The last time I remember using it was when we took the children to the Donkey Sanctuary. And I never got round to uploading the pictures onto the computer.
If you see it, just hang it over the front room doorhandle as usual, please.
Thanks.
As if it wasn’t enough that I share my home with Autism, I seem to be moving towards a career in it as well.
This week I am working in a special Autism unit in a Yorkshire school. In my class there are half a dozen kids with Autistic Spectrum Disorders, a lead teacher and a team of three assistant teachers (that’s me, that is!)
Special Education is to 21st Century teaching what fresh baked bread is to a Big Mac Meal. It is the basic stuff of nutrition without any junk additives or excessive marketing to convince us that we want to eat the garbage.
There is a profound lesson to be learned in the first five minutes - a crucial moment during which a teacher in a mainstream school can be failed (and ruined) by OFSTED if the lesson doesn’t begin with a brisk and engaging opening activity. In the mainstream school the teacher must take command, set the appropriate tone for a learning environment and engage every child in the room - all within seconds.
Ever tried to engage and hurry one child with Autism?
A register of six takes 30 minutes. By “mainstream” educational standards, registration is a legal formality to be squeezed in around the “important” stuff. In an Autism unit, it is an educational activity in its own right. And it is this attention to detail that makes it possible to engage with and educate ASD kids in the first place.
At last! A sector of the English education system that actually begins with what the children need!
Holly caught a crow.
We were walking home from the city centre, along the riverbank, when she saw it in the distance. It was hopping happily along the flood meadow, terrorising invertibrates and generally minding its own business.
She stalked it in an impressively predatorial way, staying very low and using large brown plants as camouflage. When she was about three feet away, she pounced.
The bird reacted with panic, and flapped its little wings like mad to gain as much height as possible. They must have missed each other by millimetres. And that’s when the really impressive bit happened.
Holly, obviously, returned to earth first - but the crow had put all of its efforts into gaining height rather than speed and, about 6 feet from the ground, stalled. It swerved in what I thought was a random direction and swooped towards the ground in order to gain the necessary momentum for proper flight. I don’t know whether it was bad luck on the crow’s part or impressive guesswork on Holly’s, but as the bird descended it met a small brown and white cocker spaniel curving gracefully across its flightpath.
There was a brief melee, during which black feathers and white fur flew. Then a little brown and white head appeared above the grass, with a tongue lolloping out of the side of the mouth and one ear inside out. Everyone in earshot was treated to caws of crowy outrage.
Holly was delighted - but didn’t have a clue what to do next. So she let it go.
Little Nutter has been really helpful this week.
He opened twelve tins of dog food.
When the milk was spilled, he got the mop and mopped it all over the kitchen floor.
He helped to cook dinner, and reprogrammed the oven (which didn’t work until I took the fuse out of it for 20 minutes to reset the computer.)
He tried to change Tiny Flirt’s nappy. (Tiny Flirt only wears nappies for bed now, and that was a very funny little scene that I will enjoy reminiscing about when I have drunk enough whisky.)
And he found all our long-lost toys (by emptying all the toyboxes over the balcony at the top of the stairs.)
When I took him to respite this evening, he enthusiastically joined in with the gardening.
I ran for it.
I’ve spent this week working in a very different type of school.
I’m currently arranging a few months of experience working in specialised Autism units in various areas, with the intention of eventually making a switch from teaching theology and philosophy and into Autism specific special needs education. For now, that means I’m working with the SENCO (Special Educational Needs Co-Ordinator) at an urban school in an area with no Autism-specific provision. Technically, I am teaching RE again, but in practice I know more about Autism than the existing staff. How did that happen?
This school is in an urban area of deprivation (according to the European Social Fund) and the school’s social inclusion paperwork makes startling reading. There are no “privileged” children: the “standard” poverty indicator is free school meals with 17% being the average and just 3% being present in the top 200 state schools, but this school delivers more than 80%. Three quarters of the children arrive more than three years behind their literacy targets, and never, ever catch up. The available data suggests that less than 1% of parents have any academic or professional qualifications. Unemployment in the area isn’t as bad as it could be, due to the ongoing economic success of the whole of Yorkshire (there seems to be a recession happening everywhere on earth except for Great Britain, and Tony Bliar is trying to take the credit!) but the available jobs are all minimum wage and unskilled.
And where does this leave the school? Patrolled by senior staff with walkie-talkies, with lessons routinely disrupted by forthrightly disobedient children who don’t even look at the teachers they are ignoring. Education happens in the classrooms - but this is the exception rather than the rule. Qualifications are laughed at: what is the point of them when they don’t provide any advantage locally?
