Want to know a secret?

23rd September 2005, 1:00am

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Want to know a secret?

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/want-know-secret-1
I knew I’d become a teacher when... the students were calling out Miss! and I stopped looking behind me to see where she was.

My school is... plagued by unnecessary, debilitating and demoralising paperwork that keeps a lot of people in jobs when the money could be better spent on things such as updating buildings or buying equipment.

I’m not looking forward to... organising the end-of-year outing next summer. The brief is to be “original, exciting and challenging” - all on a budget of pound;4 per head.

In five years’ time I’d like to be... running my own training business alongside a few hours teaching... no lesson plans, no schemes of work, no observations, no evaluations...

If I had the guts I’d tell the head that... she and most of her colleagues wouldn’t last a week with the kind of pressure I used to cope with daily in my previous working life, so will she please stop moaning about how much work she has to do!

My worst work nightmare is... a repetition of the time I was working on “ic” and “ick” endings to words and I asked for one syllable words they thought could end with “ick”. I didn’t really think that one through.

Senior management don’t know it but... because I’ve realised that admin procedures are so disorganised, and coming from industry I have a reputation for being incredibly organised, so if I want to avoid any unnecessary paperwork I just swear blind I did it and left it in the office.

My favourite bit of the week is... the two hours I teach computers to old age pensioners. I teach them mouse control, introduce them to the web and unleash the animal inside them. I never knew there were quite so many Clark Gable websites!

I hate teachers who... are as unhelpful and as hell bent on sabotaging new colleagues as those I was exposed to in my first year.

Weekends are for... me! If you can’t get it organised from Monday to Friday, you’re doing it wrong.

pound;50 paid for your true confessions. Share your secrets by sending an e-mail (in the strictest confidence) to dorothy.lepkowska@tes.co.uk

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