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.