dramatic cheer

This just cheered me up no end - stolen unashamedly from Dave McC's blog, Wisdom In Books...



Brilliant.

hitting home

So... it's saturday afternoon, and I'm doing what I do on most Saturday afternoons - sitting on my backside, staring at a screen. But it all seems a bit depressing. As previously alluded to, I've been struggling with our English assignment for about a week now:

"Outline the emergence of English as a subject on the curriculum, the different ways of thinking about its role and purpose, and the five major models of English identified by Brian Cox. Which of these five models appears to be emphasised in the Revised Curriculum for English at Key Stage 3 and 4? Which of these five models matches most closely with your own thinking about English?
Draw on your reading, class discussion and your teaching/ learning experience."

You can probably see why.

More depressing is that, if I'd bothered to answer the phone at 8:41 this morning, rather than roll over and go back to sleep, I could've been working. For money. (Yes Dave, it's true.)

Still more depressing is that it has finally hit home that it is October, and I am living at Home - capital H. And will be for the forseeable future. Yes, it means certain domestic chores aren't really a factor: but my growing grudge against the bumbling undergraduates at UUC is growing by the day. Lucky prats. (And when you're jealous of someone who's university experience is going to be in COLERAINE, you know you've got seriously deep-seeded issues.)

But hey, the Swiss hits inexplicably continue, and have extended to the other end of the country... people of Lusanne, you also rock.

product of an idle soul

So, was in school today playing with crayons... fear not. I'd finished reading up some stuff so was idly loitering around the SEN unit with not much else to do. After apparently picking up my first parking ticket (though, as the exceptionally tired looking traffic warden explained, I won't actually know if they're charging me or not until I get something in the post. Or don't - random) I was being similarly idle at home. I really should be working on my first major assignment this year, but good grief could I not be arsed.

Anyway, I ended up making a crayon-inspired pact with the devil and photoshopping up a bebo skin (with some destinctly old-school graphics - Paint on Windows '95, no less... 'dem wuz the days!)




In other news, Google Analytics tells me we're now big in Switzerland. Good people of Liebefeld, this one's for you...

for one night only

Should probably have put this up a while ago... the second-greatest-band that never was (no, not that one, the other one) are getting back together in various forms for a seriously good time tomorrow night (Wednesday). Be there, or have an inferior Wednesday...

i would if i could but i can't so i won't...

...be bothered, that is. With teaching. I've just spent the best part of an hour attempting to be interested in the bedtime classic that is Cox on Cox: An English Curriculum for the 1990s. Early in the 1990s (funnily enough), Professor Brian Cox came up with five models for teaching English yada yada yada... and, along with a concise history of English as a subject, I now have to write about it. Relevant? Probably. Necessary? I'm doubtful...

In other news: the original Silent Bob, Marcel Marceau passed away last weekend. If you think this isn't that important, you should - if only because he inspired Michael Jackson's moonwalking, and at least two or three great jokes in every episode of Animaniacs...



...it's amazing what one guy and an invisible wall can accomplish.

getting the buggers to write...

...actually seems to be more manageable than originally thought. It's interesting: today was my first day of five spent "observing" in the secondary school where I'll be on teaching practice for eight weeks. My timetable for the day was great up to a point: I found myself sitting around a table with a small sixth form class, probably learning more about (the drivel that is) Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter than they were. And then, just when I thought I was getting away with an easy day and a lunchtime departure, I was redirected upstairs to the SEN unit. Oh crap, I thought. Don't get me wrong: six years of youth schemes has given me enough chances to deal with behavioural and educational difficulties to last a lifetime. But in a formal setting... I felt like you could write all I know about how to teach to SEN at a secondary level - primary maybe, but Key Stage 3! A class of 20! - on the back of a rather late edition to the very-small-stamp section of a tiny stamp library. In a 1:20 scale doll's house with stamp library room.

