Meanwhile, the TES website’s chatroom has been occupied with more weighty matters. It all started when one teacher penned a message “On getting a bigger bottom”. She asked: “Has anyone else noticed how fat teaching makes you?”, identifying too much deskwork as a key cause.
In a flood of distraught responses, one teacher even admitted to continually clenching her buttocks in class (“the kids wet themselves”).
Another correspondent advised a more psychological approach: “Cheer yourself up by waging a revenge campaign against the kids. Point out that the decorous daisy tattoos on their navels will turn into sunflowers by the time they’ve reached 30... and the butterflies will look like pterodactyls.”