Lips N' Stuff

Hello!

When I started teaching it was a little strange. Very strange in fact. Years and years of being a student switched on me and now I was that guy standing at the front trying to come across as calm and authorative or that I know the first thing about cleft sentences. I'm not sure when exactly happened but it has become normal. However it got weird again. It was my first ever parents evening, albeit a parents evening that took place on a Saturday morning. It was strange being on the other side of it.

Parents are crazy! There seemed to be two types. My favourite were the ones that came in and were there for about forty five seconds.

Do they behave? - Yes.
Are they improving? - Yes.
Fine, see you next term.

What heroes. Then there were the other ones. One girl got really good exam marks thats not surprising as her English is probably better than mine. She got the same mark for reading, speaking and listening, all high, but her writing was 0.2 lower but still very high. His face dropped. He assured me from now on she will be writing more at home. He said he'd set her some writing tasks for her to bring to me for check. I felt bad for her as clearly he had very high standards, but then maybe thats why she speaks such good English. That all passed away as soon as realised just what he said. WOAH! WOAH! WOAH! Don't get her to bring me more stuff to mark! You mark it. Some were thrown as normally the students have lower marks in the first report of this year than the last report from last year. I tried to explain that it was because they had gone up a level since then, its more difficult, but that didn't seem to matter. Well that and marks always get better as the year goes as a sly trick to make us look better. Shameful stuff.

The parents were all very nice. We just spoke through their reports. They probably noticed that I had completely forgotten exactly what it was I had written, though I'm pretty sure I managed not to directly contradict myself. I wonder if my teachers were winging it as much as I was? Probably. Luckily my class is lovely so I just got to say wonderful things about their kids which they all enjoyed.

There were a few added complications. It was hard not to giggle when one student was identical to his dad and his sister. One student is always late, his mum apologized saying they live far away so can be difficult so thats why he's always five minutes late. In that case I wonder where he is for the other half hour. I also knew that she is from Croydon and thus a c*****l p****e fan so whenever she was speaking I just had this running through my head

www.youtube.com/watch?v=acAYv8wBotk

Happy times, though how bad is the defending?

Its exam time again so I'm off to look through pages and pages of identical papers, shouting "I never said that!" Marking one classes exam will be easy as by some strange coincidence after I mentioned there was an exam last week only three of them showed up this week. It will be waiting for them. So far the marks have generally been good, I've been so lucky with students this year. It's not a bad way to make a living.

See you soon

love love love x