let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

so it's snowing. schools are closing and kids are going home early or not going in at all. and...parents are complaining.

"teachers take any excuse to have some time off" and "we don't get to go home when it snows so why should they?" is being muttered around water coolers and over desks around the country. talk radio hosts are whiping up a frenzy and everyone from the middle aged to the long ago retired are recycling tales of "in my day this would never happen."

but I have a couple questions. who is this really serving?

consider this, teachers pay is decided by the performance of the students and parents, in case you haven't realised, many of you aren't providing us with great material to work with in the first place. this means, keeping our homes, feeding ourselves and our children, wearing clothes that kind of fit, keeping the lights and heating running, often depends on your little bundle of joy succeeding. we don't take closures lightly.

so why do we do it?

short answer. safety. that and litigation. you see, parents have, time and time again shown that they will go to great lengths to divorce their children from not only, responsibility for their actions but any kind of consequences. how many times does the urchin need to steal something before it'ss parents accept that their little ray of sunshine is a sociopathic kleptomaniac. so, in the interest of the childs safety and not ending up in court, we send them home. think about it, if you have to choose between these three phone calls which would you rather have,

1) your child is being sent home due to unsafe conditions outside of our control. please make provisions for him/her.
2) your child has been taken to the hospital due to the foolish and irresponsible actions of either himself or a fellow pupil during this time of unsafe conditions. please make your way to X hospital.
3) your child is to be interviewed by the authorities in connection to another child being hospitalised. please make yourself available to accompany them.

it really is that simple. and can you imagine a child falling down some stairs at speed, the fractures and broken bones, the contusions and concussions, the bandages and stitches etc, and the parent walking up and saying..."next time be more careful"?? it's not going to happen.

so parents, when you're tempted to complain about teachers, take a moment to think about what you're really saying. 'cause t sounds like you're saying you'd like us to keep your child in a dangerous environment because it's convenient for you. and at the end of the day....

that's all there is to it, isn't it?

the last day

we would wander through a nearby field with our shoes off. hand in hand, grass and poppies between our toes, we would listen to a distant stream gurgling over time smoothed stones like a new born with a favourite toy.

invoking the ancient powers of the storyteller we would bring cloud shapes to life and they would join us for lunch under the shade of a friendly acorn tree.

we would feast on the pure light of joy, filling ourselves with laughter and smiles. we would spend the afternoon contemplating the deep wonders of the daisy chain, mediating to the quiet melody of bird call in early autumn.

yeah, if today was my last I definitely wouldn't be at work

teaching by numbers

so I work with children...

some would argue that it's a step up from the world of knuckle dragging , mono browed avarice but you'd be surprised. don't get me wrong, there's a sense of 'giving back' that pushing paper and counting coins didn't provide but school, education, learning....this is big business.

I don't suppose many people realise that education in several London boroughs is contracted out to firms with very little experience in actual teaching, much less interfacing with younglings. Take, for example, the considerable corporate mass that is the fleet constructing, army training, waste recycling, nuclear decommissioning (the list goes on) Group that presently holds the contract for delivering education to young people in Waltham Forest.

Maybe there's a lot I don't understand and undoubtedly there are huge swathes of information that I do not have privy to but I remain unconvinced that these well meaning business people are best suited to do this job.

Spending each day in classroom I am constantly growing a new and deeper appreciation of what it means to succeed. I say this because no one ventures into business without carefully considering what they would find a successful result. but, and this is where it gets interesting, what counts as success for the average nuclear decommissioning company probably differs greatly to what any one of my teacher colleagues would recognise by the same name, not to mention the children.

you see, money is not and cannot be our bottom line. as my father would say 'teaching is a noble vocation'. of course he what he means by that is that one would have to be incredibly self-sacrificing (or at the very least, nuttier than squirrel shit in a peanut factory) to try it. he was a teacher for 20 years before making this declaration...and he's not very self sacrificing, but that's another rant altogether. I guess the point I'm trying to make is this, the bottom line is the children. yes, schools don't run of smilie faces and polite nods, but when we start seeing little pound signs running around playgrounds and stop seeing individuals with often more hardships than hopes, more disappointments than dreams and more afflictions than aspirations then that's when we ought to step out of teaching and perhaps, maybe...consider banking.

time

I have a very simple philosophy about life. life measured in time, in increments of seconds, grouped in minutes, forming moments, differentiated by hours, days, weeks and years. it really is that simple. when I commit my time to something I give it value. I give it the value that I would otherwise believe my life is worth. therefore, to give an object your time is to bestow on that object an import that speaks of your own self esteem. ergo, when I give a person my time I would hope they realise that I have said that my life is worth more for having invested some of it with them.

and finally, when I give a company my time in exchange for money, by pre arranged contractual agreement, I expect that paltry sum to be delivered as agreed. no amount of money can ever truly recompense one for the loss of time, for life is not measureable in pounds and pence, dollars and cents. but really? how hard is it not to be a complete and utter moron?

a fair trade?

I sat at home this weekend admiring the wonder that is employment. it seems that I have finally found a job that allows me to be home before 5.30 every evening. it's amazing. I've never lived in such luxury. the down side of this though is the staggering incompetence of those holding the purse strings means that I must content myself with working for free....

so it might be slave labour, but the hours are good.