that's some good parking

my momma told me there'll be days like this

When it's not always raining
there'll be days like this
When there's noone complaining
there'll be days like this

Well today it was raining - and today I did a lot of complaining. In fact you (as in the internet and all who sail in her) are collectively the 23rd person to whom I have complained today about today. I hate today. I wish there was no today. I'd be more than happy for yesterday and tomorrow to cosy up on the sofa and watch movies forgetting today exists.

This morning I was woken at some unearthly hour by the phone ringing. I ignored it. I've a bad dose of a cold and I hadn't slept very well - I needed my rest.

Twenty minutes later it started up again and I raised myself and plodded slowly to the phone - which stopped ringing as I reached to answer it - of course.

A couple of minutes and it was ringing again. I was beside it. The third different number to phone. I answered it.

Apparently, according to the neighbour, my father had sheep in a field beside his house. My father is on a wee trip to visit my brother and his family in Scotland. My father's sheep, the neighbour informed me, were no longer in the field and had just gone running past his house. Of course they were - they never break out when Dad is actually in the country; they save all their troubles to take out on me when he's not around.

No time to have any breakfast, shower or shave, I threw on my school clothes and jumped in my car. By the time I arrived there was no sign of any sheep. I checked in the verges, in peoples' gardens, below parked vehicles... nothing... anywhere. Assuming they had run up a local dirt track I blocked the end of it with my car and set off - in my suit - in the rain - through the mud - up the lane.

The rain was in torrents. What had been puddles once became mighty rivers and lakes. The wind beat the rain drops into my face like leather whips - my eyes stinging and my lips cracked and raw. As I checked in holes and gaps in hedges the briars wrapped themselves round my legs and ripped at my skin through my drenched suit.

A little under a mile up the lane I stopped, ankle deep in mud, in my tracks. In the distance I saw the lost sheep come running back in my direction - another neighbour behind them pushing them along. I don't know if there were tears of joy, tears of pain - or just more rain in my eyes but my relief was palpable. Between us we got them into a vacant field and I thanked James as I counted the sheep in through the gate.

My relief was short lived. We were one short.

I set off again checking fields, crossing streams, climbing gates... I was just about to give up when eventually I found her and was able to herd her into the field with her friends. I now had less than ten minutes before the start of my first class and I was a ten minute drive away from school. Driving faster than I should have down a tiny, bumpy lane led to some worrying sounds coming from various parts of my car. I also cursed the fact that I had washed it the day before as thick mud sprayed up all around me. But I got there. I arrived at school and heard the bell go for first lesson.

Have you ever had one of those days that started so badly you knew it could only get better? Well this wasn't one of them. As the mud dried on my suit and my hair took on shapes I've never seen before, and as I tried to ignore the agricultural smell that seemed to be fermenting as time passed, I had nightmare class after nightmare class. Each seemed more unsettled than the last and more mischievous. I didn't have a break at break because I do break duty on Thursdays and even my lunch time had been recommissioned as an English Department Meeting.

By the end of the day I could feel a blood vessel pulsing behind my eye - I took that as a bad sign.

As I walked out the door and made my way over to my mud coloured car I pondered on the events of the day. A curious thing struck me.

I was so unable to cope with it all. The fact that it was a one off is the redemption in the tale. If I thought that tomorrow held more of the same I don't know what I would do (It won't - not after the job I did on the hole the sheep got out of this morning -- NOTHING is getting out of that field until their rightful owner returns.)

I thought about teachers who do have to put up with that kind of stress more regularly. The ones with young families - sleepless nights, ill children, the constraints of parental responsibility. There are people out there who have that level of stress and teach full time - on a daily basis. They're insane! I both admire and pity them to extremes. Hundreds of them. Probably thousands.

And it's not just teachers. Every job that requires commitment, stress, dedication - to do that and bring up a family. I shake my head.

So when, as Van Morrison sang, my mama told me there'd be days like this - it's probably cause she'd been through plenty of them herself. And plenty much better.

When noone steps on my dreams
there'll be days like this
When people understand what I mean
there'll be days like this
When you bring out the changes
of how everything is
Well my momma told me
there'll be days like this

because you read this blog, I'd recommend you also try...

Is it just me or are Amazon's recommendations becoming a little more random? So because I bought a lead to charge my ipod in my car I'm likely to enjoy the music of Tiffany Page? Really? Um... why?

Actually the ploy worked. I checked some of her songs and a couple of videos. She's not bad. Very pretty - the guitar slinging is a good look for her - quite deep voice, very moody - I heard shadows of eighties female punk in there, and bizarrely Joan Jett in some tracks - as well as some faintly intelligent lyrics...

But try as I might I couldn't find any reference to the joys of charging mp3 players on the go. Not a single mention. But they must be right. I'll just buy the album to make sure.

writing is improved - if a little robotic

Mr C responds creatively and imaginatively to a variety of texts and a range of stimuli. He writes showing reasonable development with basic accuracy. Mr C has the potential to do well in this subject but he must learn to make sensible, relevant contributions to class discussion. Mr C must improve his standard of presentation. Mr C hates, with a passion normally reserved for avocado based salads, this new system for writing end of year school reports.

