Monday morning. I’d been at home over the weekend because my mum had come to stay. I’d said nothing to her which had been a huge strain but I know my family. As soon as my sister-in-law knew, it would be spread all over and I wanted my daughter to hear it from me, face to face, not on the family grapevine.
Getting up for work was a relief therefore. Going into school was strange. I deliberately went in late because I wasn’t up to facing everyone at the whole staff Monday morning briefing. It was nice to be back in my room. The whole English department had moved upstairs into different rooms a couple of weeks before. My room was the first to be painted because I had the least stuff to move AND had sucked up to the site manager. I’d JUST put up a display before the cancer hurricane hit and so it was beginning to look nice.
I was really nervous about seeing the kids. This was slightly lessened by the knowledge that I only had my year 11 groups – my favourites. By rights, last week of term should have been DVD’s all the way. BUT given that I thought I’d be off a month, returning late in October, I thought I should give them the rest of the background to the novel we were studying; Frankenstein. It was lovely to see them and they made me howl with laughter at their silly faith in the rumour that I’d had a heart attack (nothing as minor as cancer!). My favourite bad girl even gave me a hug, which was lovely and made me feel really appreciated. I'd like to just make a slight effort to dispel some of the myths surrounding 'terrible' teens. In my experience, teenagers are lovely. If you like them and treat them with respect, you'll get it back in return. So when one (gobby but nice) girl, asked what was wrong with me, she was drowned out by others admonishing her, telling her it was rude and none of her business. Ahhh!
I hadn’t really intended to tell the kids what was going on, but so many asked questions that I decided to tell them an edited version, which was that I had to have an operation, which was being delayed by the NHS, which meant I wouldn’t be back in September. I gave this as the reason why in the last week of term it was really important that we slogged on with work. They moaned but gave in fairly readily.
We whizzed through the PowerPoint of information I’d prepared. It was HUGE relief to be back doing my absolute favourite thing again, which was to be talking about something that I adore in front of a class of intelligent and appreciative kids that I love and that I know really like me, as well as enjoying my lessons. Despite the hard slog of teaching (70 hour weeks, blah, blah, blah) it really is the face to face interaction with the kids that makes it all worth it.
I did the same thing twice Monday, followed by a lesson talking about a poem (Hitcher, by Simon Armitage) that it turned out I’d covered before. Fortunately, I’d taken a totally different angle on it, linking it to music tracks and talking philosophically about life and what they could expect from it and what maybe, just maybe they could aspire to. Yet another lovely lesson with wonderful pupils.
The good day I’d had at work translated well into the last evening with my mum. We went with R to his favourite Italian restaurant for dinner, which went down a storm with her. However, returning home, I discovered that my house keys were locked in the house. I’d only got one set and had forgotten I’d given them to mum. There was nothing for it but to return to R’s for the night and to get in touch with the agent in the morning. This of course was added to the stress of having my second appointment at the hospital.
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