Over the weekend my classroom was painted, finally. It’s been begging for a makeover for at least five years – cracks and peeling paint are so last decade. What would Kevin Mcloud say?  So, I requested all white walls except for one bright red wall which I thought would give the kids enough stimulation and colour, without sending them insane. However, somewhere along the way my request got rather lost in translation and the entire classroom is now some kind of rancid green.

The caretaker swears it’s pistachio – it’s a very seasick pistachio if that’s the case – and said that it was approved by the bursar because green was more ‘cost-effective’ than red. I don’t know about the current costs of cheap green paint – but I can’t believe the difference was so much that they couldn’t have managed one wall of red paint. What this smacks of is the usual purse strings bureaucracy that we are increasingly dealing with in schools. Jobsworth, glorified accountants who have to change what you’ve requested simply because they CAN. I know they’re stretched for cash, but splitting hairs over some paint really is going too far.

That said, the silver lining on this pistachio cloud was the reaction of my class – a real bunch of little treasures for once – who politely told me how great it looked, before setting about, like a tiny interior design army, sticking up their art homework all over it. And little Timmy even passed this inspired comment on it: “Miss, it’s not red. But now it’s not peeling. Lovely jubbly.” And promptly sat down. Out of the mouths of babes. I feel a classwide gold star coming on.

I just couldn’t let this one slide by without mentioning it. The lovely people at Teachable are rewarding the best digital teaching resources with free access to its site for a year – and more importantly, £1000 to spend on whatever you want. All you need to do is submit one of your best digital teaching resources to the site and wait for the winnings to flood in….

You have till 22nd Jan to submit your entry, check out all the details here.

Coming back in January is so much worse than coming back in Sept; mainly because my pupils are hyperactively showing off their news toys, even though they’re not supposed to bring them in.

And the shock of rising early in the morning seems to hurt all over again. And my desk appears to have been attacked my more woodworm. And this morning a note arrived on said holey desk asking if I would bring the work I’ve done on my ‘Improvement Plan’ to the head’s office this afternoon so we can discuss it. Well that shouldn’t be too difficult, because I havent’ done it. A nice short meeting then.

Happy New Year bloggers! Only two more days till term starts, what a toxic thrill that is. I am paralysed by the fear that I haven’t done anything that I should have done, especially the school improvement report thingy we were supposed to ‘brainstorm ideas on’. Somehow I was just too busy eating turkey. And mince pies. And Christmas Cake. And mulled wine. And cheese.

Worst thing of all is that I don’t forsee any time to go to the gym this term. New Year, New Dress size?

 An article in The Telegraph  a month or so ago (I only got through the papers from the last two months at about 4pm on Boxing Day, made a great distraction from the horror of listening my aunt talk about her hernia).

Anyway – this article says that children are getting more aggressive at primary school, and have too much power over teachers. Did they not read my post on ‘compostation’; or read about ScissorGate? But seriously people, some rationality please. These are CHILDREN.

The teachers interviewed in this asrticle have spent far to long living in their heads; making out the little monsters, to actually be very big monsters. I know kids are hard, I find them difficult sometimes, and they can be aggressive – but it’s up to us give them a sense of authority and help them with behaviour. Not run to the papers about it again, and whine about – again.

So, the ‘top’ Christmas presents from my pupils this year include:

1) A Waitrose Christmas Hamper – amazing present, am eating my way through the mince pies rather well.

2) 35 different coloured pencils….in a High School Musical Tin

3) A set of stamps chronicling the locomotive history of England, address to Mr Wilson. (I have swapped these with Mr Wilson who was given a pink, glittery scarf by the same child. I think he wanted to keep the scarf, actually.)

4) A bottle of wine – I love this child.

5) A book on summer flowers, which had written on the inside cover: “Dearest Mary, lots of love on your birthday, From Auntie Sally.” (Don’t you just love recycled presents.)

Still, it’s the first day of the Christmas holidays and I am full of festive cheer! Happy Christmas readers.

The big question on everyone’s lips this term has not been about SATS, funding or whether the new Year Five teacher is in actual fact insane.

No, this term we have mainly been consumed with the big dilemma of who will eventually play Mary in the Nativity Show tomorrow. Regular readers will remember that a certain possible act of sabotage meant Mary 1: aka Little Lucy, grazed her cheek, and Mary 2: aka Little Rosie had to become her understudy. Suddenly a compromise has presented itself – we are having two nativity shows; one on Thursday and one on Friday – they can both be Mary.

We can sell more tickets, make more money for the new school rabbit hutch, and I won’t have one devastated ten year old on hands. Hallelujah.

I just heard the most ridiculous thing. Putting door handles high enough so children can’t reach them does indeed mean they can’t escape from school. But isn’t it also a fire risk? And if we can’t have doors open on warm days (because the windows are jammed and don’t open anyway, do they ever?) what are we supposed to do? Just swelter in the boiling heat? Turn the classroom into a human greenhouse and then note down the results of our experiment?

And, anyway, aside from this – I have never, ever had a child attempt to make a desperate break for freedom – they’re too busy working their small socks off to make ridiculous government targets and pass another SAT.

We have decided on a vaguely traditional nativity – usual No-Room-at-the-Inn, shepherds, kings and the Virgin Mary story (as we are a technically Christian school), interspersed with songs and readings from other religions, some classic carols sung by our small but sweet choir, and a whole school rendition of Jingle Bells in several different languages. I predict a large amount of carnage.

I have also chosen a Mary, after a short audition process that mainly revolved around which child would be most likely to a) not cry throughout the performance b) not stamp her foot throughout the performance c) not  shout ‘hello granny’ throughout the performance. And my Mary of choice, Little Lucy, was doing rather well, she’s definitely got that sweet, innocent smile down, and looks good in blue; but then disaster struck this morning, as she apparently ‘tripped over’ in the playground and has grazed her left cheek – not a good look for the Mother of Christ. Her role as Mary is in peril, will it heal in time? Will she able to rehearse? Can we replace her? Will she ever stop crying?

However, what is perplexing me the most is how she ‘tripped’ over in a playground that is virtually new, and has no holes, bumps or anything trip worthy. With the raft of health and safety these days we basically like our children to play sitting down, on cotton wool.

So, I suspect foul play – and am wondering if the girl who is to potentially take her place  – Little Rosie – might be the culprit. She seems far to pleased about becoming the Virgin Mary.

The news recently about failing primary schools is putting everyone on edge; only this morning the assistant head Janet subjected me to a ten minute lecture – in front of the rest of the staff – for finishing the last of the coffee in the staffroom.

And now little Bobby’s parents Mr and Mrs Perpetually Irritating want to have a meeting with the head, which apparently I have to attend, about how this will affect their precious boy’s development and what we, as a school, intend to do about it. I expect what we shall do about will be what we always do which is to work our proverbials off, spend most of the holidays coming up with new action plans for Ed Balls, and then fail to meet his mercurial targets because they either don’t actually apply to us, don’t make sense or are impossible to achieve.