106. Not a blog
Mrs Jellywoman is very well-meaning but inclined to get far too easily distracted from the task in hand. For instance, when she should be writing reports; and finalising writing levels; and entering data from reading assessments; and calculating the increase (or otherwise) in points for each child (and points mean prizes); and the average point increase for the class; and planning next week’s literacy; and planning next week’s maths; and planning next week’s ICT; and when she should be doing absolutely nothing else…
105. Tiny acorns…
“We were just wondering if you knew who’d got the job,” I asked Mr Oak, our retiring Headteacher.
The white smoke was billowing from the room above. We were all keen to know who our next boss would be: a Head makes or breaks a school and the staff with it. Were we going to be maked or breaked?
Mr Oak shook his head. “I don’t know. They’ve not asked me for any help at all with the appointment. Not with the job description or the showing round or the interview. I’ve no idea who they’ve appointed. Sorry.” He lowered his head and I crawled out of the office, conscious that my Headteacher was deeply upset, and that I’d just made things worse for him.
104. Oh… sugar!
“Where’s Olivia?” asked her mother. I looked at Olivia’s “going home place”. She wasn’t there; neither were her coat and bag. I was already soaked to the skin from the dash between the coach and the classroom but this was nothing compared to the tsunami of icy panic which now washed over me. Surely we couldn’t have left her at the Butterfly Farm … could we? We’d counted the children incessantly, Miss Sugarsprinkles and I, at every twist and turn during our trip from Hades but had I actually count them after we’d sat on the coach for the journey back? My mind went a blank.
103. “Romeo met Juliet by the fish-tank.”
The Marker’s Lament
June brings assessments,
reports, progress data. Where
are the strawberries?
Having a screw loose, Pa needed some bits from Screwfix this week. Instead of just driving down there, he ordered on-line with their Click and Collect service first, thus bagging £1.35 towards a cure, costing him narry a penny. The link to GiveAsYouLive is here.
98. An April state of smiles and tears…
Ask me … go on, ask me…
Are you looking forward to retiring?
Hmm… tricky one… and an interesting and relevant question. You must be a very perceptive person. Let me see…
97 Repentance…
Whan that Aprill with his showers sweet
Is watering the sod aronde my feet,
And weedes do sprout and gentile seedlings harden
Thanne longen I to go and dig the garden
And pick the hyacinths and prune the pentas
And wander lustilly round garden centas.
And this is why my blogging’s gone to pot
And furthermore hath schoolwork been forgot.
But now, alack, I reape what I have sown
And over empty planning folders groane
The thought of class tomorrow mack me shiver
With so few arrowes ready in my quiver.
“It serves you rite,” my inner Ofsted’s chanting,
“For Easter spente in planning not, but planting.”
94. The Parent Trap…
“Libby, did you want to share your news?” Libby puts down her hand, wades to the front of the carpet and faces her audience.
“I’ve got news about my mum and dad,” she announces.
“Is it happy news?” I ask. Some things are probably not best shared in show-and-tell.
“Yes it is. Sometimes, my mum takes all my dad’s clothes off and then she laughs. Any questions?”
92. It was the spring of hope…
You might have come across the ‘boiling frog’ model of how people cope with change.
The idea is that if you put a frog in a deep pan of water, it sits around doing happy frog stuff and saying ‘it’s not so bad once you’re in’. Then the pan is put on to heat. The frog adjusts to the gradual rise in temperature – sending out for the odd Ben and Jerry’s perhaps, but basically staying put. It adjusts and adjusts. Then it can adjust no more but, by then, it is no longer physically able to jump out of the pan. And so it goes to the great lily pad in the sky.
No frogs were actually harmed in the making of this metaphor. Hold that thought.
90. Working title…
“That can’t be right!” said the girl who was training me. “45 new p for half of lard?” I looked again at the price-sticker. Oh. I should have rung up 4 ½p. “I’ll have to get the manager to come and sort this out,” she sighed.
Oh dear. And the previous customer had gone so well. I’d already got plans for my first pay-packet: Chelsea Girl had a red short-sleeved V-neck jumper which was crying out to be teamed with my puffy white nylon blouse. Did they sack you if you made mistakes? I was fifteen – what did I know?
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87. Always something there to remind me…
Thursday afternoon saw me tucked away in the non-contact room, ploughing through assessment results. Depressingly, half the children still remain below the class average, despite Mr Gove’s exhortations. I fear for my salary.
Entering results onto a spreadsheet is a mundane job, so I switched on the wireless; partly to drown out the sound of children in the playground – they do keep turning up at school – but also because I knew that Clare Balding was going to be talking to Tom Isaacs as part of her ‘Ramblings’ series on Radio 4.
The Jelly Chronicles 