h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm a teacher in a secondary school in the UK, and I do love my job a lot and the pupils in the school too, mostly.

They have their moments. In the last couple of weeks I've had to break up two fights which started on the spur of the moment as I passed by, (and neither had anything to do with me, honest!).

One I broke up was between two year 7 pupils. I took one of the boys with me, for a chance for him to calm down, the other went into his class. The root cause was some imagined slight which had resulted in name calling .... it was sorted out very quickly after the cooling off time, and the incident was referred to a more senior teacher in the school, as is the protocol.

The other was between two year 10 boys who were having serious fisticuffs, and I think I would've had one or several blows landed on me. Fortunately other teachers were around, and it was stopped. As a result, the two boys are spending a week each in the behavioural support unit within the school, to try to get them to think about their behaviour.

One of these year 10 boys has, in the recent past, actually "squared upto" me. What did I do? I asked him to "Sit down, please, and get on with your work", *sigh*. I asked him to "Please use the door", which he eventually did after flaring his nostrils at me and taking an agressive stance. I had no doubts that he was likely to lay one on me given the slightest reason to, and I did my best to keep my cool. He had his backside in his hands that day. As a result of this he was not allowed into my lessons for a week, and since that time he's been rather pleasant and cooperative in my lessons.

That's the only time a pupil has actually shown a violent attitude towards me. It took me a while to calm down afterwards ... a cup of tea was much needed! The other pupils in the class were quite disgusted by this boy's attitude, and needed cups of tea too.

I regularly have to sort out problems/arguments/threatening behaviour between one pupil and his classmates when they come to lessons.

It sounds a grim view, but these incidents are few and far between and the school is very supportive, with an effective system of referrals of poor behaviour and attitudes, as well as positive praise where it's due. The pupils are put on report, and a close eye is kept on them through out the day.

I do know of other incidents in school. One where a parent walked in and threatened a member of staff, another where a chair was thrown at a teacher. Occasions where pupils have squared upto a member of staff (oddly, they always seem to pick on the 'hardest' member of staff!).

For the record, I'm female and have been teaching for 14 years. And I really do love my job, a lot !

I worked in a very agressive school when I forst graduated. Playground duty was done in pairs for safety, metal garbage bin lids were often used as projectiles, as were desks and anything else they could get their hands on. There were quite few petrol sniffers which means that they would explode without any provocation from anyone. There were MANY very angry children in that school.
The thing that made it bearable to me was that I knew they had atrocious home lives. School was the only place they felt even a little bit safe and where they could safely avoid real danger when blowing off steam. I really believe that bullies need our help as much as the victims.

Yes, but we also need somewhere for the victoms to feel safe. My children's school day should not be a battlefield because the kids down the block have bad parenting.

Although I'm not a teacher, I work in a school in a fairly deprived area of Manchester. There are alot of behaviour problems, many kids with anger management problems and tempers that get them into trouble (and tears) with older boys. The problem as I see it is authority, many of these kids have never had a secure home life, or any type of stability, so they have never learned how to react to a situation that isn't going there way, so they throw a tantrum, which in a teenager usually means anger too.
The main problem with this is that as a school, when something "kicks off" everyone crowds round, and refuses to cooperate. All this means there is no chance for the staff to control all the problems, the kids realise they can get away with things, and it is then a vicious circle, having to ignore lesser problems (wearing baseball caps in lessontime is a biggy here) to deal with a growing number of more serious issues. As an end note, I'll point out I'm hoping to train to be a teacher in Sept...They'll never scare me off(unlike the school dinners!!!)

I agree totally that all children should be safe at school. The point in that is that ALL children should feel safe. I just wish I had the mgic answer to ensure that it happens.

I heard a thing on the radio today on this topic and the general concensus of callers seemed to be that in school - and society as a whole - kids who violate get supported and have their 'needs understood', while those that don't just have to tolerate them. Whether and how far this is true I don't know, but it sort of fits into this conversation.

Bullying was mentioned a lot, too. The only time I was ever bullied I knocked a tooth clean out of the kid trying to bully me: this stopped him bullying and me being bullied. It seems that if I did this now I could end up in all sorts of trouble. Again, I'm not an authority here, I just found it an interesting point.

Sorry to have barged in!