21

My youngest daughter, Claire, was 21 on Friday. She says she's glad to be 21 because 20 is such a bland age.

I got a rare email from her father on the Sunday before this event asking what she would like as a present. He said - in more flush times he gave her sister a present worth £500 and felt 'duty bound' to do the same for Claire.

I think Helen's 21st birthday was the only other time he asked what the girls wanted. He usually gives them Amazon vouchers. Helen wanted a camcorder. Claire has simple needs. Money would be her first choice, but she knows he doesn't like giving money and certainly does not like to give what they 'need' only what they 'want'. So she plumped for a digital camera and clothes. I replied to him very speedily, thinking he wanted to get something that day, as he only had 5 days to get it to her.

At 11:56 pm on Wednesday night I got an email saying thank you and he'll get her a camera....(can you get digital cameras for £500? I was hoping he would get her a camera and some vouchers for clothes too.) and please engineer it so that no-one else gets her one as he didn't want her receiving two.

I had several ideas for replies to this.
a) Is this s bit late to decide what you are going to get her? Her birthday starts just over 24 hours from now.
b) Is this a bit late to ask me to engineer that no-one else gets her one? She has already received several parcels from people who want her to open her presents on her actual birthday.
c) No problem with anyone else getting her a camera because no-one else she knows can afford to get her one.

I decided not to send any reply. I just vented my thoughts to Helen via email, who agreed I didn't have to reply to it.

So Monday comes and still no sign of a present for her from her dad. She has decided not to care, but of course she does.

Dangers of Teaching

I've had a little challenge this week in my teaching career.

On Tuesday I taught at a school in Thatcham, Berks. I'd been there before when I had a car but this time I went via bike/train/bike. Took me one hour 15 minutes to get there. I was very pleased with myself that I cycled 4 miles in half an hour! My bike fell down once in and, whilst cycling away from the station (once I found out which way to go) I realised that myhe train bike lock had fallen off the handle bars and was now on it's way to Bedlam (or some-such place I'd never heard of).

This was a problem but not the big challenge of the day.

I had been to this school before but could not remember which class I had taken. I was in year 3/4 in the morning teaching a maths lesson for an ill teacher. Unfortunately the photocopied pages from a text book were not where she said they were so could not do the lesson as planned. Fortunately they had not completed the work from the previous day so they continued with that. 4 different groups were doing different sheets so we could not mark the work as a class. The previous day's work had not been marked by whoever had taken them.

Other lessons also produced marking so spent all lunchtime doing that task. Supply teachers are not paid for lunchtime, but I have never had that hour to myself doing this job. I am either preparing for the afternoon or marking work from the morning or both, and usually eat whist doing these tasks. We get paid to 3:30 but have to have done all the marking before we leave so I always do about 3-4 hours unpaid work whenever I do a job. I am a conscientious marker, which means I write comments and targets on their books.

This wasn't the challenge either.

In the afternoon I had a year 5/6 class. This was definitely a challenge. At least 5 children with severe behaviour challenges. Following the sanction strategy I sent two out of class. Unfortunately they came back a few minutes later. These boys were disruptive and disrespectful.

There is a challenging school in Reading that I often teach in and I enjoy going there despite the difficult children. The reason is the staff and management are so supportive. They know the children are a challenge and often it is prearranged that the worst behaved children spend the day in another class. The support from the head/deputy and other staff make the difficult job so much more bearable. The first time I taught at that school the headteacher came into the classroom as the children were coming in, having introduced herself to me, and spoke to the children kindly, about her expectations of them. She then popped in later to see how things were going. She gave me letters to give to the parents of children who behaved well telling them their child had behaved well for a supply teacher and was a credit to the school.

Unfortunately this is unusual in my experience. Usually I never see any management and if I do they do not introduce themselves so I don't know who they are. Last year I spent every Wednesday in a year 3 class enabling the NQT (newly qualified teacher) to have her designated PPA time. I had taken over from another supply teacher who found the difficult children too much to cope with (and they were very challenging). I had been there 6 weeks before I saw a member of the management team. It was the headteacher, who walked into the classroom without saying hello to me. She had an air of authority about her so I went up to her and introduced myself and when she didn't reciprocate I resorted to "I'm sorry, I don't know who your are."

