Book Nazis?

Last week’s Teaching Assistant course, whilst still dull as heck, was notable for at least one thing. It was during a bit on equal opportunities that my back was well and truly gotten up.
The tutor produces a pile of children’s books and proceeds to pass them round asking us to decide which ones were suitable for schools.

After much mulling and discussion of the books we were asked whether we thought our selections were suitable and promoted the right positive images to children.

Rejected so far had been Mr Large In Charge, where the daddy Elephant looks after the house for a night and chaos ensues. It portrayed men and fathers as stereotypically inept and lazy according to the tutor.
Also out was If I Was Boss, a brilliant book that Molly still loves, because it’s central protagonist, a little girl, is far too bossy and mean to her mom.

I was last to be asked and had been stunned as I heard reasonable people swallowing the tutors reasons why certain books didn’t portray the correct positive role models to primary age children.
So I went for it.

All books are suitable for children I said. It’s only through experimentation that children learn and I heartily believe that you should only constrain them by their abilities. I wouldn’t, for example give Molly a book written for adults, but I wouldn’t police her reading at any level beneath that.
The only thing that reading should be promoting is a love of reading and a desire to gain knowledge.
Anything else merely suits those who would wish to see our children raised in a world that promotes blandness and safety above all things until all that is vibrant and interesting is driven out.

She was a little taken aback.

But surely you wouldn’t let children read “Little Black Sambo” she asks? She’s already listed that as one of those books we wouldn’t dream of giving to children because it’s far too racially insensitive. I told her of course not, because that one had been written in 1899 and used language that we now, rightly, consider completely inappropriate.
But to limit children to only nice, safe reading where every character has a positive role and nothing bad can ever be discussed? Isn’t that just a little bit ridiculous? If we’re going down that route, how many books, classics and modern do we have to get rid of? The list is practically endless.
The end result of this sort of thinking is a world where we’re giving our children a sanitised, bland, beige world where literature begins and ends with topsy and tim.

Later that night I settled down to read Molly her bedtime story.
She’s not really enjoying Mein Kampf but I felt I had a point to prove.

Black Dog & Blogging excuses #1 : Busy and sleeping.

Lately posting has been a touch erratic to say the least.

And the reason for this relative inactivity?
Well, a combination of things really.
First and foremost a general malaise, of which i shall return to later.

On top of that has been the much trumpeted wish to actually get to bed earlier and to try to get more than 4 hours sleep a night. Which, considering I’m currently typing this at 1:40am early Wednesday morning is not really a resolution I’ve managed to keep.

I am getting better though, 1am is becoming the norm, which is what I was hoping for. Sometime in the coming months I’m going to take it to 12:30am and then get back to midnight. But the transition has been a bit shit really. I’m feeling the benefits in a morning, but by early evening I’m just as wiped out as i used to be. It still takes me until at least 9pm to get the brain in gear and then, by the time I’ve done whatever else needs doing it’s somehow 11pm or later.

Schoolwork and work for the crappy Teaching Assistant course has been rather taking precedence over the blog lately, something which, although necessary, I am not pleased about.

The schoolwork has been one last big push to get the to do list down to a manageable size. And the crappy TA course needed a unit handing in this month and one handing in next month so i really had to put some hours in.
Hopefully, once the TA unit is finished, I’ll get back to a relaxing evening of writing and relaxing. I’ve changed working patterns at work so that every Friday is clear of all distractions and has become a pure techy/website day. That way I can get a good run at all of those nagging jobs that I’m just able to fit in between teaching ict. Thus weekends, in theory are now clear of schoolwork.

Things should be getting easier……

If only that were the case.
(onto Blogging excuses #2: That damn black dog…..)

Tonight I shall be making more shit up about my experiences in a school

Yes, tonight is another night spent completing work for my pointless bloody portfolio of stupid, blindingly obvious evidence for my NVQ Level 2 Teaching Assistant course.

I have to write about the activity which I have helped my teacher plan.
I then have to individually assess each pupil involved, writing about their problems and needs. Then look at how I helped each one, what I could do differently and how it all went.
Then I have to pass the sheet onto the teacher who is required to write a 2 page essay on how it went. Hopefully she’ll manage to cover the required performance indicators of the unit otherwise I’ll then have to write a few thousand bloody words to cover them as well.

Alternatively,
I could choose an activity we haven’t done yet, but I’ve planned for. I could then fib and say I’m working with a small group outside the main class. Then I could write just what they want to hear.
I could also write about the activity from the teacher’s perspective, getting Louise to write it up in neat so it looks like the teacher’s written it but has miraculously managed to cover all the important and relevant information thus covering the performance indicators.

Oooh, I just don’t know which one to do…….

Teacher – horrible, selfish or just arrogant?

Okay, not all of them.
Certainly not the ones I’m with at my primary school.

But……
On the latest two hours a week I am never getting back night of my Teaching Assistant course we found out from two of the course attendees that as volunteer helpers in their school they are not allowed to use the staff room.
NOT allowed to use the staff room. Unbelievable.

And that’s the very worst aspects of teachers coming right out there for you.
Not allowed to use the staff room. Amazing.

Even worse, the thing that had me nearly chewing my hand off with anger was their cow like acceptance of this fact as “just the way it is”.