Good Lord. I’ve been put in charge of the Christmas nativity this year, which is a terrifying and alarming prospect. With over seven different religions and 15 ethnic groups at the school, the traditional Bible story is usually adapted to ensure we’re inclusive. I’m still not exactly sure how to adapt one sacred religious story, to turn it into a mishmash of seven different religious stories, five of which don’t recognise Christmas at all.

And then I’ve got to pick a girl to play the Virgin Mary, a process that I am sure will produce scarier scenes that those on America’s Next Top Model. I mean seven year old actually really know how to pull each other’s hair.

Like many of the pupils here, one of our new boys who started this term, speaks virtually no English. It’s fairly normal here, but always presents an extra challenge in the never-ending quest for perfection. When I say virtually, I’m not exaggerating; the best Samir’s managed so far is a very earnest: “Yes.” Despite numerous hours of work with him, his English has not improved at all, and of course he’s not making any friends – apart from a disastrous attempt to ‘bond’ with one of the other boys in the class when Samir sat on the boy’s desk and started frantically raising his eyebrows and blinking. As you can imagine, it only served to further alienate him. Kids can indeed be cruel.

However his parents came in for parents evening last night, and I thought that finally I’d be able to make sense of everything, and discuss him getting some extra help. It started well, Mr Samir smiled, shook my hand and said: “Hello, we are pleased to meet Samir’s teacher, thank you.” I smiled and started chatting about Samir. He nodded, as did his wife, and they both agreed with what I was saying. In fact after ten minutes of me speaking, and them offering periodic ‘yes’ responses I began to experience some rather unnerving déjà vu. I changed tack, asking them what they thought Samir needed more help with. My heart sank when Mr Samir smiled and said: “Yes.” His wife nodded frantically and added: “Yes.” Suddenly it became clear why Samir wasn’t learning any English. If he’s not speaking it at home how on earth is he ever going to learn it here?

Another day, another ‘healthy eating’ initiative from the geniuses in the kitchen. Today we enjoyed tomato pasta with bacon and olives. Not bad I thought, till some delightful child found it necessary to remove every single olive from their meal and give all twenty of them to their friend. Said friend promptly ate every single one of them, and then threw up in the corridor. Guess who was on clean up duty?

I do wonder sometimes if our overly litigious and health and safety mad society is leaking into my classroom ever further.

Today a classic example – Jenny drop her apple juice on the floor; not that I mind that much, full as it was off E-numbers and too much sugar. As my TA goes to clear it up, Jenny’s supposed best friend this week, Casey, says, clear as a bell: “Ummm, you should clear that up. If someone falls over on it and it’s not their fault they can get compostation.”

I believe she means compensation. And I also believe she has been watching too much mid-week, mid-day TV, the kind littered with those Accident and Injury adverts.

Telling this story later in the staffroom leads to this pearl of wisdom from the deputy head. “Obviously you need to select a health and safety monitor, one of the pupils, to keep an eye on the other pupils.” Ok then, one scrappy seven year old telling another scrappy seven year old what to do; I forsee trouble.

Great, great disaster of a lesson today. Took the children into the garden for a hands-on approach to understanding the natural world. Little Jamie found a half dead slug (mangled previously by a year three class I think) and threw it at little Lucy, who screamed, a lot. She in turn threw mud back, missing little Jamie – whose dodging tactics will make a great footballer of him yet - and getting not-so-little Dylan, whose mother terrifies me and who I will now have to explain about the whole sticky-mud-on-the shirt fiasco.

Next week they’ll be looking at pictures of leaves on black and white print outs. That’ll learn them. If I can ever get to the photocopier that is.

On the subject of sex education, this has me in a quandry. I can’t decide if i’m worried about it, happy about it or think it’s a terrible idea. Some of the five year olds I teach already use certain phrases that would make my grandmother blush, (and me at times), but I wonder if that’s exactly the point? I mean if they’re hearing bad language about sex at home, perhaps it is up to us to help them develop a more mature approach to sex. But then using the word ‘mature’ when you’re talking about a five year old is just ridiculous anyway.

There’s no harm in them learning about the parts of the body; but really, learning about sex age five – I cannot think of a good reason for this. The kinds of things they study in secondary – puberty, relationships, STIs - it’s simply not logical or necessary to teach a five year old that, or a seven year old even.

All of this just sounds like another way to put a plaster over the cracks in society – i.e. not dealing with the bigger issues of thousands of children growing up without the proper parenting and support, hence – among numerous other issues – there are far too many teenage pregnancies, and the solution is to hope  this won’t happen  if you teach them about sex early enough.

Was perusing the Guardian this morning, getting my daily dose of leftist sentiment, and saw a rather interesting article about how primary schools need to be teaching pupils to become more ‘media savvy’. I’m not even sure what that really means, because I’m pretty sure it’s a phrase the media themselves made up. But actually the concept behind it….not too insane for once.

A professor at Warwick University says that children should be learning media language and literacy, along with maths and English, to ensure they’re not too susceptible to advertising campaigns. Sounds good, infact, sounds like something we could all do with a refresher course on. Sign me up.

We have the lice. It’s revolting. I can’t stop walking around shaking my head and looking alarmed at any pupil that comes too close. Which isn’t really conducive to managing 30 young children on an afternoon trip to the local duck pond. I toyed with scarpering half way there to nip home for a quick hairwash, only to be stopped by a TA who kindly reminded me that lice ‘love clean hair’ – delivered with bulging eyes and a mad sort of Hannibal Lecter sneer. I rethought the cleanliness strategy and have opted for total isolation. I shall mostly be calling sick till it’s gone.

Worse thing is, I think I know the cuplrit; it’s this kid in year three whose mother seems to blind to his plight and is living happily in a make believe X Factor world, where Cheryl’s dress and ‘Deadlock’ seem to be her only concerns. So while we send home the letters, with the instructions, and every other parents sorts out their child’s hair, and combs it excessively, this poor child will come back into school, scratching fiendishly and reinfect all the other kids. I am despairing somewhat. It’s like there is literally no end in sight.

I guess in the end I’ve just had enough. Teaching was always something I wanted to do, and in essence I still do. I mean, the kids I still love – well, most of them – actually to be honest after this morning’s lesson/renactment of WWII I’m less enamoured. It’s true what they say about children’s names, Jacks and Ambers are ALWAYS trouble. Having to prise a pair of blunt, round-edged scissors from both of their violently waving hands this morning wasn’t exactly why I got into teaching; it’s become a bit more like crowd control recently. Thank god I don’t work in a secondary school, the scissors there actually cut stuff – doesn’t bear thinking about.

But honestly; the rest of it? The endles, endless reams of initatives, red tape, budget cuts – it just doesn’t feel like it used to. It’s more like ‘playing ‘ at teaching, I mean I stand at the front of the class, pressing buttons on a whiteboard (actually that bit is fun); but I don’t think anyone is actually listening anymore. So I’m turning my attention to a virtual audience I can’t see, you lot.

Perhaps you’ll listen…..