Oh the sweaty palms, the tired minds, the aching hands....

Yep, you may have guessed it, it's exam time!!! (ie. Time of the red pen)

This feels like a holiday, no students to teach, no set times to obey, just an endless sea of marking that threatens to engulf your very soul until you dream of ticks and crosses... 

Cough... anyway...

I remember what it was like; the long days of studying, being stuffed into a hall with your peers, having to write fast enough to finish the papers, getting annoyed with the snifflers and the pen tappers... and lastly, the annoying teachers who pace up and down staring at you....

Yeah, and now I've become one.

Thing is, we never stopped to think how BORING it was for those teachers! Imagine it, being stuck looking after 100 or so girls who are writing a paper with absolutely NOTHING to do except walk up and down the rows making sure they aren't cheating. 

So, having been given the task of invigilator for the first time in my life, I have been compiling a list of interesting things for teachers to do during the long hour sessions of walking up and down watching desperate souls frantically scribbling their future on to pages of infinity...

So here is my list of 15 tried and tested things to do while invigilating! (Warning, some of these only work if you are invigilating alone)
 
1.  Count the bricks on the walls.
2.  If there are no bricks, count the amount of cracks you can find.
3.  Sing all the lyrics you know in your head.
4.  Imagine different music videos to these songs.
5.  Write mental poetry.
6.  Make a mental grocery list. If this fails, plan ahead for Christmas.
7.  Compare how many girls have ponytails, plaits, buns, or some other creative hairstyes.
8.  Count how many pens there are in the entire venue.
9.  Plan your outfit for the next week.
10. Practise your model walk.
11. Go through exit strategies if a zombie apocalypse occurs.
12. Count how many times a girl tucks her hair behind her ear.
13. Stare at each student until they look up at you, reward them points based on how long it takes.
14. Imagine how awesome it would be if the whole venue leaped up and broke out dancing.
15. Go to the back of the room and pull faces and do weird dance moves where the students can't see you, if one turns around act perfectly normal.

 

"When I was your age blah blah blah..."

I have a confession.

No I'm not an alcoholic.

Well... okay, yes, I have resorted to a glass of wine every now and then while marking.

Only one, and only in desperation.

Okay that one time it was two, but if you had read some of those answers you would've finished that bottle!! 

But back to my confession:

When I was in school, my peers and I would roll our eyes anytime a teacher would say "You know, in MY day, we never had cellphone etc etc blah blah fishpaste", and I always vowed I'd never become like that.

And yet, at the ripe old age of 23, I find my teenaged sponges just so DIFFERENT...  In my school days we certainly didn't have smartphones, camera phones which slid open would be the coolest of the cool. We certainly didn't like male popstars that look like overgrown babies (not mentioning names here... cough...) or skip school to watch their concerts. We would've been caught dead in neon see-through shirts and shorts that were designed to make half your butt fall out. We actually knew how to use the dewy decimal system in the library and projects weren't just copied and pasted off the net.

But my students know nothing of this life. And I feel the urgent need to remind them of a time when life wasn't all Blackberrys and Ipads. 

So, I confess, I found myself the other day musing out loud: "You know girls, back when I was in school, we didn't have half the things you did, Facebook was only invented when I was almost out of high school!", in response a very sweet, quiet girl in the front row pipes up: "Wow miss, you must really be OLD!"

Sigh.

I think I'll go back to my knitting.      

Teenagers... That pretty much sums it up...

I have come to the epic conclusion that if you ever want to become a model/actress/perfectionist/grammer nazi/comedian/organiser/counsellor/mediator/Yoda.... become a high school teacher.

You have to imagine it, we are on view, everyday, to a class of 30 odd children who scrutinise our every move, from the clothes we wear, to the one word that we spell wrong on the board. My students have decided that it is their calling in life to tell me exactly WHAT they love about what I wear each day, and what they DON'T like ("Seriously Miss, are those shoes COMFORTABLE?" "Um, yeah" "Ohhh, okay, I guess if they're comfortable it doesn't matter if they don't match"... OUCH), so much so that in the morning I no longer think 'Hmmm, what would I like to wear today', instead I find myself asking 'what can my kids find wrong in my outfit'.

 I may just start wearing really outrageous outfits to work, merely to see what they will say... You never know, I could set the newest fashion trend... Or they'll send me straight to the nearest mental institution... At the rate I'm going, I may end up there sooner than I thought.

