Language Games

I often get odd looks from my kids when they make a comment and I say that I will not accept any sort of bullying in my classroom. The response is a blank look and then...'bullying????' and I say, victimisation is a form of bullying and choosing a person's name to make a cheap joke, or put yourself in the centre of attention is bullying. I'm really strict about it, I can't stand anyone in my class being belittled, even if it wasn't intentional. So I just opened this article to read about the government's suggestions on homophobia within schools. I'm not arguing against the article or the fact that it is something both staff and students should be aware of. But there was a comment on it that I didn't really agree with. They compared calling someone gay, to saying 'those trainers are gay' as homophobic bullying. I disagree. The word gay is one of those that has changed meanings over the years. It began as a term for being happy, and then became a term for a homosexual person (usually male). Over the last few years it's become more a derogative term for something that's a bit rubbish.
I'm not denying that the change in usage could have come about through homophobic attitudes but the usage in society today of something being 'gay', particularly by kids, I don't believe is anything to do with the sexuality of someone but is just a slang term. I'm as guilty as the next cuprit for using it, it was a common term in Durham that just became natural to use. The job of the teacher therefore is to stop students using slang words generally and to accentuate their use of the English language. By doing this in the first place it's eliminating more possibilities of offending someone.
I guess what I'm trying to say, is that for me, some trainers being gay is not a form of homophobic bullying but simply a use of colloquial terminology that could perhaps be bullying someone because of what they wear rather than ever considering their sexuality for it. Maybe I'm wrong, and because the word doesn't offend me I don't expect it to others, but I think we're so keen to define things sometimes, we forget that we're all just in a language game in the end anyway built on associations and experiences.

First Love Reunited!!

I'm very quickly realising a lot of things about my character! My grandma gave me a number of videos before Christmas that she doesn't want anymore because she's transferred them over onto DVD. I decided to put one of them on this evening and you don't need me to say more than Irish...priest...for you to know I'm in my element!! lol. Yes, I'm watching episode one of Ballykissangel and it's just as amazing as I remember it being. I couldn't get enough of it when I was younger. Every Sunday night I watched it religiously...no pun intended :-p I used to watch it thinking the Irish people are beautiful, and I'm not going to embarrass myself too much by talking about how I fell in love wih every character personally, especially Assumpta and Fr Peter!! I wanted to live somewhere like that, somewhere where faith is so integral to a person's life. The issue's it's dealt with in the first 20mins are already being planned in my head for future lessons in class but mainly I just can't help but sit here smiling, and thinking of the life I used to dream of. Maybe one of these days I will just take off and go and live in the remotest village in Ireland, with no connections to the real world and find myself the priest of my dreams!!!

Vocations Vocations

For this next post I need to take my RE teacher's head off before I get in serious trouble!! But how come I was the only one, who when Fr Kieran walked onto the set of Hollyoaks last week and was accosted by the McQueen girls, said that he would end up being gay, and would get with John Paul the only lad in the house, who just so happens to be gay! And what do you know this week, JP gets hurt by some tosser, and Kieran admits....it was just so obviously going to happen. The question now of course is what line is Hollyoaks going to take? My guess is they wont be able to resist the scandal of gay Catholic priest. But so far I have to give them their credit where credit's due. Some fantastic lines in today's episode FK 'Do you not think that I get lonely' JP 'yeah but that's your choice' FK 'no this is my calling, I have to do it' and then of course it all lead up to that big line at the end FK 'I know exactly how you feel because I'm gay' before he looked mortified and walked out. I'm torn between whether I want John Paul to enjoy another scandlous relationship (because he always does it so naively- oooh, and then Craig can come back from Dublin, and walk into ex-fioncee Sarah , who will have just found out her Dad and best mate are sleeping together, before finding John Paul in bed with the local priest!!!!) or whether it should focus on the difficulties of vocation and giving up what you want for what you know you have to do. I didn't really lose my re teacher's head there did I?! but I did find a lovely picture of John Paul (can't find any yet of Fr Kieran!)

