Teacher-speak

Teacher: 'So what do you notice about..?'

Audience attempts to notice something.

Teacher nods: 'Hmmm, that's an interesting comment [it obviously isn't], anything else you notice?'

Audience silence followed by more desperate attempts to notice something.

Teacher (with a 'helpful' voice): 'Take a look at the second stanza..?'

Audience still clueless, looks desperately at the two members of audience who have acquired secret knowledge of literary jargon in the hope they will blind tutor with said jargon.

Teacher: 'That's a good way of looking at it...but...is there anything else..?

Member of audience: 'So, are you trying to get us to say..?'

Teacher: 'I'm not trying to get you to say anything, there's no right or wrong answer'

Audience gives up.

Teacher: 'Well perhaps if I tell you ...'

One member of audience realises that of course there IS a required ANSWER and that it's taken 17 people a whole agonising 15 minutes to be led to THE ANSWER, during which anyone who has contributed to the class discussion has made a rectumhole of themselves by muttering apparently irrelevant drivel.

90% of audience go home thinking what a wonderful teacher they've just experienced.

One member of audience (who at some time in the past opted for the red pill and dropped out of the matrix) realises that the class has been exposed to teacher-speak, and feels hugely patronised and rather depressed as a result.

And what can we learn from this story?

1. No matter what teachers say there is always a RIGHT ANSWER, i.e. the one they want you to say.

2. Until you say this answer, you're going to be WRONG.

3. To disguise the fact that there is a RIGHT ANSWER, and that the teacher knows that answer and is deliberately keeping that right answer from you, every time you say a WRONG ANSWER they will say things like 'yes, good try' and 'nearly' and 'I hadn't thought of that one' [they had, just thought it was stupid and irrelevant] and 'that's an interesting thought' and 'hmmm'.

4. If you hear any of the above phrases, you have been exposed to 'teacher-speak' and should immediately seek out a decontamination chamber, consume alcoholic beverage and exorcise yourself through some online ranting.

Lets celebrate our boys!

'What we need, she says, is to celebrate what makes them boys and help them to understand the things that don't come naturally to them. That means getting them outside more, particularly as space gets squeezed in urban schools. “Not letting boys be boys is not only detrimental to them but also to girls, many of whom become overcompliant with what is considered ‘good' behaviour and could do with a shove outdoors to take more risks,” she says. “I certainly wish that had happened to me.” '

[From a 2008 article in The Times
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article4288100.ece]

As someone who tried very hard in my early days of parenting to 'gender neutralise' my boys, only to find out I was trying to bend the forces of nature, this quote feels very true.

So, let's celebrate our boys!

Oh yay! Oh yay! October round-up is here!

Ok, what can I say bloggy audience? I must kneel at your feet and beg forgiveness.

Forgive me for I have sinned: I've been a bad bad blogger.

You see this is how it happens:
I think of something I need to post. I have the photos; I have the words. But then somehow I don't get them to the pc.
Then a day or two later, something else happens that I want to blog. This time I get to the pc, but I don't have the photos to upload. So I think, 'well I'll wait till I have the photos'.

And well, you can guess the rest.

So here I am to rectify the situation. I have forgotten all the words I was going to say, all those pearls of wisdom/angst/humour. So instead we'll stick to annotated piccies.


Dd's 7th birthday. The hedgehog cake. Entirely home-made (well the role of nice mummy didn't extent to hand-crafting the chocolate buttons, but you know what I mean).


The best party game ever: tie mini chocolate donuts to strings off the washing line and yell 'Shark Attack!' and realise how difficult it is to take a nice photo of your child at a party without everyone else's kids in it. Especially difficult when said child is wearing a bear hat.

The best bit of birthdays of course



Mother has a fit of worksheetitis and sends children on a trail around museum. 'Just read the question again.' I say cheerily through gritted teeth 'The answer's got to be here somewhere.'

Detour to the toy shop to goggle at over-priced house-junk (the reward for not filling in the museum trail). We are all mildly impressed by the lego R2D2.

