6

The lovely DJ Kirby has tagged me. The dealio is I tell you 6 things about me, which just quietly is not going to be very interesting, but you might learn something, and that's the whole point, both of the tagging and this blog. So, without futher ado, in no apparent order, here are 6 things you don't know about Ms Anonymous.

1. I didn't actually want to become a teacher. Everyone always told me I was bossy I'd make a great teacher, so to spite them I tried to find something else to do. But there were forms due, there were universities to go to and after 4 years of drinking studiously applying myself I popped out a teacher.
2. The people I work with think I'm sweet and innocent and lovely. I bitch about all of them behind their backs. Hourly. They shit me.
3. Mr Anonymous and I travelled this great land we live in with a caravan called Bertha for 13 months. You know you'll either love someone for life or never want to see them again after doing something like that.
4. I have been taken home by the police 3 times... And I wasnt' naughty once! Just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
5. I have dated/been in love with 3 pizza boys, a (male - just to clear that up) nurse, an army boy, a farm hand, a cop, a basketball player and a race car driver. Mr Anonymous in none of these.
6. I believe I am right. 100% of the time. My way is best and if you don't believe that then you can just fuck off find somewhere else to take your wrongness.

And just a bonus number 7: Ms Anonymous is not really all that interesting...

To share the love I hereby demand politely request that Sparx and Julz

spill their guts.

A left, a right, a glass of water.

So. Comfy?

Yesterday morning Little Boy Lemming came up to me and asked to go to the toilet. My kids may not learn much but one thing they all excel at is work avoidance. This particular Lemming is by far the brightest button on the shirt that is my class and was clearly just feeling above having to do anything that morning, so I said "NO." To which Bright Button Lemming said "But I'm busting," knowing I have an aversion to kids peeing on the floor. So I let him go.

5 minutes later Bright Button Lemming had still not returned. I opened the sliding door between our class and the class next door and announced to my neighbouring teacher that I had a war to win and would she mind supervising my Lemmings in the effort that is not murdering each other. I stormed out of the class room preparing my rant of terror for Bright Button Lemming who I suspected would be fucking around taking his time in the toilets. Well. No Bright Button Lemming. Hmmm. Sent the two boys who had just come out back in to open all the stall doors and check. Definately no Bright Button Lemming . So I went back upstairs and hit panic stations rang the office. And made it their problem.

Over the course of the next 2 hours, every teacher aide in the school was sent out into the neighbourhood looking for him, sent to shopping centres looking, police were called, I was asked to give a description of Bright Button Lemming more times than I can remember. Turns out I'm not very observant... I told everyone he was wearing black or blue pants. They were white... The Principal went out walking through the neighbourhood, the office ladies were scouring the school and the Deputy went driving in his brooom brooom car.

And he found Bright Button Lemming sitting on Bright Button Lemming's mailbox at his house. As he pulled up Bright Button Lemming said

"If you're looking for my dad, he's not here."

To which a very confused Mr Deputy asked

"Are you Bright Button Lemming?"

"Yes."

"Do you go to Hell on Earth State School The Happiest School Ever?"

"No"

"Is your teacher Ms Anonymous?"

"No."

This is the part where Mr Deputy got out of the car and roared at Bright Button Lemming to get his arse on the seat of the car and get his very much in trouble butt back to school. And the whole neighbourhood didn't even bat an eyelid at a huge towering 6 foot something man putting a small child into his car and driving off.

By this time I was convinced Bright Button Lemming was dead calmly waiting in the office. Poor bastard returns and after much screeching mature and grown up discussion we establish that Bright Button Lemming walked home unannounced because he was thirsty. For water. From his fridge.

After even more questioning we established that he was intending on playing out the front for the rest of the day, had no key to get in, didn't know where his dad was or when he would be home, and that he missed his school he has recently moved from because he had friends there. To which I got all teary cause I am a fucking sooky la la. Then I got to thinking that I never really see him in the playground and asked him why. He lost his hat weeks ago so has been going to the library instead which of course no one else does. It was so important to me that he knew that we cared about him and wanted him to be safe that I did my own runner from school and went and bought the kid a hat so he could go and play with friends not computers. He's been as happy as a pig in shit ever since.

How to piss off Ms Anonymous

I'm not one of those dickhead teachers that goes around wearing a t-shirt or drinking from a mug that says
"I touch the future...I teach"
because lets face it that is both incredibly wankerish and highly illegal. I do however think that most days of the week I am actually doing my bestest to make someone's life better. Even if I all do is make a kid feel happy or ok or safe for the 6 or so hours they are with me each day, then as far as I'm concerned I'm doing a fuckload better than some of their parents. Our kids don't come from the most, ah...shall we say, happy home lives. They put up with shit that would make me curl up in the foetal position and wail myself to sleep each night, make me want to sleep with a knife under my pillow, and generally make me incapable of functioning, yet they do it all with a smile on their face and relatively few aggressive attacks on things smaller than themselves. I work damn hard at making their lives at school as fun, stress free, successful, empowering, enjoyable, friendly and safe as I can without pissing off my boss, the classes next door or breaking any rules.

