Saturday and Survived

Well we made it through a pretty fraught week. All kind of things were happening.
First Richard (of RBB) got the New Professional Award. Wow, we all bow before his magnificence.



Then the walking disaster area that is Ringo decided that as he has left early on Thursday (while everyone else stayed behind to get things correct and finished)he would get his stuff done on Friday, ignoring his allocated responsibilities.
You know, minor things; kids with knives, kids swearing at teachers, kids with dying relatives, kids stealing form the staffroom. It doesn't matter, Ringo remains inviolate. And arrogant. And a bully.

I'm not going to give too many details (to protect the innocent) but he just pushes people about as he sees fit, regardless if it's his job to do so, regardless of the greater benefit to the school.
I know that these (and previous comments) may sound a little bitter and twisted (check my name for goodness sakes), and I have tried to be as objective as possible, due to a previous competition which I lost, but this man is almost singlehandedly destroying the fantastic collegial atmosphere which was the main saving grace of Nuova Lazio High.
The previous Führer, now with the Afrika Corps in the scorching desert sands, made many improvements to this Stalag, and some mistakes, and I believe his biggest mistake was appointing Oberstürmbahnführer von Ringo to the General Staff of Stalag Luft Nuova Lazio.
Finally after I had sorted out various mistakes and re-printed the junior reports, I began to print out the seniors.
Picture the situation.
I don't have any time off.
I'm teaching senior and junior classes, who need constant teaching, supervision and encouragement.
I'm trying to print to the main printer in the main office. 200 meters away.
I'm using an advanced printer configuration setup to produce booklet type reports.
I get a phone call (in my classroom while I'm teaching)that the main printer has made a funny kind of grinding/crunching noise and has stopped.
After 10 minutes I get the message that it's restarted.
Repeat the entire sequence 3 times. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Stop.
Every time it stops, we're not sure what has been missed, and what has actually printed.
While I'm trying to sort this out, my Year 10 class arrives. A strange mix of bright hyperactive, evil hyperactive, clever, dumb, super-hardworking, insecure, defiant, resistant, forward, precocious, mongrel-mob prospective, talkative, loud, gossipy, bad-tempered, and generally nice kids. In other words a normal class.
Non-teachers may find this strange, but no matter what you hear, the vast majority of the kids we teach in schools are nice kids. Reasonably well behaved. A bit more argumentative than you will remember from your school days, but basically nice, decent kids who want to learn and to progress.
It's the scum of the difficult 5% who stuff it up for everybody else.
In these days of complete educational inclusion, you cannot just throw these buggers out.
Even though they probably account for 25% of teacher time in trying to create a safe working environment for your classes, and severely reduce the attainment levels of the majority of the kids, we are no longer allowed to remove the sods. The MOE gets really upset if we fling them away.
If they acted the way they do in adult life, they would end up "as a guest of Her Majesty".
But not as a juvenile.
They're safe, and they know it. We can do very little to them as long as they don't actually thump/knife/shoot anyone.
However,back to reports. The end result was chaos. I wasn't sure what had been printed or not printed. When I tried to get back into the print room to check, it was locked. Everyone had gone home.
At 3:30 there was no one left in the Stalag from the Reichsgruppe.
Sod it.
We can sort it out on Monday.
Laphroig (thanks Peter) beckons.
New horizons next week. Onward is better.