Exam Stress

When I was in Year 11 myself I don't remember ever really feeling the stress of the exams, and definitely not to the extent that I felt it at university.  But am I ever feeling it this year - I feel like I am personally taking 30 exams on Monday, and I suppose that in a way I am.  Whilst I know that the results of my Year 11 students are not completely down to me, a huge part of how they are doing and how confident they feel going into the exam hall on Monday has to rest on my preparation of them for this...

I've spent this past week stressing and worrying about how they are getting on and whether they are revising enough and getting enough sleep and eating properly.  I'm sure this is partly what it must feel like to be a Mum!!

A massive worry for me is about what they will do after they leave school.  I can't see them every week to make sure they are doing okay or check how things are at home or with friends, I won't be able to remind them just how capable and interesting and special they are or to pick them up when they've had a bad day.  And I'm terrified.  And more than that, I will miss them.  I'll miss the constant laughs and the chaos of our lessons, and the silly things they always say that reminds me that they are just human!  I'll even miss the headaches that set in 30 minutes into the lesson when FT hasn't stopped talking for the entire time and the rest of the class is screeching at him to stop!  Or when JP gets his phone out and decides to treat us all to the latest Scouse rap battle...

I never thought I would love teaching as much as I do when I work with these kids - they make the last two years so much more worthwhile, and I am gutted for them to be leaving, although excited for the what the future may hold!  But now for the next week and the stress to continue and the exams to happen and here's every possible part of me crossed for a positive outcome!

Jag älskar sniglar...

私は新しい言語を学ぶのが大好き ... 私は日本語の単語の多くを忘れてしまった!!

Quand je parle Français, je fais beaucoup d'erreurs. Il n'est pas facile pour moi de penser en Anglais, traduire en Français et parle en même temps, donc je dois arrêter et penser ce que je dois dire à côté.

Ja govorim vrlo malo hrvatski. Ja znam kako da pitam, ako se ljudi mogu govoriti engleski! Volio bih naučiti više i više vremena provoditi u Hrvatskoj ...

Så min vän är att lära mig svenska. Men hon lär mig dumma meningar. Jag kan säga att jag hatar Spongebob Squarepants, och att jag älskar när sniglar snubblar. Jag är inte övertygad om det kommer att hjälpa mig i livet!

Sniglar Släppa

When I was growing up we learned Japanese at school and home because we lived in Tokyo.  It was second nature to me to speak in Japanese as a child and yet, as I have grown up I have forgotten so much of it!  I wish that I had thought to keep practising when I was back in the UK.

I studied French at A-level and then took another course in university, but I haven't used French in ages, except to send random texts to friends who have also studied French!

Croatian came as a bit of a random, I was on holiday there in the summer with no real company except a 7 year old Croatian boy who did not speak English so we naturally communicated in half and half and I learned a few words from him!

As for Swedish...my flatmate is a Swede and the other day I was speaking to her and she taught me a few Swedish words and since then I have been daily adding to my vocabulary.  But it is a lot of random words which I haphazardly pile into a sentence which makes no sense!!

I really do love learning languages and wish I had a little bit more time to dedicate to doing this these days, but with work and different afterschool commitments I really don't have any time to just sit down and study a new language.  Also, I think I would first of all want to practise my French and Japanese before working a little more on Swedish and Croatian.  I would love to go and work in another country and immerse myself in the language, I think that would be amazing, but it just depends when vacancies arise and what I am able to get job wise!  Maybe one day...

A minefield of sexual activity

Coming back after the two week holiday, I had somehow lured myself into the false hope that the behaviour would have miraculously improved and we were in for a nice quiet week.  By 8:30am on the first day back that false notion had been quashed and I was right back where I had been on the last day of the previous term...except in the unfortunate position of staring down a long term of this!

In many respects the week has been positive - my NQT review was really good and I felt, for the first time in quite a while, that I might actually be able to be a top notch teacher one day!  But the familiar problems of last term - whole school not just in my classroom - of truancy, refusal to follow instructions, violence and illegal activity yet again reared their ugly heads within hours of being back.

