I am very proud of the amount of useless facts that I know. Put me in front of an episode of QI or a pub quiz and I’m in heaven. So, last week when a student asked me about the longest English word in class I rattled off a long answer about how there are some chemical names that are more than 1000 letters long but the longest word in the OED is ‘Floccinaucinihilipilification’.

Well, it’s not – it’s actually ‘Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’. The student directed me to this article via. the Macmillan Dictionary Blog as proof. I felt a bit silly about being wrong (even though I’m not an English teacher) but was happy to find out the correct answer to amaze my friends with at the next pub quiz I visit.

Knowing my luck, by the time I am asked this question again, someone will have already invented an even longer word!

Today’s image is by Dora Pete.

I am concerned about sex education. From a distance, because obviously I’m not involved in delivering it.  Well, I wasn’t until some bright spark thought up SEAL. (Seriously, who names an important bit of legislative agenda after a fat, blubbery sea animal that claps its fins together and makes comedy honking noises? Really, who? I’d like to know.)

No longer is Social, Emotional and Behavioural Learning – or just ‘good manners, decency and respect’  to you and me – to be taught in tutor time, but now it shall be ‘delivered in every lesson’. At RedTape High we actually have a SEAL agenda for our lessons – for every single lesson. 

Sometimes it’s great; it links in with what we’re working on that day and it does give an extra structure to the classroom. The Colour Purple for instance invovled some genuinely inspiring conversations about race and prejudice and perceptions of colour – and the kids, of many different ethnic origins, were really enagaged: SEAL Agenda 1: Race Relations – tick.

And wierdly, Anthony and Cleopatra created some fascinating discussions about gang culture and the importance of your reputation - actually I was being observed that lesson and I have to say I totally nailed it. I was like Teacher Extraodinaire, linking themes, down with the kids, making them think, it was like something our of Dangerous Minds; though I’m not as hot in a skirt as Michelle Pfieffer.

Anyway, am off topic. The point is it works, but as a man, discussing sex with teenage girls, it’s like a black pit of possible disasters, and the guidance I’m getting is about minimal. Alarmingly minimal.

The first rule of Chess Club is: you do not talk about Chess Club. The second rule of Chess Club is: you DO NOT talk about Chess Club! – I’ve heard those rules somewhere before but I couldn’t resist sharing them again, especially after what happened to me at Chess Club last week.

Now, I don’t actually run the chess club at school but the teacher who does was sick so I stepped in to fill his shoes. When I was a student, the kids in the chess club were fairly quiet types so I assumed that sitting watching over a group of students playing chess would be a fairly easy thing to do at lunchtime.

The problem is, I forgot the 8th rule of Chess Club – If this is your first time at Chess Club, you have to play! I am a terrible chess player but lunchbreak is quite short so I figured if I could just not lose and hold out until the bell, I’d be able to walk away with my dignity intact.

No such luck! I lost, twice. Unfortunately, I had already broken the first rule of Chess Club before I even got there and told my colleagues what I was doing at lunch. When they asked me how it went later in the day, I had to admit to getting trounced twice.

Motto of the story? Chess Club has rules for a reason. Don’t break them!

Today’s image is by Fabibel.

Although I don’t have any experience of teaching at a faith school in the UK. I’ve noticed them a lot in the news recently. I’m always surprised at the lengths some parents go to to get their kids into these schools. Just because they do well statistics-wise, parents often exaggerate the extent of their religious practices or even claim they are of a different religion to get their kids into these places.

I cant help but think that if you need to lie about a child’s background to get him into a school, he’s not going to have such a great school experience keeping up that lie for however long he’s at the school.

What about teachers, though? I’ve had to wear traditional costumes from various religions and cultures during my time as an international school teacher and found it rather fun. People always seem to save the best food for religious ceremonies, too, so I’ve had the chance to try interesting dishes that many people have not even heard of. I’ve never had to pretend to actually be a believer in any particular religion, though.

This might be different working at a faith school in the UK, though. I know job applications for faith schools are supposedly not based on religion (unless you want to be the in-house Priest or whatever) but I can’t help thinking that being of the same faith as the school must be some kind of advantage when applying for a job there.

In certain ways, teaching at a faith school could be a nice proposition. They’re normally selective (which can be a good or bad thing as a teacher, depending on how you look at it) but they also seem to get lots of funding, which is great if you just can’t live without an interactive whiteboard in every classroom.

Would it be worth ‘faking it’ like some of the parents and pretending you are a certain religious disposition to improve your chances of getting a job at one of these schools? For me, certainly not. I’m terrible at lying so I would probably get found out in the first week, anyway. I think I would miss the diversity I am used to in class, too. I wonder, though. Are there any fakers out there? If so, what does it feel like?

