Y11: Oooofff urggghhh it's soooo hot in here
Me: You think this is hot! My dad lives in Las Vegas and it hasn't rained there for 154 days!
Y11: Wooaahhh, that's ages!
(A minute or so passes)
T: Miss, does that mean your dad hasn't showered in like....150 days or something?
It's like a gift that keeps on giving.
I'm not well-known to most of the younger students in the school. Sadly my timetable is really top heavy these days, so they don't tend to have me as a teacher until they get to GCSE, meaning their only interaction with me is as a grumpy cover teacher or when I'm on duty. Plus I'm, yknow, me, so it isn't unusual to find that students are a bit nervous around me when I start teaching them.
By lunchtime on Friday, when I met my year 10 class for the first time, we were also all exhausted: new term tiredness compounded by months of lockdown. So I wasn't surprised when they were really quiet. But I was surprised when they stayed really quiet, for an extended period of time. I can't wander the room anymore to check on them, so I had to ask, instead.
'Year 10, are you being this quiet because you're exhausted, or I'm terrifying?' I stage-whispered into the room.
'It's about half and half, Miss,' someone whispered back.
I expect we all slept well on Friday night.
It's been a while since we had one of these. I'm sure it's because I have forgotten to share, rather than fewer funny things have happened.
Today was my first lesson back with a full class, since March. It's day 6 of the new year but there has been a lot of faffing and fortunate timetabling which has meant a respite, although I get grumpy when I have to spend too much time in school without teaching - what's the point?
My first lesson was with my y11 group. I had two y10 classes last year but gave up the nicer one to a colleague, on the basis that this year would be long and catching them up would be difficult. The class I kept would have coped a lot less well with the transition to a new teacher, I feared. But, in the past, they have been hard work. There are a lot of them and a small number are not very nice to each other. I have to say though, that it was a joy getting them back and I gave myself a telling off for being negative.
At some point in the double lesson, I showed them kitten pictures.
We're back in school now, trying to work out how to manoeuvre around the new distancing rules. I remember realising early on in lockdown that Covid was not going to just GO AWAY one day but that, much like that niggling pain in my foot that began as something that hurt when I walked, it would just slowly fade away until, one day, you realise it's not there anymore. At the time I decided it was going to be intensely irritating and I was correct. So I'm irritated, but also pleased I was right about it.
During lockdown I started a list of things I had learned but I only put two things on it. I didn't think I learned much. Reflecting has made me realise there are a few things to add.
1. You can use a cafetiere to froth milk for a latte (definitely my number one discovery). You heat it and then pump the filter up and down through the milk until it froths. Jenny from knitting group pointed out that this is unhelpful for anybody that doesn't have two cafetieres; apparently you can also put it in a jar and shake it until it foams. Anyway, I can make my lattes at home now which is exciting.
2. Isle of Wight Tomatoes will ship you a box of their delicious tomatoes in 2-3 days. If you order more than £25 of produce, they will ship them for free. What a time to be alive. I really hope they don't withdraw this service.
3. I don't wash my hands anywhere near enough and I touch things I don't need to touch. I cannot stop touching my face and I gave up trying very quickly.
4. I need more sleep than I get on the regular. I'd started waking up some time between 6 and 7, 7 days a week, all year round, excluding after very late nights, even if I went back to sleep; I'd therefore concluded that I was naturally meant to sleep for 6-7 hours a night. This is not the case.
5. I could probably do very well living in the middle of nowhere, actually. Mr Z and I have the constant tension of me wanting to live further into a city and him wanting to live in the middle of nowhere, which is why we live in the worst of both worlds. Spending weeks on end with only a once-a-week visit to the supermarket was surprisingly calming, though. Online gatherings are sufficient. There's mail order for everything. So, maybe.
6. Those beds-of-nails mat things really do work if you've got a sore back. The Shakti Mat was my first inappropriate lockdown purchase (I wish I could say it was my last - much like my first year as a senior examiner, the hours I spent glued to my computer meant that I bought a lot of things I really didn't need). I still can't quite manage to lie on it with bare skin for more than about 30 seconds, but it got rid of my too-much-sitting lower back pain pretty tidily.
7. If you've got stubby eyelashes and you really want them to grow, Revitalash really works. It's expensive. I bought it because there was a stonking goody bag on offer from Cult Beauty with a fairly high minimum spend. But it was worth it. And if it lasts 6 months, as it claims this tube will, that works out to be about 70p a day. Yes it's a lot, no matter how you pitch it.
That's probably it, actually. I also learned how to use Zoom and MS Teams, and worked out the perfect position for napping on the couch, but these are all pretty trivial.
I hope you learned some good things in lockdown, too.