The first day back I had an email from the mentor for my year group asking me to come and see her as a matter of urgency, but with all the crazy goings on and million and one emails I had over the course of the day I missed the email and only saw it after she had left.  So the following day I managed to catch up with her and was informed about the many goings on over the holidays that had led to one of the 12 year old girls in my form needing to go for a pregnancy test.  This was compounded by finding out that another girl, this time 13, had unprotected sex with a 15 year old boy in the school, and another one had been sexually active with another boy in the year group.

So I have spent the week trying to deal with the fact that three children in my form are clearly acting way above their age and getting themselves into a whole lot of bother!  It terrifies me to think that these girls may end up pregnant before they've even stopped being children themselves!  Sometimes I forget just how young they are - at 12 years old I was vaguely aware of sexuality but I definitely wasn't looking to have sex with any boys, and definitely not with men, and yet these girls are posting provocative photos of themselves online and sending these same photos to boys and men who they barely know!  In this age of modern technology I feel like it's so difficult to be able to monitor everything they are doing and stop them from making potentially dangerous mistakes...

Aside from the obvious huge issues with my form that have been happening this week, I have also had many issues with other students.  There is a hardcore group of about 30 kids at the school who truant many lessons week in week out.  The school seems to think that because we have 'done so much to tackle persistent absenteeism' that as long as they're in school, even if they aren't in lessons, we should be happy!  Unfortunately trying to cope with a student who turns up 25 minutes into the lesson and refuses to follow any instructions is getting to be a little bit of a joke!  Similarly, having ten kids hanging around outside your classroom door during lessons because 'the G is a good place to truant' is also highly disruptive!

The last thing that happened this week, in 2nd lesson yesterday, was that I was physically abused by one of the students in my Year 8 class.  You'd think you'd get used to it, this grabbing and pushing out of the way by students who seem to think that they are perfectly within their rights to manhandle teachers!  I've lost count of the number of times this year that I have been hit, pushed or grabbed by a student...on a couple of occasions I'll admit that I've been genuinely worried about what the student is willing to do.  I mean a lot of these kids are bigger and stronger than I am, particularly the older boys, and they are so volatile.  I'm sometimes a little bit scared that if I were to see them outside of school they wouldn't have quite the same fear about being caught.  In school there are CCTV cameras everywhere, so there is no chance they will be able to get away with it, but outside there aren't!

So where to go from here?  Back to counting down the days and hours?  I'd really like to know what it is like to teach at a school where there aren't these behavioural issues, where you aren't worried that you will be abused on a daily basis and where you can actually be a teacher, and yet what happens to these kids if everyone feels like this?  Do they just stay where they are and get sucked into the same lives as their parents?!

Emotional Management

Emotional Training

Today was officially the last day of the Spring term and, as the students finished yesterday, we were able to use the day as a planning and INSET day.  However there was also offered a day long training session on emotional management, which I decided to do.  This was initially fed to us as a behaviour management training day, which, given the nature of the school and my classes, would obviously have been highly beneficial and appreciated.  What we got instead was a whole lot better though!  The lady delivering the session, Paula, first off trained as a speech and language therapist, before branching out into anger management.  To introduce the training she first of all asked us to 'check in' saying how we were feeling and who we were, before setting us the task of writing down as many different feelings as we could in 3 minutes.  She then explained that she believes that there are only 8 core emotions - these are like the primary colours in that they are the basis of all other emotions (see diagram below) - for instance when we are feeling excited this is usually happiness and empowerment mixed with a little bit of fear (hence the butterflies...).

The 'Core Feelings'

Brene Brown - TEDx on Vulnerability

From these 8 core feeling we are able to find many other emotions, but at the root of all of them we come back to these.  The things we talked about touched on a bit of what Brene Brown talks about in her TEDx Talk (see video below).  The idea was that you need to be in touch with your emotions and have a handle on them and your own self-esteem before you are able to connect with others on an empathetic level.  As Brown talks about in her video, people who are wholehearted embrace their vulnerability and are willing to accept that they are not in control of everything.  (By the way, if you get a chance - WATCH THE VIDEO - she's funny and direct and yet has some really good stuff to say, particularly where she talks about raising children as imperfect and yet worthy of love and belonging!)

