About me I’m Iris Lark and I am an early years teacher who has been on a long break from teaching while being a more or less full time Mum with a bit of working from home thrown in. But the children have been busy growing and I am becoming more invisible by the day (except where the essentials of food and clean clothes are concerned) and so I decided to step back into the wild and unpredictable world of the Reception classroom. After a decade out of the early years loop, I landed myself a weekly supply gig in a class of 30. I would be lying if I said it has been easy. In fact it has been like jumping head first into a freezing cold lake – a sudden butt-clenching shock followed by treading water and gasping for air followed by acclimatisation and the realisation that you are surrounded by wondrous natural beauty (actually I am still at the treading water and gasping for air stage, but I am hopeful that the appreciation of natural beauty will come). Anyway, I decided to write a blog about it. The Register Picture the scene: it is 8.50am. There I am, sitting in front of a class for the first time in 10 years. And I am completely terrified. It has not been a great start. In spite of the fact that I have already visited the children and been introduced as ‘Mrs Lark, who is a very good friend of mine’ by their regular teacher, Mrs Finch, most of the children have sidled in rather warily and some have even burst into tears at the sight of me. Mrs Swift, the TA, is mopping them up as I open the register. I have been told that I should read out the school dinner menu for today’s lunch and then begin the register and the children will answer with a ‘good morning!’ and what they are having for lunch. Today’s options are toad in the hole with mash and peas, vegetarian pasta, jacket potato with cheese or a packed lunch. The children answer in hushed whispers and I have to strain to hear them. Then things really start to get confusing. Three children can’t remember whether they are having packed lunch or a school dinner, so they get up to check which pot they put their name in when they arrived. As they get up one of them stands on the fingers of another child who promptly cries and gets scooped up by Mrs Swift. I battle on through this kerfuffle. Cerys asks if she can please have vegetarian pasta with mash. This begins a trend and the children adopt a pick-and-mix approach to the school dinner menu. I stop and explain that the chefs who cook our dinner have to feed nearly 500 children and some grown ups too, and that we have to help them by sticking to the menu. Charlie puts his hand up and says did I know that it is his Dad’s birthday today and he is 28. A sea of hands goes up plus some eager cries of ‘my Dad’s 30!’, ‘Mine’s 25!’, ‘I don’t know how old my Dad is...’. I am about to call order when I realise I don’t have a handy ‘stop, look and listen’ signal. I clap my hands in what I hope is a catchy rhythm. Enough of the children notice for there to be a pause in the proceedings and I dive in with the register again. The three children who didn’t know their lunch situation return to the carpet with confirmation that they all having packed lunches. I get to Peter Yates who asks for jacket potato. There is an outcry as the rest of the class insist that Mrs Finch says he has to choose something else because he always has jacket potato. I look down at Peter who is sitting very small at my feet. ‘Is that right?’ I ask him. He pushes his glasses higher onto his nose and folds his arms. ‘Jacket Potato with Cheese’ he replies with conviction. For a moment our eyes meet. Pick your battles I say to myself. To the outrage of the rest of the class I agree to jacket potato on the grounds that Mrs Finch did not tell me this herself and I will check with her next time. I snap the register shut and try to look confident. It is 9.20am. The register has taken me half an hour. It was a very long day.
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