I should have been sacked but never was...
I worked as a teacher for nine years and actually left of my own accord - the breakdown in school discipline and pointless bureaucracy finally got to me as it does to many teachers.

I did enjoy the first few years and put everything I had into it. It's one of those jobs that gives you a real high when it's going well - I think it's called an endorphin rush - a similar feeling to being drunk or stoned. The effects are the same too, you sometimes do silly things.

Like the time a kid was being really obnoxious and I offered to give her a pound if she let me break two eggs over her huge pile of frizzy hair. She agreed, and I broke one egg...and walked away. The best thing about it was that although the class ran riot in their next lesson and the year head investigated rumours of an "egging" not one of them, not even my victim, dobbed me in.

Or the sixth form class who refused to put their names on their homework, so I used to make up names and write them on their papers, such as "Queen Boadicea" or "Elvis Presley". After a while inspiration wore thin and one time when I was in a rush I dredged up the first names I could think of from the distant recesses of my brain. Next parents' evening I got a hard time from the parents of one girl - one of the names I'd written down without really thinking was "Myra Hindley".

(Perhaps I should point out that it was at one of the few times the Scum wasn't exploiting the terrible Moors murder tragedy in order to sell copies.)

Maybe I should have been sacked - but I usually got better results than many of the "sensible" teachers.
(eesnahk, Sat 11 Aug 2007, 21:13, Reply)