Is it just me?

Five weeks into the academic year and I am once again questioning the sanity of anyone who becomes a teacher!

The reason for this is the sheer volume of work that is required to do the job well. Admittedly I am a bit of a perfectionist, but with a full timetable (21 periods a week) and teaching every year group from Year 7 to Year 13, I find that in order to plan lessons, prepare resources, mark students' books, do admin and contact parents, I have to work practically non-stop at school from 8am to 6pm, and then put in 2 to 3 hours at home three nights a week, and one day at the weekend. Crazy!

I would love to know if there are secondary school English teachers out there who have found a way to do their job really well, well enough not to feel slightly guilty all the time, and still have a reasonably normal life. It's not that I don't enjoy the work - I love it, if I'm honest - but I would also love to be free in the evenings and on weekends to pursue other interests and spend more time with the people I love. In other words, what I need is a better work-life balance.

The unofficial toolkit for teachers

There are a few essentials one needs to survive in the profession. These include:

• 30 hours in a day
• An extra pair of eyes to spot what's going on in all areas of the room at once
• Strong arms for carrying piles of books home to mark
• A BS detector for when students try to bluff their way out of something
• Thick skin so their offhand comments about your appearance/intelligence etc don't hurt
• A big heart so you can care about even the least lovable students
• A well-developed sense of humour
• Plenty of friends your own age!
• A slang translator with an auto-update facility (so you know "sick" now means "cool" and "long" now means "boring")
• A taste for cold tea
• A supersize cast-iron bladder
• A microchip in your ear so you can surreptitiously listen to music during meetings!

Personality clash

Ever experienced mutual loathing on sight with someone you teach? I know it's not politically correct to admit this, but there are some kids it is hard to like.

I am only human, after all, and period 5 on a Friday is not the best time to enter my classroom shouting "You're not the boss of me!", before spending the first five minutes of the lesson defacing most of your brand new exercise book with pointless and wholly unimaginative graffiti. Nor is it wise to keep muttering "Your mum" or "sut up" (genius, huh?) under your breath every time I ask you to stop, look and listen.

I don't mind that this student doesn't like me or my teaching style - fair enough! But what happened to common courtesy? How come many of the students from the same demographic pool are able to behave in a way recognisable as sentient human beings? What sets this child apart?

The answer came when I contacted the "responsible adults" by telephone. The female respondent (not the mother, apparently) listened to what I had to say about my concerns for the child's attitude to learning with the occasional grunt, before saying "I don't care about X's behaviour, talk to her father", and hanging up on me. The father, who sounds about 12 on the phone, was a bit more voluble.

"Oh yeah, X has always had a attitude problem, even when she was a baby. We don't know what to do about it. Sorry, can't help ya."

Interesting that you have to have a licence to drive a car, but there are no basic requirements to qualify one to bring a vulnerable human being into the world, a blank slate on which to imprint your values and attitudes.

I am going to make a special effort with child X - no matter how rude she is to me.