Last July, I was required to move classrooms. A new non-specialist (and Deputy Head) teacher was joining my department, and it was decided that it would be better if he was in the main corridor, and I could move to a classroom on the other corridor. To say that I was unhappy about this was an understatement, but the tears eventually stopped and I looked at it as a positive move.
The move itself, however, was not a positive experience...
I had to wait until the Summer Holidays - yes my precious 6 weeks of freedom - to move my stuff into my new classroom. But I accepted it, needs must and all that.
I hated my new classroom at first, I was so far away from the rest of my department (for most of the week); but I then grew to love my new classroom, I was so far away from the rest of my department... for most of the week - I grew to hate Thursdays and Fridays, because I had company next door. I had grown to love my solitude.
So imagine my horror, when I was informed that I was moving back to my old classroom! My precious solitude - gone... the freedom to blast my music - gone! I did NOT want to move back - but the worst was yet to come...
Remember that I told you how I had to wait until the Summer Holidays to move classrooms, well apparantly things are different if you have children. Yes, children, the snotty-nosed-get-out-of-jail-free cards.
One of the job-sharers moving into my classroom had previously given birth to two of these snotty-nosed-get-out-of-jail-free cards. So this apparantly meant that she cannot possibly be expected to come in during the Summer Holidays and move stuff... no, no, no! Now she lives 5 minutes drive from school, I live 25 minutes drive away from school, but I don't drive! So I actually have a 60 minute, two bus, journey to and from school. But it is unthinkable for her to come into school during the Summer Holidays, and perfectly reasonable for me to.
So I get given a deadline, I have to have all of my stuff moved out one week before the end of school. I explained that I will probably be unable to meet said deadline, but that did not deter the two new occupants of my current classroom...
Move Day (or Sports Day, as everyone else saw it)...
Picture the scene, teenagers changing for Sports Day (their last Sports' Day in fact, as they're year 10), and in comes the job-sharers. I felt like someone who was months behind on their rent, as they started removing my stuff from cupoards, so that they could move their stuff in. As they ordered members of my half-dressed tutor group to move folders, boxes and textbooks to my new/old classroom; I could hear "hit the road Jack, and don't you come back, no more, no more, no more, no more..." echo through my mind as steam blew from my ears. How dare they? Where the Hell do they get off?
I had to spend the day supervising for Sports Day, they were meant to as well, but again having the snotty-nosed-get-out-of-jail-free cards seem to relieve certain people of the normal duties of their job role. So after a long day of supervising, I had the joyous time of moving my stuff that had been dumped on various tables into cupboards. I unlocked the cupboards, using the keys that had been returned to me less than two days before, to find stuff. Not my stuff, stuff belonging to the non-specialist who had been using my room. The same non-specialist who was told to clear out his stuff and give me the keys weeks ago, the same non-specialist who had far-exceeded HIS deadline! Was he repeatedly nagged and bullied into moving his stuff? No! Was he forcefully removed? No!
Summer Holidays have started and his stuff is still there cluttering my classroom. He's a Deputy Head, he has an office, he doesn't need storage space in MY classroom.
But he will keep...
People ask me "how can you be a secondary teacher, teenagers are so rude?" My answer after this episode: "the teenagers are delightful in comparison to some of the adults that I'm forced to work with!"