Managing our emotions

Following on from this introduction Paula asked us to think about how we manage our emotions when we are at home or at work.  At home I find it very easy to keep a check on my emotions - if I am stressed or annoyed I go for a swim or a run, if I'm upset I read sad stories and watch sad films so that I can cry without feeling too sorry for myself, if I'm hurt I let the people who have hurt me know and try to reconcile it.  But it is so so so much more difficult to do this in the classroom, because you are the teacher and you are the adult.  And I'd be lying if I didn't say that I get annoyed and upset in school, I most definitely do, but when I'm there I try to bottle it up and then deal with it when I get home.  And this in itself is so unhealthy!

Dealing with ANGER

Continuing on the dealing with emotions theme Paula talked us through the aggressive and passive aggressive responses to anger - she asked us to consider our upbringing and what our parents were like and how this impacted us.  My Dad was brought up in a very abusive home and as a result he was often quite aggressive and quick to anger with us, and although he was nowhere near as bad as his Dad was, he was still terrifying when he was in a bad mood and you were never sure whether or not you were going to come under his wrath.  As for my Mum, she demanded perfection.  And I don't blame her, especially now I'm older and can understand it more, but at the time I hated her for it.  I was constantly disappointed in myself and didn't feel like anything I could do was good enough.  And these things and the way life was for me when I was younger have impacted into who I am now, and even what I am like as a teacher, and that in itself is a scary thought!

It also explains a lot about our kids.  Children mimic their parents' behaviour - either that or they take the other extreme.  The home lives of some of our kids are dreadful - one of the girls in my form came in the other morning at 7:30am and asked if she could have a nap at the back of the room until school started.  I didn't question it at the time, but later on took her out of one of her lessons to chat about it and she explained that her Mum had been up all night drinking and doing drugs and having shouted arguments with her boyfriend and because of this she hadn't been able to sleep at home so she'd come in early to have a sleep.  In the same vein, we have a lot of kids who come in early to take advantage of the free breakfast and the fact that in the winter the heating is on at school and some of them don't have heating at home.  All these things compound to make children who are so vulnerable and yet have had to toughen themselves up well ahead of their time and become hardened shells impervious to any emotions.

The Bucket

Another thing that we were asked to consider was the idea that self esteem is like a bucket with holes in it.  As a child we expect others to fill this bucket with things such as trust, respect, love, appreciation, understanding, caring and believing.  And yet as adults it is our job to be able to fill this bucket ourselves, knowing ourselves well enough to keep it full enough.  I definitely think this is accurate - as an adult I am most low not when I think someone else doesn't believe in me or value me, but when I doubt myself and my abilities. No longer do I rely on others, but instead I rely on my own emotional stability.  The only thing I do struggle to reconcile with what Paula was speaking to us about is the idea of depression.  Knowing firsthand what depression can do to someone, from watching my Mum sink deep into it while I was in my mid-teens, I don't see how the bucket concept is at all helpful in pulling yourself out.  It is such a complex illness with so many variables, and even though many people want to be better and want to feel happier with their lives, it just isn't possible!

Questions to ask yourself

The last thing that we talked about was questions to ask myself when I start to feel angry/hurt/scared/ashamed etc.

1 - If I wasn't in the situation what would I see?

2 - Will this matter in 3 months time?

3 - Exactly what am I feeling?

4 - Can we agree to disagree?

5 - What might be triggering me right now?

6 - Is this really directed at me?

7 - Can I talk this through with a friend, or write it down, before I respond?

Question 6 I think is a key one to consider when working with teenagers.  So often I have let myself get upset by a student who has been acting out or has been particularly disruptive, but when I think about it later I know that it hasn't been directed at me, that the way they have acted is often as the result of their inability to cope with and understand the way they are feeling or how this is affecting them.

To this end Paula suggested that the way we portray our emotions to the students we are working with, and also the way that we communicate with our students will directly impact on how they respond to us.