Before you get the wrong idea, I am not trying to make you think I'm a saint, pure of heart, or mother Theresa-esque. I growl at them, I keep them in at lunch time when they need it, I remove them from the room when they need it, I refuse to talk to them if they're being shit heads and often do all of these things until they cry.

Now. The point of my story. The other day, I was walking through a shopping centre when I was accosted by a fool from one of those bloody charities trying so save the fucking universe. They were operating under their usual MO. Parked in the middle of nowhere so that anyone who wanted to go somewhere had to go by them and getting in peoples faces with their shit. I don't really like to be openly rude and I don't particularly get off on confrontation, so my usual tactic is to either change where I'm going completely to avoid them or just keep my head down looking through my bag for something that I just can't locate.

Well today this arse clown was just not going to let me get by. I did the whole "No thanks, no, no, NO thanks, have a nice day though, thanks but I'm all good, thanks, have a good day," and he just kept following me. Just as I thought I had escaped his clutches he yells after me, "It's because of people like you that these children are dying!".

Well. Holy. Mother. Fucker. He did NOT just go there! Did he go there? Fuckin A.

I interrupt this impossibly interesting story for a little side note. My other half believes I have rage issues. He also believes that we are all born with the same amount of anger but because I'm kinda on the smaller side of average he theorises that my anger is more concentrated than others. He also believes I have a rather short fuse. All hearsay.

This tool with the laminated name tag pissed me off more than I thought a tool with a laminated name tag ever could. I spun so hard and fast that he stepped back and I can't be certain but I'm pretty sure his life may have flashed before his eyes.

"Because of me? These kids are dying because of me?! What do YOU do to help these kids? Stand in shopping malls abusing people who won't give you forty fucking bucks? Do YOU sponsor any of these kids? What about those kids outside there! The ones sitting outside the pub waiting for their pissed fucking parents to take them home and beat the shit out of them for the fucking fun of it?! What about the girls you see walking around here during the day when they should be at school? The girls whose parents let strangers have sex with their daughters so they can buy drugs with the money?! What about the 12 year old that tried to beat ME up so he wouldn't have to come to school and see the counsellor who makes him talk about things he pretends didn't happen? What about the 5 year old I had to pick up off the toilet floor because he had passed out from the ALCOHOL he had been fed to amuse his parents and their friends? Are you helping him? And the kids that broke into YOUR house so they could find money to buy food for their brothers and sisters? Or the girl that bashed your girlfriend and robbed her for her money so she wouldn't be raped tonight? Are you helping them? OUR kids, right here, right now! THEY ARE DYING EVERY DAY YOU MOTHER FUCKING BASTARD! So you can fuck off with fucking suit and pointy leather shoes and your god damn $50 000 car sitting in the car park and your fucking abuse!"

At least that's what I wanted to say. But those kids and more were walking by, around, drinking, eating, hanging out with their families and friends. Their families and friends who think I don't know those things about them. Who trust me, who are grateful for me being in their lives, even if they show me by grunting at me when I say hello instead of pretending I don't exist, or yell at me after listening to what I have to say because hey, at least they listened in the first place. I wasn't about to humiliate these people any more by airing their dirty laundry to this stupid little weed who would have forgotten it all by first drinks at the pub that night.

Instead all I managed was to storm back, poke the little bastard in the chest and growl "Fuck YOU" at him.

A Holiday Exorcism

Holidays are over. God damn it all to hell.

I flew out of Somewhere Not Here to Somewhere Not There to see my Bro, his Mrs and The Baby. I heart The Baby. Like freakin truck loads! He is the world's most awesome baby. (Sparx I'm sorry, but I'm biased - forgive me?)

I learnt in the week I was there that he

• loves it when I wink, but only with my right eye - I think I look more stupid when I do it with my right eye, it kind of makes me screw my whole face up.
• loves it when I screech "WILD STRAWBERRIES!" Pnau - Wild Strawberries - give it 20 seconds... that's all I ask.
• loves horsey rides, but due to the excessive size of his head and the fact that he's 4 months old and not that skilled in the area of head control, this is to the horror of his mother and father.
• is most comfortable when you are not, ie, should you wish to sit down he will need you to stand up and vice versa.
• is the world's most awesome baby.

Anyway, so I flew to Somewhere Not There for The Baby's christening because my Bro and his Mrs are under the impression that I would be a good influence over their child and that I should be his godmother. With the Mrs's sister. So the kid is fucked from word go, he has 2 godmothers and no godfathers. Anyhoo, continuing on... I don't like churches. I don't really get a kick out of religion. But I was doing it for The Baby. The priest was acutally a sweetheart, quite liked him and he gave me a cheat sheet that told me what I had to say. So there I am chillin out showing the lovely old ducks in the congregation what an awesome godmother I am when I see this written at the top of the cheat sheet:

Exorcism.

