in a class of their own

Placement is over.

My four weeks with year 5 finished last Friday and I've got to admit that the final day came with a real mix of disappointment and relief.

Leaving a school placement is always sad - four weeks isn't all that long but you do get to know the kids quite well and can't help becoming even just a little attached to them. Funnily enough, it's always the most irritating and disruptive ones I seem to get the most attached to, probably because I have the most contact with them whilst I'm teaching - it's a month long competition between me and them to see who can talk the most and best get the rest of the class' attention. Usually they win.

5J have to be, by far, the noisiest class I have ever stood in front of (yes, noisier even than the delights that were the North Luton high schools back in 1998!) They realised pretty quickly that I wasn't going to be able to shout anywhere near as loud as their usual class teacher, and would therefore be a bit of a pushover in the discipline stakes. Just to clarify, it wasn't that Miss J shouted unnaturally or excessively loudly - just that I'm a bit of a mouse when it comes to hollering and even when I feel like I'm shouting, noise levels don't reach any significant heights. And so the pattern was set with them fairly early on. One word from me and they could do whatever they liked. A lesson with me meant a good chinwag with your mates and, if I was lucky, a little bit of work too. To give them credit, they did manage a significant amount of work in between gossipping!

Leaving was sad too - the pupils were so sad that they had a party and played balloon rugby for an hour. Hmm. They gave me a lovely gold box full of chocolate (a true test of my will-power... 20 days to go before the end of Lent when I can actually eat the stuff!), two gorgeous fluffy scarves, a handmade card from every pupil and a stopwatch (topical joke, guess you had to be there).

They loved the red-handed tamarin and had an immediate contest to name him. One of the more able mathematicians in the group, knowing statistical averages, entered a large number of pieces of paper bearing an obvious variation on his name. The tamarin (we don't know if its a he or a she...?) is now called St. Kitson. Nice.

I can honestly say that upper Key Stage 2 isn't for me. At least, not at this stage of my teaching career. It really isn't anything to do with the class I was with, teacher I was with or school I was at. I just think I'm better suited to little ones.

Mrs Warwick's School for Small Quiet People.

Do you think it'll catch on?