A little bit of catch up

Good morning all :o)

Well a good night's sleep cured all my ails after the day before yesterday's big pile of poo, but I just ran out of time to post then - I spent my lunchtime on Tuesday in the dinner hall and on the playground ... I carried* one 6 yr old out of the lunch hall. She'd been given a cheese roll** ... you know where the top of the bread has grated cheese sprinkled on it before it's baked ... for lunch and didn't want it. School policy is that uneaten food goes home - so parents know what the child has eaten/likes/dislikes etc. L wasn't happy with this and flung said cheese roll across the hall and told me to "fuck off!" when I asked her to retrieve it! 6 yrs old! Fuck off to a teacher?! My mother would have skinned me alive. She then threw her yogurt - which was open, the lunch bag, the plastic box and the flask! So ... after three verbal warnings, out she came! After time out and an apology we hugged and made up.

Then at about 2:30 a little lad decided he'd had enough of class, ran out of the door, through the hall, down the stairs, he hit the exit button ran across the playground, scrambled through the railings*** and pegged it up the road. Two of our male teaching assistants and a teacher followed at a gallop but of course had to get through the KS2 building and weren't quite as fleet of foot as little J. They eventually found him walking along a local dual carriageway on his way to London apparently - to see Gordon, to tell him that the teachers at his school were not doing their jobs properly - I swear to god that's what he said!! This was his second escape of the week. New fencing was erected on Tuesday evening - welcome to the jail everyone.

After all of that as you can imagine I was really quite glad to get home and then yesterday happened to me! We have three Slovakian lads in yr 6 (last yr of primary school, aged either 10 or 11) who see themselves very much as gangsters "ruling the roost." Two of them are currently on lunchtime exclusion because of fighting, swearing, intimidation of other children, racketeering**** and shouting at teachers and children. They returned to school 40 minutes late at the end of lunch-time yesterday, continued the swearing/posturing/shouting/threatening to the headteacher and I and refused to go into class. And then one of them tried to punch me. He rolled his sleeve up to show me his muscle and punched out at me. Luckily, some fight or flight instinct had me moving backwards quicker than I thought I could and a hand in front of my face. For the next hour (until his mother turned up - 5 day exclusion immediately) the behaviour continued, they told everyone who walked past that the head and I had hit them, lied about them and that they were going home to ring the police. Eventually M's mother and older brother arrived full of temper and shouting too ... 45 minutes of talk***** later they all left - I feel quite sorry for M as I fear he was going home to a beating but I am so happy that his class teacher has a week of peace and quite ahead of her.

Sometimes, I wonder why I do the job ... here's to a great Friday eh?

* I have a Team-Teach certificate and I then filled in my positive handling report before I went and had a good cry in the corner!

** Yum, lucky mare - I'd kill for one of those right now!

*** Skinny little tyke.

**** Not yet but soon I swear.

***** Older brother, a good kid, translated. Mum is at her wits end.