All in a day's work

A mixed bag type of day. My Year 11s were excellent ... they listened attentively, contributed answers, and told any pupils who started talking to be quiet and listen. Maybe we should discuss contraception and STIs every day ...

My final minutes of the school day involved looking in on another class in the department who had a supply teacher. I'm not sure how you would describe what was happening in the classroom, but you wouldn't call it learning. Some pupils were outside, others were throwing paper balls around, one or two were trying to work, a few more were having conversations. My command to stand was largely ignored, at least until I had shouted at a few of them. Eventually I stood in front of the door until everyone in the class had completed some work - for the final few pupils, after a bit of a tantrum, that eventually resulted in the grand total of about six words. But at least it was something. Think I'll need to pop by a bit more often with that class. There are some quite good pupils in that class, but a few tough ones, and as a group they have a bit of a reputation. The worst ones weren't in the lesson that day ...

Scariest moment of the day was when I was talking to a girl in my form who had been out of lessons in the Referral Room because she'd been fighting another girl. At the end of the day I asked her about the incident. Six girls had attacked another girl. Had she thought about what she had done? Yes. And what did she think now? She'd do the same thing again. Well, that scared me. That she still thought it was okay for seven girls to attack one girl over alleged name calling, the names probably being as a retaliation to previous bullying. I thought of the recent murder, in the news a lot at the moment, of Tom Ap Rhys Jones. That the two boys seemed to mug people for fun. Where is the line between one and the other? I hope there is a line, and that she will not cross it. But her attitude at the moment scares me.