Know how I know this?
My name is Stepfordtart and Im a chair-Nazi.
In our staffroom, I have the chair nearest the door � with Sheldon-like precision this chair has been selected. Firstly, its next to the chair of my fellow chair-Nazi, Leona.
At lunch,
I.
Sit.
Next.
To.
Leona.
That�s it. There�s no variation in that. Not ever. When I was off school having cancer treatments and operations and all that what-not, my chair remained empty. No-one else�s arse sullied its moquette. The same cannot be said for my coffee mug, however, which (despite having a photograph of MY FACE on it!) kept disappearing with the feeble �Oh, I wasn�t sure whose it was�.� Ringing in my ears FAR too many times as I rescued it from someone else�s desk. Urgh. Sometimes they�d even been drinking instant coffee out of it, the heathens.
But I digress. My chair is approximately 7ft away from the bin, which is the optimum distance away for the bin to be for me to be able to throw my orange peels, apple cores, sandwich crusts and yoghurt pots and to get them in the bin Every. Single. Time. (with the occasionally �in-off� from the wall behind)
When someone sits in my chair, Im forced to recalculate the trajectory of every single piece of unwanted luncheon foodstuff if I am to avoid having to actually stand up and walk over to the bin. Sometimes the distances involved can be anything up to 15 feet and I just cant guarantee accuracy of my throwing arm at that distance.
In addition, my chair�s position in the room means that I can not only survey all the people that are actually IN the staffroom, but I can also see down the SLT corridor and can pre-warn anyone who might be bitching about the Principal or the Deputy or whoever, of their imminent arrival. I am a good �cavey� (oh, please tell me that there are private school alumni reading this who will understand that reference) and it earns me lots of brownie points, fersure.
Yeh. So that was the stuff that I wrote whilst sitting in someone else�s staffroom, in the middle of an All-Day Interview for a one term secondment teaching position. The week before last, our Headteacher came into my classroom just after the kids had left and said that she�d been contacted by the Head of another school to see if she had any staff that she could recommend for an English Teacher job they�d been unable to fill � don�t be alarmed by that, the world of education recruitment is nothing like the field of recruitment in other industries. Schools share their staff around like so many indentured servants and round about this time of year there is always a strange �musical chairs� kind of transfer window where School A takes a teacher from School B, leaving a vacancy filled from school C, who in turn take a teacher from School D who have just recruited from School A etc etc etc. Ive certainly never worked in any other field where it is normal practice for references to be sought from one�s current employer BEFORE interview, nor where at the end of the interview day, the unsuccessful candidates are told (sometimes in front of everyone else) that they haven�t got the job, leaving them to skulk away one by one until only one remains.
Anyway. The school is about 30 miles away and had had some trouble recruiting � they had previously been in Special Measures (its improving now but its still an unpopular choice for parents) and the town is an unappealing one, surrounded by more likeable and picturesque neighbours. I don�t know anybody who would willingly live there�.although, the shops are nice. So, they have a vacancy that they cannot fill and I have a job that is just about to become non-existent. Mmmmm, a match made in heaven.
That night I had a chat with the Headteacher of the other school and he seemed really nice and invited me go interview for the job last Thursday. I explained Im not an English specialist but he didn�t seem too worried and when he explained that (if I was successful) I could do the job on a secondment basis (meaning I could go back to Chigley High after the summer if a suitable job came up there) and that they would not only bump up my salary to the next payscale point but would pay my travelling costs as well�.well, it was a no-brainer really.
I went up on the train � an easy half hour ride with no changes � from Chigley station, and the other school is a five minute walk at the other end. I had my interview, faced a terrifying Pupil Panel, taught an observed lesson on �use of punctuation to develop pace and emphasis in poetry� to a class of Year 8 (12yo) kids, had a tour of the school and then they offered me the job, right there on the spot. My lesson (which included a youtube clip of Victor Borge � see below! � and also some John Hegley and Seamus Heaney, Im not a complete idiot!) was graded �good, with outstanding features�, the pupil panel thought I was �nice and quite funny� and, well blow me down with a feather, now Im an English Teacher!
Don�t get me wrong, Im still an Unqualified Teacher, but Im a teacher nonetheless. I start at the new school next Monday!
The new school, which shall henceforth be soubriquetted (yes, yes, I know that�s not a word. I AM an English Teacher, after all!) Grapetree High, also phoned me the next day and suggested that they might, once they�d finalised their budgets, be able to keep me as a kind of �half an English Teacher� after the summer�.which is handy as the principal of Chigley High has kind of suggested that there may be a position there for me in September as a sort of �half a Maths teacher�, meaning I could spend two days at one school and three at the other and not really have a chance to get sick of either!
So, whilst everything was going swimmingly well for me at Grapetree, back at Chigley the excrement was being flung far and wide by the air distribution device and my boss had been signed off with �stress�, leaving nobody in the Altern@tive Learn1ng department besides half a dozen mutinous and bolshie teenagers. By the time I got back on Friday morning, my boss had been told to not come back and my department had been moved unceremoniously to another part of the school, to repose under the watchful eye of the SENCo.
I didn�t even get a chance to tell anyone that I had got the job as Grapetree�s Principal had phoned Chigley�s principal and she�d announced it at staff briefing on Friday morning before I had even got in the building and everybody already knew!
Ive got this week to finish up any unfinished business, then I have three days orientation at Grapetree Monday-Wednesday next week, back to Chigley for a farewell field trip (to a restaurant! Yay!) with my Year 11 class on Thursday and Friday is the last day of term.
Its all been a bit quick and scary and events have run away with me somewhat, but Im kind of excited. When Im not being terrified.
This week�s been weird, as the realisation that Im not going to be there next term has started to filter through to my AL students. There was a lot of �what�s going to happen to US????� and, as some of them have got abandonment issues, Ive had to do some bridge-building and promising to come back next term and giving out my email address etc etc etc, but I think it will all work out in the end.
I have other stuff to tell you, too, about multiple gigs � there are photos and everything�.although, I haven�t looked at them yet so its possible you wont get to see them if I look like The Singing Heifer.
So. Victor Borge, then