Losing my mind

Trying to come up with some ideas just now for my crit lesson on Monday (yes, forward planning is not my strength), I found myself typing the following:

" If I were to do this, I could perhaps find a really boring episode – oh, or I could take the one I'm using and rewrite it, making it really boring? Then contrast it with the proper version and get them to say what is interesting about it, and then give them a worksheet or get them to write headings and find bits? I think I will go with this, as it would have different tasks and it would get them writing (although that in itself might be a struggle for some of them) and I could maybe even get the projector into use? Maybe not. Oh dear, stream-of-consciousness rambling again!"

I seem to have become incapable of forming coherent thoughts in my head without typing them first. Considering I am doing a job requiring a great deal of thinking on your feet, this is a bit of a worry!

I should have had this planned days ago so that I could run it past the class teacher, as I realised this morning I have no idea how far they have even got in the book. All my time has been taken up with planning other lessons, and suddenly it was the weekend and I hadn't spoken to her. I only see this class twice a week, so it's all been a bit disjointed.

It was a mixed week, the low points of which were definitely teaching the S2 class that I had problems with last week. The teacher had a stack of punishment exercises ready for me yesterday, with the names already filled in, so that didn't inspire me with confidence. Sure enough, I had given out three of them in the first ten minutes, and during the lesson I faced outright insolence for the first time when a pupil refused to give me her mobile phone despite repeated requests. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do in a situation like that, but it doesn't help when I have another pupil saying "You can't make her, you're not a real teacher" at the same time. There are actually some hard-working kids in that class, and I feel sorry for them. At least in this school, they will get away from the - for want of a more politically-correct word - nutters, next year; in my last school, all classes were mixed ability to S4, and although I applaud the intentions behind that system, I can't see that it does anything for the higher-ability pupils. It's a debate we've visited a few times at Jordanhill, and my opinion changes regularly.

But this isn't getting the lesson plan done, so I had better get back to it. It's quite stressful!