I’ve just had a little squizz through the end-of-year brain dumps that I’ve done for the last few years and a commonly recurring theme is bonkersness and new pathways forming. I do realise that I am pretty much mad as a box of frogs and that at times I do […]
#edutwitter
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My Dad started his working life out as a mechanical engineer, designing gearboxes for Leyland lorries in Preston. He got chartered and by the time he retired he was doing stuff around people management and training people using CAD/CAM systems for IBM. I liked hitting stuff, and loved maths and […]
A few years ago, there was a song that came out and it was hilarious. It brought proper joy to my little Sheffield world and made me giggle a lot: What’s the Meaning of Stonehenge, by Ylvis I’d not ever been to Stonehenge at that point and in all honesty, […]
This last week I’ve been on half term- just the last one before I leave my current job in teaching. I’ve been lucky enough to visit all sorts of different places up and down the M1 and A1 as part of my quest to take the small human northwards to […]
I was chatting to one of my tutor-kiddos the other day because we are doing about Jekyll and Hyde. The session we had was about identity and profiles people have online. We got to talking about Instagram because of the way Jekyll and Hyde is, in its rawest form, about […]
read a thing on the TES just now about teacher retention, and it made think quite a lot. I’ve been in teaching in various guises and roles for 15 years, some of which have been in mainstream, some in management, private schools and I’ve seen a lot. I’ve been very, […]
Heisenberg, I am not. A clever physicist I am not. Epically good at clever existentialism, I am not. I do have the odd clever moment and sometimes use my brain (when it’s not in a jar, kicking about somewhere at the back of my wardrobe). So I will caveat this […]
Driving home from my folks’ house the other day, the child asked me what a noise was. I told him it was music. Then he said, but I can’t see it! He asked me what it was and why we couldn’t see music. I had to think about it and […]
There is an awful lot of discussion out there in the ether as to whether teaching is a vocation, a job, a career, or a dark and mysterious, magical art. I am pretty sure at times the main pre-requisite for teaching, particularly of the primary-school persuasion, is the capacity to […]
I whole heartedly believe that the basis of anything we do in life is our relationship with the people doing it with us, to us or for us. Our whole social world is transactional. Through our positions in our social sphere, our statuses are conceived, cultivated and sometimes lost. Our […]
So I don’t often write anything about the Small Ross, because essentially, it’s his life and it matters that he gets ownership of what appears on tinterwebs about him. This isn’t really about him but he’s sort of implicated in it in a way! So all the way through being […]
I remember years ago, I watched Clueless (the film) and they talked about “surfing the crimson wave”. It sounded really cool and it took me a good few more years to work out what they actually meant. Then I wished it was as cool as they’d made it sound. For […]
Yesterday, for reasons still unknown, I decided that I wanted to listen to George Michael. I wasn’t a fan in the 80s, mainly because I was in primary school and in the 90s, I was far too complicated and into grunge! But as I got older and his music developed […]
I was talking with a friend the other day- she is a home educator and her kids are AMAZING! For their family, it’s a proactive decision and one that they made rather than a situation that was foist upon them because school had been horrible. But talking with her the […]
I trained to teach in 2006-2007 based at Sheffield Hallam Uni but my main placement was at a school I already knew well in Barnsley. At the time I trained, we were in the throes of the ‘Every Child Matters’ and ‘Stage not Age’ bit of education policy. The aims […]
It’s approaching the final week of school for those of us in the State Sector in England. Some of my lovely (and lucky?!) friends and colleagues, who work in independent schools have already broken up so they’re a week of two ahead of me in the decompression stakes, I think. […]
I used to have piano lessons and I actually got really, really far with it- grade 8. Doing that at the same time as A Levels was a really, really stupid thing to do but that’s another brain-fart! So one of the most important things that my piano teacher always […]
Trustee: “A trustee is someone with legal control of money or property that is kept or invested for another person, company, or organization”. (Collins, Undated) This happened to me on Saturday just gone. I got made a trustee. I say this in what seems to be a really passive way: […]
The fear exists and is very much in the house. Well, the garden office at this point in time. But the fear is definitely here. A dude. A dyslexia-famous dude had messaged me this morning, via my website. He’s like ‘been on BBC Breakfast’ famous because of a book he […]
What are we actually doing when we say that education is important? Who is it important for and what do we mean by education?They seem like they should be really easy, straightforward questions to answer at a first glance, and then you scratch the surface of any answer that’s given […]
Oh no they aren’t… oh… wait… Oh yes they are… or not? Maybe? It’s that mythical child we’re looking for. It’s the Schroendinger’s child of remote learning. It’s the child who is doing nothing at home learning because provision is so poor, and they don’t access it because teachers are […]
I saw a meme the other day and it was fantastic. It showed a person with a massive great big stone on their back. It had all of the things that are crappy in the world at the moment written on it: COVID; Lockdown; home-schooling; no time to work; not […]
Or at least that’s what some people who have you think! Last week teachers were superheroes and now we’ve reverted to being workshy faineants who only work 9 till 3 at a push. Never is our position anywhere in the middle. There are three things that prompted me to write […]
Neither it would seem. Apparently, according to the internet we (teachers I mean) are either superhumans or lazy gits. And which end of the teachering-spectrum we fall depends on which particularly flavour of newspaper you read. I’m bored of the construction of teachers as lazy. It doesn’t upset me or […]
When different parts of a body don’t speak to one another (or communicate through nerves and whatnot) then that body tends to have difficulties doing various bits and bobs. If I try to chew with my whole mouth but I’ve had something done on my teeth with anaesthetic, then my […]
