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.