Questions and answers

The Son rang today and had a good chat with his father. They talked about surfing: wetsuits, surfboards, waves, breaks... There was a mention that he was working on an essay at the moment, but that was the gist of the (long) conversation.

That is not at all the conversation he might have had with his mother.

She has all kinds of questions. What is he eating? How is he getting on with his work? Has he had any essays marked yet? Does he have any holiday work fixed up? How is church going? Does he know when he is coming home?

Pragmatic questions. I would probably not dare ask them all - it would seem like an inquisition. He'll tell me, in time. I know which conversation he would prefer to have.

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.

Quiet quiet quiet

J and C - aka the anklebiters - left to go back to uni on Sunday. (By the way, they used to be called anklebiters when they were still at baby crawling stage. I'm not quite sure why I'm referring to them like that again. Hmm, must think about that.)

There are pluses and minuses to their departure:

On the plus side:

1. The house is clean and relatively tidy. At least, it's only untidy with my untidiness, so that doesn't count.
2. The fridge stays well stocked.
3. The kitchen floor no longer suffers a daily sprinkling of crumbs.
4. There is always hot water when I want it.
5. The cupboards remain full of crockery and the dishwasher doesn't have to work twice a day.
6. I have a spare car to use .

On the minus side:

1. There is no loud singing in the shower. (Yes, that is a minus: not only does Jonny have a beautiful singing voice, he sings songs I like.)
2. Their smiling faces are absent from the dinner table.
3. There is no one to share a girly video with or mess around in the garden.
4. The house is too quiet.
5. The dog is somewhat miserable.
6. Our family is only half complete.

Above all, I just miss them. I'm so thankful for them and the opportunities they have, but I still miss them.

Contacting The Empty Nest

When the kids go away, of course you want to stay in touch with them. They'd already spent 5 months in Peru and Mozambique respectively, where we could only chat to them every couple of weeks.

That seemed luxurious in itself, remembering my own travels pre-internet, pre-email and pre-Skype.

Now they are at uni, we have the luxury of being able to talk over the Internet any time they are online with Skype. They call us, we call them, almost every day.

So when a few days had gone by without our daughter even appearing on line, and with news of our own to tell them, my husband decided to send a text. She rang up immediately.

It appeared she had been working so hard on an essay that she hadn't even logged in to her internet account. Who says that students just have a good time of partying? At least we had the satisfaction of knowing that the fees weren't going to waste (she is VERY sociable).

So what was the secret? You need a strong hook to catch these busy people, and we had found an effective one. 'Mum has broken her nose surfing.' read the text.

I don't recommend actually doing this, nor pretending that you have done something equally startling - remember the boy who cried wolf? Maybe store up a few of the more dramatic incidents in life for these 'non-contact' occasions.

Nothing ever happens to you, do I hear you say? Time to start! Look at the benefits - your life spiced up and increased communication with your loved ones!