MONDAY: Well, here it is, the start of another year. Same job, same desk, same chair so why am I feeling optimistic? The reason is that this is the beginning of the new era and from now on I shall be free to manage. I have a cardboard cup of coffee, a new pen and I'm ready for work. Tracey brings in the post for me but now the letters are opened and she has put them in order of priority so that the one from the Director about our new NQT is on top. I flick through them adding the odd note to Tracey for things to follow up. Later in the morning, we have our first scheduled management meeting. The boss is full of the joys of her Brittany holiday so we don't get a lot done. However, I make a list of new entrant files that I need Tracey to pull for me and I dictate a couple of letters onto my new dictaphone. This is good. By the end of the day, I still feel quite fresh.

TUESDAY: I like this new agreement! I didn't get into school until 10 o'clock this morning because I was balancing my home and school life and I had a faculty heads meeting to look forward to after school. I stroked Susan's back for ten minutes, had a leisurely shower and took the kids into school. However, Tracey wasn't her usual cheery self and seemed a little down when she came in with the files I'd asked her to find. She said that she had had an angry parent to deal with and one of the regular year nine troublemakers had been sent down to my office. She threatened to put him on report, put him in detention for tomorrow, and sent him to the year head.

WEDNESDAY: A few teething problems. Susan said could I drop the kids off again but I was doing lower school assembly so that caused ructions. Tracey is struggling with my dictaphone letters and I had to send them all back today with corrections on. When I asked her to get them done by lunchtime I noticed an unattractive curl of the lip and I think she may have muttered something under her breath. Also, had an angry head of maths to deal with because the office had done all of his copying wrong but said he couldn’t do it himself because of the new arrangements, and the staff are angry because we are short of supply cover and they want their guaranteed non-contact time sorted ASAP.

THURSDAY: Things are a bit difficult round here. I had the chief adviser on the phone at nine o'clock asking for a response to Tuesday's urgent e-mail. Tracey said it hadn't come but when she was having a coffee I found it in the deleted items. It was about getting clearance for our new head of geography and when I went to find her file it wasn't there either. I tackled Tracey about it and rather to my surprise she told me that I could take my (expletive deleted) files and stick them somewhere unpleasant and she was sick of working for peanuts. Then she disappeared into the loo for an hour so I had to do all my own photocopying as well. Finally, the boss popped in to say that we have lost another teaching assistant to the new Tesco supermarket which pays more than we do.

FRIDAY: Back to normal! Tracy lobbed the post onto the desk unopened but she did manage a smile. I had to come out of my A-level lesson to sort out a truant and his mum, grovel to the chief adviser, do an urgent DfES return (and photocopy it) and the NQT was in tears and wanted to resign so I had to deal with her after school. I didn't get home until after six o'clock so Susan was cross and said if I was going to apportion so little time to my home life she was going to apportion something else accordingly and my tea was in the oven.

SUNDAY MORNING: Catching up on last week's work and the first pile of essays from the A-level group. Seems like a lot of paperwork but it has to be done. Susan has gone to her mothers in a huff so at least I have some quiet. Halfway down the pile I found the big document on implementing the workforce agreement but I haven’t got time to read it yet so I filed it … myself.