Never Happy

You just can’t trust these admin types. After venting about how they blocked Blogger and all that’s good about the internet for practically the whole of the Easter Holiday I returned on Monday to find it has been unblocked.

This should be cause for celebration – A carnival of liberty. We could light a torch of freedom and run with it through the streets of London… or maybe not. It is surely nothing but good news. So why am I sitting looking at my computer screen with mixture of bemusement and concern?

Maybe you’re thinking that there’s no pleasing this man. Maybe you’re thinking I’m only happy when I’ve got something to complain about. I just have this nagging concern about why Blogger was unblocked again. They must have blocked it for a reason – I may not agree with their reasoning but they must have had one. What has changed? Why haven’t they stuck to their guns and continued to make my life more difficult? Maybe I’m a stubborn old fool but when I make a principled stand against something it takes an awful lot to make me admit I’m wrong.

I’d love to imagine that they read my post and were so moved by my argument (and insults) that they had a complete change of heart. I’d love that but I can eliminate the theory for three separate reasons: 1. How could they read it when blogger had been blocked from the network? 2. No one actually reads this blog. 3. If I were them and I read something like what was in that post it would do nothing other than harden my resolve.

So I’m confused.

While in the mood for complaining let me add this; what on earth am I going to use as my excuse for not updating this more regularly now?

student politics

Our year 12s have started a petition to be allowed to go on study leave early. The head boy just brought it round to get me to sign it half an hour ago.

I was a bit confused - I don't even teach the year 12s so why they felt my signature would lend any weight is beyond me. I looked down through the list of names and comments and I realised that there were quite a lot of teachers who were more than happy to wave good bye to their GCSE classes, including the head of year who seems to have given the whole thing his blessing.

I, as is the mode, am in two minds. I don't trust kids enough to work on their own at home in the build up to big examinations. This cynicism comes from my own experience. I did practically nothing to prepare for my own GCSEs and when it came to A-levels I did nothing. In fact during my A-levels I was out every night.

Maybe it's unfair to tar this present crop with my brush; but I just can't see how sending them off early is going to improve their chances.

Having said that I am impressed with their initiative. Getting the whole thing sanctioned by their head of year was a stroke of genius - it lends gravity and makes the rest of us more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. If they have completed the course and have handed in all the coursework why not set them free to fly. Apart from anything else it'll free up some time for the other classes.

Me? I sat firmly on the fence. I signed the petition but wrote the words 'I'm too busy marking to take the time to form an opinion on the matter.' The head boy wasn't impressed.

Real teaching - the substitute way

let us live our lives!

I’m angry – really angry. I’ve tried looking at it for every point of view, tried to work out their thought process, but I give up. The powers that be in terms of IT provision in Northern Ireland Education have decided that Blogger is too much of a risk to young minds and blocked it from the C2K network. This means that anyone trying to access a Blogger or Blogspot blog from any school in Northern Ireland will be shown a blocked access page instead.

I am appalled. As an English teacher I teach the variety and uses of blogs, I encouraged pupils to express themselves using blogs, I used blogs to look at the concept of writing for a specific audience. Now I am completely unable to look up any of my trusted sites.

It’s not just blogging that is suffering from C2k blocking. When I was a learning support teacher I regularly used word games from the East of the Web website. These were incredibly useful and fun ways to improve all kinds of literacy skills. Within six months of discovering them I lost them again – apparently in their clampdown on gaming sites East of the Web got the chop again. Surely even the IT geeks in Belfast running our network can distinguish between educational games and games where little cartoon tanks firing atom bombs at each other – maybe then they can explain why my pupils can play the later but not the former.

From a personal point of view it’s a pain in the arse as well. For the better part of two years I’ve been adding posts to ToaSNT during my lunches and free periods. Now that’s impossible – well almost.

