Legal Highs

How about a nice mug of cocoa?

So-called 'Legal Highs' have been in the news a lot recently, with deaths associated with taking these substances soaring. I have to confess to being very boring/sensible, depending on your perspective, when it comes to drugs, and little has passed my lips other than the odd Marlborough Light in my teens/twenties and rather more than the odd glass of Chardonnay in my thirties/forties.

As a teacher, pupils often ask if you've ever done drugs, and I am rather relieved to be able to answer honestly that I haven't. They do know about my Haribo habit though! I remember one girl commenting how young I looked for my age - it was my 40th birthday and I'd taken some cake in for my favourite group of delinquents. Another pupil butted in "Yeah, that's because all she does at the weekend is stay at home and drink water". Sad, but oh so very true!

The whole Legal High thing got me thinking about what I have in my life to give me a much needed lift from time to time. I know I am opening myself up to derision from those younger than me, but I may raise a wry smile of recognition in some of my middle-aged readers out there?

1. Getting into bed with freshly laundered sheets and pillow cases, with a cup of tea and a good book, especially if you know you haven't got to get up early the next day.

2. Watching the hedgehogs in the garden on a summer evening - glass of wine optional (or in my case obligatory)

3. Snuggling up with a sleeping baby - preferably someone else's so you can hand it back when it wakes up.

4. Looking back at old photos and laughing at how awful you looked in 70s/80s fashions.

5. Having a good sing. Usually Thine be the Glory! For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about see http://normalfornnorfolk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/thine-be-glory.html

6. Watching The Inbetweeners and laughing until you cry.

7. Learning to be content with what you have. I'm still working on this but the very old system of 'counting your blessings' works oh so well.

8. Listening to an amazing piece of music on your own in the dark.

9. Looking at the moon. (I said looking, not howling)

10. Being kind to someone you really don't like much. If nothing else it will make them paranoid!

I'm sure these will not be everyone's cup of tea but I hope you've found one or two you can identify with. Do leave your own comments below if you'd like to share your own Legal Highs.

GCSE Results

I have been a nervous wreck for the past few days waiting for GCSE results. Not my own, you understand, or even a nephew or niece this year. No, I have been waiting, as a teacher, for my Spanish class' results. You teenagers and parents have it easy you see. You may get this terrifying, stomach churning, nail biting wait two or three times in a lifetime. I have had it just about every August for the last 17 years, and the experience only gets worse as the responsibility for results gets placed more and more on teachers, and less on less on pupils.
On the whole I am pleased with the results my pupils have achieved this year. They range from a grade B to F. This time around I had a middle ability group, all lovely kids, all received the same teaching, encouragement, support, feedback over the two year course. How then can the results vary so much? In Mr Gove's world, they should all have achieved a B/C grade. I'll tell you how. The pupil with the F grade did the minimum of work. He did not submit a single piece of coursework of any consequence. The same applies to the E and D grades. I can teach to the very best of my ability but I cannot do the work for them That would be illegal and disciplinary action for fraud is something I could do without to be honest.
So now I wait to see what my 'residuals' are. This I how much I am deemed to have improved or not on the grades the pupils SHOULD have achieved. This is worked out by some ridiculous system called the FFT - Fisher Family Trust, or Fisher Price as most of my colleagues prefer to call it. From what I can tell this is an entirely random calculation based on where you live, what you ate for breakfast and what newspaper your parents read. For example Lowestoft/Quavers and Red Bull/The Mirror = E
Burnham Market/Homemade Muesli and Fresh Orange Juice/The Guardian = A*. OK, it is based loosely around how a child is doing at Key Stage 2, when they are aged 8-11. Now, I could be going out on a pedagogical limb here, but I would guess that at this age most children are a) fairly amenable to doing what their teachers and parents say  b) not full of hormones and interested only in their social life and the opposite sex  c) not experimenting with alcohol and recreational drugs. How a child is performing at 9 can surely not determine how they should do at 16 and yet this is what we are all judged on.
I have my own system for working out what grade they should get called the Sian Harrison Indicator Test. It goes like this. Take the average grade the pupil achieves aged 13. Divide by the number of piercings they have. Take away the amount of time they spend on a games console. Add the amount of time they spend doing homework. Take away the number of units of alcohol they consumed the night before the exam. Divide by the number of times they say 'Why do we have to learn Spanish anyway'. Based on the above system I would say I am outstanding and deserve a pay rise!

