Behaviour

My class still haven't figured it out. That when we are in full flow of a lesson, 'get out a pencil' does not actually mean 'start a conversation with your friend'. And that I don't expect them to start sniggering for no reason, call across the class or play with their desk lids while I am explaining to them what they are going to do. They don't get that, either.

So, every time it happens, I write the name of the perpetrator on the board, or put a tick against a name already there for repeat offenders. Three strikes - and they lose a chunk of playtime. Football time, actually, which is worse than just hanging around time.

Today they got the full teacher treatment. "This lesson will be more fun if I am having fun. And I am not having fun right now because I am too busy having to write these names down."

Shocked silence. They got it. For a while, anyway.

Observed

Yesterday one of my lessons was observed by the headteacher – part of a yearly appraisal of my performance, a system called performance management.

Great title. Every lesson is a managed performance. An observed lesson is just the same, but more so.

You always prepare hard for one of these – write up a detailed lesson plan rather than keeping the ideas thrown around in your head. We have lesson objectives, learning intentions, criteria for success, learning outcomes, introduction, plenary, resources, key vocabulary… whoa, I haven't finished yet – cross-curricular links, differentiating for high and low achievers, and links to the national curriculum. Phew – I might as well play Who Wants to be a Jargonaire?

This lesson was less straightforward than most. The subject: PSHE and Citizenship. The letters stand for Personal, Social, Health and Emotional education. I'm the coordinator. The job seems incredibly huge and never-ending: start looking into one area and you have three more to consider before you can blink. Training days are fascinating but you never feel as if you return 'trained' – just with a longer 'to-do' list.

Yet teaching about life is absolutely fascinating, because I'm teaching people about people, rather than about rivers, or long multiplication, or clauses, or… the other building blocks of education.

My lesson, planned in detail, ran away with itself. The preliminary discussion threw up a comment from one boy which I was supposed to extract, after all the various carefully planned activities to draw the pupils out and develop their thinking, in the plenary at the end of the lesson. I felt like a sailing boat in uncertain winds – constantly adjusting my sails, changing tack, altering course while still trying to keep everything safe and dry.

But life is messy. I can try to manage a lesson carefully, but, as long as we all stay afloat, we're bound to be thrown around and get wet.

The bell went before we had even begun to scratch the surface of our topic: embarrassment. Now how embarrassing is that, as a teacher, to teach to the bell without drawing the lesson to a satisfactory conclusion, making sure that the pupils know what they have learnt from the discussions and activities?

It didn't matter. Chaotic though the lesson seemed to be, I knew it was good. The children's eyes had been opened, their hearts touched, their thoughts spurred awake. That's teaching.

Dog language

Haven't had a post about Mpira for a while, which he reminded me about just now. I've been on the computer all day with one thing or another, and he doesn't think much of it. Hence the heavy sighs and mournful expression.

Not that he can complain. He's had his walk. It's lucky he can't read, because he knows that walk is translated as:

"I'll just take the dog out"; "I'll take the dog for a w a l k"(spelt phonetically); "time to take the dog for a WALK" (spelt in letter names, hence the capitals); and even the sentence "I'm wondering about…" elicits the walk response.

How does he know? He comes and watches when I put my trainers on; but never my boots or shoes. He follows me if I go upstairs (which is where the socks are kept, and everyone knows you can't wear trainers without socks). He sits and looks at me, then looks pointedly at the door but refuses to go outside.

The dog tricks are coming along a treat as well. I got him to do them today for the prospective pleasure of having a cardboard tube to tear to pieces. It's not all about food.

Drowning

In many countries in the northern hemisphere, boats are taken out of the water for the winter and put back in the spring. This happens especially in Sweden, where even the sea may freeze over. Fishing dinghies are hauled out and laid upside down, or stored in sheds or garages safe from the ravages of the weather, until spring arrives.

Imagine the scene. It is a beautiful sunny day in early spring. The ambient air temperature is still cool, there are no leaves on the trees, yet the tiny blue flowers of the spring anemone are poking their heads out of the damp ground and there is no ice anywhere. Time for the boat to be readied for the summer.

The simple wooden dinghy is delighted that it is being prepared ready for action. It can't wait for the sensation of waves gently lapping around its bows, the sway of ripples nudging its keel, bobbing along the edge of the jetty before it moves away from the land. The feel of the water gliding along its planks as it is slid into the creek is utterly delicious. It is afloat. But suddenly the sense of freedom disappears.

