Finally Debt Free After 34 Years, But Still Need to Live Frugally

Willowtree222

Have a lovely weekend hairy. I hope you ended the week on a high x

jwil

I'm glad your week improved.  You sound like you are great with the children.

Have a lovely relaxing weekend x

enthusiasticsaver

It sounds like you have a very challenging job sometimes HHOD especially with the tricky one. Try not to take the bad behaviour personally. 

milann

Have a relaxing weekend 🤞👍

HairyHandofDartmoor

teafor2 said:

Hi HHD , I'm glad your day went better. I know it's easier said than done but cut yourself some slack From what you've said it's obvious he wasn't in the mood to respond to anybody at that moment in time. You probably felt a failure, the teacher probably felt embarrassed she couldn't control him and had to call the deputy and the deputy probably felt like sending him packing. You probably all felt like hitting the wine lol. 

I hope the atmosphere at school gets better. It's a stressful time for everybody at the moment though isn't it and in schools I think this has to be one of the hardest terms ever with all the Christmas stuff coming up. Just out of interest will things like Nativity, Christmas parties etc. be cancelled this year? I'm not sure how big your school is, but ours was a one form intake so reception, Y1 and Y2 classes joined together for things like that, which I assume isn't allowed at the moment? 

I think DD has misunderstood the travel arrangements. She's in a house and I think it's just meant for those in halls. xx

Thanks TF2 . I am quick to be critical of my own performance and it's partly because I'm less experienced that the other staff. The teacher may have felt bad about it too. We're doing a Christmas performance in their year group bubbles but it will put on the internet, we won't have parents watching in real life. Class parties could still happen I guess, but we're not allowed to give the children a present this year 😥 .

HairyHandofDartmoor

elizabethhull said:

I hope you have a good Friday as well, HH. Your experience and capabilities are expanding with every day, and I guess learning how to deal with difficult children must make you VERY employable.
I admire what you (and others on this thread) do hugely - teaching would be my room 101. Most of my family taught and I always said I would rather sweep streets !!!

doingitanyway said:

All of you teachers/TA's on here are brilliant

badmemory said:

I think you need to read back over this thread & actually see what you have achieved in what is actually quite a short time.  As an aside, why do you think you ought to be able to achieve something that a teacher & a deputy head couldn't?  They have had years at it.  Stop undermining yourself.  So look in a mirror & repeat after me "I am really good at my job & challenging children flourish under my care".  Deep down you know it is true.  Repeat ten times twice a day. 

Like elizabethhull most of my family were teachers & one particularly acrimonious conversation (aged about 14) was more along the lines of walking rather than sweeping.

Aww thanks all of you .

HairyHandofDartmoor

Nicnak said:

Have a lovely weekend hairy. I hope you ended the week on a high x

jwil said:

I'm glad your week improved.  You sound like you are great with the children.

Have a lovely relaxing weekend x

enthusiasticsaver said:

It sounds like you have a very challenging job sometimes HHOD especially with the tricky one. Try not to take the bad behaviour personally. 

milann said:

Have a relaxing weekend 🤞👍

Thanks all of you . I know I'm getting better at my job all the time and I suppose I should try and concentrate on how far I'm come rather than wishing I was better. I have come a long way since I've started, but as I get better I tend to raise the bar so I suppose I do feel like I fall short  of how I'd like to be sometimes.

HairyHandofDartmoor

Friday was fine in the nice class, but I had to carry some heavy equipment around and in the evening my right knee and ankle were hurting. This morning my neck and shoulders feel stiff and painful. It's quite a physical job which makes it harder at my age. I feel like the day went well overall though . I heard loud crying at one point and when I went down the corridor I passed the tricky boy sitting on the floor outside the classroom crying with the teacher kneeling next to him and saying he needed to be calm 😱, so I felt relieved that it was nothing to do with me that day and not my problem, phew 😂. 

Today I've put some of my school clothes on to wash, folded up some dry washing and got the Christmas decorations out of the void. I helped DH put up the Christmas tree 🎄 and when we were sorting out the branches I couldn't see the numbers and DH is colour blind, so DS1 was laughing at us getting in a muddle 🤣😂. We haven't decorated it yet but we can always do that next weekend. I've also put up the icicle lights in the hall and the berry lights around the living room picture rail . We bought two new sets of berry lights last year and they now go all the way around the room and give it lovely warm glow 💥. We've never put up the decorations in November before, but it's been such a strange year that we thought we'd put them up early to cheer us up. The weather is grey outside and we can't go anywhere even if we wanted to, but we have a Christmas wonderland indoors now, or the beginnings of one anyway 🎄😃.

DH has hoovered the living room and emptied the kitchen bins, so the house is looking better. I also tackled some cobwebs with the feather duster as I was putting up the Chrismas lights. I'm going to relax now and read my book and browse on here. 

I hope everyone is having a nice Saturday 🙂.

badmemory

HairyHandofDartmoor said:

 I heard loud crying at one point and when I went down the corridor I passed the tricky boy sitting on the floor outside the classroom crying with the teacher kneeling next to him and saying he needed to be calm 😱, so I felt relieved that it was nothing to do with me that day and not my problem, phew 😂.

See what I mean.  If the child didn't have a problem they wouldn't need help to deal with it.  You will never FIX the problem but just do your best to deal with it as it arises.  Which you are doing.  Please try to see yourself at least a little as how other people see you.  The teacher of that class is probably saying to herself something along the lines of ok I can ignore this for now as HH is dealing with it so the rest of the class can have my full attention & we can try to catch up what was missed in lockdown.  If they do need to get rid of all but teachers to balance the budget then that child is going to be excluded very very quickly.

HairyHandofDartmoor

badmemory said:

HairyHandofDartmoor said:

 I heard loud crying at one point and when I went down the corridor I passed the tricky boy sitting on the floor outside the classroom crying with the teacher kneeling next to him and saying he needed to be calm 😱, so I felt relieved that it was nothing to do with me that day and not my problem, phew 😂.

See what I mean.  If the child didn't have a problem they wouldn't need help to deal with it.  You will never FIX the problem but just do your best to deal with it as it arises.  Which you are doing.  Please try to see yourself at least a little as how other people see you.  The teacher of that class is probably saying to herself something along the lines of ok I can ignore this for now as HH is dealing with it so the rest of the class can have my full attention & we can try to catch up what was missed in lockdown.  If they do need to get rid of all but teachers to balance the budget then that child is going to be excluded very very quickly.

Thanks Badmemory . The teacher would struggle to manage without a TA in that particular class 😱 but in actual fact the teachers' workloads would double in all classes without the TAs, as if they're not stressed enough, and the children's educations would also suffer without the group work and one to one work the TAs do.