What. The. Flying. Duckshit. The kid is 4 months old, can't hold up his head, loves horsey rides, and doesn't know where his hands are, but he needs an exorcism?! Yeah yeah yeah, whatever, I went to a Catholic school, I know about Original Sin and all that bullshit, but an exorcism? Can we say Drama Queens? Faaarq.

Anyway the point to all of this is we had a week long holiday, I was away playin with The Baby for that whole week so going back to school today felt like I had never left. And not in a good way. This is going to be a mo fo of a term.

A Traitor at the Picnic

It's holidays. Thank christ. Only for a week, but a week is better than a dislocated knee.

I was reading with one of my lemmings yesterday and his book was called The Picnic. We did the whole talk about it first and then read it thing. But while we were talking about it, because I have learnt to assume nothing, I said "Lemming, do you know what a picnic is?" You know what he said? Like seriously? He said ....

"No".

Fuckin A! He didn't know what a picnic is! How does that happen?! Anyway, I managed to disguise my look of shock - because yes, even though I have learnt to assume nothing, it doesn't mean I'm any better at hiding my what the fuck? face - and spent a minute or two talking about what a picnic is and why you have one.

So I decided that we could have a picnic lunch today so Little Boy Lemming would be able to actually experience one. So there we are, a bunch of lemmings, all in hats and with lunch bags in tow, trudging across the oval to find a shady spot on the least boggiest patch of ground. We sat in a circle, it was all very civilised, the lemmings were uber cute with their conversations, was a lovely little moment in time and one I'll be trying to do more often. The bell went, they all took off to play and left me in their wake. I toddled off to the staff room - which like never happens - only to be stopped by a fellow teacher.

Her: "Ms Anonymous, did you enjoy your picnic?"
Me: "Why yes thank you we did. How did you know we went on a picnic?"
Her: "Because Little Girl Lemming came running up to me to tell me that 'We had a picnic because Ms Anonymous is blonde and has never had one before!' "

At which point my fellow teacher pissed herself laughing, turned bright red and nearly popped herself out of her skin.

And do you know what was the only thing to cross my mind?
What a traitorous little lemming to call me blonde!
I mean I am, but to use that to excuse my erratic behaviour!? And it wasn't even about me!! It was for someone else!

Traitor I tell you.

Cranky

In no order, here is a list of things shitting me this week.

• I don't like or trust my boss. When I first met him I thought a used car salesman had stumbled into our school.
• The moron from the rich school trying to tell me about how shockingly dumb her Ben or Bruce or Bill or whatever the hell his name was, to make herself look like she was a saint for dealing with it. When I said I have 24 of your Ben/Bruce/Bills and they don't speak English she told me it wasn't a competition. Really? No shit. Well fuck off and stop trying to get sympathy out of me you arse clown.
• People asking me when we are going to have kids. We've been married for, umm.... like 12 weeks now.
• Liars. But they shit me full stop all the time.

Ok, that was a surprisingly small list considering the rage blackouts I have been having of late.

Things not shitting me this week.

• I didn't get knocked off by an axe murderer in my sleep. Always a plus.

The Easter Who?

I'm not very good at telling stories in 500 words or less so I apologise in advance.

Today was the first day back after the Easter long weekend. I said to my lemmings, "Let's do some recount writing!", in my best I'm-excited! voice. So the drill goes, I do it, they do it. It's called modelled writing people. Anyway I did it and then they went to do it. I get them to draw the pictures first cause they're dumb and forget what they're writing about. In fairness it's really bloody hard work for them and they concentrate so freakin hard on what letter "on" could possibly start with that they forget the rest of the sentence they were writing. The picture helps their long suffering teacher. I like to jab it a lot and screech "Yes but what were you telling me!!!!!". It's a long, slow, drawn out, painful process.

So all my lemmings are sitting there drawing away except Bob (name is changed to protect his identity. One day he might actually become literate and be able to read this). I ask Bob what the dealio is.

"Sweetie, where's your picture?"
"...."
"Honey, do you remember what you are meant to be doing?"
"...."
"Mate, what did you do for Easter?"
This at least brings an expression change. From vague to blank.
"Bob, honey, do you know what Easter is?"
After much careful deliberation Bob slightly adjusts the tilt of his head to indicate that no, he has no damn idea what the hell Easter is. Apparently the eggs, the chickens, the bunnies, the chocolate and the fully grown man in a white polyester suit sweating like a mo fo are all there purely for decoration. Oh and Jesus. Jesus has something to do with something. I think he went behind a rock and laid a chocolate rabbit that regurgitated a fluffy chicken. Or something like that.

But I digress.

"Ok, is there anyone who can tell Bob what Easter is?"
Lemming 1 "It's Jesus day!"
Lemming 2 "Egg! Egg! Egg! Egg! Egg!", at which point I thumped her on the head to stop the CD skipping.
Lemming 3 "Dat bunny rabbit bring you chocolate egg!"

