Battleground.

In the end, we are all alone, literally.

I woke up today on my bedroom floor. I didn't know how I end up on the floor. If you're an animal than tear up the floor, break a sweat on the floor, on the floor. (Cough.) It is a great idea to put cushions right next to my desk. I don't want to damage this lovely face, do I?

Sigh. Still tells the time, but not on my wrist.

You know one of those morning that you knew when you wake up you sense it is not your day? Today I had that breeze of sixth sense. And it was not nice. My watch broke in the most ridiculous place - the plastic needle-like thing (I am quite sure there's a proper name for it) snapped in half. Lovely watch, now in need of repairing. Sigh. Luckily I have a collection of watches. Well, two, just two. I guess you only have one left hand so you only ever require one watch per section of lifetime, but it is days like this when you need a second watch. Sigh. Maybe it is time for watch shopping. Don't worry. They are only Swatch watches. Needn't cost an arm and a leg.

Well, as if the day couldn't get worst, I got back to school, feeling absolutely terrible. If you haven't ever try sleeping on the floor, I strongly suggest you don't. Backbone. (Cue cracking noises.) Nah. Not a good idea. Anyway, I must move on. There are children waiting to be educated. There is a student teacher waiting to deliver the education. It gives me satisfaction to do this job. I enjoy it, even on a rainy day. Anyway, that's not the point. Today starts with Period 1. It is a new class for me. GCSE Year 11. I walked into that classroom and immediately sense something is wrong. Someone's missing. The teacher, the actual teacher. Anyway, I did promise another fellow teacher that we would swap rooms for the two periods. So I did. That was easy, like a walk in the park, literally. But, then things started to turn. First of all, the computer network was down, apparently some fibre optic issue. The IT of this school intrigues me every day. How should I summarise it? It just doesn't work, does not work, negative, no no. Anyway, I learned from the previous weeks always be prepared. So, I took out my boardmarker and started the lesson. At this point, it was 0910. 10 minutes in. Still no proper teacher in this classroom. One teacher did come in at 0912 to say, 'are you teaching?', to which I replied 'yes, period 1 only, and where is the teacher - if she is not in, shouldn't there be a cover teacher?' It is to our mutual understanding that the answer to that question would be 'I don't have a godblimey clue.' Oh well, I started the lesson already. These kids are eager to learn. I had a lesson planned. I am quite sure help is on its way. I carried on with the lesson. This was quite difficult in some sense. This is a new class for me. I have to learn everybody's name in 5 minutes and think on the spot, all unsupervised. Something's fundamentally wrong here.

First lesson approached its dying minutes. It was at this point I realised that 'hey, dude, you are doing this alone'. The problem was, I planned for one lesson. One. You know. The number that is less than two but more than zero? I knew, at that moment, 0948, 2 minutes left, I have to think of something else to do with this class, yet my brain is screaming, where is the help I was supposed to get?

1020, fire alarm went off, I didn't hear nothing. The TA next door came in. For a moment I thought 'thank god you are here, do you have any cover work?', but then she replied 'fire alarm, sir'. Well. It is only 1021 and this day was testing my limits already.

The lesson did end smoothly. The class said they enjoyed my lesson. Now that's what all teachers wanted to hear. Happy things. False sense of hope. Walked back to my classroom, the day was going to turn for the worse. The cover work was present - in the wrong classroom. It was at this point I was asked 'did you do the cover work?'

'No. I am not suppose to. I am not the cover teacher. I did P2 revision with them. Only suppose to be one period. But I did two periods. Because nobody came. No cover teacher. No information. Nothing.' It was at this moment I realised that it was not about my general welfare any more. The cover work, children's education is more important. I agree, wholeheartedly. But, what is a student teacher to do when things like this happen? I chose to keep calm and tackle it head on. To be honest, this was the best and worst lesson morphed into one.

Oh, remember the fire alarm? Things would get even worse. Last week, with my year 7, we did a starch test with flour and talcum powder, to show not all white powder makes iodine turn black. (That was a good lesson.) Turned out, one of the kids took the talcum powder out, played with it, and the particles set the fire alarm off. Now, the talcum powder, alongside a lot of my other resources, were stored in a tray. The problem is, we don't have a staff room. This resource tray of mine gets relocated every hour. Not just my tray. My coat, my bags, my other things. It was a miracle that my bag wasn't damaged or stolen yet. To be honest, my yellow headphones was the first victim of this whole ordeal of bags and coats in a neat pile - on the floor. To cut a long story short, the safety officer did come to Science and shouted at the technician. But, then the technician did defend me and himself, quoting 'there's no blimey places to even store his coat'. It was good after all when you know someone stood up for you.

The day was too long, and I had enough for today. It is now nearly midnight. I have a headache. I know I am always optimistic, but today just wasn't my day. If you did read from the beginning to the very end, I would like to thank you. Because at least I know someone cares.

iD + :T C.
PS A storm is coming. Where is the calm before that going to come?