spinning pins

Pupils are very perceptive - nothing get past past them. Whichever school I go to my pupils very quickly suss out my various quirks.

1) I hate having the top button of my shirt done - it’s not a fashion thing; I just don’t like the constrictive sensation of something round my neck. The pupils have to have theirs buttoned as part of their uniform so I do make the effort to set an example - but if it’s still in place come 11:15 I’ve done well. I’ve heard of pupils actually taking sweepstakes on when I reach for that button.

2) I have to bend down to get through doors. For some reason this causes them great mirth. Especially in the corridors where there is a fire door every 15 yards or so. On particularly long stretches they get to see me bend four or five times - and it never fails to amuse them.

3) I’m a fiddler. I don’t mean I play violin. I hate having nothing to do with my hands. Even when I’m teaching I’ll invariably reach for something to move around in my fingers. One class decided they wanted to see how far this would go and began placing different objects on my desk each morning. They started off small with pens and rulers, then they went a bit stranger with lipstick tubes, and then it got gradually bigger. I was standing at the front of a classroom unravelling a wire coat hanger before I finally caught on.

4) This may be related to number three - but I am the teacher who spins drawing pins (thumb tacks) on their point. Now, when I’m bored, if there’s a pin or two around, I’ll wind it up and let it go. The younger kids appear fascinated by this - especially when I get one spinning so well that it stands upright and appears to be almost motionless, balancing magically on its tip. I claim it’s educational - all about centrifugal forces etc etc. They always want to know how to do it. At one school I had about twelve pupils spending their breaktime in the playground seeing who could spin a pin the longest (my record is six minutes)

When I say they all appear fascinated that may be a little misleading. A lot of them appear fascinated - the rest all, probably accurately, see it as a sign of a misspent youth.

I sentence you to five years hard reading

There is something a bit odd about setting reading as a punishment.

I was covering a class today when another teacher poked her head round the door and asked if she could dump a disruptive pupil on me. The class I had was particularly small and deeply engrossed in what they were doing so I said it would be ok.
She brought him in, set him at a desk, gave him a novel and a sheet of questions and said “Read that chapter and answer those!”

I don’t get it - in much the same way I don’t get it anytime a teacher sets reading a story or writing something as a punishment for bad behavior.
Surely, as people trying to encourage enjoyment through reading and writing, we are being a little self defeating if we then use reading and writing as a punishment.

I love both - always have done. Perhaps that’s why I allowed myself to get detention so often when I was a school kid. But I know not everyone does. I know there are people for whom R&W is a necessity rather than a luxury. Personally I think it’s hard enough encouraging reading for enjoyment without throwing in reading for pain at the same time.

mobile?

I'm teaching in a mobile classroom today. Mobile 5. I'm never quite sure why they're called that - they're not very mobile. In my opinion anything that requires a plumber, an electrician, a crane, several labourers, a fleet of HGVs and a cement truck to install cannot be called portable, handipack, funsize, or mobile. If it came with its own wheels, steering wheel, and wasn't the width of three buses then maybe, just maybe, I would be happy to call it a mobile - but it doesn't. This one is much bigger than most of the classrooms inside the actual school building, is wired into the phone system, electricity, computer network, water pipes, and has been here longer than four generations of pupils have; and it's not going anywhere anytime soon... Mobile?!

So where was I? Today I'm teaching in a hut, a prefab, a portakabin, a (relatively) temporary, an outdoor, a cardboard classroom. And I must say that I quite like the experience. Yes it goes through temperature extremes with frightening speed; yes there is a weird musty smell; yes you have to stumble over snow banks to get to and from it - but I can forgive all of that.

There is a wonderful sense of isolation out here. It's like a tiny school on its own rather than just another little brick in a big pile of bricks. And the fact that I don't share a wall with anyone means that my classes can be as noisy as I like without worrying about distracting someone else's lesson. I can have pupils shout and stamp and sing and clap without that nagging feeling that my next door neighbour disapproves of my teaching methods.
I should probably have the confidence to teach the way I feel is right whether people can hear me or not - it's just easier this way. But it's much bigger than that.
It's the sense that civilisation ends at the doorway - beyond only wilderness, long stretches of uneducated wilderness - unknowns. But here, in our little cardboard oasis of culture we are safe - safe and civilised. This little island of learning with extreme temperatures and a musty smell becomes the last outpost for true education of the soul.

Is that roof leaking?

word of the day (part 5 in a 73 part series)

Somniloquy (som’nılǝ,kwı) [sŏm-nĭl'ə-kwē] n. plural -quies. the act of talking in one’s sleep [from Latin, somnus sleep + loqui to speak] somnniloquest n somnioloquous adj

To be honest I think I personally prefer the sound of somnioloquous. It has a pleasing finish. However it is a lot easier to describe sleeptalking than something with an air of sleeptalking-ishness.

I heard both these words, along with Somnambulate (sleep walking) on a rather odd radio show a few weeks back. Since then I've been trying to decide between somnioloquous or somnambulation. Both, I think you'll agree pleasant sounds. The sleeptalking won simply because I gives me a chance to link to a blog imaginatively called Sleep Talkin' Man - where a woman records the words her husband says while sleeping. Be warned - most of it is hilarious, some of it disturbing, occasionally offensive, (he swears a lot in his sleep) all of it just plain daft.

"Squid wrestling: all tentacles and no substance."

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