The Word Cloud

Sorry for, yet again, going on about teaching but the blood is boiling this morning. It seems the media are, again, taking pleasure in another spot of the sport known as 'teacher-bashing'. This time, they are proclaiming to the world that schools are lacking discipline. Michael Gove says so, so it must be true. 

I wonder sometimes if I'm living in an alternative universe to the media. I have been a teacher for 11 years. I trained in Glasgow in four different schools covering the full range of very very deprived to really-quite-well-off. I then worked in rural Cambridgeshire (mixed backgrounds) for a few years before spending a year supply teaching in dozens of schools in a deprived area of County Durham. I now teach in another rural school in North Derbyshire (mixed backgrounds). So I feel that, in my 11 years, I have worked at a wide range of schools in different areas of the country and with a wide range of children. In that time, I could pick out 2 schools, out of dozens, that could have improved their discipline - though the discipline wasn't lacking, it was just inconsistent.

The children that come into my class sometimes lack manners, sometimes are rude, sometimes cause trouble, sometimes bully, sometimes lack respect for their elders...but they learn very quickly what is acceptable and unacceptable inside the walls of my classroom, and also within the boundaries of the school. What is interesting is observing the moment they are handed back to their parents at the end of the day. I have seen and heard some very interesting behaviour and have often stepped in to intervene when the parent in charge has turned a blind eye. And this is the crux of the matter. It doesn't matter how hard schools work on discipline - if the same standards are not set at home, it will always be a losing battle in the long term.

But, I am open to disagreement. Maybe I've just been lucky to work in schools with strong leadership and clear behaviour expectations. Maybe the vast majority of schools out there do lack discipline. But what I'm asking for is evidence, not hearsay from the media who are quoting an education minister who, quite frankly, hasn't the faintest idea of what teachers do every day in school.

So, in the interests of lowering my blood pressure a little, I thought I'd ask for some Cloud wisdom on this one - seeing as there are quite a range of people on here from all kinds of backgrounds.

Do the vast majority of you agree with the papers on this one? Do you believe that schools lack discipline? Have any of you spent time in schools recently and, if so, what have you observed? Good discipline, a lack of discipline?

Back to school next week - thinking of inviting Michael Gove to shadow me for a week....;-P

I'm on too many writing sites. As I have said before, I maintain a separate pen name, as well as my real one.

I'm going through a bad and a good patch right now. As myself, I'm writing nothing. That, of course, is bad. But as my evil twin, I've never known such a fruitful period, coming towards the close of my twin's first novel and am deep in to the birth of another. I know I should finish one first, but I started a short story and it is taking on epic proportions. That's good, right?

The bad part of that is it means I'm not writing any new short stories, and that means that I'm not submitting anything new to magazines, etc., or even websites. I've learned that it is important to stay visible on writers sites just to keep people coming back to you. Yes, review them occasionally, too, but if you don't have anything for them to reciprocate, you are losing out.

I'm trying to be more active on my blog, but that is just talking about writing - basically, navel-gazing. And then there is Twitter. What does one tweet about to keep people coming back when you aren't doing anything, other than going back and rewriting or editing? I haven't even bothered with a Twitter account yet for that reason. Of course, the editing is falling behind because I'm too busy writing as my evil twin. It's a never-ending cycle.

I need to restore discipline without jeopardizing my creativity. How?

"I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me" H.P Lovecraft, 1890 - 1937

*Stands up*

My name is Ely, and I overwrite.

From the tiniest shimmer of the dust mote that floats elegantly down from an incandescent heaven to the overpowering maelstrom of the storm that rages with a power that defies all overhead, I overwrite. Adjectives, adverbs, overextended metaphors, overblown synonyms that have been sought desperately for in my well-thumbed thesaurus are all my friends; dear, dear friends I have spent a lifetime collecting, devising, enjoying.

But, alas, unlike my idols Lovecraft, Poe and Stoker, we do not live in a time where a love of language is de rigueur. To write because you love words is not enough. For fear of being rather melodramatic, I would describe myself as a bit of a shadow out of time  (nudge nudge, wink wink); an anachronism who needs to let go of these archaic mentors and begin to live in the literary now.

But how to cut those ties? To cut loose that which brings fire to your belly? To prune, yet feel you are not losing that which defines and inflames  you?

That, I do not know. It escapes me, cantering into the depths of the maelstrom above with a gleeful kick of its heels, defying me, challenging me: come and find me, but do it with less reliance on adverbial phrases and passive passages beginning with words that end in 'ing'.

Time to put the thesaurus back onto the shelf, methinks...