I always like the foreigners best

Yesterday evening after work I had to go to one of the local high schools to do some student interviews with next year's prospective college students. I can't say I really felt like doing the interviewing; it was cold and dark and raining and I would far rather have gone straight home to the family. Most of the interviews were either boring (straight A students who know exactly what they want to study) or frustrating (students with unrealistic expectations - E in Maths at GCSE, wants to do Maths and Physics at A level). But one girl really touched me. She was there without a parent or guardian - unusual, since the norm is that students come to the interview with a parent. She and her mother had arrived in this country two years ago not speaking a word of English (she was Polish) but her English was already excellent. She's clearly clever - she had a very good set of predicted grades - and she also seemed far more mature than most girls her age. Very poised, very adult. We spent a long time chatting about her subject choices, and her experiences here, and she told me - but not in a self-pitying way - how hard it was for her at school, being foreign, not having friends, struggling to get to grips with a new culture - and how much she was looking forward to making a new start at college. It just broke my heart... I hope she settles in well at college, and that she finds a friendship group... Kids can be so clique-y... Unfortunately she didn't choose my subject so I won't be teaching her next year. But I'll keep an eye out for her..

Three more days!

Just three more work days till the summer starts!

I'm working flat-out during these last few days, getting things ready for next year. It's quite enjoyable actually; I am loving updating all my resources, finding extra bits and pieces of research to challenge the best students, and working out ways to make things more accessible for the students who struggle. It feels really good to have a permanent post - it means that the more work I do this year, the easier it'll be next year, and the year after.

We are all also supposed to make sure that we have super-detailed lesson plans for the whole of the Autumn term, as they're expecting a lot of swine-flu absences in both students and staff as the summer ends. Already there are cases at Sophie's school, and they've moved away from trying to contain the virus by shutting schools etc to simply treating the infected. So college won't close no matter how high the infection rate... Pity, that! Specially as London currently has the highest infection rate in the country...

Looking ahead to the summer, it looks like Bobby's mum and sister will be visiting us in August - should be good! We haven't seen Bobby's sister since his Dad's funeral in 2005 ... far too long...

This American Life

Mondays are my favourite walk-to-work day, because that's the day I listen to the This American Life podcast. Today's episode was intense. It was a story about how things can go wrong in families, told by a mother whose daughters rebelled against her, ran away from home, started using heroin... Hearing the pain in their voices - mother and daughters - made me realise just how easily things can go wrong in ordinary families; how seemingly simple decisions can trigger reactions that spiral out of control.

The episode seemed particularly poignant, since yesterday was Mother's Day here. I was thorougly spoiled - and the gifts were all the sweeter as I hadn't realised that the children were planning anything.

So the weekend was lovely. Blue skies and gold daffodils everywhere, and good family memories. But work today was rather exhausting, to the extent that I'd happily go to bed right now if I didn't have marking to do and - if I can keep my eyes open long enough - the episode of the Ladies Detective Agency that I missed last night to watch. I plan to get up early tomorrow morning and go for my run, though, tired or not. I started the last week of the couch to 5k program on Sunday; I'm now up to running for 30 minutes. And the weird part is, I actually enjoy it! Hope it lasts!

Small things

Things that have made me smile in the past 24 hours:

• Watching leaf flurries skittering up the road as I walked to work.


• Coming up with a really cool intro for the new topic I'll be starting with some of my classes next week.


• Leaving work 45 minutes early yesterday, so I got home before dark.


• Listening to Sophie and her friends giggle as they got ready for last night's party.


• Cycling though the woods with Bobby this morning.


• Seeing how happy Steve is about his university offers.


• Eating one of Emmy's fresh-baked choc-chip cookies with tea this afternoon.


• Realising that Christmas is just around the corner!

And something that made me go "Hah! I told you so!"- this piece of research, which, as I've long maintained, says that children in away-facing strollers often get bored and stressed and miserable. Children need interaction - as I felt tempted to tell the mother of a toddler the other day. She was pushing her child along (in an away-facing stroller, of course) while listening to her i-pod!

Oh how noble!

The chief executive at Goldman Sachs isn't going to take a bonus this year.

How noble!

He'll have to make do on just his salary - a mere US$600 000. Let's hope he has some of last year's US$ 68.5 million bonus to tide him over.

Not much cheerful news here at the moment; it's all credit doom-and-gloom. House prices are in free-fall, and apparently job losses in London are likely to be even worse than job losses elsewhere in the country.

There seems to be a huge market in writing how-to-cope-with-the-recession tips, though. It infuriates me when I keep reading articles suggesting things I've been doing for years. Pack a lunch and take it in to work instead of buying lunch? Gosh, I'd never ever thought of that! Wow, great tip!!

Happy!

I'm so relieved Obama won.

I was terrified that something would go wrong at the last minute - some hideous 2008 equivalent of the hanging chad. But it didn't, so America will finally have a sane president.