Transactional Analysis

This concept is best explained by transactional analysis (Eric Berne) - this is the idea that we have three possible roles that we can take : Parent, Adult and Child.  And that communication between teachers and students is often like that of parent-child, thus telling our students that the behaviour and attitude we expect in response is that of a child. And yet we are frustrated by this immaturity on their behalf when this happens.  Berne suggested that instead we should consider a more adult-adult communication.  By treating our kids like they are adults we are suggesting to them that they should be responding as adults and so developing their emotional maturity and giving them the skills to be able to deal with situations as adults.

I have noticed this in particular with the kids I worked with in New Zealand.  I developed very quick and comfortable relationships with these kids because I took the time to get to know them as adults and not as children, and I think at times I forget this with some of the students I teach now.  I need to be more proactive at getting to know more of the students who are particularly difficult in lessons and finding connections to them that are not just on the adult-child level!

Why this matters and what is going to change...

I feel like I've gone into an awful lot of depth about this, but I've found it extremely useful training and have really enjoyed the chance to get more to grips with how emotions work and why our kids may be behaving the way they do.  In particular it reminds me of the talks we had from Margaret Ross back when I was in my Summer Institute training before I started Teach First.  A lot of the concepts discussed were very similar (if worded slightly differently) and I would love to be able to study this more in depth - perhaps as my dissertation topic for my Masters degree!!!

One of my year 11s...

I've noticed recently that a lot of my status updates and conversations start with "One of my Year 11s.."
Usually it's a funny thing that one of the kids has said or something they have done to make my day - I think because I've had them through from last year and this year I've been able to develop a really close relationship with them and I love that!

Yesterday it was SK's turn to make my status update.  ((To give a little background, SK is a 16 year old boy who is in bottom set in school and has had some real behavioural issues particularly involving gangs and gang rivalry with a Czech gang in the local neighbourhood.  He's not very academic and last year was moved down to my class because his behaviour was so disruptive that they couldn't keep him in the set above.  His home life isn't great - Mum is a prostitute and his Dad is in prison for killing his Uncle last year, and this has obvious impacts on him and his brothers and sisters.))

Anyway, yesterday afternoon we were all sitting around a couple of desks working on a bit of Pythagoras' Theorem and one of the other boys asked me if I would be annoyed if I saw them in 10 years and they were on more money than me, and I said, quite honestly I think, that I'd just be over the moon that they'd done so well for themselves.  Anyway, thinking that was the end of it I carried on working with the student I was helping and next thing I know SK is telling me "If I ever get dead rich I'd buy you a house Miss Hex, cause you're proper sound and the best teacher I've ever had."

At first I thought he was being facetious but he backed it up and took all the flak off the other kids who laughed at this pronouncement.  I felt like hugging him.  I know it's ridiculous, but the moments like that make me love these kids so much more, and make every day so worthwhile.  And with SK in particular, he has made such a turnaround this year in his attitude in my lessons and the way he interacts with the other students.

To top it off, today my head of department came and found me to chat about how my observation lesson had gone yesterday and pointed out that I should be really proud of the way things have gone with my two Year 11 classes because they are full of difficult kids who won't work for other people but for some reason are getting on and doing work for me.  Now I still have so many things to learn about teaching, and I am so far from being the best teacher I can be, but I know I have done a really good job with these kids who make me so proud every day in the way they treat each other, in the work they produce, and the way they are maturing and becoming these little adults.

And so I am probably going to continue with these stories about 'one of my year 11s' and keep posting status updates about them, and in 10 years time who knows, maybe I'll look back and remember those mental kids that made my first 2 years of teaching such a pleasure!

Mother's Day in Cumbria

Back home at the parents' house for the weekend...

I'm writing this when I probably should be sleeping and preparing myself for the week ahead - it's the last week of term and that always means stress and tiredness!  However I only just recently arrived back into Liverpool after a weekend in Cumbria to visit the parents.

Saturday I had a training course to become an accredited assessor for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award.  I'm loving this so much more the more I get involved - I just think the opportunity for the young people is fantastic!  Anyway, the course finished early(ish) and so I was able to get off and up to Cumbria before it got dark which was a relief as I'm not a big fan of driving over the fells in the pitch black!!

