things you should know about me

For the most part people who stumble upon this blog don’t really know me that well – so I thought I’d put together a quick cheat sheet of things you really should know.

1. I am not a special needs teacher. At least not at the moment. When I set out to begin this blog a couple of years ago I was working within the special education department of a mainstream state school. When I tried to think of a title it sort of made sense as my job had been gradually taking over my life. Now I’m not working there any more but I am too lazy to change the name of the blog.
What I’ve come to realise is that the title is a little misleading in at least one other way. Basically because I call my blog the Thoughts of a Special Needs Teacher people assume it will be all about special needs education or education in general. It’s not. Education slips in because I’m a teacher (sometimes) and the state of the state of the education system matters to me. It’s on my mind if you like. It’s on my mind therefore I vent.
The current disastrous state of Newcastle United Football Club also occupies a sizeable chunk of my mind so you’ll find they appear on occasion. My family are rarely far from my mind but since my sister started reading this occasionally I have to be careful what I say about them.
No, this blog is mainly just a means of clearing my head. When I was a school kid I used to record the detritus clogging my mental pores in the form of notes and doodles on my file paper. I’d write them down and then I’d crumple the paper up and throw it in the trash – now I publish them on the web.

2. I really am as bumbling as I make myself out to be here. I am in no way adapting real life to make it appear worse than it is as some sort of attempt to appear blind-puppy-style endearing. I do not relate my experiences either to endear nor to elicit pity. I do it because sometimes I can’t believe how incredibly stupid I’ve been and need to tell people about it. The pity thing is an added bonus.
When I appear naïve it is because I was naïve. When I appear clumsy it is because I was clumsy. I am but a camera (Evelyn Waugh would be proud) capturing events as they happened for you’re amusement. A camera in the old sense, before photoshop was invented obviously. Rest assured, if ever I do something suave, sophisticated or generally smooth you will read all about it.

"I'll expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That's what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour."
Evelyn Waugh - Decline and Fall (1928)

3. I have several guilty secrets. Don’t tell anyone but occasionally I watch rubbish television. In fact sometimes I enjoy it more than the good stuff. Currently I am addicted to the Big Bang Theory. I love everything about it from the Bare Naked Ladies theme to the lame stairwell conversations to the cringe-worthy stereotyping. The girl who plays Penny (Kaley Cuoco I think – I hope that’s spelt right) bears an incredible resemblance to a girl who helps me out sometimes when I’m filming weddings. Similar in appearance and personality. She has the same sunny disposition, the same assumed ditziness, the same patient but frustrated look when dealing with someone who’s overly complicated ramblings and general bumbling make no sense to her whatsoever.
Sometimes when I watch it I find myself diagnosing various syndromes in the characters – I’m not sure that’s healthy. I think it maybe suggests I miss the Learning Support Unit.
Anyway, I’m not going to attempt to argue the merits of the show – it’s frivolous, occasionally sketchily written, stereotype affirming, generalises wildly on a regular basis – and I can’t get enough of it.

4. I hate/detest/abhor/loathe those emails that ask you to take “10 minutes” out of your time to answer “a few” (dozen) questions about yourself. Can someone tell me what the point is? Are you really going to try and persuade me that you can get to know someone better through these things? Really? How does it benefit anyone to know what colour my toothbrush is, or when I last cried, or what music is on my ipod/ cd player / 8 track? It doesn’t I tell you! Well, I suppose they can now choose between buying me a gift of a CD, a toothbrush or some tissues.
Not only are they a waste of time but they revel in that fact. I saw one recently which asked the victim to record the time they started the questionnaire and the time they finished. It then asked them what else they could have spent that time doing. Cruel.
Worse still, they have pervaded the blogosphere. They take the form of an award that you pass on to blogs you admire. Once “tagged” you answer a few questions about yourself in your blog and pass it on, pyramid scheme style, to seven other victims. “Award or virus?” I hear you ask. “Or is he maybe just a little bitter that he’s never been tagged?” No! I’m not! Although you would have imagined that someone out there would have me somewhere in their top seven blogs.
These are not to be confused with the profiles to be found in some blogs. These are a different beast entirely. They tend to be relevant and specific to that blog. They don’t require you to pass anything on to anywhere. They are generally humorous and interesting as opposed to inane and irrelevant.
So, no tagging. Agreed?