I wish the UK had an Obama equivalent. Looks like we'll have to choose between gloomy Gordon and slippery slidey old-boys-tie Cameron ... not the greatest options.

Oh really?

Well, if this is true, then I should be a genius.

A bit heavy-handed with the symbolism

I took this photo this morning, from the bedroom window.




I am starting to feel like I'm getting a grip on the whole work thing. I had been feeling that I wasn't going to manage shuttling between departments - on Friday it seemed like whenever I needed a particular piece of paper, it was on my other desk, and I couldn't get my head around which group in which subject I was supposed to be teaching at any moment, let alone where I was supposed to teaching them. But yesterday was more manageable, and today I actually felt like I knew what I was doing. Tomorrow is my lightest teaching day so that's good, but I've got my PGCE course in the evening, which is less good. At least it looks as though I'll still be able to go to my Wednesday night yoga class - if I leave straight from there I should get to class on time. That's if the world doesn't end before then, of course.

One big one, one little one

Here they are, on the first day of school. Emily started Year 11 today, and Sophie started Year 7. So one big (prefect) fish in her final year of secondary school, one nervous little fish in her first year.



I'm still a lot bigger than the one of them ...




but look at our heights in this picture! It's true that I'm standing on a slope, but I'm wearing heels. When we stand to back to back these days, she's clearly taller than I am.





They both had a good day at school, I'm glad to say. Hope that continues!

And on a completely unrelated note. I am feeling very sorry for the kid who knocked Bristol Palin up. This is not just any shotgun wedding; this is a shotgun wedding where the entire Republican Party has its weapons focused squarely on him. Welcome to married life, kid. I hope you've changed your mind about not wanting children because I think you're going to find it awfully difficult to extricate yourself from this one.

Teachers' Toolkit

Now this is really scary.

A school where the teachers are allowed to bring loaded guns into the classroom. Just in case they need to shoot someone. As one so often does, during the course of the school day.

But you can't accuse them of taking unneccessary risks - apparently they're going to be using a type of bullet that's less likely to ricochet than the regular kind.

And to think I thought I was well-equipped for the start of the new term because I bought a new pencil case!

Already August....

I cycled to Bobby's work with him again this morning. Good exercise, pretty route, and nice company. It's slightly odd saying goodbye to him once we get there, though - I feel part loving wife, part warder delivering the prisoner to the jail. And the pleasure I get from drinking my coffee and reading the paper at the kitchen table when I get home is slightly adulterated by guilt, thinking of him penned in his little cubicle. Counting today, I still have 20 more days of holiday left; am still savouring each one!

On a more serious note, today is the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. This article from today's Guardian is worth reading.

LLLaurie R. King

Laurie R. King is one of my favourite writers. I discovered her blog recently, and, in reading it, learned that she, too, used to be a La Leche League Leader! How cool is that? I had always felt, reading her sensitive descriptions of motherhood, that she must have been a LLL-ish sort of mother...

I find this case - a girl who's taking her school to court for the right to wear a so-called purity ring - profoundly annoying.

The girl argues that the ring - which is supposed to remind her to stay "sexually pure" - is a religious item, so she should therefore be allowed to wear it, in the same way that a Sikh would be allowed to wear a turban or a Muslim woman a headscarf.

To which I say (and isn't it a pity that I'm not a High Court judge)...

This whole thing is moronic.

I heard Lydia Playfoot (the girl in question) on the radio this morning, and she was arguing that she needs to wear the ring because she "follows the bible". Well, as far as I'm aware, it doesn't say anywhere in the bible that wearing a rather tacky looking silver ring is key to being a practising Christian.

And why the need for a constant reminder to stay pure anyway? If she takes the ring off, will she be unable to control her sexual urges entirely? Will she leap upon her fellow students in the maths class, for instance? If so, yes, by all means, please do keep the ring on. If not, could it be that the ring is more of an evangelical tool than a purity aid? Could it be that her pastor father has had some influence in her desire to bring this case to the high court?

Plus, of course, aside from my general distaste for religious fundamentalism (whether it's Christian, Muslim, or any other religion) there's the whole issue of how useful abstinence-based programs actually are in curbing teen pregnancy rates and sexually transmitted diseases. Lydia says that it's important she continues to wear the ring because so many teens are acquiring STDs and falling pregnant, but I suspect - and this study bears this out - that a teen who is relying on their religious faith to stop them having sex is not going to use any protection if they do end up getting carried away in the heat of the moment.

I'll be interested to see how this plays out. And I must say, I think I'll lose a bit of faith in Britain's sanity if the courts rule in her favour.

It seems like we're not the only ones who've had visas denied for - and these people seem to have got a distinctly rawer deal than we did.

One of my current small pleasures each day is checking this site - the Guardian's 24 Hours, which features 15 photographs from around the world, taken during the previous 24 hours.