qualifications galore

At the moment there are new national curiculums being brought into high schools. This all started about twelve months ago when the government demanded more cross-curricular lessons, relevant to life for today's children. They wanted to be able to show why school is necessary up until the age of 16 (and over the last few months have been pushing for it to be made up to 18). This has involved bringing in a whole range of vocational courses brought in as GCE's instead of the standard GCSE's. We've got a handful of kids at school at the moment who are in school part time and out on building sites etc. the rest of the week. Next year, St Mary's will be home to a hair and beauty salon on site, and the idea is that the different high schools in the borough will support the different needs of the students to be able to go out to train. It's a good idea, not everyone is academic. My year 11's- I adore, but none of them are going to go on and be the next world class academics. So my attention was drawn yesterday to an article about some businesses getting involved in creating courses at levels 3 and 4 so that students are able to take A levels and even degrees in training for their businesses. The three businesses in question are Flybe, Network Rail and McDonalds. Yes you read that right....The biggest mistake this country made was it's insistance that everyone had a degree. You can do degrees in David Beckham studies should you really want to (yawn) but, now a degree gets you nowhere. You can't get a job without a degree because you've no experience and you can't get a decent enough job without forking out the thousands to get the degree. I think we need to step back and accept that we are all different, and all unique, and while some people want to spend their lives researching the latest findings on some 3,000 year old texts, others don't. And while some may quite enjoy learning about David Beckham for a large proportion of their life other's want to be spending our taxes on things that actually improve the education, and therefore welfare of the country (not that I'm bitter!!!) Bottom line is, I think A levels in McDonalds is a waste of time...but feel free to argue back!!

how do you measure...

I'm a nightmare for dates. I can remember everything I've ever done and drive people mad reminding them of what they've done. Suddenly realised quite randomly today though that it's exactly a year this week that I went into hospital. Last week in January on the Friday night. I can't help but feel grateful for where I am this time this year. I have a fantastic job that is going unbelievably well, I have good friends and I'm not convinced I'm going to die tomorrow...shame, I could do with the rest! But in the great scheme of things I find myself thinking I couldn't really ask for more! :-)

Twin Trouble

this story was the talk of the staff room one day last week and it's really got to me! I just find it all so....tragic. Leading on from my last post about brotherly- sisterly love, this one's worse, AND true. I just cannot begin to comprehend what would ever go through the mind for something like this. Whatever you choose to do afterwards, it's going to cause heartache. Sigh....what a world we live in

Moral Choices

'Today year 9 we're going to start a new topic, we're going to be looking at what Morality is about and what affects our Moral Beliefs'. I've started this sentence three times already this week- all of them on Tuesday! But it's a topic I talk about ALL the time. New Year consisted of meeting up with some friends from uni and discussing some moral issues in our favourite soaps :-) so the latest topic for discussion amongst us...Beth and Rhys of course- what a fantastic story line! They fall madly in love with each other and want to introduce their friends and family to this new amazing person. And then Rhys gets some bad news...his dad (who he thought was his uncle up until a couple of months ago) has died. To make it worse, his new soul mate is nowhere to be found. Completely messed up he nearly doesn't make the funeral but decides he has to go. So he turns up and his 'dad' (uncle really) introduces him to the sister he never knew about...Beth.
It's just brilliant, they've tried staying away from each other, they've both got into other relationships they don't want to be in, but they can't get the other one out of their head. Incest....wrong every time? New year, after a few drinks became a greatly animated discussion. A subject we shouldn't be seen (especially me in my professional capacity as a Catholic RE teacher) to be in favour of, but would it really, really be so wrong if they got together? Sure they'd have to move, go somewhere where no one knows the situation. Most felt they had a responsibility to not have children- but to deny true love, who has that right?! I know I know, it's just a soap, but ethics is life- and although I haven't the slightest intentions of running off with my half brother, I can't help but find issues like this fascinating :-)

tigers...tigres

Anyone who knows me well knows my frustrations in trying to find a German course. When I get time to break from school it's one of my little obsessions, that and looking at flights all over the world. I was scanning the tv the other day trying to find something to watch. I happened to fall over a wild life programme, something I'd never usually watch but for some reason decided to stick with it. They had some tigers who had been brought over from France and were being released in a safari park in the UK after 6 months getting used to our climates! The guys in charge of them were discussing how the tigers were coping and whether they were going to be ready to be let loose in the park. One person in particular was saying- well a major issue we have to face is a language barrier, I can't speak French and they don't understand English.....since when did tigers understand French?! Maybe this is my desire to speak a language- because I know that when that wild animal attacks me at least for those few seconds before I die- we might be able to share a common understanding!!! ;-)

Confused Identity

I can remember a conversation with Abby when she was visiting in Helsinki, and us using our normal jargon completely forgetting that James wouldn't have a clue what we were talking about! When mentioning TESCO my mind said superstore but we described it as 'like walmart'. Not that I have any clue what walmart is really like, just what I've seen on tv, which we know is always right ;-) and what other people have told me who have been there. I assumed it was near enough a good enough explanation. So I was horrified the other day when I drove past ASDA and it displayed 'part of the wal*mart family'. Since when?!?!?! Have I just been dizzy for the last...life...or have they just joined? There's an interesting story to the history of supermarket chains in the UK and how they developed but now they seem to be linking up over the waters so what is it now...British? or American?

