PAT play aspire teach

The Everybody Up Global Singalong continues to get entries from all over the world.

A fabulous day. MANY thanks!

What every teacher should know about St. Patrick.

A delightful video entry from Turkey. Thanks to inspiring teacher, Stephanie. Join the Everybody Up Global Singalong!

I was so fortunate to visit Ms Esra’s school in Istanbul and get mobbed by her wonderful students. Thank you for a fabulous day.

Magic sometimes happens.

C.

The core elements of your teaching, many of which will be decided by others. Your course, curriculum,  timetable and colleagues could be part of the core.

B.

Personalisation and locally based activities that enrich your core by adding texture. Again, an area over which you are likely to have control.

A.

Connect to a world beyond your classroom, curriculum, colleagues and calendar. This global, expanding sort activity will enrich your core elements.  You will often have a degree of control over this sort of activity.

Frustration stems from a feeling of powerlessness but the chances are even if you have little or no control over the core elements (C), you will have flexibility in areas A (the global) and B (the local).

The magic happens when A, B and C come together.

In which I learn the drawbacks of a posh English accent.

On one occasion, aged about 7 or 8, I was sent down to the shop next to the pub to buy a pound of butter. This in itself was a very unusual thing. In fact I have no other memory of being out by myself at that age. Beyond the wall. The shop was very small and dark, with a wooden counter.

“Please can I have a pound of butter?”

Both the teenage girl and the young man just sniggered at first. Then they called a woman who came out from the back.

“Get him to say it again.”
“Please can I have a pound of butter?
“Pardon?”
“Please can I have a pound of butter?”
“What do you want?”
“A pound of BUTTER please.”

They all had a good old laugh and got me the butter.

“There you go, pet.”

I paid and left, deeply ashamed.

In which my horticultural efforts are belittled by a priest.

I was about 10 years younger than my brother and sister who were away at boarding school in England. After the accident it was just my mum, my grandmother and a series of Danish au pairs. We didn’t mix with local kids in the area and I spent quite a lot of time playing by myself in a walled garden next to our house. Sometimes suitable friends (children of my mother’s friends) would be brought over to play for the afternoon.

There was a ginkgo tree, a greenhouse and a sandpit in the corner. There was also a small boxed-in area, about three yards by two. This was my own little patch where I could grow things. I only grew flowers though: French marigolds, snapdragons and pansies.

The property next to ours over the wall was owned by the Marist Fathers. Occasionally Father Crawley would visit us. I have no idea why. One day my mother brought him in to see me working in my garden. I was excited, expecting him to praise my efforts. He towering above me as I kneeled in my bed, looking up.

“Why don’t you grow something you can eat? Cabbages or something.”

He laughed and they went off, leaving me there, burning with anger.

In which I resist my family’s attempts to encourage my French.

“Pat. Here you are. Now Say ‘Merci’!”

A Choco BN

I was five. We were in Brittany on a camping holiday. It may have been my father’s last summer with us before the accident. It was baking hot. I had probably just been given a sandy Choco BN biscuit. They were one of the special things you got in France, like Orangina, pain au chocolat, and pommes frites with every meal.

“Say ‘Merci’!”

Everyone was looking at me. My teenage brother and sister probably didn’t think much of this forced merci-saying but I don’t remember anyone sticking up for me. Nope. This wasn’t going to have a happy ending.

“Say ‘Merci’! We’re in France now. You have to speak French.”

I knew we were in France. I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to say “Merci’. Why should I? I wasn’t French. We weren’t French.

“Oh go on. Just say it!”

Probably at this stage there was a perceptible change in the atmosphere. I don’t remember.

“Why won’t you say it? Come on! Just say it. It’s only one word!”

I wouldn’t. One word or the whole French dictionary. I would sound funny and it wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to say “Merci”. They could smash my head in with a rock and leave me there. What exactly would they do anyway?

“If you don’t say ‘Merci’ you’re going back to the car.”

The brown Triumph, was miles away up the beach. So were they really going to put a five year-old child in a car on a day with the temperature in the 80s? Really?

“Say ‘Merci’. Now. Do what you’re told. If you don’t you will go back to the car.”

“No.”

Presumably my father, Davis Cup player and Chairman of the Federation of Irish Industries then said “Right. That’s it!” We set off together up the beach, me grasped horizontally, two feet above the ground, crying, screaming and kicking. There must have been considerable friction between our hot sandy bodies.

Eventually we got to the car but he’d forgotten the keys. We had to walk all the way back to the family group. I had won. Happy days.