My Haribo Habit

Now, I know that I am not alone in adult circles in being a bit partial to the odd packet of Haribo and I have found that the more open I have been, the more people I have found over the age of 25 who share my gelatine addiction. I'm sure there are support groups out there somewhere for the real hard-core users, and a twelve-step plan to wean you off the gummy bears.
Normally when I am at home I am ok, as we tend not to have Haribo in the house, but my real downfall is when I'm at school. I  keep a big stash of this type of sweet in my desk as prizes/bribes/danger money for the kids I teach. I'm sure this goes against all guidelines on good practice, what with our being a healthy eating school and all that, but I find that fresh fruit doesn't keep so well and is nowhere near as effective. "Come on Tyler, just finish this piece of work and you can have some grapes".
Normally I can resist. The Haribo are in a tin in a locked drawer, otherwise they do tend to 'disappear', so I have to make an effort to get to them - but after a particularly challenging day I do sometimes find myself reaching into the pupils' sweet tin for a little something. The trouble is once you've had some it is hard to stop. I guess the combination of sugar, e numbers and chewiness is meant to be addictive otherwise they wouldn't sell so many.

I have sometimes toyed with the idea of buying sweets which I don't like, such as toffees or mints, but the trouble is the kids don't like them either. One 13 year old girl asked "Miss. Why don't you buy us chocolate instead?". I found myself in one of those painful situations where you can hear yourself saying something, know it's stupid, but it's too late to stop yourself. "They wouldn't last too well in a stuffy classroom, and there's nothing worse than a sticky mess in your drawers", was what I said. I hate it when that happens. She might have a point though? I'm sure melted, congealed and re-set chocolate would be much easier for me to say no to.

Lowering Your Standards

One of my favourite quotes is "Being happy does not mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections." This is a much more eloquent way of putting into words what I have been saying for years. If things aren't going the way you wanted there are two choices you have. You can either change things, or if that isn't possible, you can lower your expectations. In fact there is a third choice. Stay exactly as you are and be miserable! Here are some areas of my life where I have had to accept less than perfection.

My Home:
The Dream. I have a big, spacious home in the country but close enough to pop into London, with enough room for all my husband's mess to be hidden away. The elegant driveway leads you to a beautiful, imposing front door with a gleaming brass handle and possibly a butler to open it. The rooms are tastefully decorated, furnished with choice pieces I have picked up from antiques dealers and from my world travels. I greet guests looking immaculate and with a welcoming smile as I effortlessly mingle and hand out pates of mouth-watering canapés I have prepared myself.
The Reality. I have a small, messy house which has seen better days which faces onto a busy road popular with boy racers who can't read speed limits and have appalling taste in music. The plaster is crumbling, we have a smelly hedgehog living under the stairs and the bathroom is an 80s monstrosity featuring a peach suite and wallpaper with the Latin names for flowers on it (also peach). I have to spend hours stuffing all the mess into drawers and cupboards before people come round and usually say 'shall we just get a takeaway?' to any guest brave enough to accept an invitation.

My Car:
The Dream. I have a lovely little sporty number (brand new of course) with every possible gadget you could think of. Who knows, I may even have indulged in some personalised plates. It runs like a dream and I get envious glances from people at traffic lights. I have it waxed and valeted every couple of weeks. It absolutely drinks fuel but I don't care because I'm rich. Sod the environment.
The Reality. I have had a number of cars, each one having been at least third hand. They run ok for a bit but then start rapidly falling apart. Every year it costs more to get it through the MOT than it is actually worth. It has bumps and scratches and I get smirks at the traffic lights. I use my car as an overflow wardrobe/office/skip so it is always liberally strewn with papers, apple cores and crisp packets.

My Job:
The Dream: I am a internationally acclaimed authority on Modern Spanish Literature and run my own literary translation company. When I am not at my beautiful office in Kensington I can be seen jetting off to publishing conventions all over the Spanish-speaking world, staying in 5 star hotels and generally being popular and intelligent.
The Reality: I teach Spanish to teenagers who really would rather be doing anything else and see no relevance in learning their own language, let alone someone else's. I spend my days trying to extract homework from the idle and covering up the penises they have drawn on my display boards.

Worrying

If  'Worrying' were an Olympic sport then I would be up there sprawled across all three podiums (is that the correct plural? podiums, podia? I knew I shouldn't have sent my research team home early) adorned with the gold, silver and bronze medals, worrying that the combined weight of these metals was going to cause terrible neck problems in later life. Oh, and what if the silver made my eczema flare up?
I am a worrier, though I like to think that I have trained myself out of it a bit over the years. I have had to in order to survive. You see, worrying is an exhausting pastime. It means that your brain is constantly going over things, trying to resolve issues which may not even have happened yet, if indeed they are ever going to! And if I don't really have anything to worry about then that I will find something. Worrying is an addiction, it's like continuing to chew on a piece of gum long after it has lost its flavour.
So, I have invented for myself a simple yet effective test called 'The Death Bed Test'. It's not patented, you too can use it. When I find myself starting to get anxious about something I ask myself 'Am I going to be thinking about this on my death bed?' You can always adapt this to make it more short-term e.g. next year, next month, in a week. If the answer is 'No' then let it go. I have not yet answered 'Yes' to the question and believe me, I am a hard-core worrier. I often use this method on pupils who are getting over-anxious about an exam. It usually raises a brief smile and puts things in perspective. I hope it does the same for you.