D, H and Rose had also gone up for the weekend and R already lives just around the corner from Mum and Dad so it was nice to have the whole family there to celebrate Mother's Day together.  It's the first time in probably 10 years we've all been together for it!!

It's also the first time I've been able to spend the weekend up in Cumbria since Mum started her dialysis.  It's weird to think that she's been ill for so long and it's gone largely unnoticed.  But seeing her plugged into her dialysis machine and thinking just how ill she is got me a bit down.

Today, however, has been a day for celebrating.  D, R, H and I went to Longlands Lake for a quick walk (Rose got to try out her new baby carrier - she LOVED it!) and then we met Mum and Dad in Beckermet for a spot of lunch.  As much as at times my family drive me round the bend, I do love them all dearly, and I really enjoy the chance to spend time with them all together.  Especially now that D has Rose and is loving being a Mummy herself!

I got the old camera out of hiding for the day today and snapped a few pics of the day to look back on...I might make them into a book for my Mum for her birthday.  I think she'd enjoy the chance to look back on her first year as a grandma!!

H and Rose, first outing for the baby carrier!

Longlands Lake

Springtime Daffodils

Lakeside View - Love Cumbria!

First Mothers' Day!

Dave the Dog

桜 - Sakura

Family photo :)

A sorry state of affairs

During the time I spent in New Zealand I was lucky enough to meet, live and work with some fabulous people from the Maori and Pasifika community, learning their stories and language and immersing myself in the vibrant culture that is so key to life in the beautiful Aotearoa.  But within this community there is a dark secret that every so often rears it's head.

I hadn't been in South Auckland long when I met Janina and within a few weeks we were extremely close friends and even now, after being back in the UK for over 2 years, she is still one of the best friends I have.  But her family has a really difficult past - her little brother, Harry, isn't actually her brother but her cousin.  His parents were sentenced to jail for beating to death his baby sister.  It's not a one off case either, the issue with domestic and child abuse in New Zealand is well documented.

"Between 1991 and 2000 there were 91 child homicides, all but two of which concerned excessive physical abuse. These cases, and others that occurred in the early 2000s, put New Zealand among the worst performing nations for child mortality due to mistreatment."

The reason I'm thinking about this now is that there has been an article going around Facebook recently about a horrific child abuse case in New Zealand, and the reading of it is harrowing.  How anyone could treat another human, let alone a defenceless child, like that is beyond belief!

It took a while for me to get used to the idea of swapping babies around in the Pasifika families I met in Auckland.  There was a habit of one woman having a baby, but if she had too many then she might give her sister one of her children, or let her mother raise them.  Part of me just had to take a step back and say 'if they're being looked after by a family member then I shouldn't interfere' but the whole practice went against everything I had been raised with.  I'm one of the minority in this world in that I was born to two people who have stayed married now for almost 34 years and were happily married throughout my childhood, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Perhaps because of this though I always put this idea of a family onto a pedestal and have had to, over the last 10 years or so, begin to adjust my way of thinking to take into account that this 'man, woman + kids' is not the only form of family you can get!  I've got plenty of friends who come from one parent families, some who have two mums or two dads, some who have step parents and parents, and all of them have a different idea on family.  But none of these have come close to the Maori (I'll use Maori as the basis, but it spills over into all the Pasifika groups too) concept of it.

To clarify a bit I will try to introduce the three key Maori words relating to family:


Iwi - Translated literally as bone, the iwi is the largest of the social units in the Maori culture.  It's sort of like the tribe or people who you come from and where your ancestors are from.  Historically most Maori people lived on the land of their iwi and would grow up there, but now less and less people do and a lot of the Maori's I worked with in South Auckland didn't know or associate very much with their iwi, and so had no real bond to it.

Hapū - A hapū is a group within an iwi that is linked by a genealogical connection.  So usually within a hapū you have lots of interrelated families.  This is a smaller group than an iwi and there are usually about 400 people in each hapū.  You are born into your hapū but then if you marry would be married into another one, or maybe more than one - so many people are members of numerous hapū but maybe only one iwi.  It's a closer connection and people will tend to see their hapū family more often, particularly for funerals, weddings, celebrations etc.