And that will do for now. I think you know all you need to about me. And all without the use of a single questionnaire. Although if it is bothering you – I prefer cold vacations to hot ones, I have two pets, I wanted to be a train driver / pig farmer / psychologist when I was growing up, I’ve never been toilet papering, I have blue eyes, I prefer croutons to bacon bits and my toothbrush is purple.

downtown ballywatt

we don't have many shops - but the ones we do have their priorities firmly placed.

word of the day (part 3 in a 73 part series)

enigmatize e`nig´ma`tize Intransitive verb To make, or talk in, enigmas; to deal in riddles.

I used this in a conversation with someone last night and have only just realised it wasn't the proper use of the word. I don't care - I wanted to use it and so I did. Sue me.

education could damage your health

Week #2, school #2; and I have an admission to make. This subbing lark should come with a health warning: May seriously damage your moral high ground.

Anyone who knows me would be able to tell you my views of the Grammar school system and academic selection. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that still holds onto academic selection for entry into secondary schools and it is holding onto it fiercely. I, just in case you don’t already know, am fiercely opposed to a two tier education system (or indeed the three or four tier system we actually have)
It is an opinion that has brought me into verbal conflict with several members of my family and my closest friends, all of whom benefited from a Grammar school education. I, myself, benefited from a Grammar school education – the difference being that I have worked most of my adult life with children who didn’t pass the test at eleven and are thus not benefiting from a Grammar school education. I see what the great divide does to them. I have witnessed the sense of resignation they have that they aren’t ‘meant’ to be academic so they’ll not bother. I’ve worked on breaking down barriers that a sense of failure (aged eleven) builds. And it’s just not right.

The Grammars in Northern Ireland wield a lot of power. The Government love them because they allow us to produce the best exam results in the UK year after year. And how do they achieve such fantastic results? Well, using academic selection they pick out the pupils with the highest IQs; the academic cream if you like. Unsurprisingly these pupils perform well in national tests (relatively speaking) which gain the schools good reputations. These good reputations make them extremely attractive for business and community support (everyone loves a winner) so they see all kinds of funding opportunities opening up. They can plough this money into improving the infrastructure and resources of the school, which in turn improves their standing in exam league tables and leads to a higher percentage of post 16 students, who attract the largest amount of governmental and commercial funding. And so the cycle continues.

I’m not suggesting that Grammar schools are wallowing in cash. The way state education funding is at present no schools are finding it easy to balance books. It just seems to me that Grammar schools are better equipped for this hardship and seem to find it easier to produce money than non selective schools when push comes to shove. Just look at the beautiful gardens and perfectly manicured playing fields on which Grammar schools play their Rugger and Cricket. Compare those to the council owned dog walking parks that the high school next door use.

Grammar schools produce results; of that there is no doubt. If I hadn’t gone to a Grammar I doubt very much that I would have gone to university – I have no idea what I would’ve done but I wasn’t the kind of pupil who could motivate themselves against the odds. I would have blended in and faded out of education. I certainly wouldn’t be a teacher.
Back when I was eleven I did the test that was to determine whether at thirty one I would be sitting typing up a blog in a classroom after teaching a year 12 poetry lesson or… well I just don’t know.

I’ll be honest. The reason I fixate on this issue is because in my mind I shouldn’t have passed that test. I failed every one of the practices in the build up . Somehow I squeezed through and onto the road to Grammar school. To this day I don’t know how. In quiet moments I find my mind wander into ‘Sliding Doors’ territory and I find myself imaging what my life would be like had I dropped a couple more points in that test. I know it’s pointless; I believe that things happen for a reason, that I was guided up the path I was meant to take – but I can’t help wondering. And then I start wondering about the pupils I teach. What would happen to them if they’d done just a little better or worse when they were eleven.

