Blog Action Day

I think you can tell it's getting near the end of term ... the pupils have been hyper all day. A few year 10s ended up having a 20 minute detention at the end of the day, but even when they left, the room was still in a state. Which leads me to the topic of Blog Action Day ... we are supposed to write about the environment. Well, my classroom environment was not good today. Even the displays are now tattier than ususal. Pupils seemed to be throwing themselves around the room today . Interestingly, the Year 8 assessment was about the environment and how it should be treated. I got some really good responses - the toilets sound really disgusting, and I hope the description of the canteen food and hygiene standards is purely artistic license! The pupils were also quite vocal about the state of the classrooms. It is depressing working in a room with peeling paint, graffiti, gum in the carpets, and a never ending supply of broken chairs and tables. It's a microcosm of how our outside environment should be - somewhere nice, pleasant, not spoiled in any way by thoughtless people.

Talking of thoughtless people, I was tidying the aforementioned classroom at the end of the day, when I saw a man (a parent?) get in his car, right in front of mine. Noticed there was very little room ... And then his reversing lights went on! I knew there would be no room for him to go back, so I frantically started banging on the window, but to no avail. He went back, right into my front bumper, and our car moved! He then drove off, and I went running round to inspect the damage. Fortunately there wasn't any I could see, but I wasn't impressed with his driving technique at all.

The other interesting thing that happened was the visit from Trident. They were excellent, and there were pictures of guns that you had to guess if they were real or fake. The difficulties we had telling one from the other showed how hard it is for armed police officers to make up their minds whether or not someone has a real or fake gun. There were also images of victims of gun and knife crime, which weren't very nice.

There have been about 21 young people killed in London this year so far. It is worrying when it sometimes seems to be getting closer to home.