…just a little something I wanted to share with you all, courtesy of the ever hilarous News Biscuit.

The accompanying news story reads: “Yoda has overcome his demons and passed an exam in GCSE English. The pint-sized Jedi had long struggled to formulate sentences properly, meaning that he had failed the test aimed at 16 year olds no less than 728 times. Yoda received his GCSE result last week but wanted to keep the achievement quiet in order to avoid a fuss. ‘I just want to carry on like normal,” said Yoda today, “I really don’t want to draw any attention to this, I am like, ok, I’ve done this, I’ve passed, let’s move on. There are far more important things to be dealing with, such as the rebel alliance and that troublesome Darth Vader.’”

There’s nothing like the smell of bad taste humour on a Friday morning.

Genius.

I attempted to enter civilisation last week. I joined Facebook with a private account. It’s taken six days and already ten of my pupils have tried to befriend me.

This is most alarming. They already think i’m a loser, what happens when I fail to post lots of pictures of my *raging* nights out and they discover that i do infact spend most of my nights sitting at home with Horlicks and  episodes of Silent Witness?

And, equally, I really don’t want to see pictures of three of my female students drunk off their faces with their tongues out. It creates all sort of unnerving visual flashbacks in the class the next day when I’m trying to get them to talk about iambic pentameter and I realise how much they must pity me and my tragic life.

On a more serious level though, I do wonder about the proliferation of Facebook at schools; i’ve heard of at least three teachers who have been ‘victims’ of pretty serious hate groups about them on the Facebook; that’s gotta be hard to take…

Yesterday I was faced with classic CLSS (Clever Little Shit Syndrome). My class was working away drawing pictures of their dreams (quite illuminating really), and had been instructred to talk quietly to each other about what the dream meant. Sadly, ‘quietly’ is a word they all don’t seem to have learnt yet, so the volume got way too loud, way too fast.

Asking nicely -  not really an option (is it ever?). Bellowing at them seemed to work for about five minutes (but is also rather counter productive, yelling at someone to be quiet just doesn’t seem to hold any weight). Standing at the front of the class with my arms folded and glaring was also pointless, they just ignored me. So then I attempted to stop the lesson ask them to talk more quietly. At which point CLS Tommy muttered (loud enough for me to hear): “How are we supposed to know what’s too loud?”

 How do you respond to that? I mean honestly? There I was, floored by a seven year old, with absolutely no come back whatsoever.

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.

According to this story, I don’t need to do my job anymore. My pupils are now learning to write by blogging and social networking. Awesome.

And of course, they really are learning to write well and pass their exams. This will surely be a good example of how much they’ve learnt: “Liz Bennett, imho, is not a heroine cuz she is 2 proud and judgemental, lol.”

God help us.

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?

Redtape High School has been all about the ‘green agenda’ for a couple of years now, and I’m quite frankly sick of it. Well, i’m not sick of it, but I object heavily to having to take my pupils out of their lesson this morning to clear up the ‘recycling’ which has blown all over the school grounds because of this hideous weather. Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind the excuse to enjoy a quick cigarette and coffee while watching my pupils trawl about in the wind picking up litter, it’s like some sort of mini community service (which I reckon is a great idea) but they’ve got mock exams coming up and we were finally making some progress with romantic poetry – a feat of genius when dealing with a load of oversexed teenagers who couldn’t usually care less about what Keats thought about nightingales or Grecian urns.

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.

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.