Lemming 3 had me. I thought that was the funniest thing ever. Don't know why, can't explain, but I thought it was piss funny that he called the Easter Bunny "Dat bunny rabbit!"

Anyway, I gave up trying to get anything out of Bob.

Later in the day our neighbourhood hippie Miss Hippie (clever name change I know) popped in for a visit. Well she floated/drifted in but you get what I am saying. She has an actual job at the school but I'm not sure what it is, but she loves the kids, the kids love her and she is as mellow as all fuck which is nice. Now Miss Hippie has a wicked sense of humour, i.e., the same as mine. So I was regaling her with the story of Bob and Lemming 3's explanation, when who should appear in front of us, but Lemming 3 himself. Seeing as I am all for using the small children in my class to keep myself amused, I started prompting Lemming 3 to say "Dat bunny rabbit!" again.

Me: "Lemming 3, tell Miss Hippie who came to see you on the weekend."
Him: " *crickets chirping* "
Me: "What happened this weekend?"
Him: "Easter"
Me: "Yep and who gave you the chocolate eggs?"
Him: "....", his expression clearly reading, this teacher is a tool.
Me: "Who sneaks in and gives them to you?"
And very slowly, so his dim witted teacher can keep up he says "... Daaad..."

Moral of the story? There is no Easter Bunny. And for this poor lemming who didn't even know his name, I don't think there has ever been an Easter Bunny, there has only ever been Dad.

At least Dad is not a total bastard. At least he bothers to give him the eggs.

I have come back to say that shit fire hell that was one looooong post. About shit fire hell. It amused me at the time though. I laughed belly laughs with tears.

Easter. Shit.

So it's Easter. With so much political correctness, religious views, teacher bashing and Easter Bunnies v Easter Bilbies, I decided that for the first time ever, I just wasn't going there with my kids. Usually I do the whole deal, egg hunt in the class room (cause let's face it, it's all about the chocolate), the Easter basket etc etc. Out of respect to the one child in my room that is Muslim, and the fear that "this chocolate has been sitting in a box in a warehouse that 25 years ago was a soil processing plant that may have contained peanuts" might kill one of my kids, I made an educated decision to not even acknowledge the reason my lemmings and I were not going to see each other for the next 4 days.

Everything was going great guns, none of my kids bought me an Easter present - which, rumour has it, is what teachers at all other schools in the universe get from every child every year; personally I think it's an urban legend - and as such I was confident that my plan was going to come off without a hitch.

We were halfway through a maths lesson on length, when my arch nemesis - a six year old girl, cute as hell even though she looks like a boy cause her mum shaved her head, and an eye roller from the womb - asked "When we make da Easter basket Miss?". To which they all cheered at such an intelligent and amazing stroke of genius, followed by a brief yet powerful wave of shame that they hadn't thought of it earlier themselves.

I was like a deer caught in headlights (cept we don't have deer, so a kangaroo perhaps?), had a momentary freak out, and then played it so cool and told them that *scoff* "Of course we're making Easter baskets! What kind of a teacher do you think I am?" I then spent the lunch break scurrying madly trying to find templates and glitter and glue and pom poms.

My poor little bastards. We had an assembly sprung on us at the last minute, our moron deputy principal took forever talking shit about shit and by the time we got back to our rooms we had about 40 minutes, to colour, cut, glue and decorate the baskets. When the bell rang at the end of the day and all my lemmings filed out with the rest of the school, their little baskets looked so sad, what with their handles missing, rabbit ears chopped off , sticky tape trailing after them and no eggs to put in them.

These kids have enough disappointment in their lives and I'm sad that I just gave them one more thing to be disappointed about. Except I think they were too grateful to have lopsided, half arsed, sticky tape overloaded, empty baskets to even be disappointed. Poor bastards.

The Drunk, The G-String and The Bus Stop

I swear to god this is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

This morning I was driving to work. It was about 7am like it usually is, and as I drove past the bus stop on the busy main road to turn the corner into the school's main entrance, I just happened to look up and saw a sight I don't think I'll ever forget.

There was a drunk woman stumbling into the bus stop from the school grounds. I didn't really think anything of it cause that in itself is not actually a very uncommon occurrence. Then as I got closer I discovered that her pants were unfortunately tight as I could see every little lump and bump and that was without really paying much attention.


Then I got closer and realised that holy shit fire she didn't actually have any pants on. Except, turns out that she did... A black g string that had disappeared up her butt. How do I know it was up her butt I hear you ask? Well that was because at that exact moment she bent over and showed me it was up her butt.

Sadly for me it did not stop there. She then whipped her g-banger off, bent over and proceeded to pee, yes pee, ALL over the bus stop.

Now I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, why the hell did you keep watching Ms Anonymous?!! The answer is that it all happened in the space of about 3 seconds and it was like all these bizarre pieces of information that my brain was taking in and then put them all together in the last tragic moment.

