Conversations between myself and my kids

Working with children can be both stressful and refreshing at the same time. Here are some conversations children in my class have had with me that I found touching, sweet, offensive or just funny. FYI, they are 5-6 years old.

1. Child: Miss, have I been good today?
Me: ...Yes, mostly good.

2. "Miss, you look like a princess in your wedding dress!"

3. Child: Miss, what will you do when you get home?" (Doesn't wait for an answer). I'm going to have a cup of tea, watch some TV then see my mate, what will you do?
Me: I'm going to have a cup of tea then mark your books.
Child: (Stares at me then wanders off).

4. (On the way to the National History Museum)
Child: Miss, I'm going to pray we have a safe journey today.
Me: Ok, go ahead.
Child: (Whispers into her hands). Ok, I've prayed now! (Starts singing).

5. (In the Museum, same child as 4).
Me: Ok, we're coming up to the T-Rex now!
Child: (Starts crying her head off and grips my hand really tightly). 

6. Child: Miss, when I grow up I want to be a teacher just like you!

7. Child: (Comes rushing in straight after playtime, and says quite fast): Miss, someone said I had a stone in my back and now I have a stone in my back. I don't know what to do.

Me: (Perplexed)...Maybe you could jiggle around a bit and then it would come out?

Child: (Thinks about it). Ok.

8. Child: I need the toilet.

Me: I can't let you go yet, you only went 10 minutes ago!

Child: (Really loudly). But I need a poo!

9. Another child, last year: I need the toilet.

Me: Everybody is going in 10 minutes, can you wait until then?

Child: My mum says I have diarrhea. (Deadpan voice).

Me: ...

10. (Child comes running over at the Christmas disco, looking quite tearful). 

Miss, he said Santa Clause isn't real!!

Me: (Thinking):

Image from diylol

What I replied: Just ignore him! Believe what you want to believe. (Child looks relieved).

There have been so many more occasions but my mind has drawn a blank!

What are some funny things kids have said to you?

Achieving that work-life balance

Hello all!

Hope you have had a restful weekend.

One of the aspects of teaching is the immense workload you have. Some people believe teachers roll in at 9am, leave at 3.30pm once the children have been picked up, and indulge in many holidays (I was one of those people...). However, harsh reality kicked in during my very first weeks on placement during my PGCE. I spent every single night until midnight preparing lessons for my Year 6 class, to wake up at 6.30am the next day and repeat once more. By the end of placement I had lost weight yet aged a little bit too. Concentration wrinkles anyone? 

Image taken from http://www.amoils.com

Over the course of my training year however, I had been given little nuggets of advice that struck a chord with me, and can be adapted to any job.

"Teaching is 'just a job'"

Some people may not agree with this, because teaching is a responsible job and if you don't provide a good service to the children, you may be in danger of limiting their education and possibly their life prospects. I had to keep reminding myself that what I am doing is a 'job' because it was in danger of consuming my life entirely. This doesn't necessarily mean that I put in minimal effort to plan mediocre lessons at all; it is merely a reality check that what you're doing may not be any more or less stressful than what somebody else is doing.

"No matter how much work you get done, it will never be finished."

A supply teacher who had taken a different class that day during my training year came in to my classroom after watching me pore over a lesson plan that I had to annotate and re-think for the next day. My thought processes before she had shared this with me were along the lines of, "I will fail if I don't complete this" and "I'm not a good teacher". My confidence was at an all time low. Somehow this reality check changed the way I thought and I decided to learn how to prioritise.

"Work smart, not hard."

This links in with prioritising your workload. Juggling travelling every weekend to see my husband and spending quality time with family and friends (of which was minimal) was really difficult, so I was forced to prioritise. I worked until 8-9pm every evening and did absolutely no work if I could help it at the weekends, so I could get some proper rest and spend proper time with loved ones. Use your PPA time to get planning done and bits of time after school to prepare resources the next day. After a while following this strict regime, I began to feel much more relaxed and it had also helped me improve dramatically! 

"Don't take it personally."

When you start a job, any job, you don't necessarily know the ins and outs of it and can often feel overwhelmed by how much you may not know and feel inferior to the next person. DON'T! A baby can't walk until it's taken a few steps, stumbled a few times, then got up again. It's the same with teaching; don't compare yourself to somebody who has 20 years of experience, of course they're good at what they do because they've been doing it for so long. Likewise, don't compare yourself to somebody who is as qualified as you and may seem like they are doing a better job; everybody learns at different rates, just like the children in your class. Just because you deliver a bad lesson does not mean you are a bad teacher. Reflect on it, improve on it, move on from it! 

"Look after yourself."

