I taught year 6 up until a couple of years ago, then the head teacher at my school had the usual shift around of staff to keep us all from going insane and shooting up a supermarket. I ended up with year 3 (who make way worse slaves than year 6) and to be honest I'm glad I was moved. Now, watching the year 6 children from afar leads me to the conclusion that they are all really shitty people. What's more - it's all our fault. The year 6 kids at my school are, for the most part, quite nice and can actually access all of the nice parts of the emotional spectrum that make a decent human being decent. They show compassion and make for good hosts whenever there's another pointless learning walk. They see when a teacher is doing something for them and they say thanks...until they turn on you. Today, for example, the kids have began their swimming block at the local pool. It's chaos at the best of times but the year 6 kids are usually pretty good and set a good example...
At my school, we recently came into the care of a rather dashing PGCE student (who we will shall herein refer to as James). I'm happily married to a lady but even I took a look at him and thought about what he might look like without clothes on. He's classically handsome in a manly way but and Jesus H. Christ, have the ladies I work with caught on to that fact. Even the year 6 girls look at him in a particular way and giggle when he's near. He's a staff-safeguarding nightmare in that he's naive and young and doesn't realise how much the profession he pursues would so easily persecute him for simply being male should he step over one of the many, very blurry lines. I'm the only bloke in my school - a primary school which is in its self the most interesting thing in the area it serves. The women of the workforce are mostly old-school: they bake and attend coffee mornings; some still go to church; they all love a good, rapey drama on the BBC. You know the typ...