Anyway it turns out I wasn't really that special anyway and that there were others who had seen her shenanigans. The school cleaner called the cops, who came and took her away, after seeing her with her gentleman caller and someone else saw her rolling her boob tube down so all of her girly bits were foot loose and fancy free.

By the end of it all I was left with a few questions.
1. Was she drunk or high?
2. I wonder whose mother she was?

Then I felt sad and hoped that the cops had her bundled up and taken away before any of the kids arrived to discover that the reason their mum wasn't there to get them to school that morning was because she was naked and trashed and roaming the streets.

The Letter S, L & Pea Soup

Just so you know (and by you I mean the ant that is crawling across my screen), maS still can't spell his name. He can, however, now tell me that his name starts with 'S' and that 'S' says 'ssssss'. Yay maS. Another small miracle is that yesterday after 25 minutes of me asking the questions along the lines of:
"What letter is this maS?"
"Do you know sweetie?"
"Do you need me to tell you?"
"It's the letter 'L'."
"What sound does 'L' make maS?"
"No honey that's what 'F' usually says"
"No that's what 'Y', 'B', 'D' 'G', 'P', 'Z', 'R' and 'C' says. It says 'lllll'."
At which point maS passed out with exhaustion on the floor and that was his day.

On another note, I have the sweetest, loveliest, just plain bestest class to teach that I have ever ever had. By this time of the year in any of the years passed I would have had at least half of the following things happen:

• a desk thrown at me (multiplied by about 174)
• chairs thrown at me (multiplied by about 8453)
• a chairs at a time thrown at me. Only happened once so far.
• a computer desk flipped. With computers still on it
• a book shelf pushed on the rest of the class
• slapped with a pencil case. One of those vinyl bastards and it stung like a mo fo
• stalked down a jetty/wharf/pier/whatever you want to call it by a nut job with a knife. The nut job was a 10 year old who's eyes rolled in his head.
• shoved, then pushed, then pulled to the ground, then nearly kicked. I'm little, I rolled.
• had a seven year old threaten to commit suicide by jumping off the second story stairs
• same seven year old tell me "I'm gunna kill you bitch!" with his eyes rolling in his head and a manic smile on his face. Incidentally he's not related to the previous eye roller.

Apart from the 10 year old knife wielding eye roller and the attempted kicker, they were all my little Year 2/Grade 2/Seven year old rays of sunshine who unleashed the hounds of hell. Which is so sad I think it induces more tears than watching The Notebook. Like I said though, this group of kids are nothing like that and I alternate between feeling smug and chuffed with myself, and terrified that their true natures are going to come out exorcist style. I'm taking a rain coat tomorrow to protect from the pea soup vomit just in case. Wish me luck.

Rain rain go away

God damn I wish the shit hole rain would go away. Yes yes blah blah drought blah blah other parts of the country drinking mud blah yaddah yaddah blah. Whatever. I am freaking Over. It. There is some sort of chemical element that turns kids into feral shit psycho pains in the arse retards. True god. Today I was lucky enough to have the pleasure of going out into the playground to supervise play time in the downpour. With the prep kids. Who are all about 4 years old and have had about 5 weeks of schooling. So they are really good at following instructions. And when you scream "Don't run on the concrete!" at the top of your lungs they just look at you quizzically while their feet keep moving on the spot not dissimilar to the road runner before they run off. I am sure I heard one of the little upstart punks yell "beep beep" as he ran off into the sunset.

The Year 1 kids, bless their hearts, have decided that every time the bell rings they are all going to scream at the top of their lungs. That god awful ear splitting squeal of a scream. That makes me wish I could learn how to head butt kids and make it look like I tripped. (A skill I believe they should teach at university. Don't give a shit what your teaching philosophy is. True god.)

Then after the joy of that migraine inducing spell outside I went back in with my poppets to get them ready for their PE/sport/whatever you want to call it lesson. Which was clearly going to be a roaring success considering the monsoon outside. So they're packing their crapola up ready to go and one of my girls, who surprisingly is one of my more capable students, runs out of the room with a look of pain on her face and leaving a trail, nay, a puddle in her wake. In all the excitement the poor chick somehow missed all the warning signs that her bladder needed to be relieved of its cargo. So relieved it was. All over the carpet. What ensued was some smooth manoeuvring on my behalf to cover her tracks. Literally. I did all but sing and dance to distract my lemmings, ah hem, children and divert their easily diverted attention away from said tracks. I delivered my lemmings to their PE teacher and took the dry-underpantsedly-challenged student down to the office to see what we could to dry her out. On the way though we met the most painfully stupid and biggest waste of space arse clown that exists. The Year 7 testosterone charged yet stunningly dumb male. Who was walking circles in the rain. Being a tool. And I had to open my mouth. Just couldn't help myself. Apparently though I pressed the wrong buttons and I pressed them a tad too hard. Because my afternoon ended with me dragging and all but carrying my dry-underpantsedly-challenged student while the moronic Year 7 tool who I found out the hard way was high as a kite on god knows what, chased us screaming "What the fuck are you looking at you stupid bitches! What the fuck are you looking at you stupid bitches! What the fuck are you looking at you stupid bitches!". Well you get the idea. We made it to the office in relative safety and welcomed by being asked if rain induced moronic behaviour was now spreading to teachers. At which point I discovered my button pushing had been witnessed by all of admin…

