absolutelynotnormal

“We all come from the same root, but the leaves are all different.”

– John Fire Lame Deer

I’m currently in the middle of a three week placement at another school in our Trust; something which is not entirely within my comfort zone. It was supposed to be set up to start in September so I spent the whole of the summer gearing myself up for it, only to be told three days into the term that it had fallen through back in July and no one had bothered mentioning this fact to me. The joys of working for a multi-academy trust where you’re seen more as a piece on a chess board than an actual living, breathing human being. Anyway, I found out half an hour before breaking up for half term that it was now going ahead. Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m not particularly good with change, let alone last minute change, but there you go.

I’m dealing. Mostly successfully.

But this isn’t a rant … honest! It’s more a reflection on how things are going and why things feel very, very weird at times.

It’s a very odd thing to walk in half way through a term, take over someone’s timetable (for reasons that are not mine to share) and be left to find your own feet and get on with it. The first day was an exercise in ‘What the hell is going on?’. No one could tell me where the groups were up to in terms of the curriculum. No one knew which set of teaching resources had been used with each group … and for some reason that has entirely escaped me so far, there are three different sets of resources for each unit, no consistency as to which is used, and no real expectations of anybody using any of them! Confused? I certainly was!

The thing that’s really weird though, is that everything feels familiar at the same time as feeling completely alien. They are a Trust school, so theoretically everything should work to the same systems as we use in my school. They should be following the same curriculum, teaching the same units, in the same order, using the same pedagogy. That’s surely the point of multi-academy trusts, right? It’s certainly the justification that’s trotted out every time we suggest that we might want to do things a little differently.

But it turns out that things aren’t really run the same way. Starting with the timetable of the school day. I still haven’t entirely figured out what time we’re expected to (officially) start the day. I’ve been getting in at my normal, ridiculously early, time to get things organised, so it’s not a problem, but it might have been nice if someone told me what time I was technically expected to arrive. They are a much bigger school than we are so they have split breaks and lunches … which is breaking my brain. I can’t work out whether it’s the year group I have before break that determines which break I have, or the one I have afterwards. Same with lunchtime. I’ve taken to just waiting to see of anyone turns up and then behaving accordingly. God help us all if one of my classes decides to wind me up and go to the wrong place (or just bunk off entirely) … it’s not like I’d have any idea that they weren’t where they were supposed to be! It’s not helping that the Year 11s are in the middle of mock exams, so the school has turned off the bells so they aren’t disturbed. I keep finding myself glancing at the clock to see how long I’ve got left … only to realise (yet again) that I don’t actually know what time the lesson ends, so I’m none the wiser. I do have the times on a piece of paper tacked to the wall next to my computer, but I can’t just stop teaching to go and figure it out.

I knew I needed to go to staff briefing on Wednesday morning, but I couldn’t find the room that I was supposed to go to. I’d got the right floor, I think, I just hadn’t walked far enough along. Maybe. Someone very helpfully said that it would normally be fine because it was always in the Library … I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I hadn’t got the faintest clue where the Library actually was. Or if they had one. With or without an orang-utan as Librarian. Or L-space*.

*If you’re not a Discworld fan, I’m sorry. And also, why not?

I don’t have access to printing rights because the printing is run by our central IT department and they don’t think that we should be able to print in our own schools, let alone a different one. Because the computer systems would all work so much better if both teachers and students weren’t allowed to use them**. I have been given a copy code though, so I’m making do. The copiers are exactly the same as the ones that we have, so no problem there. I was hurriedly trying to enlarge my resources for a student who had pitched up unexpectedly requiring modified versions of reading booklets when the copier subtly (with a big red flashing light) mentioned that it had run out of A3 paper. Now, I’m a seasoned pro at this; I pride myself on knowing how to fix almost any problem with the photocopiers. I turned around to grab some more paper … and realised that I wasn’t in my school, there was no handy stash of paper next to me, and I had not a scooby where I might find some. Bother! I did know where there was another photocopier though, so I sprinted down the corridor to go and try my luck there instead.

**I mean, they’re not wrong. But maybe they’re missing the point just a tad.

The behaviour system is (almost) the same as ours. There are corrections, reminders, and removals. Only I heard someone refer to a removal as a ‘safety net’ the other day and now I’m really confused. Whose safety net? Mine? The student’s? Or is that something entirely different. And the detentions don’t work in quite the same way – all of theirs are after school, whereas we have most of ours during the day; the only ones that we run after school are upscaled detentions following a student’s failure to turn up to a normal one. They also do after schools on the same day as they’re given, which I didn’t even think was permitted. I certainly can’t see our parents rolling with that one!

They use the same MIS system as we do. For the uninitiated, that’s the computer system that holds all the information about students. It only took me two days before I remembered I couldn’t use the login information I usually do! There’s a win, right there. Now, if only they kept information in the same place on the system as we do. I honestly thought there was only one way to do it … Oh, how wrong I can be!

One of the things I have always complained about at my school is the communication. It seems as though people are constantly playing secret squirrel and holding all the key information very close to their chests. Turns out they’re maybe not as bad as they could be. This placement has given me a whole new appreciation for certain members of our staff – I think there might have to be some reward cookies dished out when I get back. Our SENDCo is amazing. I always knew that, but I don’t think I’d realised quite how amazing she actually is. I normally have the luxury of being able to find, without any problems, all the EHCPs, SEND passports and medical plans for every student I teach. They’re on the MIS and are emailed out to us every time revisions are made. This is essential information when you’re trying to get knowledge to stick in a student’s head for more than the three seconds a goldfish manages. So trying to teach some very low academic ability, high SEN classes, with high behaviour needs and no information is a real baptism by fire. And a mess. There’s one group that strike fear into my heart every time they appear on my timetable. They are so weak, their behaviour is so off the wall and I’m not entirely sure they should be in mainstream school, let alone in front of someone with no information about them. I also have them only twice a week … which suggests that someone else has them for two lessons as well. I really need to find out who that might be and if they can offer any insights.

I think I’m getting there though; between myself and the students we’ve pretty much worked out where they’re up to in the schemes of work. How well they’ve understood the content they’ve had delivered by a series of cover and supply teachers is anybody’s guess, but we can only move forwards and patch holes as we come across them. I feel like I can mostly find the important places; the kettle, the toilets and the shortcut to the carpark at the end of the day. I did confuse myself on Thursday when I got the wrong corridor and couldn’t quite work out where I’d gone wrong, but that was just a minor miscalculation. The students have more or less (hopefully) stopped testing the boundaries. A calculated strop on Wednesday seems to have mostly worked … although on Thursday when the TA removed someone from my lesson, he flipped me the bird multiple times on the way out. I’m not entirely sure why he thought it was my fault, but whatever makes him happy. I’m not sure doing it in front of the teacher next door was a good plan though; it just added an extra fifteen minutes to the detention he’d already earned***.

***It did make me giggle however, which was a win! I managed to keep my giggle on the inside as well, which was an even bigger win.

The bit that has remained constant throughout, is the students. Yes, they’re pushing their luck in places; I am, after all, an unknown quantity. But they show the same uneasy mixture of wanting to succeed and being desperate to look cool that ours do. They’re a little bit less able to stay quiet and listen, but maybe that’s got a lot to do with having had a succession of different teachers. They whinge more than ours do, but they’re very quickly realising that I’m not very good at sympathy. But they try when I ask them to, and really, that’s all I can ask of them.

Onwards and upwards …