In their efforts to avoid our impressionable young folks seeing anything with bad language, sex or violence C2K have blocked even the tamest of sites. By blocking hardcore porn the pupils moved to softcore, by blocking that the pupils moved onto ‘mild references to’, when all of that got blocked pupils moved into chat rooms. But, as we all know, chat rooms are evil and eventually got blocked. The pupils then moved into social interaction sites. Then Bebo and Myspace made headline news and Youtube became the home of happy slapping – so they got banned. This meant that anything that allowed pupils to upload photos, share ideas or actually express an opinion (horror!) had to be blocked and so we get to wave goodbye to blogs – well almost.

You see, here’s the thing. With everything of interest blocked the pupils had to get inventive. Every week they discover a new proxy site and, before it gets blocked, use it to check out their bebo pages and prank youtubes. Of course the proxies aren’t exactly discerning types and so we see the return of hardcore porn and sickening violence.

Ironic, eh?

So C2K please, for the sake of my sanity and a sex ed teacher’s ability to research lesson plans, get off your power filled, litigation fearing censor fest and give us a system that lets us teach… and maybe write the odd blog entry during our frees.

I am so SO sorry

I was thinking of changing the title of this blog to ‘Thoughts of a Substitute Teacher (TOAST)’ but to be honest being a substitute teacher commands so little respect that I doubt you’d bother listening to me long enough to actually read the explanation. You’d be plotting how you could put a drawing pin on my seat, or how you could get every mobile phone in the room to go off at exactly the same moment, or how you could persuade me that your regular teacher allows you to watch videos and eat popcorn in class all the time.

Maybe it would help if we changed the name. Substitute teacher sounds like someone who you bring on when the science teacher gets injured in a nasty challenge down the left wing. Maybe we should call them ‘guest teachers.’

I have to apologise to sub teachers everywhere. As a pupil I mocked you, I showed you no respect and I took advantage of your temporary status by pushing classroom boundaries to the limit at every opportunity. As a teacher I belittled your standing and possibly contributed to your hardships by not leaving enough work to cover a Friday afternoon double period. Covering the odd class for an absent colleague every now and again gave me the false impression that yours was a pressure-free existence, void of challenge or purpose. My opinions have changed dramatically.

For the past few months I have been a substitute teacher and I don’t believe I have done a more difficult job in my life. Standing in front of a group of thirty kids, none of whom you know, a group of kids who are determined to push you as far as they can, a group of kids whose names include (apparently) David Beckham, Mickey Mouse, Cevin(sic) Costner and Cesc Fabregas… Standing there knowing that you have to gainfully employ them despite the fact that you don’t know what topic/unit of work they’re doing, what work they’ve already done and in what ability range they lie. Of course there’s no point in asking them what they’ve done so far:

Miss always reads to us from Autotrader, and then sends us down to the off license for some WKD Blue.We don’t have any textbooks. We watch Jeremy Kyle and make notes on lie detectors and their use in the discovery of whether or not some woman’s husband has been sleeping with her sister for three years. Notes? No, sorry, don’t know what they are – but we do a lot of word searches and colouring in.

So, here it is – my open letter of apology to substitute teachers everywhere. Yours is not an easy lot. You have skills I didn’t know existed and deserve every bit as much respect, if not more, than regular teachers. I have had my eyes opened with crowbars and offer my most humble apology – I am truly, truly sorry.

unfamiliar

It’s an odd thing, familiarity. You never know where you are with it.

This morning I took a walk around a town I’ve lived beside for thirty odd years. I go through Coleraine at least seven or eight times every week. I would know my way around it blindfolded. I know all the shortcuts, all the best parking spots… my car can practically operate in auto pilot I know the place so well. Well, I know the place so well from behind a steering wheel. Other than the town centre, the parks, the area round the football ground and the university my experience of Coleraine is based on what I see while driving about. Today I took to my feet.

I was forced to. Much as I would love to say I just decided to take a long walk I cannot. I had to leave my, recently crashed into, car at the fire station to get some bodywork done (Who’d have thought that firemen moonlight as bodyshop workers? – that’s two months of a dreamboat calendar accounted for right there) Anyway, I was sans wheels in Coleraine with nothing to do while two men repaired my car between callouts – and so I walked.

