Edssential article from @tstarkey1212 :
When I started the job the kids scared the hell out of me.
They were the unknown element. They were agents of chaos. Detailed planning would be snatched up, rolled into a cone and worn as a hat. Activities would be hacked, circumvented and used for nefarious purposes often involving off-shore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands . Conversations would turn into battles, battles into absurdities and absurdities into points of honour, only to be settled by pistols at dawn or, failing that, bouts of ultra-violence by the basketball court after last bell.
When I started I’d find refuge in just about anything that didn’t involve the classroom. Paper that stayed stacked, tick-boxes that stayed ticked, meetings that stayed minuted. There was blissful order and light in the darkness; a mundane normality that sat in direct and stark contrast to the Thunderdome that was my classroom on most days.