Today’s image is by Robert Aichinger.

thanks flickosopher.com

Monday:A massive headache onset, followed by a twisted ankle as I managed the rampaging bus queue, topped off with a massive case of sneezing as I drove home, subsequently almost hitting a wall.

Tuesday: To be or not to be – Hamlet with Year 11 and a SEAL co-ordinator turned into an amazing lesson on revenge and honour…working with at least five kids who had gang-related allengiances made for a pretty intetresting hour.

Wednesday: That lull of awfulness that hits midweek was further exacerbated by a looming parents evening.

Thursday: Meeting with my newest recruit who used words like ‘inspired’ and ‘motivated to lead the learning’. Christ help us all.

Friday: Ducking out of a staff meeting to write this, and enjoying the free doughnuts and cup of real coffee, provided by my new recruit, trying to curry favour. It’s totally working.

It happened three years after I started teaching. I broke one of the golden rules I had made before becoming a teacher. I started a sentence with “When I was at school…”. Since then, I’ve also ended up saying “Ask your mother”, “but fruit is a kind of pudding” and “Sam might look cool riding his bike without a helmet now but he won’t look cool when he falls off and cracks his head open, will he?”. All of these are phrases from my list of things I promised I wouldn’t say when I became a parent.

There’s a difference between annoying parent language and annoying teacher language, though – kids get more practice at thinking up sarcastic responses to those expressions we sometimes slip up and use as teachers.

Anyway, when I got to “…school”, I stopped in disgust with myself, unable to finish the sentence, half-expecting one of the students to finish it off for me with “we had to carve our homework into pieces of stone and Latin was classed as a modern foreign language” or something equally sarcastic. They didn’t, though. One of the kids actually asked me to continue.

At first, I couldn’t believe they would actually be interested in it but they found it really amusing. They laughed about the BBC computers we used to use and the drawing software that could only do straight lines. They giggled about my old school uniform. They sympathised with my long walk to school. We were all able to laugh the episode off and although I’m not about to start lecturing all my students about the good old days, I certainly wouldn’t mind telling them something about my own school experience in the future as long as it’s appropriate.

The whole experience got me thinking about what it must have been like as a teacher when I was at school and what my old teachers would think of the challenges we face today as teachers. I’m sure they would be shocked with the amount of box-ticking and paperwork we all need to do. They would probably be surprised that we’re not allowed to smoke in the staff room, too.

Although some teachers tend to complain about technology, personal computers and access to the Internet make it a hell of a lot easier for us to find extra resources for class and prepare them quickly. For MFL teachers, not having to deal with cassette tapes for listening tasks probably saves 20 minutes or more a day. Even technogrouches like DesperateDan wouldn’t be able to have an online rant without the Internet.

Despite the changes on the surface of teaching, what we do is still essentially the same as what our own teachers did. We face different challenges but we have more people and machines to help us deal with them. Even though we’re under more and more pressure to hit targets and tick boxes, the best teachers will still do what they have always done – inspiring students to actually become interested in a subject rather than just getting them through exams.

Today’s image is by Sigurd Decroos.

…about the start of term are:

1) How cold my classroom is for about three days until it is eventually warmed solely by the breath of my students. Not, the radiator, obviously.

2) How, without fail, despite numerous traps, another mouse has eaten through the whiteboard cable.

3) The overlong and tedious ‘catch up’ meetings we have with the SLT. What is there to catch up? I ate turkey, drank too much, and New Year was disappointing – nothing changes.

4)  The fact that mocks are in about three days.

5) My end-of-holiday headache that takes exactly nine and half days to shift; without fail.

I teach at RedTape High. (No really, I do). And while I love the little cherubs who delight me every morning with their heart warming stories of teenage pregnancy and homework stolen by their dealer; and my wonderful colleagues whose halitosis breath always ensures I’m awake (and suitably nauseous) at the staff meeting; and the inspired powers that be, whose various initiatives have over the years served to wear down any possibility I had of still caring about anything, I decided it was time to take action.

So, in attempt to stem the tide of bile and general dissatisfaction with everything in education that threatens to take over my sanity at any given second, I have instead decided to ‘Blog It Out’. I think that is the official term. And it’s important to use the official term. If there was one, the catchy governmental acronym for this particular solution to my problem would most likely be B.I.O.

I expect there would be a government white paper on it; some big press releases about the promised billions of pounds of funding (which would later be rescinded); and some well-staggered and completely unrealistic targets to aim for as well. Various ‘education giants’ would bring out expensive software to manage the problem, there would be a website www.bioandyou.gov.uk; and it would be front page news on The Sun for about five minutes, until Jordan took her top off again; or they switched to supporting the BNP.

Yes, I have great hopes for Blogging It Out. It surely will hold the key to my sanity. Something has to.