You, too, can pick your own nose

Efficient. Crisp. Cool under pressure. Lightly humorous. Groomed and gleaming, with salon-shiny hair carefully brushing her shoulders. Her filing cabinets are tidy and her clothes are dry clean only. Yes, the supernice professional on the right looks exactly like me. Just like the photo of the teacher elsewhere on the page looks exactly like me. […]

Squid-tastic

Me: If the revised curriculum was an animal, what might it be? English teacher: A squid, obscured by its own ink. Nice response, I thought. It’s tricky to get all the parts moving together, its slippery, its inky-ness makes it hard to see what’s really going on…. The opening gambit was my ‘warm up’ attempt […]

Stories and mash

Have just checked out Penguin’s We Tell Stories: Six Authors: Six Stories: Six Weeks page [thanks to Ewan’s blog for the tip]. It pulls together some amazing authors in a mashup with Google Earth. As the plots progress, you move from real location to location. Had a crack at reading Charles Cummings’ 21 Steps…brought back […]

The Unteachables II

If we are to take the programme running on Friday nights as reliable research (a big IF, in the light of layers of editing and programming that exists between them and us), the key messages for English teachers might be distilled thus: listen to the students (even when they call you a t–t) appeal to […]

The Unteachables I: I can’t even remember how to learn, it’s been so long since I’ve been doin’ it.

Only three years after it screened in the UK, The Unteachables (Channel 4) hit our screens (Friday nights, TV1). Led by the late, great educationalist, Professor Ted Wragg, the programme (‘research’ project) sets out to explore what it takes to engage some of the country’s most difficult students, excluded from the schools many times and […]

I only did it ‘cos everyone else was doing it

Facebook was going to be the answer, my great new hope of communication. Global village? Yeah! Collaborative communities? Bring it on! A MySpace for ‘people like me’? Where do I sign? Turned on, tuned it, found a heap of fabulous friends doing fabulous things in London-town and suddenly it was like I’d never left ol’ […]

Easter comes early

It’s all about rabbits this week. Not the Easter ones, the Potter-Peter bouncy ones or the ones that prolifically produce more cute little bouncy ones. But the ones caught in headlights, the ones running away, the ones rushing down the rabbit hole, “I’m late, I”m late.” Faced with the implications of turning the revised Curriculum […]

Bringing down the borders

As the Egyptian army finally close up the last gap in the wall, and Gaza is cut off once more, I find myself pondering the nature of borders, power and ownership as I plod through the six am run….and recall the following from late last year: ‘De-bordering (‘Entgrenzung’) of education’…..a concept to conjure with, first […]

Kaboom 2: stop that essay!

My current Master’s opus has exploded. …past 4000…surging past 5000..leaping the barrier of 7000…galloping on and over the hills towards mountainous double figures. Stop that essay! Woah there, analysis pony! Rein in the sweating steed of blah! Hence the lack of recent blogging action. Oh dear. Anyone who knows me will be unsurprised but succinctness […]

No Ordinary Son

It’s been an odd week. Four times, in response to hailing people with a breezy, “Happy New Year! Good Christmas?”, I have been told about the sad passing of a dear relative. (open mouth, change feet). And, of course, the national news has rather reflected this unfortunate procession of sorrows. A shame, in some ways, […]