Anyway, back to my Tuesday challenge.

The lesson had been so interrupted by the poor behaviour that they had written nothing in their books when the bell for afternoon play went. I told everyone that no-one could go out to play until they had completed the task set. Unfortunately the boys had to attend a meeting in the hall so I told them to come straight back to the classroom when it finished so they could finish the work before going to play.

As I was saying 'boys line up,' three boys ran to the door. I shouted stop, but no-one took any notice so I put out my arm to bar then from running through the door and into the corridor. They were going at speed and so the first two boys got by before my hand was extended, but the third boy collided with my hand. As he was lining up I saw him wiggle his shoulder and thought ' Oh he's making a big fuss, I didn't hurt him.' He was one of the most disrespectful boys in the class.

I was so glad when home-time came. As I was marking the books I got a phone call from the agency that gave me the work, to say there had been a formal complaint made against me. I couldn't think what I had done to warrant that! I had shouted a few times that afternoon, but that was the only thing I could think of. The agency said the child protection agency was involved. I asked what I was accused of doing. Apparently I had grabbed a boy by the arm causing red marks.
Oh now I remember! It must have been that really disrespectful boy who had collided with my arm. My gosh I was trying to prevent him hurting himself by racing out of the door into other people and now his mother was accusing me of abusing her son!

I left at 5 pm having done all the marking. The NQT came back after holding a dance club after school and I found out she had not been informed of the accusation. I therefore warned her to be wary of that child.

Fortunately I spent the rest of the week in that supportive school in Reading, who were most shocked that no-one from the school in Thatcham had spoken to me about the incident.

The week ended with a phone call from the agency. The police had decided not to pursue it. They must have been told by the other children 'witnesses' that the boy was running through the doorway at the time.

Fireworks

I'm sitting listening to more fireworks this evening. We have heard bangs and whistles for 5 days now. The official celebration was yesterday November 5th. For those non-English readers November 5th is called Bonfire Night or more officially Guy Fawkes night. We celebrate the fact that a person called Guy Fawkes and his Catholic friends were caught before they managed to blow up parliament and King James 1, in 1605. The original terrorist, before the word was invented.

I have some sympathy with the Catholic plight at the time. They were treated as second class citizens with less rights than the protestants.

I have never been a fan of the practice of burning effigies of the man on bonfires but I do love a large bonfire and can ooh and aah like the next child at the fireworks.

It is interesting that Catholics today celebrate Bonfire Night along with the rest of the population, without a blink of an eye. When I was in America on July 4th some Americans thought that I would feel uncomfortable with everyone celebrating the defeat of the British on that day. It hadn't occurred to me to be bothered. It was so long ago.

This attitude of the British is in contrast with the Muslim attitude to the Crusades, which finished in 1291. I was astounded to learn that the Muslims in Kuwait still hold a grudge about these events!

Learner Drivers

Part of my route to work is quite a quiet road. I cycle up it from the dead end and have noticed lots of driving school cars traveling towards me to the end. One morning I passed 5 such cars. I wondered why they were so concentrated on that particular street. My first lighthearted thought was that they were having a learner party. This of course I quickly dismissed as pure whimsy.

My next thought was that it was a good spot for reversing around corners and three-point-turns. But, I asked myself, why so many in this particular road? Surely there were other streets in the area that were suitable too.

Today I found the answer to the plethora of learner drivers. I saw one car drive down the side of a property to the car park at the rear. I looked more closely and realised that the building that I had thought to be only 'Thames Heating' premises was in fact two businesses and one was the DSA (Driving Standards Agency). Presumably this is where the learners take their driving tests!

Don't Go with Strangers!

I remember when I was four years old, I went to a Sunday school Christmas party with my five year old brother. I don't remember the party at all, and I'm actually just assuming it was a Christmas one, because I was wearing a maroon coloured wool coat. What sticks in my mind is going home.

It was raining and two worthy gentlemen from the church must have offered to take us home. My mother had my one year old sister at home and a husband working away so she was probably very grateful. She might have known these men but we certainly didn't!

Being a good mother she had told us we must never go anywhere with strangers and certainly not in their car. So we tried to refuse. We cried and we bawled but we ended up being taken home in their car anyway, still crying.