Young Wonder

I spent Christmas week in Spain this year, taking a break from everything too familiar and walking for hours, looking out at the endless sea and musing. Last term was tough. I loved it, and got a lot out of school, but at the end of the day I cannot deny how tired I was and how stressful some of it was. I was ready for a break. I only had one conversation in the whole week about anything to do with education and it was to my Grandad one morning about how I think the American education system is superior to ours (it's not very often you hear me say American and superior in the same sentence, but when it comes to education- one of my biggest interests I have to admit it's up there!) There's lots of little areas within teaching that people are interested in naturally, but there was one thing in particular that really got me engaged last term and that was some work we did (and I'd already researched) called P4C- Philosophy for Children, first introduced by Matthew Lipman in the States. Lipman decided that education wasn't really preparing people to be young human beings but just to be able to take exams and so he suggested using p4c from as young as 6 year olds to encourage children to think for themselves and ask the questions about life. I lead a p4c lesson at the end of the term after badgering my mentor about it and what I enjoyed was their frustration that maybe there wasn't an answer. That maybe everything they had asked was right and yet there was no right answer. Well anyway it's a fascinating study and I wont bore you too much with it- I'm just getting into it 20 years too late. Back to Spain- I spent the week with extended family and was surprised in myself at just how much I enjoyed spending time around Nathan, my cousin's little two year old. Now I don't get broody, I wouldn't say I've never dreamed of my own kids, but I think it's closer to say I've always feared them! Nathan was a whole breath of fresh air though. He's going through a 'wonder' stage atm where everything is amazing. He asked for fruit and when you put an apple in front of him he said 'oh wowwwww!!!!'. When he learnt a new word the delight that spread across his face was gorgeous and anything and everything was fantastic.

One of my favourite moments was one night when we got a taxi back because Nathan would never have survived it. For personal reasons I was desperate to just get out of the taxi and back to the room (I should have walked really) but it was automatic, as the car pulled up one of us grab Nathan, another sort out money, another get the push chair etc. etc. We were so busy and not concentrating on anything, and all of a sudden this little voice pipes up 'oh wowwww, dark!!!' And when we looked up the sky was dark. And I guess, on reflection it is wow :-)

I love watching my kids register something they've never considered before, it's one of the beauties of teaching R.E. They're often desperate to prove something that they know either society or the church say is right/wrong which is very controversial. But when you throw in a statement that they haven't even considered you can almost see it turning round in their minds, trying to reach for something but satisfied at this new nugget of information! We had a year 12 taster day for GCSE students a couple of weeks back and so used the Matrix to ask the question how do you know you are real and not just a figment of the imagination, programmed and controlled by some computer? How do you know the corridor exists outside this room when we close the door? They're questions that they wouldn't think to ask but when they do ask them it's like they're being opened up to a whole new way of thinking, a whole new thought process in life. And I looked up at the sky and thought, yes Nathan, it is amazing that it is dark. It is amazing that day after day, night after night, the sun rises and it sets. I felt privileged to be in the presence of a two year old who was opening my eyes all week to the simple, yet beautiful and astounding things that is just generally 'life'.

Lions and tigers and bears....oh my!

Majorly behind on my posts, and mainly because I've not been at home much for the last couple of weeks. So I'm going to start off with this story which is a bit old in itself now. I was sat in an Irish bar in Spain (yes I know- don't start!) when I noticed on the news a story. One about a tiger that had jumped a 12 and a half foot wall, killed one man and injured two others.

It caught my attention not just because of the phrase 'victims are in good spirits' which amused me greatly, but because of this issue I have with wild animals. I've never been an animal person, and sometimes am known not to be a peoples person either!, but there's something about wild animals that really freaks me out. When I was little I used to be scared of sleeping, imagining snakes in the room who could kill when I was at my weakest.It was a conversation we got into in Finland, walking through Nuuksio, discussing the 'worst' and 'best' ways to die by animal. Even now when I go out of my back door at home I sometimes imagine I can feel a presence of a wild beast (because of course lions and tigers roam freely in Wigan?!) I don't know what it is that makes me so insecure about it all. I love visiting zoo's and I've never had a bad experience with an animal, not even with something like a dog. I just have this inbuilt fear of being ripped apart by something I'm completely defenseless with. Maybe it's just paranoia, or maybe it's premonition and one day I'll be walking through some zoo somewhere and you'll see on the news about how some tiger/lion/bear/crocodile escaped from it's cage or how I was walking on my own somewhere as I'm prone to doing, pondering over the world and life when a panther or snake came upon me and you'll remember this post and think- well at least she's in good spirits now cos it's all over!!!