{"id":30570,"date":"2015-07-05T18:53:07","date_gmt":"2015-07-05T15:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acakuwait.wpengine.com\/?p=30570"},"modified":"2015-07-05T18:53:31","modified_gmt":"2015-07-05T15:53:31","slug":"confessions-of-a-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acakuw.com\/?p=30570","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of a teacher!"},"content":{"rendered":"

 \"\"<\/a> 
\nSecret Teacher: I wish I could stop taking out my work stress on my class.<\/p>\n

I really do care about my students. But the relentless pressure of Sats, data, targets and appraisals stops me being the teacher I want to be.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve told you to sit down NOW!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, you cannot go to the toilet in the middle of maths!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow dare you speak to me like that? Go to Mrs Shouts-A-Lot\u2019s classroom this instant.\u201d
\nAs I lie in bed, these words scratch angrily around my brain. How many times a day do phrases like these leave my stressed mouth? Too many. Where are my manners? Why do I think it\u2019s acceptable to speak to my class like this? Who do I think I am? They\u2019re only 10 and 11 years old.
\nThe day usually starts well. \u201cGood morning class\u201d flutters kindly around the room and I promise myself that today will be a good day. I\u2019ll be kind today, I\u2019ll be patient and I definitely won\u2019t shout.
\nThat lasts until I\u2019m ordered to cover an assembly 10 minutes before it\u2019s due to start, and then told off by the snotty deputy head during wet play. \u201cThree members of your class were found flicking water at each other in the toilets, Miss. Please remind them how to behave.\u201d My frustration prickles. I want to retort: \u201cHow about you stop pushing papers from behind your desk for two minutes and get back on the frontline to remember what this is all about?\u201d But instead I just nod and get on with marshalling the class. 
\nThe problem is that as the pressure of Sats, data, target tracker and my appraisal looms angrily over me, there\u2019s 30 people who bear the brunt of it: my class. My caring, hardworking, and delightful class. As I stand at the front, I desperately throw information at them and hope somehow it will enter their minds. I especially need it to stick with George. He looks at me blankly. He\u2019s my 3C pupil who has had every intervention under the sun flung in his direction. From one-to-one support to class teacher focus groups, you would have thought that something must work. But nope. Not for George. 
\nDid you know it takes him two hours to get to school each day? Two trains and a bus. He\u2019s always late and he\u2019s always tired; he doesn\u2019t go to bed until 1am, his mum isn\u2019t the least bit interested in education, and his dad messes him around every weekend. But here I am, in reciprocal reading, asking him to summarise the main points of chapter five in The Secret Garden; and for some reason I expect a level 5 answer (because something happened recently and a level 4 is no longer \u201csatisfactory\u201d).
\nI feel my frustration edging up again. \u201cYou read this damned chapter yesterday.\u201d Don\u2019t say it. Don\u2019t say it. \u201cRight, let\u2019s start with the basics. What\u2019s the main character\u2019s name?\u201d He\u2019s forgotten. Again. We\u2019ve only gone over it 137 times. \u201cRight George, go and sit over there, read it again and don\u2019t come back until you know the answer!\u201d Why do I get so annoyed? Where is the empathy that I dutifully show in front of parents and colleagues?
\nAs I lie in bed I think about the conversation I should have had with George \u2013 the type of exchange that only happens every now and then, usually in September after the summer break or on a Monday after half term. \u201cGeorge, let\u2019s have a look at this piece of text together. Can you read the first paragraph and spot the main character\u2019s name?\u201d
\n\u201cThanks Miss, I re-read this chapter at home last night to help me today,\u201d George replies. \u201cI remember now, skim-read for the key word, that\u2019s right isn\u2019t it Miss? Found it! She\u2019s called Mary Lennox.\u201d
\n\u201cGreat effort George, I\u2019m really proud of you for trying so hard.\u201d
\nAs we discuss Mary and her selfish ways, George becomes passionate, explaining his feelings about her and backing it up with evidence from the text. A flurry of excitement tingles through me as I see him listen intently to the others on his table and then the children calmly debate why Mary acts the way she does. I\u2019m patient. I pose a question at key moments to develop their answers and I\u2019m focused \u2013 as are the children. Oh, wow, this is real teaching. This is how it should be.
\nThen the pang of guilt leaps in: here I am, in the real world, demanding so much from these little faces and in the most toxic way. George needs to read, yes, but force-feeding him The Secret Garden isn\u2019t going to help him cope with all the things he has to manage outside of school. But it must because he needs to make accelerated progress, six point progress. Come on George. That\u2019s when my frustration kicks in. I moan, I groan and, sometimes, I raise my voice.
\nI know that I\u2019m actually annoyed with those in their ivory towers \u2013 mostly the government and Ofsted. But, unfortunately, the only people getting this anger is George and Co. In that moment, at home in bed at 11.30pm after an evening marking session, I\u2019ve forgotten that you pulled Sarah\u2019s hair, I\u2019ve forgotten that you haven\u2019t handed in your homework (all year), and I\u2019ve forgotten that teaching can make me crazier than I ever thought possible. But I haven\u2019t forgotten that I appreciate every one of you, you make me proud every single day, and I don\u2019t tell you enough that you inspire me to be a better person. I really, really do care \u2013 I\u2019m just not given enough space and time to tell you that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

   Secret Teacher: I wish I could stop taking out my work stress on my class. I really do care about my students. But the relentless pressure of Sats, data, targets and appraisals stops me being the teacher I want to be. \u201cI\u2019ve told you to sit down NOW!\u201d \u201cNo, you cannot go to the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":30571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-178"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acakuw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acakuw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acakuw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acakuw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acakuw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acakuw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acakuw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acakuw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acakuw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acakuw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}