Apathy Jack writes:

Just for anyone following the politics at Hoodrat – everyone else can ignore this one:

So, the Principal has said firmly that there is no way he or the Board will accept co-heads of department. (I’m pretty sure he didn’t ask the Board, but we’ll just gloss over that one for now, shall we?) However, when he actually got around to reading the proposal the Creator and the Preserver put in, he noticed the last-minute compromise they included, saying they would consider dividing the job along the lines of head, and assistant head. He’s decided (in the face of yet another week without applicants) to go with that plan. He hasn’t decided who gets to be boss, but it’s definitely one of them.

The next few years will be interesting, but I think I’ll be at Hoodrat for them, and I’m pretty sure my Trimurti will be as well.

All of which pales into insignificance next to the fact that we no longer had relievers teaching those classes! We got two new actual honest to God English teachers! I’d do my happy dance, but the last time I did it (when the old HOD resigned) I was spotted by the IT guys, and they looked at me funny...

Sure, one of them’s a first year teacher and the other has only served one year, at a very white school a long way from the likes of mine. But hey, they each have an English degree and a pulse, so they’ll do for now.

One of them has taught at a university, and struck me as a professional student type – you know the very affected peculiarity and staggering intellectual arrogance. The Creator had a word with me about him, telling me how visibly deflated he became when he found out she had a higher qualification that him. She said that it was good for him, because he now couldn’t get ahead of himself by thinking he was the Smart One in the department. She then told me of the important role I was to play in making sure he didn’t put on airs: I was to make sure he knew he wasn’t the Weird One either...

We then got to talking issues of experience, and she told me that I had to stop thinking of myself as the New Kid. This is my sixth year at Hoodrat, I’m the longest serving member of my department, and I’m in the top about twenty-five percent of longest serving staff overall, but she’s right: I still see myself as being the young one with only half a clue. She told me that I had to stop thinking of myself as the brash young turk with license to break the rules granted by inexperience and unfamiliarity with the Way Things Are Done; I’m the wise old Merlin now, not the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. (Although she did concede this was still a Micky Mouse outfit...)

I think the thing that convinced me that she was probably right about me not being the new kid on the block any more was the fact that a few years ago, she was a trainee teacher in my class.

Some people wonder why I constantly make reference to how old I am. It’s these sorts of things...

Right, that's enough how-was-your-day bollocks from me. Normal service will resume when the students start bringing guns to school.