Explore. Dream. Discover.: "If you can teach here you can teach anywhere"

This was what I was told when I student taught in MPS. I found out that this was COMPLETELY untrue. My experience teaching in England became the new standard for the worst possible teaching situations. I realized that there was a lot a teacher staffing agent wouldn't say to convince a naive American teacher to come over to his rowdie country.

I remember looking at the school website with my mom when I was offered my position. We commented on all of the kids with their uniforms and how cute they were. I couldn't have possibly been more wrong. Belhus Chase was considered a school in revision. They scored low on a national standard for schools and I was dragged in unknowingly.

To begin with, my classroom was non-existant come the first morning of classes. I was finally shoved into a Barney- purple colored room at the end of a coridore that was not intended to be used.... In fact, this coridore had been abandoned for two years, completely locked off from the rest of the school, because it was contaminated with asbestos, and I found later had no heat. I cried that morning trying to organize my "new" abandoned room, complete with old posters falling off of the walls.

I was told by a guy giving us a tour at our local gym that the problem with the students around that area was that, "Nobody around here respects anyone. Everyone thinks that they are right, no matter how uninformed they are, and live life for themselves, never considering anyone else." This struck me as completely true. The majority of the students that I came into contact with that year were absolutely ridiculous. They were ridiculously disrespectful, running in circles around my room chasing eachother, screaming, hitting eachother, throwing paper balls full of glued in pins and paper airplanes with pins glued to the noses. Spitballs flew, along with profanities, and the most disgusting floor I had ever seen.

I found that my students' grades on the daily counted for nothing, and they took advantage of that, completing absolutely nothing in classes, which happened to be block schedules. It wasn't uncommon for them to tell me to "f off Miss" when I asked them to take care of something.. at least they said "miss", as if that was more appropriate.

During the course of the year I had a bird fly into my room and crap all over everything, a group of year 7's (6th graders) swinging chairs and getting into punching fights, a kid from the outdoor PE class run into my classroom THROUGH a window, and fights with my year 11's (10th grade) that involved screaming and flipping tables.... to name a few...

MPS had NOTHING on England.