Wednesday 21 December 2011

Mithering musings part 2

Restorative Justice - recently, we had a two part Insect Day on that delivered by a brace of RJ evangelists. Just what you want as twilight sessions towards the end of term. Loved the theory but cannot imagine much in the way of it being effective for our putative jail fodder. There were also grumblings and frownings among some of us old lurking deadwood that having staff go through it with some of our charmless unlovelies would undermine any effective dealings we have with some of them.

Perhaps those bastions of hero worship John Terry and Luis Suarez could undergo some RJ with their nasty little racist outbursts. Foul as many of our kids are, they are hot on their anti-racism so long that is  you are not ginger which seems to be the only thing the mythical PC brigade have failed to tackle.

Horrid headline from the Independent yesterday purportedly stating that the pursed lipped fool Gove is set to make MFL compulsory to 16. There really is no point to it unless MFL is taught properly from say age 7 and that some profound cultural shift occurs beyond the middle classes who are the only people who seem to see a need to study a language. The reality is that English in its  various forms is the default second language of the world, that is the experience of our kids who will just sit resentfully through lessons they will fail to achieve in as they see no value to languages (not even their own) and, given the demographic of our school, are simply not  academic enough to succeed. Here's an idea for little Michael - why not have a compulsory European Studies GCSE which will at least equip kids to understand a little more what is going on across the Channel and the UKs place within.









Sunday 11 December 2011

The voice of pissed off England?


JulianSorel
11 December 2011 12:22AM
David Cameron is the Prime Minister for the City of London.
The same City of London which is primarily responsible for the financial crisis.
The same City of London which contributes 11% of tax revenues each year but which is instrumental in facilitating $3trillion of tax funneled to tax havens every year.
The City has become disproportionately dominant over the last 30 years, a period in which the wealth gap in the UK has widened massively, a period in which we have all become massively indebted as real incomes for ordinary people have stagnated.
It's extraordinary that Cameron thinks that his priority is to defend the interests of the City regardless of the impact of EU isolationism on the UK manufacturing sector.
Cameron's stupidity has cheered the swivel-eyed bigots on the Right of his party and his sponsors in the City, but it was not done in the national interest and it will tear the coalition apart, after which it will tear the Tory Party apart.
The most momentuous foreign policy decision in decades, and one which he and the Europhobes will come to rue in the coming years.

Old age


Written by my Mother - in - Law during one of her increasingly rare less un-lucid moments. She is in a (s)care home who do their limited best despite the fees they rake in. 

In another not so distant life she has been a published writer, artist and poet, local rather than national, also a linguist and fellow teacher and is fading from view. She is past her use-by date and only too aware of it.

Who knows the stories of the others, all women,  keeping our seats warm in the waiting room for death?



Old Age

Our bodies stiff
Head and neck so gently bent
Towards the earth

Strutting stumbling struggling through
Old age arrives
We feel, though we may not say, too old to be alive
Why do we often wish to die
Cut our throats and pass away
Not have another day spent struggling

Unseen unwanted
So it seems
Only really loved
Within our dreams

Saturday 19 November 2011

Children in Need

Call me curmudgeonly if you will go on, but Children in Need and bloody Pudsey bear is so annoying. Yes, we all get to go to school in civilian clothes which provides a much more relaxing atmosphere. The kids all cough up a pound, we all buy some ghastly home made cakes, and some staff do silly things to raise money. All good. I also imagine that some of the kids who (have to) chuck in a pound may probably be benefiting in some way from the worthy deeds. Yes, like Poppy day, (or is it month now?) we all get to feel good about our generosity because it is the right thing. Undoubtedly.

What we, and the self-satisfied slebs doing their bit for an unquestionably good cause, are not doing is asking why we still tolerate children being in need in one of the world's richest nations.

Saturday 29 October 2011

The webbed fingers of Ofsted

Well - it had been on the cards since I arrived at the school last year. The Ofsted Black Opps squad announced their imminent arrival  last Monday morning. The itchily sweaty wise head, complete with pulsing neck vein matching the ripplingly throbbing one on her temple,  called an emergency lunchtime meeting much to the grumbles and growlings of the Union reps as it intruded on time which is not the Academy's to take.  Regardless, TWH informed a resigned staff of the imminent descent of inspectors via teleport on Wednesday for 48 hours of rampant Ofsteding brought on by rubbish attendance, delusional massaging of figures notwithstanding, and less than brilliant exam figures. Cue a 72 hour mithering mass panic attack to the accompanying Benny Hill soundtrack played on our tinny BSF tannoy.

