This article from the TES, which I finally got round to reading in yesterdays staff meeting, is quite interesting – though as usual it does annoy me when the papers ‘report’ on something revolutionary with bold type and a big headline, which is merely a repetition of complaints heard in staffrooms up and down the country for years.

Frank Furedi, who often lectures on education, says our fear of kids being bored is leading to over-innovation – i.e everytime results aren’t what the government hoped for some overpaid bright spark says that pupils aren’t motivated anymore and we must therefore have ‘more innovative and dynamic lessons to really get them engaged’. We must develop several new IT programmes to help with this innovation, draw up a list of targets to aim for and put together some sort of quango to ‘drive this agenda’.

Problem is, this is now happening almost daily. My pupils are so overstimulated they now start shaking if there’s more than a ten second silence; which means my Monday morning solution of ‘quiet reading on your own while I try to deal with this epic hangover’ is tragically a thing of the past. Leaving me attempting to motivate and inspire a group of hormonal, over-hyped teenagers while juggling a sore head and alarmingly blurry vision. Perhaps we’re all just too over stimulated now?

Arrived into work this morning, again - fighting through a depressing lack of snow – to be handed a document during the staff meeting entitled: “A Mission Statement for Success.” Yawn.

And oh yes it was as bad as I expected. Our new ‘tag line’ is “Inspired Learners, Inspiring Teachers” – and of course that’s ILIT for short. We must work the ILIT concept into everything we do, a meeting at the end of January will ask for evidence and ideas on how we’ve brought ILIT into our teaching on a lesson-by-lesson basis. And that’s it. Class dismissed, with  no more guidance than a reassuring: “I know you’ll all come up with some inspired ideas,” from the head. Give me strength.

Still, I’ve been working hard on the project already, and so far have focused all my efforts on trying to find a way I can make the mission statement a bit longer, so it becomes ILLITERATE for short. How about:

“Inspired Lazy Learners, Inspiring Teachers, Endlessly Reaching Abominable Target Expectations” ?

Opinions on a postcard…

I just heard the most ridiculous thing. Putting door handles high enough so children can’t reach them does indeed mean they can’t escape from school. But isn’t it also a fire risk? And if we can’t have doors open on warm days (because the windows are jammed and don’t open anyway, do they ever?) what are we supposed to do? Just swelter in the boiling heat? Turn the classroom into a human greenhouse and then note down the results of our experiment?

And, anyway, aside from this – I have never, ever had a child attempt to make a desperate break for freedom – they’re too busy working their small socks off to make ridiculous government targets and pass another SAT.

The news recently about failing primary schools is putting everyone on edge; only this morning the assistant head Janet subjected me to a ten minute lecture – in front of the rest of the staff – for finishing the last of the coffee in the staffroom.

And now little Bobby’s parents Mr and Mrs Perpetually Irritating want to have a meeting with the head, which apparently I have to attend, about how this will affect their precious boy’s development and what we, as a school, intend to do about it. I expect what we shall do about will be what we always do which is to work our proverbials off, spend most of the holidays coming up with new action plans for Ed Balls, and then fail to meet his mercurial targets because they either don’t actually apply to us, don’t make sense or are impossible to achieve.

Was perusing the Guardian this morning, getting my daily dose of leftist sentiment, and saw a rather interesting article about how primary schools need to be teaching pupils to become more ‘media savvy’. I’m not even sure what that really means, because I’m pretty sure it’s a phrase the media themselves made up. But actually the concept behind it….not too insane for once.

A professor at Warwick University says that children should be learning media language and literacy, along with maths and English, to ensure they’re not too susceptible to advertising campaigns. Sounds good, infact, sounds like something we could all do with a refresher course on. Sign me up.