Newbug

Had quite a busy week. Went to an evening training session about a method of teaching youngsters how to write, which involves gross motor movements and fine motor movements…sort of dancing with crayons basically. God knows if it works but I’ll give anything a try. Was observed teaching maths by some freelance consultant in the pay of the dark forces of the L.E.A, actually turned out rather nicely. She wasn’t interested in giving me minute feedback on my teaching and how the children behaved (which makes a change) but rather gave me (gasp) practical tips, some of which I’ve already put into use. One of which is splitting up the ability groups. The way I was trained (and the way most schools operate), is to have your top table, middle tables and bottom table. I’ve always had my doubts about this. Surely the kids on the bottom table never progress much because they’re all sitting together ‘helping’ one another. Thanks to the consultant lady I’ve now got them in groups of four; one top, two middles and a bottom. Seems to work really well.

The class is ticking along nicely, got a good idea about where they all are on the scale of ability and potential, and have got stuck into the most important thing in education; making lots of really dead important spreadsheets for people to uhm and ah over. However, these damn children are proving poor material for this blog. Still no outbreaks of stupidity or weirdness. But there’s hope on the horizon! This week I’ll be getting a new kid in the class. I’m thrilled, no really, I’m dead chuffed…apparently he has ‘brain damage’. We don’t know much because his family are being re-housed from another borough and oh boy, do they sound like the fucking Waltons! Domestic violence, multiple births, extremely young parents, one of whom likes domestic violence, did I mention brain damage? Wicked. We don’t know everything yet. However this is what I do know, from what the Head gleaned from the new child’s last Head Teacher:

• He has brain damage. Did I mention that?
• He’s physically stunted.
• He’s ‘no naughtier than most other children’.
• His father is violent and also has learning difficulties.
• His mother gets beaten by dad. But keeps going back because they love each other really.

Just a couple of questions:

• What level of brain damage are we talking here? And how did it happen?
• Right, so he’s no naughtier than other children at his old school. Well it’s relative isn’t it? If ‘naughty’ at the last place was whispering ‘bum’ in someone’s ear during carpet time then that’s fine, but what if the normal level of ‘naughtiness’ was throwing chairs at people? He’s coming from quite a rough borough to be honest.
• Am I going to have to have a fight with his dad every parents evening? That’s fine if I do, I just need to know if I should order a really heavy meter ruler to have on hand to give me the edge.

Anyway, looks like there’s a new character coming, and at least I’ll have plenty to tell you about next week.

Hope you all had a nice weekend.