Just the teacher aide

This is my second week at work and already I'm looking forward to the holidays. I come home every afternoon absolutely drained ..... and I'm only the teacher aide! One of my faithful followers, the lovely Fiona aka Mumsey, told me to never call myself 'just' a teacher's aide. But I use it here in the sense that I have not been working with these kids since the beginning of the year, I do not have to attend every lesson with them, and once I leave the room, that's it for me.

What's happened to bring me to this state? First of all, let me remind you about my job - it's teacher aide for the english department of the high school. I work in the staffroom with the 8 english teachers - 4 for the middle school (years 8,9,10) and 4 for the senior school (years 11 and 12). My day starts at 8am with the printing out of the daily notices and then I work according to my timetable. So - I either stay in the staffroom and do admin or I assist one the teachers with their class. To this end - they have booked me in for a certain day and a certain session or lesson.

And the assistance is in the form of one-on-ones or small group work. Sounds ok? sounds easy? pleasant? rewarding? - yeah - that's what I thought too. I didn't account for attitude, disinterest, peer pressure to be an idiot, showing off and that bane of the high school teacher's life - the year 9 student.

Some of the classes are better than others. And remember, I'm still new so we have yet to build some sort of relationship. I can hear the teachers among you laughing, I can see you shaking your heads and I can hear the chorus of 'welcome to my world'.

Let me tell you though about a small victory and a surprise outcome. One of the middle school teachers asked if I could help her in session 3 - yeah, no problem. That's good, we'll be in the library and we're doing ..... sexual education. But wait there's more - it was with year 9s. OMG.

I was placed at a table with a work sheet and each group that came to work with me had to devise a brochure on one of the following - pregnancy, contraception or STIs. Interestingly each of the 4 groups chose pregnancy as the topic of their brochure. And each group, after the initial giggling and smarty pants remarks, settled down and came up with some very sensible thoughts - safe sex, teenage pregnancy is not a good idea, the pregnant mother has to look after herself by not eating junk, you need money to look after a baby and how can you do that if you're too young, and you can go to the medical centre for help.

Understand that these kids have short attention spans, are low level achievers and as with most of the students in this school, english is their second language.

How did we bond? They asked if I was a mother and where were my kids. When I told them they were in Brisbane, they asked how could I leave them behind? (I ask myself the same thing.) But I explained that they are grown up now and don't need me as much. "Dat not tru miss, you da mother - dey should be with you all the time". I assured them I that I would go back to them soon.

Nothing more to add really - life is full of little surprises.