SLT turned a clammy and sweaty grey / white, they had become drawn and squeaky voiced as the news was delivered. Number 2 a young yet prematurely wrinkled Maggie Thatcheresque clone went into fist punching mode about getting our teaching bases (formerly class rooms) into order and gave a patronising diatribe on the bleedin obvious before curling into the fetal position and frothing on the BSF stain free carpet sponsored by Northgate.  Following the announcement of the impending nervous breakdown we sloped out leaving one or two of the NQTs  screaming to no one in particular as to how they could  get all the books marked by Wednesday. Being poorly mentored they still did not realise that NQT time is different to that of others. The fat women sought solace in Weight Watchers biscuits in the micro staffroom  and the the older wiser hands continued to count down to retirement before 70  doing a mental shrug as the inspections are not like they were.

With the school cracks still covered up from a recentish Open Evening it could have been much worse something like the week long inspired sieges of yore inspired by the not so great friend of Mel - and now mostly forgotten or unheard of Chris Woodhead. He meant well but really messed up a lot of careers and helped bring on the patronising demeaning of teaching as a profession. Nonetheless, with attendance being the biggy, we suspected that Those Upstairs and their made up, self-sought, poorly thought through policies would come under the Cyclops's gaze Ofsteds. Sympathy and empathy were short not least as TWH (increasingly resembling a beleagured female versions of John Major) and her politburo had long lost the staff room resulting in a mass exodus of middle management and NQTs last year.

Insouciance and purpose were feigned at the same time while the school rode a strange undercurrent of fear highlighted, I observed , on my way to the microtoilet near the megaoffice, by  the high-heeled short-haired, good ladies of the Stasi who were busy shredding forests full of paper while the PFI companies who really run the school furtively took out wheel barrowfuls of hard-drives to help the landfill.

News and gleeful rumours about the academy being closed spread around the kids who took  understandable pleasure in pointing and laughing saying how Mrs X was going to get the sack for the crime of trying to enforce high standards, and how they were going to 'dob in' the English department for making them read Shakespeare (gay), poetry (trampy). Understandably they were also making plans to see off the grumpy and shouty witch in charge of inculcating superstition and they were set to expose the rampant crossdressing and  lipstick lesbianism among the male members of the  PE department. It is (or was) on bloody Facebook so it must be true.
A brace of Ofsteds
The Big Days

On Wednesday a weird quiet enveloped the Academy once known as a school. While we all waited for the inspectors to beam down. Little Lucie (the only child known to have read a book in my vertical mentor group) explained to the other Year 7s how you could tell if someone was an Ofsted. She whispered that you had to look out for strangers of well-passed a certain age, in ill-fitting suits, bad ties and scruffy shoes. Their leader is always a lady in bad glasses who has the smile of someone who can't smile and has webbed scaly fingers. The clincher is that they have neither shadows nor reflections. Drawing on past hits her observations were not far off the mark.

Observations

So for the days of occupation they were in, my classes were a little tighter than usual, the kids co-operated and conspired for a chocolate. - even the bottom feeders of Year 8 - a classic Daily Mail class of semi-criminal yobs, yobettes - feral would be the mot-du-jour I suppose. Fortunately, the Ofsted came to see me first thing with a second bottom set of Year 9s on the computers when they were still sloughing off the effects of late night Black Opps, bloody Facebook, junk food, drugs and / or  porn. I know my kids and that will be what they remember from their often irrelevant school days.

As weird coincidence would have it my own particular Ofsted had worked in the same part of Asia as I once had and in the very small world that is Expatland  it turned out we had some mutual acquaintances who we had gone drinking and snorkelling with at different times. Lovely. So while we were seeking out common friends and experiences the girls had got round the firewall and were having arguments on bloody Facebook and the boys were looking at football or cars. After 30 mins of idle chat the Ofsted left with a smile.

So that was that - rumours of sightings, visitings, and abductions spread through the days. Idle chat and speculation went from being busted down from Outstanding (with a different head and SLT) to some mean spiritied folk wishing a Fail which is conceivable. Pleasingly, SLT were suitably zombiefied. 

The siege over - initial reports and patronising from the Deputy was that we had lost our Outstanding - nothing to do with the teaching which, being professional, we all knew anyway.