I don't remember being scared, just very upset at being made to do something that my mummy had told me not to do. I probably didn't understand the reason for not going with strangers. We were much more innocent than the kids are today.

I was wondering what would happen if that scenario played itself out today. I can't imagine any man bundling two screaming children into a car nowadays. The Sunday school teacher would not have encouraged it either. They would probably have phoned my mum and got her to speak to us to tell us it was OK. We had a phone at home so they either did not know her number or didn't consider it.

So even though children were more innocent then, they were not treated with the same respect to feelings as they are now.

A Reversing Car

I had a little accident today. I was cycling to work. Well I wasn't going to be paid. There was a training day at my contracted School. I was invited to attend but it was made clear that I would not be paid because it was not my usual day for working there, and they had used up the budget on paying all the Teaching Assistants to go. The headteacher said "I understand if you get a teaching job, but you are very welcome to come if you are not busy."

I was nearly there, and at the part of the journey where I cycle on the road on the cycle lane. However it was blocked by a delivery lorry so instead of continuing and veering into the traffic around the lorry, I decided to go via the service road. This was lined with parked cars, hence the lorry on the cycle path. A car came out of a space and I waited behind it for the driver to change gears and move forward. But it didn't. I reversed. And kept going even with me shouting. If he had looked in his mirror he would have seen me plain as day behind his car. But he didn't look. And he didn't stop. I scrambled out of the way and he missed me by a hair's breath. He still didn't stop until he was way behind me and noticed me shouting and waving at him. He wound down his window to hear me bawling at him. "You need to look in your b***** mirror when you reverse!" He looked at me, lifting his hands in a gesture that conveyed either 'It wasn't my fault' or 'What is all the fuss about?' I reacted angrily to this and shouted, "You could get someone killed doing that!"

This really shook me so I turned round and cycled back home. When I got there, 30 minutes later, I was still upset so I sat down and used the violet flame to help me forgive the guy for doing it and forgive me for dumping my energy onto him in the form of shouting.
The violet flame resonates at a very high frequency and when invoked acts as a cosmic eraser, changing the energies of resentment and unforgiveness into love and joy.
So after a while of saying:

I AM forgiveness acting here
Casting out all doubt and fear
Setting men forever free
With wings of cosmic victory

I calmed down and got on with all the many chores that I have on my list.

Day Nursery

As it is half term this week there are no schools in session. The only work available is the day nurseries. I was called to my regular one this morning and found myself in the 3-4 year old class. The are called 'Snowdrops' and they are really lovely. The whole nursery is great. The children are mainly from middle class families which makes such a change from the school I usually teach in. These children are intelligent and most have a good vocabulary and because they don't carry around the emotional baggage that the deprived kids do their behaviour on the whole is wonderful. So refreshing. The last two visits have seen me in the toddler class which is lovely but today I was back to the class I started with and had most time with. The leader of the room is a mature nursery nurse of very high quality and a joy to work with. She likes that I just get stuck in and start singing with the children if she has a visitor or some other distraction. I love to read stories and sing songs. I have a repetoir that the normal staff don't have, and the children remember and ask for my specialities.

There were a few children this time who I have not met before as they have recently moved up from the 'Primroses'. I asked one pretty bright red haired girl what her name was and she replied. "Princess." I said "Oh?" in an enquiring sort of way, and she repeated "Princess." Then added "I'm going to be a Princess when I grow up but my name now is Katie Walton-Hardcastle" (or something like that).

Being half term some parents did not bring their children in due to having to be off work for their older ones. Therefore I was asked if I didn't mind leaving at 2pm as they didn't need me. I was delighted! I know it means less money and I didn't get any break but I did get to eat with the kids so it wasn't all bad. The food there is very tasty. We had lamb stew and new potatoes in their skin.

As I was leaving I noticed a dead mouse on the ground near the entrance so pointed it out to management and left her to get the poor creature before the parents started coming again.

Whilst cycling home I noticed an eagle circling above. It just kept going round and round in the same place. What a wonderful sight - so rare in this country. I passed two ladies carrying supermarket bags and pointed it out to them but they were not interested. What a shame.

