So I’m looking to organise a Teachmeet in Birmingham sometime in March.
So I’m looking to organise a Teachmeet in Birmingham sometime in March.
I’ve never experienced a different education system than the British one, but of course the odd snippet or two has come my way over the years which have led me to the following beliefs about education in different countries:
My happiest moment of learning was sitting with my Year 4 teacher some 20 years ago and really ‘getting’ long multiplication. I remember thinking this is what I can do – I’ve never forgot the process or that moment.
My least happy moment of learning was realising what I thought was good practice was actually rubbish. It forced me to change quickly.
It wouldn’t strike many to be that important, but over the next few weeks I reckon I’m going to be counting my blessings that I forked out for a top of the range trolley from Lapsafe.
Surely it’s the quality of the technology – the laptop, the iPad, the Chromebook – that’s important. Surely it’s the product support / the software / the training that is the key to succesful deployment.
Nope. I think it’s the quality if the charging trolley (or Cart if you’re US).
The next few weeks will prove me right or wrong.
Not quite what I intended, but here is the first picture from “The Family Frog”. The cartoon that started the whole ‘frog’ thing.
Erm.
No. Not yet.
Today was the first time that all the staff got their hand on the Chromebooks.
Many people who will have read the announcement from the Prince’s Trust I found on the BBC this morning will have dismissed it with the thought Oh anyone could have told you that. That’s just common sense. The headline reads, “Princes trust: school grades hit by lack of routine.” In the article, the vital statistic is that 30% of students with poor grades had no set routine as a child, contrasted with 14% of students with ‘better grades’.
Concerned minister: Have you seen this article? We need to bring back routines into family life.Junior minister: How can we do that? We don’t control every family.Concerned minister: Hmm. What do we control?Junior Minister [Thinks]Civil servant: There’s always schools. And Ofsted.Junior Minister: Yes. We could make schools teach their children to have better routines at home.Concerned Minister: Yes. It could be part of the criteria in the Ofsted framework.Civil servant: So… you’d like a glossy pack going out to every school, perhaps? An instructional DVD? A website?Concerned Minister: Yes, that sounds good. I could really… Oh I mean, this will help the whole country.Junior Minister: I’ll prepare a press release…Civil servant: Might you also like a pilot study? Some academic research to back up what we want to do?Concerned Minister [eyes glowing a baleful red]: Yes! Yes!Civil servant: Right away minister.
Have you ever been in one of those shiny new places
With crisp mirrors set into blue lazer bright tiles,
Where the reflections are only of beautiful faces
Well-trimmed eyebrows, neat nosehair and toothy, white smiles?
When,
After using the urinal disguised as a fountain
And the basin disguised as a wall hanging plant
Hands dried, you inspect the pores and start counting
The number of eyelashes too terminally bent.
And suddenly notice the way bright lights are angled
Gleaming and glinting from every which way.
They light up your ear hair – so eerily spangled
Glistening and sparkling in random display.
Looking at the mound of old, slightly damp paper I found in the loft was slightly daunting. How was I going to start sorting through this? Especially when I have so much to do to prepare for the Spring term.
Fortunately a couple of easy wins popped out at me: poems.
Written on a scraps of paper some years ago, it wouldn’t be too difficult to type them out. And here’s my first one: The ‘F’ word.
By tomorrow I need to think of a title for a poem about toilets and ear hair.