To take a job working with year 9s

[Surelyitstimenow]

For secondary school teachers out there and parents of year 9s.
I'm interested in applying for a job working with year 9s to support teaching staff in the classroom. Some of it will be supporting behaviour management.
By this age, have the kids settled down in their behaviour and are more grown up and mature? Will they be a calm, well developed age group to work with?
I get that year 7 and even year 8 they are still young, but by year 9 has the immature behaviour all stopped? Has all the chattering in class, physical horseplay, silly behaviour and chat back stopped by the time they hey to year 9?
I'm thinking about the behaviour of year 9 boys more specifically, based on the assumption that girls have generally matured in their behaviour at a younger age than boys (stereotype I know)!

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.

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.

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.

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

"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 😄

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… 🫠

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.

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!).

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. 🤣

Exactly what I was going to say!!!!

It’s the year we ignore who they were and by year 10 and 11 enjoy who they’ve become!

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

OP, I'm guessing you haven't worked with teenagers before 😂

Kindly, if you're worried about "silly behaviour, chat back and physical horseplay" this job is not for you, because those things are not only par for the course, they are very much at the lower end of behaviour issues you will encounter.

You've asked for specific examples so here is an incomplete list of behaviour issues I dealt with from (but not limited to) Y9 when I worked in secondary

• Swearing (at each other and staff)
• Racist, homophobic and misogynist language
• Total refusal to complete work or follow instructions
• Refusing to attend lessons
• Absconding
• Vandalising school property
• Fighting, not "horseplay" kids actually properly hurting each other resulting in injury
• Threats of violence against teachers
• Filming/recording Teachers on phones
• Constant social media related nonsense
• Vaping and smoking on school site
• Cannabis and alcohol related incidents
• Sexual harassment, cat-calling, upskirting, sexualised comments and a couple of incidents of indecent exposure

I get that year 7 and even year 8 they are still young, but by year 9 has the immature behaviour all stopped? Has all the chattering in class, physical horseplay, silly behaviour and chat back stopped by the time they hey to year 9?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA god, no.

DD is Y9
She is sensible and studious and not badly behaved. She loves watching the drama, but is very seldom involved. The girls seem to be more mature than the boys, apart from the Mean Girls, who are just horrid.
On the other hand, there still seems to be a fair amount of horseplay and backchat. DD is full of daily tales of who got sent out of their classes, and the events leading up to that. (DD is in top set for everything streamed; this is the first destination for people bring sent out of class, before the HoY office).

All secondary teachers say Year 9s are the worst.

They are the worst honestly - they’ve got past being the youngest and everything being a novelty but aren’t at the stage of doing exams, so are a bit like a problem middle child, so to speak. Probably as well a higher proportion have hormones racing around, so I guess that won’t help.

There are of course lovely kids in year 9 but I’m generalising.

From experience as a secondary school teacher Year 9 is the worst year group (this is in any school) - hormones flying about combined with GCSE courses not quite started in all subjects
Stay away if possible!

This is why schools that can, send all of their Year 9s off to their Forest School Campus in remote places void of phone coverage.

Year 9s gathering wood, learning to survive on their own cooking, washing their own clothes and safely traversing long trecks in the wilderness promotes them taking directions, working in teams and becoming independent.

It removes them far from sight while at their worst.

My current year 9’s are a dream. Last years were a nightmare. It depends on the kids themselves not simply their age. Year 9 can be a transitional year friendship wise. It’s also an age where the hormones are definitely kicking in. I would go for it 💜

Year 9 girls: rampant hormones, sensitive to criticism, loads and loads of peer bullying and you will be forever sorting out rifts in friendship groups and group chat issues.

Year 9 boys: still very much children emotionally but starting to resemble overgrown puppies, lots of physical contact between them and peers as they try to assert their dominance, also they start to stink really badly in this year, though by year 11 that starts to even out.

I am still haunted by a Year 9 class I had back in 2009, it was like fucking Whack A Mole every lesson with them all popping up to disrupt.

IME horseplay is at its pinnacle in Year 9 kids

Year 9 was awful for DS - all the boys are in various stages of puberty and trying to vie for top dog!

I am going to go against the grain here. I'm a secondary school teacher and would choose to work with y9 over 7/8s everytime. Yes they are more hormonal than the y7/8 but I find them better to chat with, i find them funny, i actually enjoy my lessons with them.

Asked my yr 9 DS. When he got up off the floor from laughing, he said no. The girls talk more than the boys, they just don't get told off for it. There is a boy in his non sets who throws his bag and chairs, swears at everyone and storms out of classes crying. There is also some horrendous bullying by mean girls.

YABVU to contemplate this job if you needed to ask the question.

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

No. It’s at its peak.

One thing I remember being struck by in my early teaching years was the amount of manhandling the Year8/9 boys do. They grapple with each other in corridors, jump on each other in hallways, grab each others heads, smack each other with rulers, it’s like a wildlife documentary.

Once I said ‘Boys, boys, can you just keep your hands off each other for five minutes’ and they didn’t know how to take that - quite a few of them were like ‘euw’.