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In
it he described daily battles with unruly kids and paints a picture
of how the education system fails children and teachers alike.
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Stuart
Williams holds up his Private Eye diary
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Mr
Williams, who used to teach at the Lord Silkin School, Telford,
says other teachers have to face similar problems every day.
He
says he was demoralised by having to deal with students who were
ill-equipped, physically or mentally, to learn.
Monday,
Period 3:
"Ten minutes into the lesson, most of the class has arrived.
Those who got here on time are now bored and talking: they have
finished the five subtractions I put on the board as a warm-up
exercise. The pupils all came from the same place and left at
the same time.
Only about half of them have either a pen or a pencil; only
a very few of the girls have both. We do have a school shop
where pencils and pens can be bought for 5p each.
One girl, let's call her Susan White, never has a pen. She starts
to explain at length how it is not her fault.
Me: "Never mind the story, what have you been using all
day?"
Susan: "I borrowed one, sir."
Me: "Why didn't you get one at break?"
Susan: "I didn't need a pen at break, sir."
Fifteen minutes into the lesson the classroom door opens and
Brian Moor falls in, singing to the tune of "This Old
Man":
I love drugs, drugs love me
Crack cocaine and ecstasy
With a sniff sniff here and a sniff sniff there
Now I'm in intensive care"
The whole class starts laughing.
Tracy Jones is writing on the desk. When I tell her to stop,
she shouts out in an exasperated tone: "For Christ's sake
leave me alone, pick on somebody else for a change."
Brian Moor is entertaining the class by hiding beneath a desk
surrounded by chairs shouting: "I'm not here, I'm not here."
I move the desk and tell him to get up. He complains that I've
hurt him and he is going to Claims Direct.
Even by the standards of this class, this is a particularly
bad lesson.
Tracy has had two or three homes and two step-fathers in three
years; Brian and Susan, like many, are on medication to control
their behaviour." |
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Extract
from Stuart Williams' diary
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The former
Maths teacher told BBC Radio Shropshire's breakfast programme how
the diary began: "Initially I put pen to paper with no attention
of publication. I realised that my lessons had lost a certain shape
and I wasn't being effective in the classroom.
"When you are a student teacher you write reflections of what
you have done. So I decided that I would start doing what I did when
I was a student.
"I would write down what happened in the lesson and would be
self analytical, critical of what I was doing and it kind of grew
from there."
The
diary of the classroom was documented during the autumn term of
2002. It in particular highlighted the difficulties posed by disruptive
children in the classroom.
Mr Williams' diary tells of the daily struggle with a small
minority of children intent on making life hell: Hell for teachers
and hell for the majority of children who do want to learn.
He says so much time is lost to disruptions, there's little time
for real teaching.
He
says his experiences at the sharp-end of the chalk-face are mirrored
in hundreds of classrooms up and down the land.
Mr
Williams gave up teaching maths at the Lord Silkin School after
his life was made intolerable by a small minority of unruly pupils.
He now works with young offenders at Stoke Heath.
Brian
Oakley, a senior Shropshire member of the teaching union, the NAS/UWT
says parents are often at the heart of the problem.
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