The boat is pulled back close to shore and heavy rocks are loaded into it. The boat's timbers groan under the weight as the gunwales sink lower and lower into the water, until the boat can bear no more. Yet still the rocks are loaded in. With a last gasp as trapped air bubbles up, the boat sinks onto the bottom. It is only a few centimetres below the surface in the virtually tideless Baltic but that makes no difference. It is incapable of floating. Drowning.

This has to be done. During the winter, the wood has dried out, shrinking, becoming brittle and porous. Were the dinghy to be put straight into the water and used, the unaccustomed strain on its timbers would cause stress fractures, splitting the wood and creating fissures and leaks. Leaving the boat in the water like this gives it time for the wood to swell up and regain its former strength, so that it can be used and do its job properly.

This is what Jesus said in the gospel of John: "I am the Real Water and my Father is the boatyard owner. He chops up any boat which is not useful and sends the timber away for scrap. Every boat that is useful and does its work well, he takes care of carefully by drowning it first, soaking it in my water, so it will be able to float again. You are already soaked in me by the message I have spoken.

"Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a boat is no use unless it can float on the water, you can't be really alive and useful unless you are joined with me. "I am the water, you are the fishing boats. When you're saturated with me and I am in you, the relation intimate, the fishing catch is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can't catch a thing because you won't even be out there putting the lines and nets out. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is—when you are able to catch fish, when you mature as my disciples. (Chapter 15, verses 1 – 8).

This is, of course, a paraphrase but I think that's what Jesus might have said had he been Swedish. Really, he is talking about grape vines and farmers. (Look it up.) He actually talks about 'branches' in him being 'pruned back' so that they will bear more. Painful, for the branch. So is drowning, for the boat. It can be agonizing for us when God, through life's circumstances, seems to be cutting us back, drowning us in difficulty.

So we can take heart from Jesus' message. That our difficulties are a necessary part of our development. That without them we will not grow back and become stronger, more fruitful, more useful. When we're submerged in pain and trouble, let it be a light at the end of our tunnels. We will be better for it.

Decisions, decisions

Sometimes it's really hard marking decisions.

Sometimes, just deciding whether or not to have another cup of coffee takes a little thought.

Sometimes that's just ridiculous.

A cup of coffee? For heaven's sake.

For heaven's sake, the price of a cup of coffee can make the difference between life and death.

Sometimes I need to decide very very carefully about that cup of coffee.

Our vicar's induction

The church looked great last night. After all our hard work cleaning, the floor gleamed and the pews were dust-free. Several huge floral displays were banked up at the front of the church - there is a wedding today.

But last night's occasion was of greater significance than even a wedding . After nearly a year without a vicar, the time had arrived for the new one to be formally introduced - inducted - into the church.

It was quite a performance. All the local churchmen were there, the Dean of Guernsey, various lay readers - all robed up and sitting behind the altar facing a packed church. There was much standing up and sitting down, surrounding various rituals - ringing the bell, washing hands in water at the font and promising to baptise, accepting the key to the door, a bible, a prayer book, a concordance; making countless solemn promises.

It was all quite beyond the experience of most of us. We are indeed an Anglican church, but very informal. Ritual and liturgy are kept very low key, happening seldom. Responses among the congregation encompassed incredulity, bewilderment, amazement, amusement...

Yet it was all very comforting. Hearing the new vicar who will be leading the church make promises was reassuring. He confirmed that he will guide us according to the beliefs of the Anglican church. Of course, there is a careful selection process, but there was still something inherently safe about the whole service. Our new leader will, we hope, continue to take us on in our lives with Jesus, without sidetracks or distraction. We are all pointed in the same direction, and the induction service confirmed it.

How boys see things

Had the most wonderful conversation with a child this week. In a very bizarre way.
He had been disciplined by his History teacher, losing some of his playtime. I asked him what he had done.
"Well," he said thoughtfully, "I did two bad things."
"Can you tell me what you did?" I enquired.
"Well, I can only remember one."
I smiled encouragingly.
"I told Tom how to spell Guy Fawkes," he said, his huge eyes looking up at me with the innocence of a bushbaby.
Incomprehensible. It is not even as if our expectations of behaviour are exceptionally high. Further conversation elicited that he had not been given a task to do.
"So Mrs Robinson was teaching the whole class, was she?" I inquired.
"No," was the reply, "she was talking to Andrew."
It turns out that Andrew had asked a question.
"So what were you supposed to be doing?"
"Listening."

He wasn't, obviously, if he was talking to his neighbour. Hence the discipline.

Quite an insight into how a boy's mind can work. Evidently, if someone in the class asks a question during a whole class discussion, no one else is required to listen. Hmm.