RE: TEACHERS’ UNION MEETING AT THE CHICKEN SHOP ACADEMY TO DISCUSS WORKLOAD

Dear Union rep,

Thank you for inviting me to the meeting to discuss teachers’ workload at The Chicken Shop Academy taking place next Thursday just right after work.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend because I have to:

• Mark 250 books.
• Write down 27 lesson plans.
• Collect attendance data
• Collect data about students’ performance
• Collect data about ethnicity related students’ performance
• Log in data on the database.
• Analyse data.
• Mark Ben as ‘Late’ in the database. Call his parents.
• Log in behaviour incidents with saws on the database.
• Fill in 25 forms with exhaustive details- nobody will read- about ALL my lesson plans.
• Grab a cookie from the staffroom.
• Oh, Ben just arrived! He looks scruffy and is dressed in his regular torn-apart PE trousers.
• Add that to the database.
• Attend Brand Awareness sessions about how I should include the corporate logo and corporate colours of “The Chicken Shop Academy” in my PowerPoints.
• Wait in the queue for the only working printer.
• Did I mention the word data?
• Stop Ben from eating a pigeon… that he just killed in the playground… with his bare hands.
• Realise Ben is not entitled to Free School Meals anymore.
• Kick the printer.
• More forms.
• More book marking.
• Gosh, I need sugar. Go to the staffroom for another cookie.
• Confiscate Ben’s saw.
• Remove pins carefully placed pointing upwards, on my chair.
• Find out why Ben is underperforming.
• Oh, I just found out. It’s my fault.
• Also, forgot to use the corporate colours in the PowerPoint.
• Eat – Share my lunch with Ben.
• Make sure the trainee teacher I mentor, also eats.
• ¡Yay! Ofsted’s coming tomorrow.
• Keep kicking the printer.
• Oh shit, Ben is trying to eat another pigeon.
• Breathe.
• Hyperventilate.
• Have another cookie.
• Attend the wellbeing session on “wine tasting with puppetry design and performance”.
• Be happy, smile, be positive, be resilient, be nice to kids, be patient, show empathy and dedication.
• Stay in school until 8pm to prove to my headteacher that I am a good teacher who cares about the kids.
• Feel privileged for having a job, as per instruction of the head teacher in the briefing this morning.
• Congratulate Matt, the new Teaching Assistant who got promoted to “Corridor Coordinator”
• Recover emotionally from my last lesson observation where it was decided, “we don’t want you here anymore because we just hired Matt, a Non-Qualified Teacher who is the soon- to be head of the department for a more reasonable price, you old grumpy fat useless lady!. Stop eating those cookies! And where are our corporate colours in your Powerpoint!!??”
• Watch the P.E. teacher teaching history. He is explaining WWII by bouncing basketballs against Hitler’s photograph in the textbook.
• Work out what can be improved in my lessons for when Ofsted comes. Tomorrow.
• Oh shit! Matt was just physically assaulted with a saw, by Ben.
• Figure out what was wrong in my lesson plan, that made Ben attack my colleague with a saw.
• Hide Ben’s saw in a better place.
• Pat Matt, who now upgraded to Assistant Coordinator of the Printer Queue. He’s still paid the same but looks very happy – regardless of that injury from Bens’ attack.
• Avoid being mugged by my own students on my way back home, after 8pm.
• Celebrate Matt’s new promotion (again!) to Assistant Coordinator of the Printer’s Queue and Supervisor of the Lunch Queue. Still paid the same but gets a box of chocolates every Friday and lots of compliments from SLT.
• Shout out I LOVE MY JOB three times a day (luckily just before each meal).
• Decide whether I want to have a shower or sleep for one more hour tonight.
• Matt is now Head of Department AND… Assistant Head?!. Hold on … what? How did that happen!
• He’s still unqualified!! And he will now be able to make decisions that will affect EVERYONE!!!!!.
• Super yay.
• Finally,
• do
• some
• teaching.

I hope you understand. Now I must leave before Marcelo, the cleaner, locks the school, as I am the only one left in the building. Oh no! It’s 8pm. Again!! Shit.
Kind regards,

Miss Alba Late.
(Modern Foreign Languages)