Storytelling Sunday: School stories

It's time for Sian's Storytelling Sunday again which means you can grab a tea (or delicious beverage or your choice, naturally.  Or even a not-delicious beverage, but that's your choice and we seem to have gone off on a tangent so I'll get back to the point.  Still with me?  Good.  The point will be arriving any moment now.  Wait for it....here it comes!) and head on over to Sian's to find a whole variety of memories and tales from those who inhabit blogland.

I've got a selection of little anecdotes from school for this week.  One day I'll stick them in my memoirs and give after dinner speeches.  For now, it's enough for me to know that my job, teaching maths, makes me laugh every day.

*****

I'm currently mentoring  a trainee teacher who's doing a placement at our school for a few weeks.  He's taken over some of the teaching of my A-level class.  I perch inconspicuously at the back of the room, generally being responsible and trying to pretend that I'm not there.  Whilst looking encouraging.  However, on a Friday afternoon, he found them to be rather chatty.  Instead of worky.

He waited patiently for the most talkative student to finish his sentence and smiled pleasantly at him.

"Do you ever stop talking?"

The student considered this. "I don't talk the most in this room, sir."

"No?  Who talks the most?"

As one man, the class swiveled around and looked at me.  I quirked an eyebrow back at them.  I knew what would follow.  But before I could do anything, James cheerfully piped up.

"Miss Smith.  Definitely."  They nodded agreement. "She talks all the time and sometimes she runs out of stuff to tell us, but she just looks up more stuff on Wikipedia and tells us that because she says its interesting.  Last time it was fridge magnets*."

This was sadly true.

You can't argue with the truth.  I carried on pretending not to be there.

*****

Overheard in the corridor....


The teacher frowned at the student before him and inquired, "So why did you take his pencil, Andrew?"

"Because he was annoying me."

The teacher persevered.  "And was that a sensible thing to do?"

"No, sir."

"What should you have done if he was annoying you?" the teacher prompted.

The student glared up at him.  "I should have broken his pencil."

*****

The Year 7s seemed a little downcast after the student council meeting.  Why?

"I don't think people took us seriously miss."

"What makes you say that?"

"All the older students laughed at us when we said we wanted bigger balls."  His expression darkened. "I don't think they thought we meant footballs, miss."

*****

And what did the Year 9s ask for in the student council?

"We wanted to talk about safety in the corridors miss.  All the year sevens are about this big-" he gestured perhaps three feet off the ground, "-and they all run around in big groups and today a load of them ran into me in the corridor."

I assumed a sympathetic expression. "What did you do?"

"I fell over, miss."

*****

Back later during the week with some craftyness - yay!  A quiet weekend and a bit of free time is all you need sometimes.

Kisses xxx

P.S. The fridge magnets thing is a long story for another time.  Just to clarify, I do not collect fridge magnets. Nor do I wish to start doing so.  But I would like to know who first saw a fridge door and thought to themselves; "Hey!  What this really needs is a magnet..."