A day in the gladiator academy

Don't forget your armour
At the end of last term I thought I had finally done the impossible and got a job. It was a local school, pretty bog standard and to all intents and purposes average or below average as state schools go.

They interviewed me ages ago before the kids had come back from a summer of terrorising local residents and collecting ASBOs and gave me the job on the spot. The agency had said that the first CV on the head's desk on Monday morning would get the job. This wasn't lookin good.

I arranged to see a lesson, just to get a feel for the place before commiting myself to what I knew was going to be a young-offender-infested pit of Hades. Yes I really was that optimistic.

As I crossed the river Styx into that place, suited and tied I began to get a feeling of what it was like to be a gladiator in ancient Rome. Specifically I felt like that one in the film Gladiator who wets himself before going through the gate. From what I recall of the film, it was that man who promptly got a large spiky metal ball through his face pretty much as soon as he walked through the gate.

...and that's pretty much what happened to me really. I had just entered the classroom, not even introduced when one of the kids, takin a look at me and decidin that he didn't like my face or some other thought that probably didn't need too many brain cells to process, strode over and proceeded to kick me in the shins.

Now if this bastard had done that outside the school gates I probably would have chinned him . But as it was I had to let it slip and just sat there aghast. Of course, the next thing this shit does is decides to push the issue and sits there taunting. Well I was just watching the lesson, I could have been anyone off the streets and this is the sort of thing that he deems appropriate.

Things got worse from there.

After an hour and a half (the kids had completed a wordsearch by then -pretty much the only taks they could get through. Seriously) and were getting restless. Well alright they had been restless the whole time, shouting, screaming and throwing items of furniture across the room but they decided to get worse. So one of the girls jumped out of her seat, runs across the lab swearing like erm well like me I guess only worse and using lots of the REALLY dirty ones about fannies.

She grabs one of the quiet girls by the hair, smacks her head on a table throws her on the floor and kicks her in the teeth. The teacher in charge and myself ran over to break it up and the other kids whooped and cheered. It was like feeding time at the monkey enclosure.

So I left that job before I even started. It was never really ideal, I mean I didn't want to teach science, just physics and they'd not really made it clear if I was to be brought in as a teacher or a boxing referee.

Broken homes are spilling out broken kids and there's not much any teacher can really do when given a class like that. When you see this sort of thing it reminds me of why all my mates think I must be mad to teach and why I say I love it. I'm beginning to wonder myself if it really is worth it.

Credits: Thanks to Chris for sorting out the photoshop up top. A big improvement on my effort.
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