To take a job working with year 9s

I don’t think year 9 is settled at all. My youngest is in year 9. He started it in September as a boy. Now it’s April, he’s grown at least a foot to 6 foot and his feet gone up two sizes to 11.5. He has a booming deep voice and is eating 8 weetabix a day.

im not joking I bought him some 14-15 trousers in Feb and they were perfect length. A month later they are swinging round his ankles.

inside though he’s still a young lad in many ways. He’s all over the place! He’s very clumsy and gangly and his brain hasn’t caught up. And he has no common sense. 🤣

There’s a reason they’re recruiting for a behaviour support role in Y9!! Y9 is a challenging year (I personally think Y8 are tougher to deal with but Y9 are second!).

There is a shortage of funding in schools so if you are employed to support with behaviour management, you will be in classes with very difficult behaviour regardless of the year group. In Year 9, your role will probably be to cajole very reluctant, low ability teens to produce some work while they take the piss out of you. If you are good at working with difficult people and have supportive teachers to work with then it might be alright.

Ha! No. Yr 9 is the year of no consequence, old enough to be cocky and secure, caring not a jot about your school work because it’s not GCSE, completely sacking off any effort in some lessons ‘because I’m not taking it anyway!’

It’s a ‘good time’ year and they definitely know it, plus the drama, oh the drama… 🫠

"Has all the chattering in class, physical horseplay, silly behaviour and chat back stopped by the time they hey to year 9?"

Your Enid Blyton view of year 9s makes me fear for you 😄

To add though, it’s incredibly rewarding when you can make progress with those behaviours.

Years 8 and 9 can be the bane of my existence. I find that year 7 can be quite timid until after Christmas when they settle a bit and find their confidence. I do the job you’re describing and most of my pupils who need the most support are years 8 and 9.

This is a very odd question. Gently, OP, have you spent any time with teenagers? They do and say all sorts of things and it will vary by person or day or mood or anything really. Half the time they don’t even know what they’re doing so there’s no way we could predict their behaviour.

Obviously if a behaviour management job exists that’s because the behaviour is so challenging they have decided to allocate money to this instead of the 1000 other things they need. So I can’t see what else you’d expect from this job. Am sure it has rewards too, but teaching is hard, teenagers are hard and teaching teenagers is super hard.

I just had a conversation with a teacher friend about my year 9 child and her words were ‘ year 9 is the worst year in any school’.

A mix of hormones kicking in and not yet having to knuckle down to GCSEs apparently.

It’s peak be vile to your friends time with the girls. They’re no angels

Because they've found their feet in the school, are full of hormones and overly confident, and GCSEs seem like a lifetime away so no desire to study.
That said, they are bloody hilarious too. But you don't sound suited to this role.

Have you worked with children before? The behaviour depends on the needs of the child but generally they’re all full of raging hormones and getting ready to drop subjects that they aren’t interested in.

Obviously this is a generalisation but Y9 is peak hormones and when friends (and boyfriends/girlfriends) become far more important than parents. Indeed adults are often viewed as the enemy. Added to this, as someone has also pointed out, they are getting ready to drop subjects and therefore don’t see why they have to focus in those areas.
All this chips away at any respect for teachers and they are obsessed with what their peers think of them. As everything with behaviour, it’s often not the big incidents, but the general ethos and constant feeling that you are not on the same side that is the most difficult. Add in the teen girl drama, mental health, anxiety and school refusal problems you find in any school and it becomes very tricky.
i’ve been a teaching Head of Year from Y8-Y11 (same cohort) and Y9 was the year that almost broke me.
Having said all that they are also funny, surprising and it’s great to make a difference to some who are struggling but go with your eyes open and don’t expect an easy time!

Why did you want to go for it?

yeargroups vary but no, generally y9 is not a light switch to maturity.

but if you think about heat attracted you to the job that might help? Tbf it sounds like you want to work with adults rather than children

People can’t give you specific examples of ‘year 9 behaviour’ like year 9s are some homogenous group. That’s a silly request.

Respectfully, you sound naive. With the state of education that it is, no one has the money to pay for an additional body in a room to support ‘nice, mature’ students.

There is always the chance you could be working with some gorgeous, lovely children who are weak readers or something. More likely, you’d be wrangling hormonal teens who don’t want to be in Geography (other unwanted subjects are available) into labelling a volcano when they’d rather be on TikTok.

If you’re keen, go for it and suss it out at interview though. You can tell a lot about a school just by being in a corridor at lesson changeover.

In my 15 years of teaching I have always found that it entirely depends on the cohort of students.

I am a music teacher and I know that many students don't really care. This year - I teach 5 different year 9 classes and id say in those classes very few are actually picking GCSE music. However - I have very few behaviour problems within those classes and they are all (with the exception of about 5 students - out of 150) lovely. Last year though, I taught about the same number of students - and it was terrible. Is the job a pastoral assistant? Because the job will move with the students....

Our Year 9s* at school do this thing where they pretend you aren’t talking to them and carry on screaming/laughing/chatting with their friends whilst turning their backs on you. IT IS INFURIATING. When you bring them up on it they look at you like you’re an alien species. This is a particularly tough Year 9, though, we’ve had better previously.

*Not all Year 9s, just those whose parents have avoided putting in proper boundaries.

Yes this. If the class were a lovely quiet bunch of angels the job wouldn't exist? Year 9 is hard work. But teenagers can be great to work with. The role is surely to build relationships, you would potentially the consistent adult in the room and the job is to work with staff and management to help with pupils. I have a few friends who do similar and they love it but you would need to enjoy teenagers and want to support them.

Year 9 is the most unstable year. They feel they have been at school forever, and will be there forever, hormones have fully kicked in and yet, there is still a large degree of immaturity at play.

So, good luck!

In the nicest possible way, you said part of the job was behaviour management which implies there is behaviour to manage and you seem to be looking for some. reassurance that there won’t be any so it really doesn’t sound like this would suit you.

Not at all. Kids at all age are naughty.

You do realise this was sarcastic?

Look, year 9's are hideous, for all the reasons listed above. Individually they can be hilarious, kind and extremely needy. But as a group they are... difficult. And if you apply for a job involving behaviour management, you need to understand this

Just want to say that secondary school teachers really don’t like teaching year 9s. They are the worst. Especially as the year goes on and they know they aren’t going to take your subject for GCSE.

My daughter is in year 9 and according to her,the boys are savages. Especially at lunchtime throwing food around the place 😩 You'd expect them to be a lot more mature by now but no 🙄