Turns out they were pretty wonderful kids altogether. I don't know, maybe it's more obvious with behavioural, but I personally can't look at a child and automatically tell you that, for instance they're a particular form of ADHD (which is a myth anyway...). I just think they're the type of kid that gives you a pain where you never had a window, as my mother dear would say. If someone is acting up, it's usually got something to do with the eight bottles of lucozade they drink a day - one of the more talkative girls in the sixth form English Lit. class was telling me about this...

Now there's a rant. The primary school I was placed in a couple of weeks ago have comprehensively banned fizzy drinks on the premises. The number of kids newly statemented for behavioural difficulties in the last 12 months has dropped by more than half or something like that. Do the maths.

Coincidentally, Getting The Buggers To Write is actually an English teacher's handbook. It's pretty bloomin' good too.

Now, having just witnessed the decimation of a tragically crap Ireland team by Les Coqs, I'm going to get back to getting friendly with Mr Jamison...

how (not) to save a life

Was just doing my "hero-of-the-hour" impersonation: removing a mouse (and his trap) from my sister's room upstairs. Was a bit weird though because this one was still very much alive (they're normally pretty stiff by the time I get to them). Was quite sad watching the little guy struggling. He was pretty prone until I poked the trap, and then he began a feeble attempt to leg it - pretty hard when said back legs are trapped in the jaws of a big plastic monster. Don't get me wrong: mouse in house is not good Ever (capital E). But I was a bit sad all the same - couldn't bring myself to put him out of his misery, so just picked him up gingerly, placed him on a plank and transported him to the bin outside. I sure there's a deep metaphor for something here, but I just found it all a bit melancholy.

mmmm... toasty

I'm on Primary school placement this week, but I'll talk about that later as the legal wrangling gives me a headache when you try to talk about that kind of thing. enjoy this instead.



NB:Lack of scanner or even digital camera means that this is actually a still from a moving capture - photoshop can only do so much!

so this is this, and that is that...

This week at school we mostly been working our way through ICT competency tests... yes, just like when you were 12 and doing your Key Stage 3's. A lot of the content is the same as well: PowerPoint, Excel, all the greatest hits are there. At least it's a bit warmer than LT1 (which isn't. At all. Ever.) Oh what fun we are having... it's all based around Intel Teach To The Future which I suppose is actually a great intiative. But it's mindnumbing if you've a shred of understanding already. I think it's mindnumbing for most others too... except that one poor girl who just does not get it...


The cornerstone of the Department of Education's tech rollout for schools is LearningNI, a ridculously secure online portal designed to link every single teacher in the country across a central network: resources, discussions, shared objectives, planning, networking, whatever you want. Brilliant concept. But like C2k in schools (which was so secure that it took at least 5 minutes to convince the system you actually wanted to install Super Mario on it rather than trawl it's approved content) in practice, it's a bit of a nightmare. In a couple of years, they tell us, it will rock. I'm pretty sure they told my old mum that when she did the PGCE course too - though to be fair, that was only a couple of years ago...

Otherwise, the only other task this week has been working on a subject-specific presentation, in our case a 20th-21st Century poet of choice. That's it. No outline or anything, just 'tell us about...'. Anyway, plumped for TS Eliot because as someone who didn't do A Level or degree English, and therefore is still scarred by ****ing Wilfred Owen (just wrote my first worksheet about him, the irony). You know, TS Eliot who wrote about the Cats, and then that bloke Andrew Lloyd Webber bastardised it all and let Elaine Paige wail it out in the West End... he actually did a lot of other rather wonderful things too, but it's poetry he got the Nobel Prize for (in 1948... see, I know stuff already!)

Very very cool bits of TS Eliot include Willem Dafoe reading a bit from Four Quartets or Eliot himself doing his groundbreaking Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock (often found online mashed up over a Portishead track, google that one.)


Eliot also accounts for 5 out of the 100 of the BBC's Nation's Favourite Poems...

...now here's a book you should look through. Don't buy it - thanks to copyright expiration you can get most of them online anyway - but browse it if you see it. (Help! I'm turning into an enthusiastic English student!) And pause a moment to think about this...

Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
If quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

Anon.

I almost don't hate poetry. Just teaching it.