Whānau - The whānau is the smallest division of Māori society and is generally 3 or 4 generations of one family. Most people will live with their whānau and generally the whole family will either live in one house or in a few houses within close range of eachother.  The word has been slightly changed in meaning in recent years due to it's popularity amongst not only Māori people but also the Pākehā.

The reason I think an understanding of these words is important, is because it sort of explains why the idea of letting your sister raise your children isn't as unusual as it maybe would be in suburban England.  In fact, many of the kids that I worked with in New Zealand were living with aunts, uncles, brothers or sisters and some were living with even more distant relatives!

Three of the kids that I worked with most closely: Phantaesha, Santos and Ennex, were brother and sisters, and also had 7 other siblings, but none of them lived together.  Santos was living with Janina after having been deserted by her Mum who ran off with a boyfriend and left Santos in a house with no food or electricity for over 2 weeks.  Phantaesha lived with me while I was in New Zealand and then when I left she moved in with Jono and Anna and has been living with them for the last 2 years.  And Ennex spent some time drifting around but eventually moved in with his Dad, who last I saw was in the back of an ambulance being rushed to hospital after overdosing.  Their family was chaotic, and some of the things that they had been through when they were younger was distressing to hear about.  But it wasn't unusual.  I had the same story when I spoke to most of the kids, and the more I heard about the things that they put up with at home the more I sort of became used to it, in a way that worries me, because it stopped being a massive shock every time they told me about a new cruelty that was bestowed upon them.  And that just isn't okay.

I feel like I've been getting to this point for ages - but basically I am right back where I was almost 3 years ago, thinking that something has to be done about this problem in New Zealand, and I just don't know how you go about doing it. In a way to stop the practice of child swapping and fluid families is to interfere in a long held culture; to ignore it all and not say anything so as to avoid hurting anyone's feelings and causing any more strife between Maori and Pakeha, is to say that it is okay that these children are being hurt, abused and killed.

Janina and I spoke when I was leaving New Zealand about one day going back and starting up a House of Hope where abused women and children could come and stay and have somewhere safe and warm to be while they got their lives back in order, and I really do hope that one day this will happen.  I know the difference it would make, even just in Takanini, and hopefully things like this would go some way to making sure that soemthing is being done to ensure that cases like Baby C and Delcelia Witika never happen again!

Laundry life...

6pm Friday night and I am sitting in the local laundromat washing clothes...we have a washing machine at ours but no tumble dryer and I just like the dry clothes feeling!!  That and I'm camping up in Lancashire in the middle of nowhere tonight and I want dry clothes for a day of walking tomorrow...

I always find you meet the most entertaining people at the laundromat too! There's a guy here telling anyone and everyone who will listen that he's a multimillionaire and has a record deal with virgin! He's now suggesting to me that (because I can get internet on my phone) I google him! Hahaha! Best put this away quick! Over and out x

Cardiff and London - Rugby Fever!

True to form, the 6 Nations Championship has been brilliant yet again this year!

I've been lucky enough to go to two matches this year - thanks to Papa Hex who is brilliant at getting tickets ... love you Daddy!

E and I at Millenium Stadium, Cardiff

R and I headed down to Cardiff for the France game a couple of weeks ago and then this past weekend I went down to London to stay with Ste and we headed to the Wales v England game at Twickenham on Sunday.

I haven't been able to see much of Ste at all recently so it was lovely to spend a weekend down in London and hang out with him, and it was topped off by a cracking match between the two teams.  I always find it difficult to decide whether I am Welsh or English when I am watching rugby and can say, happily, that England beating Wales neither upset nor thrilled me...I think I would have honestly been happy with the result either way!