And walked. I don’t think I’d ever been in Coleraine so early in the morning before. I’d certainly never walked through Coleraine so early in the morning. Snow had fallen overnight and the place looked so clean and unspoiled. It was almost beautiful. And time after time as I walked I saw new things – things I never knew existed. I used to be incredibly disparaging of a friend of mine who, although having lived there almost his entire life, didn’t really know his way around the town. Yet here I was – lost. For three hours I walked through areas I’d never been through, along alleyways I never knew existed, up stairs which ended I had no idea where. As I climbed (very gingerly) a steep hill and spotted an amazing old house, long abandoned and hidden from view of the road by new developments I had a startling feeling – a good startle.

I’ve never been married but I imagine it must be like that when you’ve lived with someone for years, you’re shared your life, your loves, your pains and your joys. You know each other so well that you barely need to utter a sentence to understand one another completely. Then one day you’re looking at your wife and she does something you’ve never seen her do before – It must be wonderful, after all that time together, to be reminded that there are still things to learn about each other and new experiences to be had. It has to be healthy for a relationship… unless of course the something new you see her doing is having an affair with your friend… that wouldn’t be healthy.

Of course it wasn’t all a morning of joy unbounded. I saw an old newsagent where I used to buy comics had been turned into a chip shop. I saw run down residential areas that seemed uncared for. But when I was standing on top of that hill, after seeing that house, I turned around and looked down across the horizontal profile of the town. Looking at those familiar buildings from a new perspective made it seem like an amazing place to be right now.

local warming

Here’s the thing – I think a lot about global warming. It’s something I feel is very important. However, up until yesterday anyway, it’s all been a bit virtual for me. I’ve watched reports on the long term effects, seen maps of England with East Anglia submerged, listened to accounts from Inuit communities whose lives are being directly effected, I’ve been horrified by the suffering caused by natural disasters – but it’s all been so far away (either in time or space.) As far as the right here, right now is concerned all I’ve noticed is a distinct lack of snow and a bit more rainfall. Not overly immediate.

Not until yesterday that is.It was a news story towards the end of the report on five live (on AM, FM, online at BBC.co.uk, digital radio, freeview, sky, virgin media, and tapped out in Morse Code on your water pipes) about how the Giants Causeway was at risk of being swept away due to climate change. The Giant’s Causeway? Swept away? That’s a bit major – and it’s happening less than ten miles away. Apparently within fifty years Ireland’s most famous basalt stones could have been removed by stronger than usual wave and tidal action brought on by global warming. For the vast majority of the world’s population this news would be but a mild tickle in the back of the throat – but for those of us who’ve grown up in this area, who’ve taken for granted that fact that we live right beside a world heritage site, who’ve used the old GC as a sole source of bragging rights… this is earth shattering – literally.

The iconic world heritage site, one of the province's biggest tourist attractions, will be under threat if sea levels rise and storms worsen, said the National Trust conservation organisation, which owns and manages the site. The report warned that the site was at risk from coastal erosion and flooding over this century.

I love the Giant’s Causeway. It’s a special place. The stones that project into the North Sea don’t actually do it for me – although that’s what brings the tourists. I love the feel of the place, the way the breeze tries to throw you off the cliff, the way the sun wets over the ocean, the way everything looks like an amazing photograph. When I go walking up there with friends who don’t live in the area they are always amused that I greet everyone I pass – local or tourist. They can’t get over the fact that someone so moody and reserved is so friendly when on the cliff walk. I tell them it’s an unofficial tourist board ruling, that we have to project the stereotypical Irish personality so that the Americans will go home and tell everyone how friendly we are. I tell them that but really I just feel better when I’m breathing the fresh air surrounded by glorious creation. When I feel better I feel friendlier – I want to share the joy.

The idea of that ceasing to exist within my possible lifetime is an incredible, terrible thing. I would be sullen and miserable all the time, and you wouldn’t like me when I’m sullen and miserable.