sunday morning cookie monstars

i'm watching my love grow
i'm watching the kids
go mad and i'm
i'm watching this
whole thing from above

this is real

this is real

this is real
this is as good as it gets

like father, like son

ha! danny is back in the bay

to see his mummy

go to the next twenty first.
this one's a dressup affair -
he's going as ozzy.

i mean, ozzy.

uh, it turns out that
it's been three whole years since

the ozzy-wig was last donned
talk about a crazy train X

remember sneakily passing notes in class? well, imho, fb wall chat is the new notes passage. anyway, i'm stuffing froiday night's chat in here.

i saw you dancing, throwing your arms toward the sky. fingers opening like flares, stars were shooting everywhere.

finally a pic
of my two fave things

ah yes, i wore
my Million Dollar Dress
and my new
Don't Mess With Me Boots
to my dahling girlfriend
mel's beach wedding
which was
on my birthday weekend
in the middle of winter
actually we had
all four seasons lol
but we do so love the beach X

"oooh, mum! are we marking again?!!"

spot the ex-homeskooling family, all clustering around mama's marking of invitations for her ICT class. cos mama would love to give every kid in the class a Merit/Excellence, so the lads have the officious title of Moderators.


my kids at skool have been so wonderful about me trying out all my unskooling university theories on them: we've run this class on the inquiry model of learning with as much child-directedness as possible with 28 kiddos and only three hours a fortnight. we've based our learning around a class party (which is happening in two days' time!!! squee!! i need to sort my *R* dress ups pronto) which the kids've planned and are going to run. they've each created invitations using microsoft word (that's the ICT bit lol), which as a class we wrote success criteria for, and these are what my own lovely lads are helping to grade. it's funny, for all my anti-grading feelings, kids at skool don't seem to mind it so much.

the hills are alive with the sound of music

in the last few weeks there've been 230 skools competing for 20 places in the BIG SING national finale - and my Beautiful Smart Talented Daughter's choir GOT A PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! which is pretty fabulous for a teeny skool from The Sunny Bay X

what's it all about, alfie? or maybe just count the number of times i've written the word 'test'.

the performance anxiety's been a bit intense of late. there's these things called pre-tests and post-tests which means that kids' learning is marked and measured and recorded in little boxes. two weeks ago, i was totally ecstatic that my mathsy kiddos averaged a 25% increase in their algebra results. go mrs unmathematician. pfft. i am now fighting the impulse to jigger the geometry post-test results.

at staff meeting today we were given 'self-review buddies' which is teacher-speak for 'someone's gonna observe ya trying to control a classroom bun-fight and tick/cross boxes in red pen.' the kids get tested, the teachers get tested. if it moves, measure it. i did last year's art assignment on anti-that. what a fraud.

but because i'm teaching part time, on days where there's eleven teachers out, Sir asks me to do the odd relief lesson. yeparoonie, i get to spy on how other teachers do it. is everyone else as freaked about the conveyor belt as i am? how do they handle it when some kiddos fail? do their perfectionist tendencies let them sleep at night? or maybe they've just put the jedi mind whammy on it? anyway, yesterday i had a class of seventeen year olds... who did a test.

today's spy mission was last period upstairs in the gym with a bunch of sixteen year old geography students.
kiddo: oh, hello miss, are you our teacher today?
me: no, i'm your very expensive babysitter. i get paid danger money, you know. so who's here? i'll just call the roll...
another kiddo: miss, do you like relieving? cos there's no homework aye.
me: (ah yes, here we go, the stall technique) well, *grin* there's pros and cons. i love the no homework. but sometimes i have a science class who give me grief and i have to channel my inner-hitler.
another kiddo: so are you teaching us tomorrow?

and on it goes, in the hope that they'll escape doing any work. they talk to me about other teachers, the winner winner chicken dinner that they cooked with olly-the-chef yesterday, past and hoped-for geography field trips, and i vibe them to finish their work for today so that they'll be homework-free. we chat about life and how one student wishes she'd continued learning french. they give me some boot-lovings and then three kids leap up at the window and wave frantically to a drama student who is dressed as a cow and for a moment i let them, but then i do the twirly-whirly manoeuvre between them and the window and invite them to finish their work.

but i see no need for the hitler-act cos i have no hidden agenda of a test next week and there's only fourteen kids so the hour turns out rather relaxed and dancy, and i don't even get my red pen out.

happy twenty fifth to me

feeling incredibly spesh!!! i wore my birthday boots to skool, and i had two birthday songs from sixty beautiful kiddos. sir and i esCAPEd for lunch and we have all just finished an amaaaazing hurry curry birthday dinner and brandy snaps with berries, and bubbles, and jazz music, and a call from the beloved dannyboy, and speeches. i ♥ birthday speeches.

did my first evah zumba class last night. uh yeah, i'm only half a year behind the rest of the world.

anyway, it was insanely hysterical: a room full of white sheilas, trying to shake da booty like da black chicks. talk about lol. also, i couldn't be sure, but i think the instructor had a teenage mutant ninja turtle tattooed on her arm.

so i made a *like* page on fb just now, and in the 1.7 seconds it took me to refind and reload the page, 17 other randoms had already 'liked' it.
freaky deaky. how big is facebook anyway? at least i've got today's unfriendliness outta my system. and the bathroom is ridiculously clean.

head over heels

my birthday boots have arrived.
they pass the sniff and lick test.
i'll finally be mistaken
for rene russo.

rainy weekend + kids = scary fairy monstars

i ordered this book a couple of weeks ago on the pretext of inspiring my soft materials techno kids, but i haven't been allowed to take it to skool yet... and since it arrived *squee!* no one has any socks left either, cos they've all been refabriKATEd!!!

yep, the kiddos and i've become
addicted to making these critters!!

ok. formal introductions:

meet jeremy, estelle,

red wetty and mister jackson,

who've become instant siblings
for claudie aka squishems and squaddle.

we're the monSTARS!
that's m-o-n.. uh...

skool of rock

sigh - the biggest bruvva has arrived to see his mummy go to two 21sts and i just looked around now to find that all the lads have drifted into sam's room to make musicskand technical tips and latest chords and riffs of various fleetwood macs and dire straitses and guns and roseses stuffs are vibing outta there, including intros and outros and a glockenspiel that's masquerading as a drum kit and - sigh - all is right with the world.

cos i was right - starting something new is just like having a baby. we've finally reached the magic six-week-mark,

and everyone is coming up for air.

could you please just post out my boots already. that is not a question.

it was ten days 'til the wedding and buttercup neeeeeeeded the boots.

THE BOOTS. yes. shouting now, can you hear me?
cos hello up there? i ordered them 18 days ago.
and you said they would be shipped within 2 - 5 days.
and they would be on my doorstep within 3 - 11 days.
i have sent THREE emails and STILL haven't been notifiKATEd of shippage.

fourth email sent just now. bad juju boot mojo.
i waaaant them before my birthday!!!
anti-jinx X

dear diary

it's raining and raining here. edward the vampire is on the telly and corn chowder is nearly on the stove. it's five o'clock but i am resisting opening a bottle. instead i am about to mark tests and write a little bit more on these reports. boy oh boy, the unskooling days seem so far away... X