Any of you who are teachers will know the joy that is writing annual reports for a few thousand pupils. The numbing effect it has on your brain, the ebbing of your will to breathe, and the inevitable repetitive strain injuries are surely some of the reasons we became teachers in the first place. Those of you who aren’t teachers will undoubtedly remember reports written about you. Pride, shame, amusement, despair, anger… They, love them or not, affected a little bit of who you were to become.

“The stick and carrot must be very much in evidence before this particular donkey decides to exert itself.”

"When the workers of the world unite it would be presumptuous of Dewhurst to include himself among their number."

“The improvement in his handwriting has revealed his inability to spell.”

I have been teaching long enough to (just) predate the influence of digital technology on reports. At the end of my first year a huge book was sent around the staff for each class. The reports were hand written and every mistake, no matter how tiny, became catastrophes. If you made one you had to reject the whole sheet for that pupil and all the teachers would have to rewrite their comments. The trick was either to be the first to comment (thus fewer teachers would be affected by any incompetence on your part) or to invest in an erasable ink pen. I did neither. I wasn’t liked that year.

“He has given me a new definition of stoicism: he grins and I bear it.”

“This boy does not need a Scripture teacher. He needs a missionary.”

“Would be lazy but for absence.”

Of course all of this was no longer a problem with the introduction of computers and such. Mistakes could be corrected easily and the copy and paste functions were a Godsend.

But, perhaps like so many aspects of the modern world, it’s all gone too far now. The system we use in this school now simply requires us to select five sentences from a preformed comment bank. We don’t write comments – we click buttons.

“He has an overdeveloped unawareness.”

“At least his education hasn’t gone to his head.”

“Your son sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them.”

And I can’t help but feel we’ve lost something special in the process. The quotes I’ve included here are genuine comments sent in to the letters page of the Daily Telegraph. They may seem harsh – but then I only close the ones I thought would raise a smile. Sure they show a concerning level of derision and sarcasm – but they also show individualism, and wit. We can no longer show our individualism it seems – we can no longer possess wit. But it’s not just that.
Gone is the ability to qualify statements with personal disclaimers; gone is the ability to encode hidden meanings and the art of the backhanded compliment. Maybe that’s the whole point of this new system – maybe by controlling what comments can be used we remove all risk of ‘misunderstandings.’

But it’s all so robotic and impersonal. Will parents/pupils really find “________ lacks confidence when speaking but can listen actively and respond with understanding. _______ can read numerous types of texts, including fiction, non fiction and media with a high level of understanding, attempting to use evidence, and he writes confidently in a range of forms that suit different audiences with good levels of accuracy. If he is to improve he must show a more positive attitude to his work” more useful than a couple of sentences written specifically for that pupil with some personal points for improvement? Somehow I doubt it.

ambition vrs apathy

Its sad I know, but I live in a part of the world where, for a large part of the population, ambition and a desire to succeed is viewed with suspicion and derision.

I just had a young man come to me looking for extra revision materials for his GCSEs. Nothing untoward about that. I actually had a booklet of such material made up already for a girl the year below him. What struck me was the manner in which he asked for it.

I was in my classroom catching up on some marking after school. A shadow passed my door – then paused – then passed again. Eventually a face peered in, looked in each corner of the room, as if checking that it was completely empty. Quietly he opened the door and backed into the room checking the corridor as he went, and closed the door behind him before approaching the desk in a decidedly embarrassed fashion.

“Sir, sir, um, sir. I was wondering if you had anything I could use to revise for this exam.”

“For this exam?”

“The GCSE exam.”

“Paper 1 or 2?”

“Um, both.”

“Actually I think I may just have. Hold on till I check if I have an extra copy.”

I started to root around in my drawer for the sheaves of paper. He looked panicked and slammed a USB pen drive on my desk, shutting the drawer with his thigh as he did so.

“I was thinking you could copy the files onto this – you know – to save you any hassle.”

“Not a problem, give me a sec and I’ll do it now.”

Again the panic. He was looking at the door as much as he was looking at me now. It was obvious he didn’t want to be seen.

“I was thinking I could maybe pick them up in a bit. You’ll still be here in half an hour?”

And with that he was gone. And I was left holding a memory pen wondering what on earth had just happened.

It was simple of course. The young man, who incidentally had spent most of the three weeks I’d been teaching him with his feet on the desk pretending to sleep, wanted to pass his exam – but he didn’t want anyone to know that it mattered to him. I honestly believe that, if he’d been discovered in his English room, he would have come up with some excuse before disappearing and gone into the exam revision-material-less. His image was more important to him than his exams. Hopefully I won’t sound overly dramatic when I say that his image was more important to him than his future.

It’s a real problem here. Working in secondary schools I see it all the time – and it’s not easy to break through. Maybe it’s different in the grammar school sector with their super ambitious career students - but try getting any of the pupils here to admit that they like school or specific subjects is very difficult – getting them to admit that they want to be good at something like English is almost impossible.