A Week of Culture and Special Needs

This week has been interesting, as most weeks are being a supply teacher.

Monday
On Monday I worked with a year 1 class. This was my second visit in that class and they were much better behaved as a result. They have a system where there is a tick put by their name on a star chart each day for good work or behaviour. They then get a sticker at the end of the day for each tick they have on the chart. Last time I was there I gave out about 4 stickers to each child because of all the stars they had. This time some children got only one or even none. It was a little weird that the overall behaviour was better this time! They often physically put a tick by their own names at the request of the Teaching assistant or the Teacher. Anyway, One boy had 5 ticks and I asked him what they were for. He said playing nicely on the carpet. I then asked who had given him the star and he said no-one. He had just thought that he deserved it and gave it to himself. It turned out that no adult had given him a star at all (poor lamb) and he had awarded them all to himself.

Tuesday
On Tuesday I worked as a Teaching Assistant in a residential school for Autistic children. This was miles from anywhere and too far to cycle, but amazingly the nearest bus went passed the bottom of my road! The bus went every 2 hours so I got the 7:13 am one, arrived at 7:45, walked down a country lane, arriving at about 8 am and waited an hour for someone to escort me to the classroom along with the children.

There were 4 higher functioning boys in the class and I made the 3rd adult in the team. They were aged about 10 but working at a year 1 level. I had been to the school before and enjoyed it greatly. Last time I worked in several parts of the school, with the higher functioning children and also those functioning at a low level, with little or no speech. Last time I was paid as a teacher but this time I was being paid as an assistant at half the pay. However it seems I did a very similar job. The room leader was a man from Ghana who had his two little girls and wife still over there. I was struck by the love and respect both Katie and Erastus had for the children, indeed, one of the reasons why I like the school so much is that all the staff have a wonderful manner. I also liked the kids.

The first thing a person new to the room does is read the information displayed on each child to learn the triggers for behaviour and strategies of dealing with them. This day did not look too promising because one boy, I'll call him Tony, was afraid of the sound of rain and the weather forecasted heavy rain. The strategy was to put on music to attempt to distract him. He started out the day in a difficult mood but fortunately the rain did not fall and his mood improved.

There is a drawback to agency staff. Even though we all have current CRB checks we are not allowed to be left alone with any child. This is usual in this situation and in nurseries too. The reason is that the children do not know the adult and the adult has limited knowledge of the children. After lunch one boy, Jonathon sustained a bump on the head and started feeling sick so Katie took him to the nurse. When it came time for Troy to have his Occupational Therapy session we all had to troop to take him to the room as I could neither take him on my own, or be left with the others.

Wednesday
The last 3 days of the week I am in my contracted school (which is in a very deprived area)- 1 day taking a class so the teacher can have preparation time and 2 days with my normal year 3 class that I share with the school SENCO (Special Educational Needs Coordinator) who needs time out of the classroom for all the work that entails. We have boys on the autistic spectrum in year 3. Why is it that there are more children with autism now, than there were 10 years ago?

It was Cultural Arts Week and so I dressed in a sari in the afternoon teaching the story of Rama and Sita in our India room. We have three year 3 classes and for three afternoons the children rotated through to 'India', 'Kenya' and 'China' to do various arts activities . Our new TA, Deep, is a lady who was born in Kenya from Indian decent. She provided wonderful resources for both India and Kenya.

Thursday saw me learning an Indian Dance and

Friday watching a brass band from England. The 5 members were all peripatetic music teachers who demonstrated their instruments and played a variety of interesting and enjoyable music. with the children in year groups, joining in with the complicated percussion rhythms on the Latin piece.

I taught a different year 3 class on Friday. Two of the year team were having PPA time, so whilst the children were watching The Lion King (for the Kenyan landscape scenes) with the other PPA teacher the rest of us got some displays on the wall from the week's activities.
I also did an international music quiz with them. They had listened to music from India, China and Kenya whilst doing the various activities about those countries. I put together several clips of music from those countries and played them one at a time for them to discuss with a partner and decide where it came from.