I hate the rain.

maS

I have a kid in my class, his name is Sam. Sam can't spell his name. That is just so tragically sad I think it’s past funny. I have tried freakin everything to get this kid to spell his name, but nothing, nada, zip. There is some major miswiring in his brain. I mean that in the most respectful way. Sam writes his name like this:

He starts with the ‘s’ and then goes backwards. I have made him trace cards, given him fat pens, skinny pens, heavy pens, light pens, glittery pens to write with, put stars, stickers, dots, arrows where he needs to start writing his name, held his hand while he writes, given him individual trace cards of the letters, and I make him do all of these things about 683 times a day. And he still writes his name like this:
The other day we were moving into small groups to do some patterning and sorting stuff (seriously, there is nothing that can describe the pain of such a brain numbingly empty void of time that is 'little kid maths'), and I was putting out different stuff around the room and calling over small groups of kids to each pile of goodies. Anyway, I turn back to grab the next pile of stuff for the next group of kids only to find maS sitting at his desk. I asked him why he was there...he had no idea. Went something like this:
Me: "maS, how come you're at your desk mate?"
maS: " "
Me: "maS, is anyone else at their desk sweetie?"
maS: " "
Me: "maS do you think you are in the right place?"
maS: " "
Me: "maS can you see what everyone else is doing?"
Sam: " "


At this stage one of my darling angels comes to save me by grabbing his hand and telling him "maS, she didn't say your name yet, come back to the floor". At which point I didn't know whether to cry out of frustration, cry cause I really do teach the sweetest most caring kids ever, cry cause maS just doesn't get 'it' or go across the road to the pub. In the end I gave maS the dinosaurs, which he loves, and told him to play. Sorting them by colour was beyond him after that exceptionally strenuous conversation.

Hot Water. Please.

This has nothing to do with school. Well it does in that it is a pain in the arse to get ready to get to school at the moment.

Our hot water system shit itself. Just gave up the ghost, kicked the bucket, just stopped making hot water. We live in the tropics. You would think this is not a problem. But it is. Apparently, rumour has it, that if you live in a certain climate for 5 years or something similar, your body adjusts and either thins or thickens your blood as necessary. As such I can quite happily roast, swelter and gain unattractive and equally unladylike sweat stains and feel nothing more than mere discomfort. But don't make me have a cold shower. I swear it is like preparing my body for cryogenic freezing or whatever the hell John Wayne had done to come back from the dead one day when they can fix whatever it was that he died from.

Now that's established what to do about no hot water? Although my House Pet is in a trade of some description, plumbing is not it and I think we all know, universally, that tradesmen are Not Reliable. In either actually arriving or the quality of work once arrived. So realising that this may need a somewhat long term (anything more than 1 cold shower requires a long term solution as far as I’m concerned), HP went looking for solutions. And found the camp shower. The camp shower is a complicated bag of tricks comprising of a battery pack - as in car battery - alligator clips, what I can only assume is a pump, a couple of cords, wires and a shower head. So all of that, combined with a bucket, and the 2L kettle of hot water boiled and emptied into said bucket twice then filled with cold water, and we are ready to get clean. Needless to say getting clean has been a rather traumatic experience, now add to that getting clean AND being on time? Well lets just say that teaching is a trade. And like all good tradesmen, I am sticking true to form and am having difficulty arriving on time to anything and when I'm there I may or may not do what I'm meant to and will probably send a bill home with my kids stamped with “Payment required before any work to commence”.

Who's the Boss?

So I like to be the ruler of my universe. What I say goes. Even the people who are my boss people know that and within reason are happy for me to be the ruler of my own universe. I actually have a role within my school that lets me, to a very very very small extent, be the ruler of other people's universe, not just mine and that is super. The more stuff I can be the boss of the happier I am. This is perhaps the only reason I became a teacher. I get to be the boss, ruler, commander, president, king, prime minister, dictator, emperor, monarch, overlord, controller, governor, leader, choose what you will, of 25 little people all day long. Don't get me wrong, I wield my powers wisely. I treat the little people fairly, listen to their side of the story and feel guilty most of the time I send them off to order my lunch for me. They are after all not my slaves. Or so I've been told.