Ste at Twickenham Stadium, London

The highlight to the day had to be after the match though.  Ste and I met up with J and some of his friends for a couple of drinks before heading back to Ste's house so that I could grab my stuff and drive back up to Liverpool, but as we were walking to the car an absolute legend of rugby whose career I have followed since his first game in Tokyo in 2001 (also my first international rugby match!!) to his international retirement in 2009 just happened to walk out of the stadium in front of us.  I think I actually punched Ste I was so excited!  I've never before understood the screaming girls that surround One Direction as they tour the world, but the feeling I got at seeing, talking to and having my photo taken with Dwayne Peel has got to be comparable!!  He was the person who graced the cover of all my schoolbooks as a teenager and his poster is still on the wall at my parents' house in Cumbria.  If that isn't infatuation I don't know what is.  Anyway, as I said, I had a picture with him and have looked at it every few hours since just to remind myself!

The final weekend is coming up this weekend for the rugby and it's all down to the last match, which I am so excited about.  I think this is going to be a weekend of little work and lots of rugby!

10 years since piggy backs and Meatloaf...miss you always!

Today marks 10 years to the day since my friend, Vicki Lynn, was killed in a car crash.  It's mad to think that if she hadn't died we would have most likely grown apart and would be in 'distant' touch on Facebook but not be in each others lives anymore!

Vicki was brilliant.  We would spend our afternoons after school singing Meatloaf songs at the top of our lungs as we piggybacked our way around Catty and Claughton on her paper round.

For the longest time after she died I felt guilty that I hadn't been with her when it happened and that I hadn't somehow predicted it.  I carried it with me for the rest of the time I was in school and probably even for a few years after that.  But at some point it stopped hurting every time I thought about her and now whenever I think back to the times we spent together I just remember this hilarious and entertaining joker who always wanted to make people smile.

Vicki, I will love you and miss you for the rest of my life, but I am so happy I had the chance to know you and that you blessed my life in so many ways.  Keep giving those angels hell!!

Turning 26..

It's happened...I am officially over halfway to 50!

Today has been lovely - M, P, H and G all joined me for an 18km trek around the Lancashire fells in the Trough of Bowland area followed by a pub dinner in Clitheroe.  I am, yet again, tired but happy!  I love having a birthday that falls in the holidays every year, it means I can have the full day to celebrate!

I always get a little maudlin around the time of my birthday and start thinking about all the things in my life I would still like to achieve, but for now I am going to leave that.

Of course there's lots of things I have on my ever-growing bucket list, but I find if I dwell too much on these it detracts from the things that I am doing right now.  I don't want to let anything get in the way of giving the best I can to the kids who I am working with at the moment, and if that means putting my bucket list back in the cupboard for another few months before I get it out and polish it up then I can cope with that!

So, not today, but watch this space!

Mental Money Maths...

Teaching my Year 11 bottom set today and we were doing a little bit of mental maths with money problems and I asked the boys what 68p + £7.58 was and CB got all excited and shouted "£15.60!!"

When the other lads started laughing he looked down and said "I can't help the things that go on in my head when I do maths Miss!!"

I love these kids

Expeditions and getting out!

February is proving to be an absolute corker of a month!  Not only has the SixNations 2014 tournament kicked off, I have got plans for every single weekend either going out walking with friends or for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award or going to rugby matches.  I'm so excited to be able to get out and about a bit more.

As I write this I'm sitting on my back stoop stretching my legs and feeling them throb from all the walking we've been doing this weekend.  I LOVE THIS FEELING!

I've spent the weekend in Cheshire walking with some of the other DofE leaders from schools in the area and it's been brilliant!  We did 16km yesterday and 19km today and I'm exhausted but so refreshed by it.  I really hope that this is how our kids feel when they come back from a DofE weekend - it's such an awesome opportunity for the kids to get out and experience something different and I always find that they are so excited by the prospect of getting out of Liverpool for a couple of days!

Here's a few pictures of the weekend (I need to stop instagramming...)

Mud!!!

Team Attack!

A & G

Peckforton Castle, Cheshire

100% Scouse!

Much to the amusement of my Year 11 class today I made a little mistake when dictating a question about an antique clock and managed to miss out the L...For the next 5 minutes there was phallic humour overload from all of the students who could not stop rolling about laughing every time they looked at me!!  Doubt I'll be living this one down any time soon!

About 5 minutes before the end of the lesson one of the boys, J, who is possibly my favourite student in the school (not that you're supposed to have favourites), came to speak to me and suggested that I take a quiz on the Echo website to see how many questions about being a Scouser I could get right.  Amazingly, I managed to score 100% - apparently I have been living here too long!