Hard of Hearing

I appear to be following in some well-worn, pre-destined genetic paths by beginning to lose my hearing quite significantly in my 30s. Not wanting to be too predictable though, I have decided to lose only my middle frequency tones, i.e. the most useful ones, as they include speech. I have also made sure that I have one of the most ridiculous jobs for the hard of hearing, namely teaching, and languages teaching at that! My other career choice would have been Speech Therapy. Oh, the irony. Perhaps I should just give up and become a mime artist?
When I spoke to my boss about my affliction he was very sympathetic and understanding, saying that the school would pay for any 'reasonable adjustment' to help me and going on to suggest that I should have all the noisy classes so I would be able to hear them. Thanks, but I felt that the department's money would be better spent on a regular supply of 'Sancerre' to help me come to terms with my disability. I'm still waiting for that one!
My pupils have their own unique way of 'helping' me too. Their logic dictates that as I can't hear middle tones, then if they speak in a high pitched squeak or a bass-baritone growl then I should be able to understand them. Doesn't work but does make me laugh.
So, no doubt I shall be spending many more happy hours waiting in the audiology department at my local hospital. It's hilarious. They can't pronounce my name properly (being a bit Welsh and all that) and I can't hear it anyway! I am one of the few people in the country actually looking forward to growing old and losing their high frequency tones. At least then I'll be eligible for hearing aids!

Decisions, decisions ...

This morning my lovely boss (he'll be reading this) asked me what kind of Teacher's Planner I would like for next year. This always causes great excitement as it is the only freebie we get these days, following the discontinuation of valium-tipped board pens. (Dear Customs and Excise/Drugs Squad/Ofsted - that was a joke - no dawn raids please.)
His first question was quite simple. "A4 or A5?" "A4 please. It's easier to hide my mobile phone from the kids with an A4 one."
Second question. "Ring bound or loose leaf?" " Loose leaf"
Third question. "What colour?" "What colour? Ooh the red is quite nice but I had red this year so maybe not. I don't like the orange one - looks like a baby's nappy. Um, how about green? Oh, no it's that horrible dull green isn't it. What other colours do they do? Is there a pink?"
My boss was trying very hard to appear patient but I know him well enough by now to spot the signs.
"I know", I exclaimed. "I'll have that colour!", pointing to the vivid shade of puce which was spreading from his neck up his face.
In the end I plumped for blue. I may not be needing it anyway if I get my P45 in the next few days.

Monolingualism Can Be Cured

"If you speak to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you speak to him in his own language, that goes to his heart" - Nelson Mandela.
As a languages teacher, who has to do daily battle with the linguistic prejudices of the average English teenager, I find this quotation beautiful and inspirational. I have it on my classroom door hoping that, if I fail to do so, then at least the great Madiba might inspire them to open their minds just a little bit. If I had a euro for each time a child has said to me "Why do we have to learn a foreign language? Everyone speaks English anyway", then I would probably be comfortably able to bail out most of the Eurozone with a bit left over for a nice holiday.
As it happens most of the world does not speak English. Just 6% speak it as their mother tongue and only 25% speak any at all. That's three quarters of the world excluded. I know, I'm showing off - I can do Maths too!
I have been hugely thrilled to see that my posts are being read in France, Russia, Germany and Serbia as well as the USA, Canada and UK. When I told Bryn that I had page views from America and Serbia he said "That will be Obama and Djokovic!" Who knows? Whoever you are, wherever you are, thank you for reading and please do leave comments on any of the posts.

Insomnia, School Trips and other Ramblings.

I find myself awake at stupid o'clock this morning, a time usually only experienced in any meaningful sense by shift workers and small infants. Speaking of small infants, I am taken back to the days when Bryn was tiny and 5.30 am was considered a lie in and you knew it was going to be a bad day if the baby had woken you up before the CBeebies channel had come on air.
There could be many reasons for my current bout of sleeplessness: clammy nights, feeling hungry, things on my mind. However, on this particular day I like to think that I have woken up in sympathy with my colleagues who, as I write, are setting off for Germany with 35 excited teenagers. I myself have been on this trip a number of times but, more recently, have gone over to the dark side and accompanied the Spanish jollies (let's face it, that's what all you non-teachers think they are!) instead. On the last German trip two years ago we had literally been on the road (or to be more accurate, the school drive) for 20 seconds when one 13 year old girl threw up over herself and her (ex) friend. At this early stage of the trip I was still feeling reasonably fresh and enthusiastic and so set about cleaning up the mess. If anyone thinks teachers have an easy job then they should try cleaning up someone else's child's vomit on a moving coach. The novelty will soon wear off I can assure you.
...and so it was that I earned myself the (unpaid) title of  'Teacher in charge of Vomit'. Later on in the trip, the lack of fruit served at the hotel necessitated the addition of 'constipation'  and 'rickets' to my responsibilities. All in day's work!