My Secret Garden

I recently visited Lincoln Cathedral to hear my partner sing in a choir there and while they were rehearsing I was able to try and capture my impressions of the place with my camera. Now as you may know, I am an athiest but that doesn't stop me finding such places fascinating.
But I am seldom drawn to the grand views which although magnificent somehow don't touch me that much but instead to the small things, and in Lincoln particularly the stone carvings at the entrance. Perhpas that is a reflection of my athiesm as they feel human rather than something austere and other worldly. It as if the stone carvers were given freedom to express their imagination and as with music where the Devil has the best tunes it seems that Medieval Stone masons had most fun when they are depicting a Hell populated with fantastic demons and tortured sinners.

OK what do you think the guy in the middle is thinking?

He would have known what the first line in his obituary would be.
It would not mention his record number of tries scored for his club, or his Man of the Match performance in the 1968 Challenge Cup final.
No, the first line in his obituary would be of his failure to place one simple kick between the posts denying the team that he loved and worked for a Title.
He was, the commentator said "A poor lad." and in a day when men did not cry publicly he struggled through the post match interview, so crushed as to be virtually inarticulate. Perhaps he already knew that this would be what he would be remembered for and no matter whatever else he achieved he could not remove this stain, just a simple mistake but one that he would carry with him always and which would taint all that he had done in an otherwise illustrious career.
Poor Don Fox, for all the wonderful things that sport had brought him it would now curse him and the curse would last as long as he lived as it also cursed Tony Underwood, no longer remembered, for his corruscating pace or the sensational tries he scored for England or as one of the great Sevens players but remembered always first and foremost as the man that was crushed by Jonah Lomu and that, of course, will be the first line in his obituary.

I remember the phone call when I first heard that I was to become a Father,
I remember telling my parents about you as we sat beneath their apple tree one late Summer evening and the sheer joy that it brought to them,
I remember my Mother running to tell her best friend,
I remember the night before you were born,
The midnight call to the ambulance and the blue flashing light as it slowly moved between the terraced houses to collect us.
I remember your first moments, holding you for the first time and singing Happy Birthday to you.
I remember sitting with a friend the day before you first came home and as we listened to Pachelbel's Canon in D I simply wanted to cry as the music seemed to tell the story of what your life would be, the music beginning so simply and returning always to the same theme but each time gathering in more richness and complexity as the life was led and experiences gained.
I remember collecing you and bringing you home in a taxi and carrying you through the door to your first home,
I remember the look of wonder in your eyes when you first saw a Christmas Tree,
I remember how you love my own Mum and how she could listen to you in a way that no-one else could,
I remember how shy but how beautiful you were when you sung,
I remember how being in the sea makes you come to life my dearest Selkie,
I remember how proud you were when you and I climbed a mountain in the NorthWest Highlands and your pleasure in the beer that we had to celebrate,

I remember how difficult school could be for you but how bravely you faced it and how hard you worked,
I remember feeling so thrilled when I heard your exam results,

And I remember all of this and so much more today, because today is the day that you begin your adult life, my darling daughter.

Ok I have to go back today so am not feeling in the best of moods but I read this in the Educational Guardian yesterday and wondered whether you could spot the logical flaw?

Let's adopt the teaching methods of legendary language guru Michael Thomas, a new book pleads. There's a belief that languages either come naturally to a person or they don't. But to the late Michel Thomas, the "World's greatest language master", there was no such thing as a bad student, only a bad teacher.
It's a view that grates with prevailing educational opinion. These days, children's ability to learn is often blamed on a variety of learning disabilities. If teachers are bought into the equation it is usually by ministers claiming the workforce is the best trained it has ever been, or declaring that inadequate teachers must be fired.

Well Michel may be legendary, though in 24 years of teaching (Oh My God is it really that long?) I have never heard of him and he may have something relevant to say from beyond the grave but surely his view that "there are no such thing as a bad student only a bad teacher" chimes rather neatly with "inadequate teachers should be fired"?
Current educational orthodoxy does blame the teacher you just have to be sad enough to have read several recent OFSTED reports to know that, in my own school some challenging behaviour was explained quite neatly by stating directly that it was caused by the teaching being boring.
Strange though, because in the last few years there has been more top down led change in education than there ever has been and yet the opinion of most teachers is that discipline has got worse and worse. Could some of the 'good practises' imposed on us including the 'discipline strategy' have actually contributed to making things worse?
Now of course poor bad behaviours (oops Challenging behaviour - need to make sure I use the correct euphemism) is usually explained by those in charge by explaining that it is a society wide problem implying that somehow that means we can wash our hands of being involved in solving it or that you might think it's bad here but you should try elsewhere and then count your blessings an attitude I once described in a meeting as equivalent to having been burgled, rung the police only to have someone tell you " That's a shame sir but of Course this problem is far worse in Liverpool!"

Well anyway Michel may have some good ideas but perhaps it was just him, perhaps he was just an exceptional individual and that by copying him things may improve a bit but that would not mean that we could revolutionise teaching. It would be like me trying to copy the running action of the great 200m runner Michael Johnson - wonderfully effective for him - totally useless for the rest of us.

So wish me luck today, I have to find some way of building myself up for the year ahead and do not know how to.