The problem is they do want to be good at it. They do want to pass. They want to pass with the greatest marks ever achieved in the history of GCSEs. There is real tragedy then in the way their pride engages their logic in an horrific battle to the death; their relationship with success like the doomed potential love affair between two passing strangers in a William Trevor short story.

That student came and picked up his memory pen. When he’s gone through the notes he’ll understand what is expected of him better than he did before he read it – but whether it will be enough to make up for two years of self imposed apathy is doubtful. It may well be too late for him.

As for me – well I start doing what I can for people like the girl in the year below him. It pains me that I can’t effortlessly inspire every one of the little people - o captain! my captain! But I can’t. And I have to keep telling myself that three weeks is never going to be enough time to perform miracles. Tiny steps great journeys make... Or something like that.
Next year that girl will be sitting those exams and hopefully she, and those around her, will take more pride in their successes than their indifference. We can but hope and pray.

cheese pushers

The best things in life are worth that little bit of extra effort.

I was brought up to acknowledge this as a truism - and I firmly believe that there is a lot of truth in it... whether it refers to amazing socks or danish cheese.

But really. Enough is enough!

Somewhere out there someone is bound to stock havarti cheese so I no longer have to drive the fifty miles (exactly - I google mapped it) to buy some in Sprucefield when I get the cravings.

Based on a conservative 40p per mile for travel costs, adding on the £1.70 that Sainsbury's charge for the 200g blocks, that works out at almost £220 per kilo! Over $9 an ounce for those of you living stateside.

All of this leads me to four conclusions:

1. It had better be some mighty fine cheese.

2. My mental arithmetic skills are on fire today.

3. I have far too much thinking time on my hands.

and 4. Someone could make a killing selling the stuff on street corners.

the shyest teacher in the west

I’m fairly shy in real life [how ironic is it that just as I finished writing that sentence I flew out of the coffee shop, tipping my table (and coffee) over, and ran through a busy shopping mall screaming “Seán” repeatedly at the top of my voice?] Okay, well, apart from the obvious exceptions that prove the rule I am quite the introvert.

As a teacher it doesn’t pay to be too retiring however, and I manage to fight my shyness quite effectively in the class room. In many ways I am a completely different person standing in front of thirty teenagers than I am in real life. This, of course, means that my pupils often find it odd that I struggle to maintain eye contact let alone conversation once they leave school.

A few minutes ago Helena, a pupil of mine from a few years back, saw me in the distance and came running (literally) to take me for a coffee as I seemed “to have fallen off the edge of the universe” since I stopped teaching her class.
Off the edge of the universe - well, I suppose that’s one way to describe where I’m teaching now.

Helena was, in many ways, such a stereotypical emo when I taught her. She had massive parent issues on a daily basis, had become completely disillusioned with a society she wanted to reject before it rejected her, and somehow managed to turn a rather generic, bland, school uniform into a theatrical dark gothic creation. Even outside of school she was never to be seen in anything that wasn’t black.
But it wasn’t just an image thing for her; she really saw the world in various shades of purple and black.

She loved art and would always come to my class to show me what she was drawing. She was always (rightfully) proud of whatever it was and after thirty seconds of false modesty she would beam as I told her how good I thought they were. They were always dark and haunting and always absolutely beautiful. Intensely mystical worlds filled with so much detail and emotion. Epic fantasies showing an imagination I could only - well - imagine. It frustrated me, as an english teacher, that she was unable to express these worlds in words and paragraphs but I loved the fact that she shared them with me projected onto paper - and I thought they were amazing. She would explain all the various elements in that breathless excited way she always spoke - as if she had just seen something amazing and had to tell someone about it.

Every morning in form class she would plop herself in front of me, flip open her sketch pad, grin broadly and say, “Well? What d’ya think?”

And here she was, talking non stop in that excited, breathless, stream about the old times. Reminding me of the characters in our class; bringing up embarrassing incidents I had long eradicated from my memory; asking - no, interrogating - me about why I hadn’t made more effort to become a permanent fixture in that school. She was no longer the girl dressed in long black coats and platform boots with attachments, wearing far too much eye makeup. She was now a young adult; still with a rather distinctive style; but not a hint of black. In her eagerness to ask questions about what I was doing with my life now, she was forgetting to wait for answers and seemed completely oblivious to my lack of conversation. A couple of times I tried to join in - but my social ineptitude kicked in and I was reduced to smiles and nods as she told me all about art college and how she was experimenting with photography now. She told me that I’d always been her favourite teacher, qualifying it by saying that I was the only one not up their own ass. I, she informed me, cared. She said that as a teacher I tried to encourage her, not change her.

But I wasn’t her teacher any more. The different circumstances threw me somewhat. I no longer had to establish authority in the situation. I didn’t have to control the environment around me; didn’t need to fill any vacuum with constructive learning. I didn’t have to present myself as a figure deserving of pedagogical respect... and so I was completely unsure of what type of figure to present -- That is until she pulled out her sketch pad, flipped it open, grinning, and said, “Well? What d’ya think?”