Brave New World

Unable, until tomorrow, to take down the Christmas tree and completely consign the festive season once more unto the loft, I am sitting in my living room contemplating emptiness.  The emptiness of the shelves which a few days ago were crowded with Christmas cards, of the velvet tablecloth and runner waiting to go in the wash and the cinnamon candles back in the cupboard.  The emptiness of the house now that my daughter has returned to her university life and my son is about to embark on a new adventure.  And I think - now what?

For I sense this could be a year of change.

Already we are straining at the ties which bound us to this semi-rural market town while our children were growing up: the ties of schools and stability and childhood friendships. Now those ties are financial ones, and our own future is too knotted up with the economic decisions of governments.  At present we need a small lottery win or a serious promotion to free ourselves from the weights of debts and the vagaries of the housing market.  But by the end of 2013 we will have choices again; a move back south might be less fraught with potential disaster, might, indeed, be a real possibility.

But what now for me?

I have been reading, this week, of the lives of women in magazines.  They have their own businesses or media careers.  They live in the south east in converted country farmhouses or flash city apartments.  Their concerns are fashion and beauty and Smartphone addictions.  I think of the world in which I live and it bears no resemblance.  Setting aside my impatience - for these are the women who read and reject my writing, who patronise and pass judgement - I hanker for a little of this myself.  I want my own business, writing scripts and novels.  I want to be able to make choices and decisions which take me forward instead of leaving me stranded in the mire.  I want this year to be about success.

There.  I've said it.  All I have to do now is make it come true.   

Sinking ship

A year on and nothing has changed.  It has been the worst working year of my life. The school is held in the grip of a downward spiral which is taking everything and everyone with it.  Pupils are leaving in droves.  Ofsted have been due since September and SLT have been whipping the staff into submission ever since.  Loyal, hard-working teachers are persecuted to breaking point. We are not allowed to voice our true opinions, because they do not matter.  I have to ask people's permission to speak to them at all.  If we do venture an opinion, we are told we are at best wrong and at worst liars.  Pupils are excluded for selling drugs.  Some of them lie down in the corridors and scream.  I understand the impulse completely. 

Is this a dagger?

Before Christmas, I directed a school production of Macbeth.  Not just any old school production of Macbeth.  Macbeth The Musical, which both deliberately and inevitably became Macbeth The Pantomime.  I enlisted the help of two young Performing Arts graduates and my actor/director/writer friend whose business is comedy.  For many weeks Year 7 and 8 pupils and I met in various inhospitable classrooms to rehearse scenes in a language which was largely foreign to them with a level of commitment and focus which was very definitely foreign to them.  We tackled singing, dancing, physical theatre, even acting.  Several times I wanted to leave the country.  But in the end, the children gave it their all and the show was a great success.  We had come a very long way and what we achieved was remarkable.

Back at school in the torrential and rain and howling gales of January 2012, I am once more reduced to data inputting, photocopying and being discussed by my heads of department as though I am chattle.  I've been directing children's shows for years.  I have a degree in English and Drama, published works to my name and a literary agent.  A school theatre trip to London is planned for next month, including a visit to The Globe, but I am not allowed to go.  No one has fought my corner.

Stabbed in the back?

I think it is time to find another job.

And the rant goes on

Oh thank God.  I thought it was all our fault.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/05/nick-clegg-britain-expects-teachers

(The) State (of) Education

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jul/25/secondary-school-streaming

Don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Reading For Pleasure

Last week of term but instead of relief and euphoria we had tears, nose-bleeds and raging frustration.  Way to go, Senior Leadership Team.

Good teachers want to inspire pupils, to instil in them a love for their subject.  Like most non-selective secondary schools, we have a number of pupils for whom reading is a struggle and a chore, who come from homes where there are no books and where the feeling is that reading is what you do at school.  Library lessons have therefore become something of an essential and a highlight for our Year 7s, an opportunity every so often to spend three-quarters of an hour immersed in a book they have chosen, something which really interests and engages them.  It emerged this week that this is Wrong.  Children should not be allowed to spend forty-five minutes reading.  They should be interrupted on a regular basis to be told what their objectives are, which level they're on and how much progress they've made since they plucked the book from the shelf.  Heaven forbid they should be left to concentrate, to be absorbed, to lose themselves in the written word.  What good would that do them?
Similarly, a bottom set Year 9 class has been reading Blood Brothers this term.  Two of the most challenged and challenging children in the class have been reading the main roles and taken them to their hearts.  I have never seen either child as engaged with or enthusiastic about anything as they are about playing Mickey and Mrs Johnstone and their acting has been tremendous.  But their teacher has been hauled over the coals because Blood Brothers was not listed in the Scheme of Work for that term. The children had already completed the Scheme of Work for that term.   Heaven forbid they should be allowed to enjoy anything.
Questions need to be asked about what we are teaching our children and why. 

Lambs to the Slaughter

This week in La-la land has seen our New Year 7 Parents' Evening.  Hours of dressing it up and pretending it's a normal school.  Exhausting.  I watched the children, tremulous and excited, clutching at their parents as they met their new form tutors and explored the corridors and classrooms.  Every September we are fed these innocent, eager little creatures and every June we regurgitate them as hard-eyed, diaffected tramps and thugs.  It is a truly terrible machine.

I also stood in the shadows of the hall and listened to the headteacher's speech.  He promised that in every lesson the children would receive 'high-quality teaching'.  I wanted to step out into the light and ask whether that included the 30 or so lessons a day which are taught by non-specialists or indeed non-teachers.  The cover work left for one particular Year 7 Science lesson this week was 'Complete the worksheet and do page 70'.  Page 70 of what?  And there were no worksheets.

My colleagues are tearful and depressed.  The Senior Leadership Team cares only for results and nothing for the people charged with bringing about those results, whether they are staff or children.  This is not going to end well.