Proof!!

I think there's so many misconceptions about Scousers that make people not want to visit Liverpool, but I love this city and the people here so much.  They are just bonkers!  I mean, some of the slang here is hilarious - and embarrasingly, without even realising it, I am finding myself coming out with these words!!  Every time I meet up with my uni mates they tell me how Scouse I've become.  I don't hear it at all, mostly because I spend all day with true Scousers, but it must be rubbing off!!

Marking Madness

We've had a huge focus this term on ensuring that marking is of a good quality so that all the students are aware of what they need to do in order to improve.  Now I'm generally quite a detailed marker and I take my time to ensure that what I write is valuable to the students, but I've been having real issues with the marking for the kids who I teach who speak little or no English.  In lessons we scrape by with my poor translations and signs to tell them what we are doing and what I expect of them, but when it comes to their book work I am never sure what I can do that is going to be beneficial for them.

So this week I took a new tack and, with those students who speak no English at all, I tried my best to translate the marking into their home language.  Which was all fine with the kids from Eastern europe who speak Slavic languages and so have some very similar vocabulary to the Croats, but with the Chinese, Arabic, Greek and Russian students, who have a completely different alphabet for me to write in, I struggled.

Romanian Marking

I always feel that I don't want to let the EAL students down, as life is already difficult enough when you are stuck in a school where everyone is speaking a language that to you sounds as comprehensible as Gobbledegook!

Maybe it is going to be a case of learning to speak another 15 languages so that I can easily converse with these students in their home tongue and don't need to worry about this whole English malarky...or maybe I'm going to have to think up another way to give effective feedback to these kids!

This beaut!

For some strange reason I am up early this morning and am thinking that there is no better way to kill time than to do a bit of blogging!

I've been meaning for a while to post a picture of the amazing Christmas present I got!  For the last 2 or 3 years I have really developed an interest in photography and have wanted a bit more decent a camera so that I can start to play around with taking photos.  Anyway, after a lot of 'saved up presents' I was finally able to get a new camera.  It's nothing snazzy, but I LOVE it.

I think it's slightly ironic that the first thing I did upon opening this present was take a photo of it, but hey ho!

Over the last few weeks I've had a chance to get out and play around a bit with this bad boy, and here are some of the shots I've snapped:

The Screes, December 2013

Wast Water, December 2013

Mum and Dad's House - Love this place!

My gorgeous, if slightly sickly, niece

The beautiful Alice-Rose on Christmas Day 2013

Low Mill House

Wast Water on Christmas Day 2013

And last, but by no means least, here is a little snapshot of Rose and me enjoying cuddles for the first time in 6 days - the longest that I have ever gone without seeing her since she was born!!

Hallway Dance Parties

My flatmate and I have spent the previous few days having random dance parties in the hallway every time we see eachother.

I'm not fully sure how it started, but once it had started we just kind of carried it on.

Two days ago it was Take That Tuesday, yesterday was Westlife Wednesday (I'm surprised I let that one by...) and today is Throwback Thursday...the theme to our evening - hits of 1998

I don't know what our other 2 flatmates think of this strange practice, they haven't really commented, but it is making my week so much more manageable!  I've been cracking down on my marking recently and as a result have spent the previous week bringing home 20 books a night and marking away.  I only come out to grab a drink, pop to the loo or have a little dance!

It's not the first time that H and I have started our own little trends - I think we just have such a similar sense of humour that if one of us finds it funny it's likely the other one does too.

There must be some research out there to prove that a little boogey every hour or so increases the endorphins in your body and makes you happier!!  I reckon it should become standard practice - I might even suggest it at school, a bit of cha cha slide on the corridor in between lessons!  I'd love it!

Now to get our other 2 flatmates to realise that they want to join in - we've been having difficulty figuring out a theme for tomorrow evening, although I'm pretty set on funky Friday.  I reckon if we can get E and M involved we can convince them to crack out a funky Friday playlist.

Right, procrastination over, back to my marking!