GETTING IN A PICKLE

We love pickled veg and to buy they contain loads of sugar so over the weekend we pickled some baby cucumbers (really cheap at Lidls) and some radishes which turn the liquid a lovely shade of pink. What to pickle next… thought about green beans and found a recipe for pickled sprouts which sound interesting. You will also notice my partner has begun eating them, the cucumbers were only in the jar 2 hours before they started.

I have a picking section on my SugarFreeMeUK Pinterest if you’re interested and hundreds of other recipes. I always use the recipes as a guide and adjust to my own taste. When I do that success or failure, and I’ve had loads of them especially with brownies, I’ll publish them on here, Facebook and Pinterest 

The Weather and Kids

Some people may laugh but the weather does affect the behaviour of kids with certain difficulties, like ADHD, ADD etc. In windy weather the behaviour of SEBD pupils is erratic to say the least and if you add rain to that its mental. This week we’ve had the added weather conditions of high temperature and humidity which also make the pupils have a very short fuse so to say this week has been interesting is really an understatement. Luckily most of the behaviours were easy to contain and mostly directed against each other. Some had to be excluded, but then you have parents phoning up asking “why has Fred been excluded?” First reaction after watching the rather large year 10 batter a year 7 pupils is to say he’s a bully and basically a rather large S**T! But we explain calmly and politely only to get the reply of either “but he was being wound up” or “he never does that at home”. The thought goes through my mind to say How would you know a) you’re never there b) you let him do what he wants anyway c) he does it to you and you’ve told me. Then they say “I just don’t know what to do with him. You should be doing more to make him behave better.  I’m at my wits end. Why aren’t you making him behave? Its you’re job to make him behave.” All of the above being parental cop out. They should have stomped on the behaviour when they were younger, they should never have let it get to the point where the child was in charge. Little Prince Syndrome is the most common disorder for boys in the education system. For Gods sake parents tell them NO, let them tantrum all they like but the answer still be NO and stop giving them everything except your time, attention and love.

Welcome Back From The Holidays

Well what a week that was! After having a fantastically relaxing holiday week it was back to school on Monday… 6 members of staff off sick… management panic, we only have 24 members of staff in all including kitchen,office and maintenance and all those off were teaching staff and assistants. By friday we were the walking wounded, Exhausted some feeling ill themselves and totally run ragged by the boys who capitalised on the situation. Then on ITV there was a program called “Who’d be a teacher” and a Food critic who has started a free school in a posh area of London called Toby Young (The name says it all) Says why are we complaining because we start at 9am and finish at 3:30pm and then have 6 weeks off in the summer. What a prat i’d like to see that jumped up little squirt survive for more than 30mins in one of my classes, in fact I challenge him… I don’t think he would accept.

So this weekend its 6 to 8 hours planning and marking for me while he probably relaxes or dines out for nothing in some high class restaurant where he will comment on the skills of people who have worked for years to perfect them and who also work extremely long hours. Enjoy yourself Mr Young because some of us have to actually work for a living

Joolzs101

Schools Out

I know many people carp about teacher holidays but how many people would work the hours that Teachers do? Lessons don’t plan themselves and books don’t get marked by a wave of a wand. I have 27 lessons a week to plan and prepare resources for and 6 year groups to mark books for. I teach 4 different subject across the curriculum, not an easy task.

Many of my colleagues, like me, start work at 7:30 am and after various subject,pastural and general staff meetings finish work at 5pm, some work later. That I make a 9.5hour day. I don’t have a lunch break as I spend it with the pupils eating and then doing lunchtime duties. At the weekends I spend 6-9 hours planning plus some time marking, so that makes a 6 day week. I also spend 2 hours a week shopping for Food Tech and Breakfast club. During the week I have 3 free lessons (45mins each). Nurses and doctors will sympathise with teachers but the general public pour scorn on us because the only look at what we do during school time

Now the Government announce that they want to lengthen the school day and shorten the holidays, teachers are on their knees exhausted already without having to work longer and plan more. And will we get more money if that happens… I doubt it.

Most evenings by 6:30 i fall asleep and my partner wakes me up at 10pm to go to bed, thats no life.

So parents before you complain about the holidays think as to whether you would work the hours I do, take the abuse I do from both pupils and their parents and have the home work load that I do.

Thanks for listening

Joolzs101

Welcome to my world

Hi

Its the weekend and I am awake at 3am thoughts of the week just gone causing me to have a headache of monumental proportions. Why is it that school kids think that it is fine to verbally abuse and even hit out at people that are truly trying to help them. In this week colleagues have been spat at, had water thrown over them, been punched and kicked, been offered advice on what they could do sexually with their parents and been called a variety of names too disgusting to write here. Reasons why all this has happened, usually because the word NO has been said and generally because they are not getting their own way but occasional because their life is so awful and they feel so bad that they want to try and make us feel as bad as themselves. Yes the school I work at is for pupils with problems, social emotional and behavioural, so some leeway has to be given for this but the frequency that these incidents happen has increased 10fold in my 12 years of teaching in this environment. I myself in the last 18 months have been head butted unconscious, had a suspected broke wrist and a broken thumb only to be told by the local education authority that we work in an environment where we should expect this. That is totally unexceptable no one should go to work expecting to be injured. We are highly trained professionals, what other profession would be told that? One colleague was told after having a limb broken severely by an angry pupil that she may have provoked the situation so was not able to claim compensation even though her injury will affect her for the rest of her life.

The pupils have no respect for others or property except if it is their phone, which they seem to fear being separated from. They also see no wrong in using said phone during a lesson and object by kicking doors in or lashing out at teachers who take it off them, unbelievable!

Thank you for reading my first blog and will write again soon

Joolz101