First day back, so teacher training.

September 1, 2020

'First day back, so teacher training. Classes arrive tomorrow. A tedious day, but we could wear jeans, drink our coffee hot and go to the toilet when we chose'.

A familiar scene for many who work in education. In this extract from Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean? We learn what the first two days of term are like for 'Miss'.

Monday 4 September

First day back, so teacher training. Classes arrive tomorrow. A tedious day, but we could wear jeans, drink our coffee hot and go to the toilet when we chose. Never look a gift horse.

Stuck in the school hall all day, though – its curtains slouching off the rails.

Adrian Parkes had two cheery headmaster’s messages for us – he was not impressed by the summer exam results and wanted to remind us that Ofsted found us mediocre last autumn and would return soon to check we’re less mediocre. ‘Like the Terminator, they’ll be back,’ he said. We thought he’d smile, but he didn’t. And his comb-over is even less convincing than last term.

George, who’s been promoted to head caretaker, updated us on summer improvements. Surprise! English block left until last, hence the drilling and hammering.

At break, nano-squares of flapjack. Cake money clearly went on the refurb.

After break, we learned to operate a fire hydrant, chiefly by learning how not to.

Once we’d mopped up, lunch was a leather-skinned baked potato in the dining hall. Afterwards, watched colleagues levering potato skin out of teeth during looooong graveyard-slot session on planning stimulating lessons. Sunlight playing through the windows increased the agony. My eyelids struggled. Three hours’ sleep last night. In bathroom this morning, complained to Mirror, ‘Why the angst, the self-doubt, so early in the term?’

It sniggered. ‘You’re fifty-five, as plump as a cushion and your face is sinking. Any further questions?’

Training finished at 3.15. Stayed in English department office until 6, readying for tomorrow. The room looks as it did last term – our desks piled with books and folders, and the shelves in disarray, poetry beside lit. crit., and Shakespeare by Year 7 novels.

In my classroom, the new cupboards and display boards haven’t materialized, and wires hang from my light fittings like spaghetti. Classroom windows painted permanently shut. Must report this. Middle-aged women need breezes.

Bussed it home, trying to finish my Anita Shreve novel before the term murders reading time. Ate shepherd’s pie with Spouse. He cooked, as he’d come home from gardening at 5.

Spent three hours writing stimulating lesson plans in the study upstairs and watching neighbours drink wine on their patio. Then started this diary at bedtime. Auntie Google says wannabe famous writers should journal. Spouse has bought me a mini-lamp to clip to its pages so I won’t disturb him. Not exactly a love gift, but hey.

Tuesday 5 September

In our office at lunchtime. First departmental meeting with Camilla Stent, temporary Head of English and, she told us, Cambridge graduate.
Poor Pam is on long-term sick leave after the stroke.

Camilla couldn’t make yesterday. She was on her way back from the Big Apple with friends from Cambridge.

Who calls it the Big Apple?

She wears red shoes and matching nails and refused lovely Sally’s lemon drizzle cake, patting an abdomen as flat as a board.

Did I mention she went to Cambridge?

‘How old, do you reckon?’ I asked Sally later. ‘Early thirties?’ Sally said she wasn’t sure. ‘I bet she jogs in Lycra.’

‘You could jog in Lycra.’

‘I could,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t.’

‘Saying no to your lemon drizzle, though,’ I said. ‘It’s just wrong.’ Tuesdays this year will be manic. Five hour-long lessons. But that’s next week. Periods 1 and 2 today were ‘Orientation’ with our forms. Didn’t work for new Year 7s, wandering corridors all day in voluminous uniforms, spectacularly un-orientated.

Don’t like the look of my Year 8 class list. Have put tricky customers at the front on my seating plan.

My Year 12 English Language A-level class is fourteen-strong. Two boys with a never-does-homework reputation. Three pupils – Olivia, Chloe and Gus – could be sophisticated private-school stock, but attend Beauchamp School instead because their parents read The
Guardian and champion state education. Made sure to enunciate.

Handed out sheaves of essays to last year’s Year 10 class, now Year 11s and facing GCSEs. ‘Lovingly marked in purple pen on holiday in Tenby,’ I said.

‘Did I write this stuff?’ one said, flipping the pages as though examining an ancient relic.

Hoped old Year 12, now Year 13 A-level Literature class, would return with more oomph than last term. But ‘What homework?’ they said.
Rebekah, with glasses and peer contempt, rescued me. ‘Miss definitely told us. Look.’ She produced a fistful of handwritten notes on her chosen coursework texts.

At least the hammering and drilling have stopped now.

A client gave Spouse a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream today. I poured us both a glass before bedtime. ‘Generous measure,’ he said, when I passed him his. ‘Forgotten Sunday’s sermon, then? The spirit is willing, but the flesh is –’

‘The flesh is knackered. If you don’t want yours, I’ll take it back.’ But he did.

Just told Spouse I’m only writing this diary on school days. ‘Why?’ he said.

‘You’re always telling me weekends and holidays should be different,’ I said.

‘I’m talking about your schoolwork leaching into your free time.

Actually, not leaching. Flooding.’

‘I can’t fix that. But I can differentiate them this way. It’s a start, isn’t it?’

He said I was clutching at straws and turned off his lamp.

Set in diary form, Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean? is a funny, life-affirming memoir set in the manic world of a busy teacher. Fran Hill's account of one typical year shows it's not just the pupils who misbehave.

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