Anyway today I had to go to a meeting. It was all day long and it was with people from other schools who have the same role as me. I.e., like to rule other people's universes although we have no real power or authority to do so. I am a big fat bossy boots and I know it, but because I am aware of it I tone it down when I'm in someone else's universe and Behave Myself. But holy flippin snake crap, there was this other arseclown there today who beats me hands down. I was foolish enough to sit beside her and she was so full of her own self importance, being rightness and so certain that her way is the only way that I swear to god I thought she was going to explode icky green goop all over me. She argued with the boss of us, argued with all of us both individually and collectively, tried to upshow, upsmart and uparse all of us to make herself feel better. She made generalised sweeping statements about what kids can and can’t do, forgetting that she comes from an uptight rich middle class twat of a school with more money then they know what to do with while the rest of us are shit kicking down the bottom of the ladder with our small poppets who have mummies or daddies in jail, drunk, on crack or at the very least the dole who all believe that education is how you spell Free Babysitting.

I wish I could end this tale of woe with a recount of how she fell down the stairs on her way out or had a parking ticket waiting for her or choked on a peanut, but alas I can't. Some shits just cruise through life being a pain in everyone's headspace.

But some good has come of it though. I have decided that even though I know I am bossing and try and turn it down perhaps I need to boss less and listen more. Except to show and tell. I refuse to listen to that punk arse shit.

Autism much?

So I taught this autistic kid right. He was diagnosed as having a mild dose (they are my words, not the doctor's - clearly) and is able to function normally but it is obvious he doesn't not operate the same as the rest of us. You had to trick him into everything or force things into being habits. Like when he came to my class he used to eat sandwiches for lunch every day. Every day, he'd take half of his sandwich and take a bite out of the middle, then to the left, then to the right. So it looked like this:

and then that would be all he would eat. It pissed me off. Don't know why. Maybe I just forget how truly frustrating he was to deal with. Maybe it was just one of those things. But maybe I'm just cruel. I decided I'd make him eat the whole thing. After a few weeks of tears, tantrums and lunches that lasted 2 hours, he just gave in and suddenly eating the whole thing was What Was Done with sandwiches.

It was about now that I realised that with a little bit of persistence I could 'train' him. Much like Pavlov's dog really. And holy shit! This was a kid who could do NOTHING as far as school was concerned but by the end of the year, after many many tantrums, tears and thrown books, pencils, pencil cases, (all of which I am pleased to report were his), he was as capable as the rest of the class and was a successful student.

That is the lasting memory of this kid in my head. So yesterday when I saw him in the playground and he came to tell me for about the 36th time that someone was annoying him and now they had hit him I jokingly (I think, but maybe I wanted to see what would happen...) said "well why don't you go hit him back?"....

Yeah so he still thinks, acts and responds literally, I didn't fix that and I spent the rest of lunch time trying to bust up the fight I managed to start...

10 things I hate about you

I have had a fucktastically annoying week. Here is a brief yet not exclusive list of things that pissed me off this week.

1. The evil little bastard child son of a fellow teacher.
2. The kid who still doesn't know that the two letters 'n' and 'o' together makes the word 'no'.
3. The evil little bastard child son of a fellow teacher.
4. Working with people who believe it is healthy to compete. About everything. Ranging from who has the smartest kids to who has the dumbest and needing to win both cases. Like are you a moron? You just don't get to win both of those.
5. The evil little bastard child son of a fellow teacher.
6. The handful of kids who still don't know the alphabet even though I have done everything short of tattooing it onto their retinas.
7. The evil little bastard child son of a fellow teacher.
8. The few kids in my class who still can't write their name. Just a tip you are going to need to know at least that even to be a dole bludging blight on society. Dickhead.
9. The evil little bastard child son of a fellow teacher.
10. The fact that it is illegal to headbutt children.

8

A quick bit of background... Even though I live in an English speaking part of the big blue thing commonly known as Earth, the kids I teach, not a single one of them, speak English as their first language. However most of them speak a language that is so close to the English language that they don't know that they are not speaking English and as such have great difficulty in all areas of literacy. Which funnily enough can be found in all aspects of schooling.

Part 2 of the bit of background is that this particular bunch of joys I choose to spend my day with are somewhere between the ages of 6 and 7, and depending on what part of the planet you reside on, are in Grade 2, Year 2, Second Grade or whatever you call it in your neck of the woods.

By this stage in development students should be not far off reading and writing, again, depending on your neck of the woods. Lets just say that the peer group of my wonders of the world would be up to those things.

You are prepared for the fact that these rays of sunshine will be lower than where you would expect kids of that age to be. Even so there are always a few who stun you with how ridiculously little they know. The other day I had a group of these stunners and we were learning the alphabet. To start with, how the hell do you get to be 6 or 7 and not know the alphabet?! Seriously! Anyway, they don't, so I thought we'd see just how much (see, hear the optimism there? I said how much, not how little!) they knew. So in a group we sat down with some alphabet cards spread out between us and we worked together to put them in order.

