn't leave because they are capable of passing a regular English course.

My year 12 class was pretty morale crushing too. They got their Formal Writing results back and about 80% of the class passed (which is pretty good for the first attempt). One girl complained bitterly though, inspite of having passed, because she found a spelling mistake circled in the final copy that I hadn't circled in the second draft.

"How was I supposed to know that it wasn't spelt correctly when you didn't mark it in the second draft," she whinged.

"Sorry, I must have missed it in the second draft," I admitted because I should have picked it up. "It doesn't affect your grade anyway."

"But that's not the point. You're an English teacher, you should have seen it," she mumbled huffily. "If I hadn't passed, I'd complain and appeal the mark."

At this point my mind played an amusing scene of my forcibly silencing the little brat by shoving the essay down her throat and explaining it is hard to notice all the spelling mistakes when she writes likes a drunken monkey and I had done about 2 hours of solid marking trying to get all the drafts marked in one night for the next day's assessment.

One of these days my tolerance will run out and I shall explode in a torrent of rage on one of these bratty, obnoxious students. I shall beat them about the head, possibly with one of their non-regulation socks, and tell them just how annoying they are.

Right, a funny joke or similar I believe was promised. Hmmm. Tricky...

Well, I can't think of my own, so I resort to one of my favourite puns from the Pun Of the Day website.

The history of cheese is full of holes, but it's interesting in its own whey.