Diary of a Trainee Teacher

Ah, bureaucracy, sucking the fun out of life! Does anyone else agree that making host families (every member of them) have an enhanced CRB check before allowing them to play host to a foreign exchange student might make it more and more difficult to convince parents to take part? CRB checks are time consuming and frustrating, but a necessary part of working with children. You don’t need one to be a parent or to have a family, and that’s why you go on an exchange, to live with a family. I can also see a battery of fussy parents insisting that if they have to have a CRB check then the families hosting their children should have something similar. The hassle just means that schools will find it too difficult to difficult to do and they’ll stop doing it!

I personally loved my exchanges, they taught me that these languages we slogged away at school at are not just useless lessons, but that people really did speak them. They taught me to love German breakfasts, French wine, German beer and French music. They taught me that the French spoke in France and the German in Germany have as many regional varieties as the English we speak here. The Guardian points out the many different experiences that would be missed out on by the next generation, should Exchanges go the way of the Dinosaurs.

While I can (just about) see the point of a functional English GCSE for kids with English as a second language…but the claim that it’s suitable for “post-16s who need a language qualification but would not wish to tackle the reading requirements of the English literature course” is, erm, difficult to comprehend. If I remember the reading was one short novel and a small selection of poems.

Granted, English GCSE might be tricky for some people, but so are Maths and Science. If we’re not careful we might end up with a large proportion of the next generation having never read a poem or heard of Shakespeare!

I Stumbled across this today, and was incredibly saddened by what this tells us about our society. Anyone who works with children, but especially men, is subject to both outside scrutiny and internal self consciousness when it comes to the matter of touching children. As a society we have internalised the idea that to touch a child is somehow perverted. We are also wary of taking photos of children, even when in a public place, and I know that I am always very careful when speaking to children I don’t know that their parents can see very clearly that I don’t mean their kiddies any harm.

Touch is important for everyone, not just children. In the TV show ‘Pushing Daisies’ which I watched for the first time yesterday, one of the characters refers to a hug as an ‘emotional heimlich’, as a way of releasing pent up emotions and making you feel better. The writers and directors of this show clearly shared my view of the importance of touch, as the main character, who grew up wary of touching people (or even his dog) for fear of killing them is very clearly emotionally crippled as a result.

It depresses me that society has got to this stage, where young children may only be touched (and by this I mean in a friendly, nurturing way rather than a sexualised or fetishised way) by their parents and family members and older children are vilified by the media as hoody wearing thugs.

I might even argue that there might be some connection between children who are not touched and the thugs they grow up to be.

I just wanted to share this with you.

I know it’s about the US, but the lessons are the same.

Hooray! I’ve now received a notification from the Student Loans company, they will lend me some money (and give me some too) and actually I’ll be quite well off next year. That’s very good news.

Also, the deputy head of my former primary school as consented to allow me to do my primary placement with them, they sent the documentation directly to the university, rather than to me, which is why I didn’t know.

EDIT: I received my certificate of good conduct from Germany – so I am now really officially clear.

I’ve also approached the gym with a request to cancel my membership, so this means the to do list is now a lot shorter – find a house (and move into it), secure Mr Meanor a job and complete a french course.

Easy!

OK, so I didn’t make the title of this blog up, I took it from this article from the Guardian about maths exams and thought it was reasonably clever. The government’s current pet project (now that they’ve miraculously solved the next generation’s literacy problems) is to improve maths. Apparently there’s just too much innumeracy going on these days. And too many people are proud to say that they’re awful at maths.

Actually, I agree. I always hated maths at school, and despite getting an A in my GCSE I’m really not all that confident, especially in the mental arithmetic. I didn’t do very well here and I do worry about the maths exam that I’ll have to do in order to become a qualified teacher, as it involves mental maths, of the type I’ve never been that good at. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t consider myself innumerate, I just need a few tools to do maths, you know, a pen and some paper! Even without paper and a pen I’m fully capable of working out how much I’ve spent when out shopping and how much change to expect. I’d like to think that while I’m no maths whiz I can fairly consider myself functionally numerate. I don’t see why this is something I should be ashamed of, at least why should I be more ashamed to have a weakness (or at least a lack of interest) in maths, when many people declare proudly that they’re bad at French, or can’t read anything more challenging than the back of a cereal packet? How are the intelligent among us supposed to compete with the uneducated idiots (sorry, celebrities) held up as people to admire? (I think there’s another post coming about the damage the celebrity culture is doing to our young people’s educational opportunities).

The truth is that when it comes to academic matters we seem to be falling over ourselves to admit that we’re not good at something. It’s not cool to like to read, to speak a foreign language or be good at maths. Only geeks are good enough at maths to program a computer (never mind that the average cool kid’s life would be really dull if no one designed computer games) and only swots read a lot. If we want our kids to be functionally literate and numerate human beings we need to shake off this concept that educational achivement is somehow a negative thing.

I’ve been a bit busy lately, and haven’t posted. Also, I’m a bit short of things to say. 

Just about the only good thing to be happening at the moment (PGCE wise at least) is that tomorrow is my last French evening class, so its back to home study until the intensive course begins next month. I’ve enjoyed the classes, but I’ve missed the time I could have spent at home with Mister Meanor (my OH), as I’m very aware of how busy I’ll be next year. I’m not enjoying the waiting – I have things in pipelines, but I have to wait for responses from letters, for the ‘right’ time to go house hunting, and as a consequence I’ve nothing exciting to say, at least not anything education related. 

I did think about wading in on the failing schools story, but I think that’s been pretty well canvassed everywhere. Local authorities with grammar schools have failing comprehensives and the government has ignored it’s own contextual value added measurement in favour of using raw GCSE results. There’s very little more to say on the subject.

Perhaps I need some inspiration… I’ll be back soon, hopefully with something interesting to say. 

Right! To do list progress!

Today I managed to get my request for a certificate of good conduct signed, stamped and in the post. It’s cost cheques for £12 and £10.30 as well as 72p postage. Just have to wait for it to arrive now.

I’ve got my application for (another) student loan in to be assessed, including all the necessary beaurocracy, and I’ve informed my bank that I’ll be a student again and will need the overdraft facility for another year. More waiting.

I’ve emailed a primary school (actually my old one) to organise the obligatory week’s observation. Apparently we need to get a grounding in primary education to prepare us for secondary teaching. They’ve already, kind of, agreed to it so I just need to formalise it. Still waiting.

My OH (Let’s call him Mr Meanor, to fit in with the trend) has an interview (the final part of the interview process for a job he applied for a couple of months ago) and it’s in a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed!

We’ve started contacting letting agencies ‘up north’ looking for somewhere appropriate to live. It’s rather exciting actually. I get to be strict about my requirements for a big kitchen diner, gas hobs and spare bedroom big enough for me to turn into an office.

I’ve started working through the textbooks for my French course, should be fine. I’m also seriously considering a short holiday in Germany in August. Hopefully this should help me get my languages balanced out.

I still need to go look at some properties, cancel gym membership and the rental on our current place and get all financial and paperwork based loose ends tied up, not to mention the practicalities of moving, but I’m on track so far.

Life almost reorganised.

Hi all

I decided that I wanted something a little shinier and sparklier than Blogger – so here is my edublog! I suppose I’m hoping that its new educational home will draw new, education related readers and commentators. It’s a wordpress blog essentially, but for people in education. 

I got fed up of looking at other people’s super professional looking blogs so I decided to get an edublog!