Oooooooo the pain!!! Shit fire they couldn't even find me the letter a! Then after a particularly gruelling round of "Who can find me the letter b? No sweetie b. No, not d. No not p. No not v. Yep b. That's what I'm after. No that is the letter x..." at which point I grabbed the b and shoved it at the closest kid all but screeching "It's this one!" The letters c, d, e, f and g weren't much better. The kicker though was the next letter. Still foolishly full of optimism I asked, "a, b, c, d, e, f, g, who can tell me the next letter!?" Only 1 answered. Her answer?

"8!"

That was the end of learning the alphabet that day.

Ooops I did it again.

Parents. I think out of everyone I have to deal with in my day at school it's the parents that make my head hurt most. Some parents are fantastic, some are ok, some are tolerable, some are a nuisance and some are a category 5 storm with psychotic tendencies that hit when you have a migraine ripping your left eye ball out and no drugs in sight. The parents of the kids in my class tend to fall mostly into the latter category.

There are 2 types of category 5 storm with psychotic tendencies that hit when you have a migraine ripping your left eye ball out and no drugs in sight parent. There are the ones who think that Bob is gifted and talented because he can spell his name forwards and backwards, that their angel can do no wrong (because it was Amy’s fault that Bob stabbed her in the bicep with a strategically sharpened lead pencil plucked in a timely fashion from behind his ear, after all she did ask him to pass the glue) and that generally their snookums is indeed smarter than the university degree holding teacher.

Then there are the ‘others’. This would be the type of category 5 storm with psychotic tendencies that hit when you have a migraine ripping your left eye ball out and no drugs in sight parent that shows up half an hour after the bell went for the end of the day. Drunk. Same parent who sends their child back to school a week after it started, with no books , no lunch and no uniform, just to make the poor bastard stand out a little more. Have a guess whose fault it is that said child is no longer at school seeing as it had finished half an hour before? Did you say the parent who was busy consuming alcoholic beverages at the nearest alcoholic beverage watering hole? Well then. Wouldn’t you be wrongity wrong wrong! Lo ho! It’s that rascally, pesky, trickster of a teacher. The cheeky minx let said child leave the classroom with the rest of the class at the end of the day! When the bell rang no less!!

That trickster of a teacher really needs to get their parent-drunk-at-the-pub radar fixed. Someone revoke their registration before their parent-in-the-middle-of-very-important-drug-deal radar goes awry.

Politics

Everywhere has them, but none so petty as a school.

It's just a fact, there are more female teachers than there are male. When a new teacher shows up for their first day and they are young, quite scrummy and male, I feel for them. Cranky old bats who are in a permanent state of PMS are suddenly charming and delightful and needing assistance with a bookshelf or heavy box. Stand offish fashionista wannabes who had their personalities removed at the age of 16 are suddenly Fun! Frolicky! Socialites! But even funnier than these two breeds of female are the men folk and the carry on they come up with. Suddenly meetings are punctuated with amusing anecdotes about beer, being drunk, the doldrums of marriage. The men folk are lively and jovial whereas previously grunts were their main form of communication.

Resources. As in the stuff a classroom has, both the big and the little stuff. There is an etiquette that is observed by most and flaunted by a few. Needless to say, the flaunters piss off the majority. They're the ones who go and take all the books on a particular subject. They take as much play money as they can. They take all of the blocks, counters, ones, tens, hundreds, calculators, weights, scales, rulers, number boards, readers, book sets, cards and games. And never use them. Then there is the bigger stuff. Like desks and chairs. Heaven forbid if your desks are nicer (and by nicer I mean possessing 3 or more legs), chairs matching, chairs being of the right height, desks being of the right height or your cupboards actually having doors. Such rare commodities are only to be utilised by the select few. Usually the PMSing bats. But the surprise packet this year has been bookshelves. Apparently bookshelves are right up there on everyone's list. There was much toing and froing today, counting, debating and justifying why bookshelves should not need to be given up. At which point I need to point out I was an observer. Being the owner of 2 less than desirable bookshelves I knew I was safe.

But I wonder if I can make the scrummy new teacher come and move one of them for me...

And so it begins...

The Facts.

• I am a teacher.
• I teach at the smaller end of the spectrum. Not small as in brain power. Small as in size. Although with all the hormones in chickens these days some of the little people are nearing my size.
• I like it.
• Schools are amusing places.

The Reason.

The year is about to begin again. I hate the beginning of the year. You always forget how little they know when they come to you. You have to teach them things like ... Shit. There are things you have to teach them. This is what I hate. You always forget just how bad the first few weeks of school are. You forget just what it is you have to teach them before you can teach them what they need to know. They know so much by the end. And then there are the big people you have to deal with in your day. And the big people are 9 times out of 10 worse to deal with than the small people. They throw bigger tantrums, need to be put in time out more often, need to be kept in at lunchtime to reflect on their behaviour more often and are whingier than any 5 year old with a stolen lego car 'situation'.

But I digress. The Reason. The Reason is the year is about to start and it is a year of opportunities. Opportunities to share what it's really like . And if I don't record it somewhere it will become another year of forgotten idiocy, bureaucracy and lunacy. And that would be a shame.