Phonics

 I haven’t written for ages, and my stats show it. My god, the blog reading ‘community’ are fucking fickle!

I’ve been rather busy and haven’t really felt like getting on the computer when I’ve come home. Still, no excuse. I would give out a detention if one of my pupils did the same, if of course keeping a blog up to date where a part of the Year 2 curriculum, which it isn’t. And thank the Lord for that as well, it would be awful reading the insane drivel of 30 five and six year olds. It would be mostly lies too, the duplicitous little swine.

I attended a day long course on phonics last week. Riveting stuff as it turns out. I was at a slight disadvantage as I’ve never even seen a phonics session let alone tried to teach one but it’s very important that I learn so off I went, to sit in a hall with about 30 or so other year 1 and 2 teachers trying to look like normal human beings in their ‘casual’ clothes. A collection of off duty teachers is only marginally cooler looking than a mob of off duty coppers. In other words; fucking tragic. To put it in the simplest terms, phonics involves helping small children write and spell by teaching them the rules of the English language, and its rather quirky ways. To help this happen there are two ways of saying the alphabet; the first one is the way you or I say it normally; “ay, bee, see, dee”, that sort of thing, and the other is by literally just saying the letter as if you had picked it out of a word; “a, b, c, d” (never “ah, buh, cuh, duh” by the way, it’s confusing for them, which means that saying the alphabet this way is fucking difficult at first). To avoid saying “duh” you just say the purest part of the ‘d’ sound…which sounds like a ‘pop’ to be honest. I hope you’re keeping up. Anyone older than 30something will probably remember this method from their very early school days, but at some point in the early eighties it was binned. (Some of you may remember it after that time, if you were at a school where the teachers didn’t follow the plan, which is a good thing as you can probably write better than most your age). The reason it was binned was essentially because teaching got a bit progressive and anything ‘old’ was deemed shit because it was, well, old. Think New Labour’s take on the late 90s. Anyway, it then turned out that my generation and all the ones after it can’t write very well (see this blog for a good example) so they’ve just decided that we should go back to this old fashioned system. Good thing too. It will take years to put right though. So, I’ve done the training and now I’ve got to get my head round the whole thing, take notes, photocopy children’s work and go back for some more training in the new year. Fucked if I know what’s going on though, my brain had melted an hour before lunch so I’m not sure how much I managed to retain in my head. Huzzah for handouts!

Talking of training; I’ve noticed over the last few years that the worst fucking people in the world for talking over speakers in training sessions, lectures and meetings etc are teachers. I can’t abide it. There was a table of the very worst kind at the back of the hall, the worst kind of course being slightly older and more senior teachers. They probably feel they have the right to talk incessantly. And because everyone in the room are deemed to be adults the trainers don’t react to it. Drives me insane. The thing is, you know these hatchet-faced dragons would go ape if their pupils even dared whisper in one of their lessons, which shows them for the hypocritical witches they are. Is was all I could do to stop myself hurling heavy objects across the hall at them. They all had glasses on and I don’t think they could see my withering looks (and in my job I’ve really developed some great withering looks), I was quite far away you see. When I reach the dizzying heights of being allowed to train teachers I will not have it. I’ve heard there’s a head of something-or-other in the borough who tells these types to stop talking or leave, can’t wait to see him in action. Apparently he’s loathed, I think I’d like him.