If you have a New Year’s Eve party to go to, you may be faced with the horror of having to attend in fancy dress.
But you’ve got this covered: you’ve run the gauntlet of every World Book Day and topic-themed dress-up morning since you qualified. If you don’t have a wardrobe full of fancy-dress options, are you even a teacher?
This year, though, you may want to get topical and choose a costume based on your profession.
Here are some ideas to start you off.
1. Attach several alarm clocks about your person - the bigger and louder, the better. Set them all to go off two-and-a-half hours after the party begins.
2. One for the primary school teachers: gather two sidekicks, a red top, a blue top, a red and white striped top and a large key. Accessorise further with stage make-up to resemble gaping wounds, mud smears and maybe a life-sized toy crocodile.
You have gone as: the Oxford Reading Tree’s as yet unpublished literary work: Things go Badly Wrong for Biff, Chip and Kipper. Prepare for every Year 1 teacher in the building to high-five you
3. Wear a blue suit and tie, carry a folder of hastily scribbled-out bar charts and adorn your face with a confused expression.
4. Wear your normal work clothes, but attach reels of Sellotape, reams of A4 paper, a full pack of Berol handwriting pens and a packet of dry-wipe markers. Stuff a box of Pritt Sticks down your trousers.
You have gone as: your annoying colleague who steals and stashes all the good resources from the stock cupboard before anyone else has had a look in. It’s niche, but oh-so-satisfying if your other workmates will also be there
5. Get a friend to dress in their smartest work clothes, and to make themselves as shiny and hopeful-looking as possible. They should carry a brand-new diary and a selection of highlighter pens. You, on the other hand, are going to wear something ancient and smeared with the usual assortment of child-related stains: felt-pen marks, blobs of yoghurt, something that’s probably mucus. Smudge black circles under your eyes and develop a twitch.
You have gone as: September and July. If you don’t know which of you is supposed to be which, then you’re better at your job than I am
6. Get out of bed, leave your hair unbrushed and stay in your pyjamas. Accessorise with a bottle of wine and a packet of biscuits.
You have gone as: a teacher in the middle of the Christmas holidays AKA yourself. Actually, forget the party - wine and biscuits for one on the sofa sounds perfect.
Lisa Jarmin is a teacher and freelance writer