The resource I used for this was the catalogue on CD of ARC Music. This has clips of a few minutes of all their music form all over the world. A wonderful resource for any school, or anyone interested in music from around the world.
http://www.arcmusic.co.uk/

Cycling home in the light has become a novel experience these days. It was great to be able to get home before dark on Friday. Whilst cycling on Thursday I had a beautiful red sky in front of me that kept changing until, as I cycled into the car park at my apartment there was just a deep red low in the sky.

Train to London

I got a train from Reading to London Paddington this morning along with lots of other people. The train had come from Oxford and was only 3 short carriages long. We filled the seats and so some people had to stand and even more people got on at Slough. I was amazed to see that the seat in front of me was occupied by a coat and a bag. Sitting next to these articles was a young lady of east Asian origin. She was totally oblivious that the seat was needed by several people. A man walked onto the carriage at Slough, put his heavy bag on the floor and pointedly looked at the seat and then at the woman. I don't think the woman noticed. He must have been English because he did a typically English thing and said nothing to her at all. After another pointed look, he turned away and spent the rest of the journey standing next to the 'empty' seat.
I found out later that she did not speak or understand English so I wonder, was it a culture thing on her part that she didn't think to move the articles or was she just very self centered, or simply in culture shock?

There must have been an International football game because there was a high police presence at the station and many boys and men were dressed in their replica England football shirts. The tube was like riding in a sardine can.

The return journey in the evening found me on a train to Taunton. I walked right to the front of the train - about 4 times longer than the morning one. It was crowded with families, singles, couples and football fans. There were lots of tickets on seats denoting those that had been booked. I was really pleased to find a pair of seats that had been reserved from Reading to Taunton, so I settled comfortably in and waited. Unfortunately this bliss did not last long because their was a message to say that all people in the carriage I was occupying had to vacate it and find another seat! The door to this carriage would not shut and they didn't want to lose anyone during the journey. How thoughtful!

The train was delayed for 20 minutes altogether for another safety technical reason and as we were setting off we had a message apologising for this delay and announcing that the buffet car had run out of beer. Ha ha. At least the lovely seats would be kept clean.

The story of my car

My car died at the beginning of the summer so I bought a bike and convinced myself I was not poor, but keen on becoming fit. This is what I have been telling people. However the truth is a little more complicated that that......

To give you the correct picture I need to back up a little to the Spring. I needed to buy a car, being car-less at the time and wanting to get back into Supply teaching, but had no money to do it with so a friend lent me the money. I bought the car on Ebay. My reasoning for doing it this way was because the people selling anything there strive to get and keep a good reputation for honesty and efficiency which is all recorded by means of customers' feedback.

I bid for a car for £400 and was very excited when I won it for £410. As it was a Friday evening and the seller did not work weekends (he had made it his job to sell cars on ebay), I arranged to pick it up on the Monday. That Monday was the first day of my supply teaching and I was given an afternoon job so I checked emails in the morning. Good job I did! The seller emailed me to say that he no longer had the car for me! He had got it out of the secure parking place on Sunday ready for my collection and it had been vandalised whilst sitting on the road near his house. He did not want to sell me a vandalised car, even though I had bought it. When I told him I really wanted to get a car that day, as planned, he told me to look at the other cars he was auctioning and he would stop the auction for me to get it at the same price as the other one. Most of them were too expensive but there was one nearly in the same league. It would probably go for at least £600 but had just got to nearly £400. He was true to his word and let me have it for £410 - a dark green Volvo. It ran well and served me well.

However, one Thursday morning I found it sitting in the drive with all 4 tyres slashed, deep scratches over every section of body and the wipers wrenched off the car. Needless to say I was late for work that day, having to get the bus. Saturday morning was spent watching a mechanic trying to get the wheels off without the required locking nut implement that had not come with the car! He was telling me it would take a few hundred pounds to get them off. However I prayed and low and behold he immediately managed to do it without resorting to expensive methods.

I got the car running which cost me a few hundred pounds but the insurance company told me the scratches meant it was a write-off as far as they were concerned, because the car was not worth the cost of a total respray. I accepted what they were offering but it took a while for the car to be picked up, so as it still ran fine I used it. However the week before they picked it up it died and the rescue guy told me it needed a new alternator and would need a new clutch soon so the timing was just right. It died but I got the money anyway.