'No you can't have one for Christmas!'

Making beady bugs. Guess what everyone's getting for Christmas instead of a lego R2D2..?

Dying fluorescent orange cotton a (hopefully) less fluorescent orange colour.

Only another 20 or so balls to go...

Hoping these will make stripey socks because I'm too tight to buy the proper wool.

So, if you're not getting a beady spider for Christmas,

it could be fluorescent orange (and brown) socks.

Halloween bonfire party in motion

A picture just made for quirky captions. Suggestions anyone?

How about 'The devil is in the detail' ?

Or perhaps 'It was a hell of a halloween'?

Is it one of my kids in the photo?

No, obviously someone more willing to wear silly headgear than my bunch.

I think someone has been drinking too much Tango.

And the most exciting part of the halloween bonfire party?

When the fire engine arrived, of course!

Nothing us mothers like more than when the firemen stripograms arrive

I think everyone should set fire to their carpark

and invite a few firefighters along to the party.

On our trip somewhere between worksheetitis and toy shop we do something far more educational: watch a stuntsman do a stunt for the next series of 'Lewis'. To quote a famous band: 'That aint working that's the way you do it,

get your money for nothing and your chicks for free.'

(Though it must cost a fortune in chiropracter fees.)

New Fast Automatic Daffodils

There's a poem by one of the 'Mersey Beat' Poets, Adrian Henri, that I always liked as a teenager. I still have the poetry books, well-thumbed from that time long ago. The other day I browsed through them and came across the poem again.

It's a strange poem, probably not to everyone's taste. Henri has taken Wordsworth's famous 'Daffodils' poem and spliced it with a Dutch advert for a car. (Yeah, weird, but I like weird.)

Here's the first part of it:

"THE NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS

by Adrian Henri

I wandered lonely as

THE NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODIL,

FULLY AUTOMATIC

that floats on high o'er vales and hills

The Daffodil is generously dimensioned to accommodate four

adult passengers

10,000 saw I at a glance

Nodding their new anatomically shaped heads in sprightly

dance

Beside the lake beneath the trees
in three bright modern colours

red, blue and pigskin

The Daffodil de luxe is equipped with a host of useful
accessories

including windscreen wipers and washer with joint control

A Daffodil doubles the enjoyment of touring at home or

abroad

......"

I showed the poem to the kids. Then, egged on by their interest,'You mean you actually like it?!', I printed out another Wordsworth poem, and gave them some old magazines to make their own 'Mutant Wordsworth' poem.

So, this is the original they were working with:

Hmm..well it doesn't really float my boat. But take a look at the new improved version by ds1:

(alterations to the original are marked in bold type below)

"THE RAINBOW

By Public Relations

My luxury car leaps up when I behold

Cheaper online access in the sky

So was it when my life began

So is it now I am a van;

So be it when I shall grow old

Or let me fly

The child is father of the car that is man

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by the tax increase."

So, you see, whatever you think of poetry - and most of the time I think it's a pile of pompous pants - it really is just playing with words. Yep that's all it boils down to. Iambic pentameters (or should that be pompous pantameters?) aside, there are times when poetry can be crude and fun. And - though I've only just noticed - ds1 has even kept the rhyme correct in some of the lines - man/van, sky/fly. There was no prompting from me, I gave them free reign to do as they wished with old Wordy. Blimey! That means my child actually READ the poem and THOUGHT about which words would fit best.

Sometimes we seriously underestimate our kids, don't we?

Er, yeah, me again.

Feel like I can hardly keep up with our weeks now. I have so many photos to post, but haven't loaded them up yet, so a quick whistlestop tour right now and then I'll get around to doing the photos soon. Promise. No more boring posts, after this one. Go on, sue me.

