Bad Day Syndrome

Or “BDS” as it’s known. They warn new teachers about this, and how some days just seem to fall apart or never get started. Supposedly the trick is to not take it out on the kids. I think I managed this, but it’s not easy when you have some grinning idiot purposefully trying to throw a bag full of spanners into your neatly tuned lesson plan.

I think today I was subconsciously trying to see just how bad my day could go. I didn’t feel great for any specific reason from the minute I woke up. I’m fairly sure several good things happened today, but since I was in a “let’s focus on the crap things happening today” frame of mind they totally skipped me by.

Here’s a short version of today…

• My car seat was inexplicably stuck on its runners, making it impossible for me to get into my car
• Period 1, my kids moan “this is boring” and then stop listening. When I get them to do the work they say “we don’t know what to do” and seem confused about why.
• Period 2, the software I wanted to use didn’t work so I had to make up a backup lesson. This worked fairly well actually.
• Period 3, two of my kids decide that hitting each other in the head is a great way to pass the time. One of them gets sent to sit with another teacher.
• Period 4, the vast majority of this class seemed totally unable to shut up and listen. I issued a record breaking six detentions in that lesson.
• Period 5 was free and quite nice
• Period 6 saw me emergency covering two kids and confiscating a bottle of alcohol hand cleaner from another kid (wtf? where did that come from?). One of the kids turned his PC off so I moved him to the middle of the room, he then decided to mess with his phone so I took it off him. He then went mostly nuts so I got rid of him with another teacher. Turns out he has a “time out” card to help him manage his anger problems. Well if I’d known that I would have been a bit more tactful with him. Stupid bugger.

So yeah. Tomorrow I now get to waste my break telling kids off. Mind you, if they don’t turn up I’m keeping them behind after school.

Normal service will be resumed shortly, stay tuned.

Tags: blog365, Idiots, Teaching, Work