By next Thursday, before yet another holiday weekend, – yes, I know bloody teachers – I will have submitted around 30,000 words to my current headteacher outlining the progress of 26 children in my class. I started a couple of days ago. Pressure makes for focus I find.
A certain amount of copying and pasting is allowed for similarity in contexts. Blah, blah, they all studied artists and scientists and found out about the life of pirates in days of yore. That still leaves a lot of words that are unique to every child. Mainly because they are all unique. I’ve spent every school day with them since last August till now and I know them as well as it’s possible to know anyone in around 1,000 accumulated hours of close proximity.
And it strikes me all over again. Every year. Every time I come to the full report on the progress and knowledge of the children in my care. Gawd, I really know them. Not until I put the words into type and see before me the evidence of my own thoughts and their development.
Of course, in between times, this is all held in my head and in ongoing assessments and profiles. But it’s the summary – if summary 30,000 words can be called – that brings home to me every-single-year how well I imbue all that unfolds before me.
Don’t we all?
I haven’t commented, as such, on the results of the general election here in the UK where the incumbent party swept home on around 25% of the electorate.
And that might even be wrong.
My head is full of figures.
I’ve read just about everything there is to read on post election analysis. I’ve listened to and read some unadulterated shite.
Some perfectly reasonable arguments and some hugely emotive posts from people who have so much at stake from another five years of Tory government. The favoured and the damned.
I haven’t read much on WordPress unless there’s been a link through Twitter or Facebook to a relevant post on a subject that is not going away. Democracy. Justice. Representation. Empathy. Compassion. Corruption. Representation. Capitalism, that no creator of its name surely ever envisaged. Surely not, Adam Smith.
More than one subject there?
Or one?
I’ve listened to I don’t know how many repetitive newsreels on Burundi and immigrants on boats who may or may not be genuine asylum seekers and appeals from member states of the European Union that Britain and other members step up to the mark and take their fair share of suffering by any other name.
I’ve hung my head that, already, an extreme right-wing government is seeking to revoke the Human Rights adhered to by member states of the EU to be replaced by some paper invoking #British values. A government with its 25% mandate seeking to ensure that no strike action may occur in any workforce without a 40% vote in favour.
I’ve laughed, delightedly, that the 56 Scottish Nationalist Members of Parliament ‘flouted’ etiquette by applauding – that’s it, applauding! in Westminster! How very dare they! To flout the establishment thus! Off with their ……Fuck off!
I’ve smiled that a 20 year old politics student overturned a 17,000 seat majority from Labour to claim her own 6,000 seat majority.
I smiled and nodded as I listened to her say that it was a wee bit embarrassing that tweets of hers/Facebook stats were being dredged up from five or six years ago to disgrace her. Yeah, like any fourteen or fifteen year old could beam with pride at everything they’d ever said or done.
Or any of us could at any age.
And what does all of my reading and listening have to do with writing report cards for 26 kids I love have to do with each other?
If I have to explain that.
If I have to explain that we already know what is good for us and our children, for the weak, the impoverished, the homeless, the disenfranchised.
If I have to explain that a lifetime watching and listening and reading and being part of the system surely equates to more knowledge and understanding than 1000 hours of close proximity of love and care can produce.
I have the wrong audience albeit a small one.
What is wrong is endemic everywhere.
I’d like to leave the last word on the subject – before I go back to writing reports on my little ‘angels’ – well, they are! – to a new find to me today.
A voice. Not from Scotland.
Because what I know, what nearly everyone in Scotland knows, is that this is not nationalist as previously known. I’m glad to know that others know this too.
This is civic.
This is debate.
This voice.
Of the people.
This is basic.
And as surely as a 20 year old MP can eat a piece ‘n’ chips on the steps of the established powers that would hold us to values we don’t hold, we have voices that will flout established thought till we get to know the hearts and minds of children of the future.
I give you Mhairi Black
And Mancunian Spring, proving that people voice exists across the whole of the UK. And the day of reckoning is dawning. Perhaps everywhere.
And, if you don’t believe me, I find this more than a little worrying. So many familiar names in the newly appointed Tory cabinet in roles that ‘if at first you don’t succeed’.
In other news,
– someone resigned from The Simpsons. Apparently the map of the UK now resembles Maggie. Does that mean that the body hasn’t caught up with the head yet? Or what?
-and women say bigger might be better. Jury out on that one here. Quality counts.
Now going back to nursing a cold – first one in I don’t know how many years – and catching up on reports that I know inside out. Because, let’s face it, we know what we know already. No one need to tell us what is self-evident. Right?
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