I worked with a student this week and they shared their school-screen with me. They showed me the repository for all their work and it hurt my head and I’m the adult. There was so much for them to process and to manage. The student’s school is, to be fair, […]
Where do mess-ups stop, and accountability begin? In any other industry, you’d get in huge amounts of bother for the way that education has been planned and how it has veered from one course to another with seeming wallies at the helm. You’d lay down conservative policies and some cautious […]
This term has been a massive ridiculous mess of ridiculousness and messiness. The year since March has been insane. I saw a thing on Facebook the other day that read: January, February March, COVID, Christmas. It’s not wrong. The year has been pretty pants. And pretty pants is how I’m […]
Today I broke our food processor. It’s not a £400 disaster, massive mess-up, that would have been the case if we’d had one of those lovely Kenwood ones or something similar. It was a second-hand one from my parents and they’d had it for ages, and even then I’ve not […]
The gravity of what I do when I work with kiddos hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday. A kiddo I’ve been working with also was always going to be assessed by me this summer, but it ran a little later than we were hoping to start everything off […]
On Tuesday, I had a twitter chat with a chap I met at a conference a couple of years ago. He’s a nice bloke and works in education policy, and computery stuff, and setting up what teachers need to teach. He has done some really important work and has raised […]
Today’s team meeting for the project I work on with Swansea uni was attended by all and good catching up was had. They are all such lovely people. Lyle has written a book and we’re all in it. We wrote stuff ourselves and she’s included it. I do sound a […]
Church was on on Sunday and for it being a bit apocalyptic with all the space and tape everywhere, it was actually quite good. It was good to be a building with people that are lovely and who I usually spend a lot of time talking to. After that I […]
Back in the Day A ‘Walk of shame’ has always had really negative and stigmatised connotations for me. It was something to sort-of hide and sort-of revel in when I was at uni and playing rugby. It tended to be preceded by a somewhat jaunty and vivacious night out with […]
I’m not in charge of the world. I think it would be terrifying if I were. Unlimited Viennese truffles for me would be first order but then the real stuff would kick in. I think any world-domination plan/chocolate procurement plan should carefully consider what the values are that underpin the […]
I live in a strange old twilight zone between schools and Universities. It’s manifested in my home life and professional lives concurrently, and at the moment, it’s properly bruising my brain. Scottish Highers and Standard Grades. A levels. GCSEs. They’ve all been cancelled this year and SATs have been stopped […]
I’m in the National Education Union. I have been in the NASUWT in a past life in Yorkshire, before I went to South America for a while, then moved to the South West. I am proud Trade Unionist and I value what unions work for and their purpose of improving […]
I have the brain of an unreliable goldfish. I can’t remember anything. I would forget my appendages, were they not fully attached to my person. And even then, I have been known to fall over my own feet because I don’t quite realise where they are! And yet I’m not […]
Unprecedented. Unparalleled. Extra-ordinary. These are all part of words and phrases that we’ve heard a lot over the last 3 months or so since the COVID-19 lockdown. And it’s not wrong. We are in really strange old times and it may well be that way for a while yet. Shops […]
This last month has been bonkers. It’s properly bonkers. May is usually a busy one with family birthdays, bank holidays and frequent trips up the A350. The weather is usually stunning (I’m a big fan of late spring and early summer), and we’re gearing up for a whole load of […]
“No they can’t. Or well, perhaps they can because parents are home-schooling perfectly well and they don’t need teachers at all.” “Look at the New Oak Academy materials that we’ve had to make because schools aren’t doing what they need to and it’s just not good enough. In fact it’s […]
That’s it. I confess. I have LITERALLY been watching grass grow. That is where my life has got to. The thing is, I confess again… it’s not the first time I’ve done it. About 5 years ago, our house and garden needed gutting and re-doing. Part of that garden re-do […]
Lock down is happening in spring, so each week the days are getting longer and the nights are getting shorter. I like that. I am a daytime person and I love natural light. As I write this, I am next to our big front room windows that let light flood […]
When I’m in school it’s for 2 days a week. It’s a cracking 2 days a week and I enjoy is immensely. It’s a good chunk of my general weekly workload and it’s something that makes everything else I do feasible. But it’s also not that much of the week […]
I’ve got dogs. Anyone who knows me or follows me on Twitter or Facebook will know this and probably think I am a daft, dog-crazy pet-parent. I am. I am all of those things and soooooo much more when it comes to these hounds. They are absolutely my world and […]
Live streaming lessons? Me?!?! No-one needs to see that. EVER. I’m lucky (or actually, my kids are lucky) that no one is expecting me to live-stream. But some schools are. It’s not that I can’t do it. I can. But no. Just no. Not for a whole class, in the […]
I will preface this with the fact that I won’t use any references. I won’t cite anything proper. I’m just going to have a bit of a ramble. Lots of people on my Facebook (old grump here!) and Twitter feeds are talking about home-schooling their kids. And they’re finding it […]
Today, I got a lovely comment from a student on Show My Homework. The student doesn’t always find learning easy and has a wobbly time in life. But they engaged, did their work beautifully and on time. And I could give them feedback in a way that works for lots […]
I’ve got dyslexia and it can be a bit of a pain at times. Reading, writing and remembering stuff just isn’t the easiest thing in the world ever. But sometimes, I’ve got dyslexia and it isn’t a pain. Sometimes it leads to amazing things and opportunities. It spurred me on […]
“I can’t do anything with them at home!” “He’s at school, so you need to deal with him!” “She’s so moody! I just can’t talk to her!” The number of times I’ve heard these phrases (or something equivalent), I cannot tell, both as a form tutor and as SENDCo. Sometimes […]