I believe that schools selecting their pupils on the basis of IQ is wrong; I believe that eleven is far too young to map out someone’s educational career; and I believe labelling pupils as either academic or non-academic is just plain immoral.

After all of that please don’t think less of me because I am writing this entry from a classroom of a Grammar school. Just because I am in a position where I have to take what work is offered doesn’t dilute my opinions. I’ll teach their pupils, I’ll take the pay cheque but they can’t make me like it.

a quick rant

I am depressed this evening. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a branch of the “UK’s leading bookseller” to stock a classic piece of literature such as Death of a Salesman. It’s not as if I was looking for some obscure, was I? I mean, I’m not being elitist by expecting a high street store to have a copy of one of the most famous pieces of American theatre? Am I? It can’t be that obscure – they used references to it in Seinfeld!

I needed a new copy as I’m going to be covering it with a bunch of A-Level students as part of their course and I seem to have misplaced my copy (for ‘misplaced’ read ‘lent it to someone who seems to have forgotten where I live’) so I went in to my local Waterstone’s expecting to have to choose from a range of editions (and possibly translations.) But here’s the thing – they didn’t have a single copy. But that’s not the thing – not really. Yeah it was surprising but it’s hardly enough to make me depressed. A little disenchanted maybe, but not depressed. So what is the thing?

Take a look at the photo above.

You have now seen the entire Literature section of my local branch of Waterstone’s. The whole literary canon reduced to a single block of five shelves – four if you discount the top shelf which contains only study guides. I remember a time when they needed more space than that for plays by Shakespeare – now he has to make do with sharing his space with Tom Stoppard.

In a shop filled with floor to ceiling shelves upon shelves of biographies, with whole walls devoted to travel guides, it seems impossible to believe that they need to put Stanislavski beside Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It pains me that anything calling itself a bookshop would have more varieties of Dilbert compilations than Sartre writing? And while we’re on Jean-Paul Sartre; does no one else find it incredible that we can go from Willy Russell, through Sartre to Tennessee Williams in less than six inches of shelf?

I don’t know who to blame. Is it the shop’s management who decreed that classic literature doesn’t sell in Coleraine? Maybe it is a wider problem brought on by the rise of the warehouse booksellers and the demise of the local independents? Could it be that the people where I live just read cartoons and ghost written celebrity autobiographies? Whichever or whoever or whatever, I cannot help but feel sad.

But in a moment of delicious irony I went into the tiny little second hand bookshop on my way home. Despite the lack of shelf space, 'helpful' staff, and comfortable chairs I was able to find what I was looking for in seconds. It cost £2 and had been carefully annotated in pencil by a previous owner who was obviously directing a production of the play – now when the big chains start offering that as a service I may forgive them.

supply, supply and supply again

Back to subbing.

Different term, different kids, different school, same old challenges. Well for the most part anyway. However the task does seem a little different this year. In the past I have always been fortunate enough to end up working in the same school for the entire year. This year, however, I am facing the prospect of moving around looking for work where I can get it.

I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about returning to the chalk face. There is a certain amount of relief involved. If you include the summer holidays I haven’t taught in over three months. From a purely financial point of view the relief is immense. They say that most of us are only three pay cheques away from homelessness. I may not be in risk of that just yet but I was beginning to watch the outflow from my bank account with increasing concern.

It is, however, much more than just a financial relief. I was (whisper it softly) missing the working day. I missed the hubbub of the school, the flow of people in the corridors, the characters in the classroom. This may not sound like the cynical old grouch, lacking in any semblance of the youthful idealism with which he once glowed, to whom you have become accustomed – for that I apologise – but sometimes… well… I just miss teaching.

But, as I said, this is a new school and a whole new experience. New beginnings always worry me a little (you’d think I’d get used to them considering I go through this annually.) I’m not a huge fan of readjustment, and fitting in around a completely new system with a completely new set of rules, with a staffroom full of strangers and a classroom full of young strangers fills me with dread.

It’s a good dread though.

down the plug

I am making a stand today. I am avoiding Starbucks. I know they’ll be worried.