Your health and well-being is so important. Absolutely refuse to get less than 7-8 hours of sleep a night, and drink plenty of water. Water helps your concentration and regulates energy levels much better than caffeine; plus, it keeps your throat nice and moist so as not to strain your voice box! Also, try to cut down on sugar. I know it's really hard when colleagues bring in biscuits and chocolates into the staff room (which I also get tempted by...I'm only human!) but as much as you can, try to incorporate more salads and fruit into your diet. It will help much more with those energy levels and you won't feel a slump when teaching in the afternoons. It will help you feel more positive, too!

"Have 'me' time".

Now that you have more time in the evenings and weekends, do something you really love. This will help you feel human and less like a 'teacher' (something I will touch on in a different post!) because you are a person who teaches, not a teacher who does some extra things when you get round to it. Doing things you really love will also make you more interesting to your pupils because you can share bits of what you love, and even feed it into your teaching. My love for cooking and experimenting with food has fed its way (no pun intended) into my lessons and into an after school club. The children see passion as equally as they see zombie-ness. Just do it!

I hope this helps anyone who is feeling the strain, whether you have just qualified, in the midst of training or are having a bad week and need reminding that there is a world beyond the classroom!

A homage to Mick Waters

Some things people might not realise about teaching is the number of observations you have, and how they're accountable to your performance management. They can also be accountable for your mental well-being, which in turn can affect your performance in class. 

I spent my PGCE year and majority of my NQT year being told I was 'satisfactory', which has now become 'requiring improvement', which had meant extra observations. Think of Meryl from Tough Young Teachers. Thankfully my year was not as horrific as hers but it was along a similar line and I know how she feels. It took a conference I went to held by Mick Waters, a teachers' hero, to start unburdening myself with 'grades' (however, this was difficult) and to think of myself as a human being who is doing the best job I can. Mick talked about stereotyping children in the classroom, e.g. gifted and talented, low achievers, special needs, and to label them instead as children who have different learning styles. He touched on how we label ourselves as 'outstanding teachers' if we deliver an 'outstanding' lesson, and 'inadequate teachers' if we deliver an 'inadequate' lesson. The point is, it is ONE lesson; not you as a whole. An outstanding teacher is not only one who can deliver more brilliant lessons and a handful of crap ones, but the teacher who cares about the children as a whole. This could mean extra boosting classes, after school clubs, even sorting out a friend for them if they are alone in the playground. He told us to stop beating ourselves up if we have a bad lesson, because it happens to everybody. However, it is a problem if you deliver more 'inadequate' lessons than not, because the children eventually will make little progress. 

I think the ideology stems from training programmes where we are taught the atmosphere, behaviour, and progress of the children is solely down to the teacher. We are taught strategies to 'engage' pupils who don't want to learn by targeting the lesson to what they might be interested in. This is all well and good but if it goes pear shaped and a child decides to run out of the classroom, is that really your fault? Children come to school with a wealth of problems from home and it is not necessarily always the teachers' fault. During my training year, I taught a year 6 class and the teacher had taken half the group out for an activity. I was left with the other half of the class and after an hour, one kid decided he wanted to go home so he ran out of class. I didn't think - I just ran after him and asked him why he had done that. He shrugged and mumbled something about home. It's not always the teachers' fault.

So, next time you get a grade less than 'good', don't beat yourself up about it. Reflect, think about what you should have done instead, watch another teacher deliver something similar and learn from it. Bad experiences are hidden blessings because they make you stronger and you learn from them. 


I hope this was helpful.

'Til next time!

About me

Welcome to my blog! 

This will feature my ramblings about my job as a teacher. I say 'job', because that is what it is. It can be very life consuming if you make it so. 

Just to tell you a little bit about myself. I'm from the UK. I graduated with a Psychology degree and a Masters in health psychology, with the original view of becoming a clinical psychologist, work for a few years, then become a psychology teacher in the future. That plan didn't work out so I trained on a PGCE in Birmingham in 2011-12, did my NQT year (it was also my first year being married!) and for my second year landed a job in South London in my dream school. It was all a bit of a whirlwind, but being the spiritual person I am I felt it was all part of a bigger plan and everything had fallen into place quite nicely :).

I'm not sure exactly how I want to treat this blog, but it will be general ramblings of my day-to-day life (not too much though - have to protect myself and others around me!), maybe touch on some issues like achieving the work/life balance, OFSTED and jumping through hoops, giving tips and snippets on issues in schools, behaviour management, maybe some funny things children have said. If there are topics you would like me to write about, please leave your suggestions in the comments and I will be happy to post about them!

Disclaimer: By no means am I an outstanding teacher, or label myself as one - I am simply doing the best job I can and if the senior staff think I'm doing a great job then so be it. I have learned so much in my 1.5 years of teaching (as of Feb 2014) and I feel like I want to pass on little nuggets that I have learned. I struggled as a trainee and I really don't want people to have the same horrific experience I did. I could do another post it and tell you all about it! 

More soon!
Mrs K.