OK – I know it’s cack but it’s the best I can do after a gruelling week. For anyone interested, the nine hour days with no lunch break remain a feature of this course but sadly I have no voice, or at least, the voice I have isn’t being heard by anyone with enough clout or will to take up the cudgel on behalf of students. It’s wrong on every level. If we were employees, what they’re doing would be illegal. As students who are paying £9k for tuition fees for this course, it should also be unacceptable. Not only that but we are being taught to “model good behaviour”, yet it can’t under any definition of good behaviour be possible to argue that pounding facts into your students for nine hours on the trot is good behaviour. It suggests that trainee teachers are so far down the food chain that everyone else in the picture gets treated better than we do.

What’s odd is that although most of the students moan about it, there seems to be no appetite for fighting for a fair working day. It makes my blood boil. I have even heard people trot out the “well, it’s what you’re going to have to get used to as a qualified teacher”. I can’t believe how anyone could think this – yes, I’m sure lots of qualified teachers work through their lunch break and I am under no illusions that my working life will involve anything but lots of very long hours – but any teacher who works through their lunch break does so out of choice (however much they may feel it’s hobson’s choice) because the law of the land has breaks enshrined in it. Even if I can’t make my voice heard now, I will certainly be making it heard in the end-of-course student survey.

So, the upshot is I get home utterly knackered and this shot is all I can muster. It’s the pizza cutter with garlic butter and parsley on it. Today is the closest I have come since my re-start in January to not getting a shot.