It is something that I have thought about before but today it was in the news so I chose this moment to make my one man boycott.

You see Starbucks have been wasting the amount of water most small countries use. In fact we're talking 23.4 million litres. Every day.

Every time you go in there you see taps that are left running constantly. Look at the wee sinks that they put the spoons and thermometers in between uses – they are placed in constantly running water and in a world that is seeing the value of water more and more it is ridiculous.

Of course it seems less of a priority in this wee country as I type this while looking at the rain streaming down the windows of the seemingly more ethically aware Ground. If there is anything we have an abundance of it is water. But that isn’t the point. If it were the point then the fact that the Starbucks shops in drought affected countries such as China, Australia and Romania are also leaving their taps running would be horrendous.

I don't often urge you to read the Sun but take a quick pop over and read the full story. It still pains me slightly that this is an issue I have noticed but never fully appreciated until I spotted it on a tabloid newspaper front page. Maybe I need to do a bit of work on my observational skills before goin back in the classroom.

So maybe Starbucks won’t miss my custom today; and maybe we won’t find a way to share the surplus rain we have in Ireland with the rest of the world any time soon, and maybe I need to look at some of the waste of which I am guilty – but until I can feel a little better about my extra hot latte I’ll be spending more time in Ground.

Father I place into Your hands...

It’s been a pretty horrible few weeks for me. At times I’ve wondered whether it would be easier to give up and let someone else take over.

I remember once when I was a kid I had a Home Economics assignment. I wasn’t as good at cooking back then as I like to believe I am now and I had worried myself into a frenzy over it. I had undertaken to create some kind of apple sponge swiss roll style thingy. I had no idea how I was going to do it, I had no idea what I needed to do it and I had no idea why I was planning to make something like that when I couldn’t stand cooked apple. The one thing I did know was that I had messed up.
So at 4am on the morning of the assessment I finally broke. In less than six hours I was going to be plating up for the teacher. I hadn’t looked up any recipes; I hadn’t even checked whether I had the necessary raw materials.
I got up and made my way down the dark corridor to my parents’ room. I knocked on the door, went in and, with tears running down my face, shook my mother awake.
“I need help.”
I half expected her to be angry that I had left everything to the last minute. I fully expected her to be livid that I was waking her up at a ridiculous time. I would have understood if she told me it was all my own fault and that I had to learn the lesson before washing her hands of it and going back to sleep.
Of course she didn’t. She got out of bed and started pulling things out of cupboards in the kitchen. She showed me how to stew the apples, she gave me a masterclass in weights and measures, and we even had time to do a practice run for the sponge making.
The weight she lifted off my shoulders that morning made the journey to school the most pain free it had ever been. And it is probably that incident I return to when I try to trace my love of cooking odd things. I’m not a parent so I cannot begin to surmise why she did it or what was going through her mind at the time – but it left a lasting impression on me.

So when I was weighing up my problems while standing in the freezing cold rain on a half deserted football terrace watching Coleraine losing one nil to Ballymena United I thought again of going to my mother for help. When Coleraine had their main goal scorer sent off it appeared to symbolise the uphill struggle I seemed to be facing. I wanted to talk to my mother about what I should do about my lack of employment, about the toothache that was keeping me up at night. I wanted to talk to her about the huge gap she had left when she passed away on the previous Monday after fighting illness so bravely for so long. But she is no longer there for me to shake awake.

As I stood in the rain, half watching the match I suddenly realised what she would tell me. In fact it was as clear in my mind as if she were standing in front of me. It was real because it was what she told me time and time again when she was alive. I wouldn’t dare suggest that my problems all drifted away at that moment but I was able to be a bit more objective. And a few minutes later Coleraine equalised. Not that I’m suggesting the events were related but it did bring a smile to my face and I spent the rest of the match jumping up and down and urging my team forward with all my breath. My voice has not recovered yet.

But I bet you want to know about that apple sponge swiss roll thingy. Well I went into the class full of confidence. I threw it together with panache and a smile on my face. The teacher was impressed and I got a decent mark. But it was never going to be as good as the one my mother made six hours earlier.