Mrs Smith has plans for this evening.
She would like to go out and watch a film at the cinema, she’d like to binge watch Jeremy Paxman humiliating students on University Challenge, hell she’d like to lie on the sofa doing bugger all like the rest of her family.
Mrs Smith knows how unrealistic she is wanting this. Mrs Smith is aware of how flawed, faulty, and quite frankly fucked up her hopes are.
Mrs Smith has marking to do.
Mrs Smith has piled the books on her desk. She did this at 3.30 in the vain hope that she might be able to get some marking completed before she leaves for home. Mrs Smith knows that with a whole school staff meeting, a second, smaller, unofficial, whispered staff meeting to discuss the stuff talked about in the staff meeting and a “quick chat” with the year group team, she is pissing in the wind about getting any work done at school but she is ever optimistic and lives in hope.
Mrs Smith is eternally grateful to the government, no, honestly, she is. Not for the shit storm they have created surrounding SATs marking, no, certainly not. It is for passing the law banning free plastic bags that has consequently saved her from swearing in earshot of the children so many times. She tried to prevent this, of course she did. Indeed, Mrs Smith was a fan of double bagging when it just meant using two bags to carry heavier objects home from the shops. How many times has Mrs Smith got halfway up a set of stairs only to feel the handle of the two carrier bags decide now was the time to give up the ghost? Sending piles of books hurtling downwards followed by a volley of short, pithy Anglo-Saxon phrases not suitable for the Y4 history topic of the same name is not going to get Mrs Smith a good manners sticker from the headteacher any time soon is it.
Mrs Smith would like to stick to her aspirations and use a Waitrose bag to take her marking home. Sadly, the ones she owns are too small for quantity of books she must lug away from school every evening. Mostly Mrs Smith favours the Sainsbury’s orange elephant or the Tesco ladybirds. On days where she screwed up and got the planning spectacularly wrong thus leaving her several sets of books to mark she often goes the full blue IKEA. As Mrs Smith packs her indestructible, reusable set of bags she understands it isn’t just the books she needs to take home. Oh No. By adhering to the school marking policy completely this also means a small branch of WH Smiths must also make the journey home too.
Green pen for marking against the learning objective, purple pen to identify work that needs to be polished or improved, pink pen to underline spellings. Highlighters show the work that needs to be improved, because simply underlining it in purple means it may be ignored by the wotsit that didn’t do it properly in the first place. Of course, Mrs Smith does only need 4 highlighters and not the 8 pack but it was on offer on Amazon and she likes a bargain. Ruler to underline the date and objective for those children completely unable to remember to do this despite it being a daily fixture of school life every sodding day. Rubber to remove any doodles from the margins or covers, not often drawn by Mrs Smith but you know, sometimes her mind wanders. Mrs Smith has two of everything, just in case. Nothing worse than being halfway through a particularly pithy appraisal of an expanded noun phrase and finding you are out of ink in your purple polishing pen.
Mrs Smith started teaching when pens were red, boards were black and a gold star could put someone into orbit for a week. Imagine that.
Mrs Smith extracts book after book from her bag.
Mrs Smith organises the books in order. Alphabetical? No, not today. Ability? No, never. She has today decided on potential for causing Mrs Smith fury as her sorting criteria. Whose work will piss Mrs Smith off the most? Who will get the Smith sarcasm today? Not that she’d actually write down her sarcastic remarks any more. After a marking symbol, three stars and a wish, a next step comment, a question to deepen understanding and a note to say if the work was independent, group work or 1 : 1 with a teacher, Mrs Smith no longer has the energy to share her wit and wisdom.
Mrs Smith knows sarcasm is not looked upon kindly by those in power, however the best insults are those your enemies need to look up, so in a way, she’s enriching her classes vocabulary by indulging herself. She spreads the theoretically irritating books throughout the marking pile, just in case.
Mrs Smith prays to the marking fairy that all will be well. It isn’t.
Mrs Smith breaks out the chocolate. Not just a small square, a huge, sanity saving block of the stuff. She’d prefer gin or wine but Mrs Smith knows only too well how that could end. Mrs Smith shudders at the thought.
After ten minutes, Mrs Smith checks the names on the front of one of the books she has marked. As far as she can remember, and it has been a long and tiring week, Mrs Smith was asking the children to create a non-chronological report on hills and mountains in the United Kingdom as part of the geography curriculum. Pictures have been shared to inform, video clips watched to stimulate questions and knowledge organisers revisited because they are the latest bandwagon to be jumping upon. Mrs Smith learns something new every day. Mrs Smith is pleased to note that if you are taking part in the Three Peaks challenge it is important to get to each mountain “as soon as the doors open” to maximise your chances of completing the task in hand. Mrs Smith will remember this should she ever get out into the fresh air for long enough.
She is also somewhat flummoxed by Chardonnay’s reference to building houses made of sticks, straw, and bricks in order to keep out the big bad wolf. Then the penny drops. Three Peaks child, not three pigs! FFS. Mrs Smith makes a note to move her to the space right under her nose for the next lesson, if anyone asks it will be to check any misconceptions as they occur with the child. Mrs Smith suspects she will be mostly stopping Chardonnay from daydreaming.
Mrs Smith finally gets the books all marked. She has eaten the chocolate. All of it. Every piece. It has left a slightly sickly taste in her mouth. Hmm, thinks Mrs Smith, what would clear the palate well? Gin. Yes, gin. Mrs Smith had remembered earlier that this wasn’t a good idea. Now she seems to have forgotten. This will not end well. A thick head in the morning was not in Mrs Smith’s plans.
- This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
- Copyright © 2017 by Mrs Smith
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