 I must say, it can be a rather big ego boost, but I'm not there to be their personal model. But hey, anything to distract their hormone crazed minds from the actual lesson! Greek gods forbid that we actually do WORK for once!!  The shock, the horror of it all, that we actually go to school to LEARN!! Whatever will they think of next!! *swoooooooon*

No one ever said this job would be easy, but boy do I get some good laughs out of it.  

Survival level: Term 1

So I did it, I survived through the first term. On the last day of school, I bid my students farewell, the normal "have a great holiday, be safe blah blah blah..." What I really wanted to do was surf on the desks, swing from the ceiling fans, screaming "I'M FREEEEE, FREE I TELL YOU, WOHOOOOOO!!!!!" But that may have been slightly inappropriate. Instead I allowed myself a relatively silent fistpump the moment the last scuffed shoe and slumped posture had exited the door. 

I have a feeling my students are under the impression that I actually didn't WANT to see them leave, in fact, one even said "don't miss us too bad miss, we'll be back soon", and hinted that they might bump into me at the local mall and that I MUST say hello!

So while I'm sipping my sparkling wine, eating Easter chocolate, lazing outside with a good book,  sleeping in til late, watching movies whenever I want and generally being a slob... I'll find time to toast a glass towards those dear students of mine... And I'll try my UTMOST not to miss them....

Dreams of ditches, Shakespeare and cats...

I used to have this joke with my friends at university. Every time things got a bit mad, and I started freaking out convinced I would either fail or have a nervous breakdown, I used to say that one day they will find me in a ditch, clutching homeless cats, and reciting Shakespeare. My version of a crazy cat lady. And we'd all laugh and they'd convince me that if that happened they would visit me, even going so far as to point out suitable ditches for me at the side of the road (I am now starting to wonder if this was more than just harmless jest, maybe they actually WANTED to get rid of me. Hah.). In any case, I landed up a teacher.

I am starting to find that ditch mighty appealing.

 LO class, grade 10. Going through the South African Bill of Human Rights.  Cue attitude-I-don't-give-a-damn-life-should-revolve-around-me student:

"Miss, if I have the right to an education, and its my right, then surely that means if I choose NOT to do homework, then that's my choice and you shouldn't be able to punish me? Its not like homework helps us anyway".

And people wonder why I don't want to have kids and bring them up in todays society.

I sincerely wished I could have gone into Shakespeare mode and dramatically pointed to her going: "OUT OUT DAMNED SPOT, OUT I SAY!!!!" and sent her scurrying out my classroom, never to be seen from or heard again.

But I'm afraid that may have been grounds for the school to fire me.... hmmm...

Anyone know of a good ditch?

Oh woe is me...

To mark or not to mark

That is the question

To suffer the grammar and spelling

Of outrageous answers

Or to take pen to the seas of paper

And by marking, finish them. 

To eat, to sleep, no more

And by sleep to say we end the long nights of

endless red pen...

Tis a possibility devoutly to be wished...

To eat, to sleep, perchance to dream,

ay, theres the rub, for in that sleep there

would be no failures and stupidity 

of students who shuffle through the mortal land of school.

As you may be able to tell.... I have a sea of marking... An endless torrent of work that never ends... my red pen is reaching it's end and I fear it's funeral is around the corner... Alas... Oh woe is me... 

I need coffee. Stat. 

        

Wait... I said WHAT?

LO lesson... aka sex education (as if teenagers these days actually need it...)

So there's me, long day, trying to talk 18 year olds out of having sex....

"Ladies, if you fall pregnant now, how many of you actually believe that the man will stick around? He's 18, he has a future, he doesn't want to stick around and take care of a baby. No ways. He will go off to varsity, his life ahead of him... and you will be stuck looking after a baby. Then ladies, you are screwed. Literally and figuratively..."

<silence>

<class erupts into laughter>

Sometimes I worry about myself... Am I really good for these kids?? The other day I caught myself speaking in memes... (yes, I know, the horror of it all). We were reading a play which had the word "arse" in it which my girls found hilarious. I informed them that since they all SHOULD have one, they should be able to say it without giggling. And then, in my best American accent I went, "Dat ASS, whooo!".... I thought I said it to myself... apparently... I didn't...

Note to self: Do not spend weekends procrastinating on 9gag when you should be marking... Only leads to jokes that only you find funny.