Tuesday, 22 September 2009
22nd Sept - Abbott Community Primary School
Friday, 18 September 2009
Kingsway Infants Library

Making My Mark in the Whitley Park Library

Tuesday, 1 September 2009
It just dropped out of the sky...
...a pigeon. Clearly a rather stunned bird, it's neck was at a peculiar angle and, apart from its blinking eyes, it was motionless... I had a choice of three things, contact the RSPCA, take a quick photo of it or write about it. I decided to do all three (in that order...).
By the time you're reading this I'm assuming the bird has made a complete recovery and is this very moment up a column pestering Nelson with a gang of its mates (well, let's hope so anyway...). I'm certainly seeing this as a good sign - this year ideas are going to just fall down from the sky... Only next time I hope they get their timing right: by the time the pigeon had been dispatched to the local vet my tea had grown cold...
As I sip my replacement cuppa my thoughts go out to all you teachers who are gearing up for a new term... Here's to rolls of brand new backing paper, piles of unsullied text books and uncannily bug-free computers. I just hope, as you put the finishing touches to those tray name-labels, that the silence of your room is not disturbed by a sudden thud against your window... (Although if it is - you'll certainly have something to tell the kids tomorrow!)
Saturday, 16 May 2009
Special...
Over the years there has been a struggle to come up with an appropriate way of describing this sector of the system. Once acceptable terms have been quickly discarded as misleading or downright offensive. It could be argued that, to the casual outsider, the term "special" seems to be a neutral compromise... But if you spend a day in such a life-enhancing place as Meadowgates you quickly learn how accurate it is...
It didn't take long to pick up the positive atmosphere. The sense of joy was contagious and the enthusiastic response was overwhelming...

Thursday, 14 May 2009
Are you sitting comfortably?

This is especially true when it comes to the merry-go-round of educational initiatives. The longer you're on it the dizzier you become. But it is so tempting to dismiss anything new as merely rehashed old ideas (I have done it on many occasions...) and I'm starting to think that such a stance is just a simplistic cop-out...
"Teaching" is such a fundamental thing, pre-dating by many millena the establishment of these things we call schools. I'm sure Ug, when trying to teach his son Oog a new way of fashioning flint, felt pestered by his know-all traditionalist father, Erg. Everyone starts out as "Ugs", but, alas, we all become "Ergs" in the end...
I remember, while nervously sipping my first ever staffroom coffee, the whispered advice of a lovely Welsh colleague, speaking from the height of her many year's experience - "don't listen to anyone who tells you they have the next big-thing - mark my words, young man, everything just goes round in circles..." After almost thirty years in teaching, and as I mull over the implications of the latest government initiative (I make that number 6953...), I know what she means - it seems that the "topic web" is about to be reinvented...
At times it really does feel like there is nothing new under the educational sun... but it's an illusion. No matter how convinced we are that we've "heard it all before"(and with every passing year that becomes so much easier to say...) it's the peculiarities of the moment that matters - it's all down to context...
As I embark upon my year as Scholastic's Literacy Time PLUS Writer-in-residence and my private thoughts become puplic pontifications, it's the context of the moment that is exercising my mind. Who knows what is about to happen to the recommendations in the Rose Review or what shape "assessment" or "appraisal" will be in by the time my year is over? What's certain is that by this time next year we'd have gone through an election (and from where I'm sitting we're going to have the first conservative education minister since Gillian Shepherd...), the true effects of the recession will no longer be speculative, the 2010 Key Stage Two SATs may (or may not...) have been boycotted and Arsene Wenger's youth policy would have been finally vindicated (or not, I dread to say...).

Also, I would have visited another 130 schools and tried to convince another 30,000ish children that they are authors - that we are all authors! It's what I do... I've been travelling the world since I left full time teaching 13 years ago with that mantra - it's my passion... I often get asked whether I get bored with peddling the same message and I can honestly say I don't. While my message remains pretty constant the world of schools, where it is preached, is in constant flux - the context.
I look forward to sharing my thoughts with whoever wants to listen, hopefully my observations as I move from school to school will provoke others to share their comments and opinions here as well - I look forward to any responses with excitement and trepidation: authors rarely get a chance to hear the thoughts their words may have evoked...
So whether you are an idealistic young Ug or an Erg who has been round the block a few times, you are more than welcome...