We had a day out on Saturday with friends at a little theme park to celebrate dd's 7th birthday (half-price voucher for tickets, always a bonus). Then she had her birthday with home-made hedgehog cake, a wolf suit (which was kinda purple when it arrived rather than grey, but she was dutiful enough to try it on) and a visit from her auntie. Then on Monday it was cinema in the morning (Schools Film week - free films) and her 'animal-themed' party in the afternoon. All surprisingly chilled. Today, cinema again, this time to see Ponyo, one of the Japanese animations by Studio Gibli that we love.

Previous weeks the kids have been creating knex crossbows at HE group, doing poetry (well, doing 'Mutant Wordsworth' more about this when I post up the photos), ice skating, and er lots of stuff. I find now if I don't keep a note of it all it's soon forgotten. Ds2 has done a long hike and overnight camp with cubs, ds1 has been film-making with a friend.

Part of me feels I should be booking some group workshops at museums, or doing some outings with the kids, but another part of me knows that I can't really take anything else on at the mo. If you read my other blog (http://www.the-idle-pen.blogspot.com/) then you'll know that I have other things to fret about, like Jane Austen and her literary chums.

Sigh.

In order for me to have time to tackle JA and Co, I've been trying to keep some structure to our weeks and a while back I came up with a plan to tick a few boxes. So, we do one week 'writing' (and anything associated with) and one week 'maths (and anything associated with). Writing has included poetry (Mutant Wordsworth), filling in a museum trail sheet, writing a letter to penfriends (it took a whole week for that) etc. Up to an hour a day max. Maths is less exciting and flexible...just workbooks until I can come up with the energy to do something else. Of course I could do cooking or some other sort of measuring, but cooking with kids is even more stressful than stapling them to the table to do a page of a maths workbook.

Saying this, I DO have plans to cook with the kids, using the River Cottage Family Cookbook which looks fab (have it on loan from library at the mo). Still at the planning stage though. Or maybe it will just make a nice coffee table book, or doorstop.

The kids started fencing lessons this week. Kindly offered at bargain price by another home ed family, my bunch joined others to have their first lesson on Tuesday. The best thing is that the teacher is a boy who was home educated himself, AND his mother was the first ever HE contact I ever made, about 8 years ago. Lovely stuff. Amazingly dd did not bark, or miaow or growl or make bear noises or crawl around the floor on all fours or hug the tutor's legs until he fell over. No she participated and cooperated and enjoyed. Miracles do happen.

Christmas is approaching. Am very aware of low funds, bulging credit card, and children's expensive tastes (and, more importantly, very few relatives left alive to meet these tastes, or even any to buy them some cheap tat so they have something to unwrap on Christmas day.). Oh and the small matter of nearly 2 grand's worth of course fees, still to pay this year. I'm going to blame it all on Jane Austen.

p.s. check out this wonderful explanation of the defence cuts:
http://archers-at-the-larches.blogspot.com/2010/10/defence-cuts-explained-simply.html

The Silent Blog

Yes my blog has been silent.

No particular reason. Or perhaps many not-very-good-excuses reasons. It's been both reassuring and unsettling getting back into regular domesticity since the Scotland trip. Routines, more routines and falling behind routines. Ferrying kids hither and thither. Picking over fluff on sofas. You know, same old same old.

I've started my Diploma Course in 'Creative writing' (God how I hate that phrase!). The weekly sessions are intense; the workload is - er - heavy. We're not talking essays and the like, more, well I suppose it's more that there are high expectations. I am surrounded by people who I assume (and have some evidence that they) are good, experienced writers, which ups the pressure. We are expected to read widely, understand fully, and write weekly.

This is the second week we've been expected to write a short story within certain parameters in a week. Finding the headspace, let alone the writing space, is a challenge. If words don't come when they are supposed to, no matter how hard you try and make them, how are you meant to write something to a deadline? It's not writers' block, it's simply a blank page.

Added to dealines there is the problem of understanding. This is only an introduction, but already we are onto theories of narratology and other adventures into Big Word land... It feels like I'm doing an English Literature degree as well as a creative writing course. My head hurts.

The tutor says 'I'll illustrate this with an example that you will all know, Pride and Prejudice.' I look around at the class and I wonder, am I the only person who has never read this book?