And never, ever, since my first day at primary school in 1973, have I seen anyone tell a headteacher to f*** off. And at this school, it is not wise to make a big deal out of it. Discretion, it seems, is the better part of valour.
Little Nutter has been learning all about my new satnav.
Now that I am working at random locations throughout Yorkshire, it is a useful toy - but I turned it on yesterday morning, on the way to drop Little Nutter off at his breakfast club at the Autism Unit, in the hope that it would direct me on a shortcut out of York (which it did) and the quick way across Leeds (anything that gets you through Leeds quickly is worth its weight in gold-pressed latinum.)
I thought it would be a good idea to use it to teach Little Nutter “left” and “right.”
This afternoon, when I picked him up, it was off - but he was very, very disappointed and dragged my hand to the machine to turn it on - saying “Turn left!” So I did.
Unfortunately, it was still set to guide me to work instead of home - and Little Nutter was appalled when the machine said “Turn right” and I didn’t!
“Oh no! Norby boy! Turn right! Turn right! Turn right!”
So now the satnav is programmed to guide me home…
I walked the Great North Run because my doctor said he would certify me insane if I ran it. Fair enough - and at least this way I didn’t suffer any knee pains or embarrassing injuries.
At the end, I was welcomed by my three children in their own, unique ways:
Tiny Flirt threw his arms around me, covered me with kisses and ran off with my medal;
Little Madam said, “Ewwwww! You’re all sweaty!” and refused to touch me;
Little Nutter saw that I was wearing a number like all the other runners, and which he had been coveting. So he stole it.
It’s been an unusual day.
Darling Wifey woke up feeling a little bit tender. Last night her minions took her out to celebrate. Much Champagne was quaffed, silliness was indulged in, and a dinner party for six guests was rustled up out of nowhere (yes, I am a domestic god on top of my many other virtues. I have so many virtues I am a one man pantheon.)
So Darling Wifey was left with a small pot of tea and the Fellowship of the Snot this morning and I took Little Madam to her tennis club, where all the mummies and daddies were sitting in the sun acting like eight-year-olds. (One of the mummies had caught nits from her little darling -ewwwwww- and there were many suggestions for getting rid of them, ranging from shaving her head to introducing natural predators. What eats nits in the wild?)
Later, walking back from town, whilst the rich parents of kids at the public school next door were watching the rugby a couple of traffic wardens were happily ticketing all their enormous 4×4s. Oh, how I laughed at their temper tantrums and accusations of pettiness when one of the wardens told them, “We had a complaint from a resident.”
(Time for a bit of social commentary: we need a large car because we have three children, two of whom need buggies. So we have ordered a 7-seater. However, it takes up the same space as a standard saloon car, runs at 45mpg and has the highest safety rating Euro NCAP have ever given. Meanwhile, the vast majority of public school parents have enormous off-roaders. “Oh, it’s for the safety, Darling.” Morons. Children are more likely to be injured in the back of a Range Rover than a Renault MPV - and that’s the official statistics. And these parents can’t fit them in parking bays or in the narrow lanes of the centre of York. I am all in favour of a 100% road licence fee surcharge on these stupid machines.
And no, people in rural areas don’t need them either - unless they need to drive in fields. When we lived in the North Pennines all our farmer neighbours used tractors in fields and saloon cars elsewhere. The vet drove a German estate car, and I once won a £50 bet with an idiot in a Land Cruiser who couldn’t get it up a snowy hill. I made it in my 15-year-old tiny French hatchback.
4×4s are for idiots who don’t understand the needs of rural life.)
Then we let the children run around a park like wild animals for a bit. Tiny Flirt kept shouting “I’m Tigger!” and bouncing on people. Darling Wifey sat on a park bench being very quiet and avoiding strong sunlight.
Finally, we bought Little Madam her new school shoes - and Little Nutter was actually happy to sit in a shoe shop. I think it had something to do with the most important job that the staff had to do: they would press a button and a bell would ring and the number on a display would roll up one, and they had to call out the number. He was transfixed.
It isn’t just Jedi Knights and wizards who go over to the Dark Side. Teachers do it as well. Only they do it properly.
Death Eaters and the Dark Lord of the Sith have nothing on OFSTED Inspectors. These once diligent, well-intentioned teachers have learned that they can fund their early retirements by sucking all the happiness and enthusiasm out of their erstwhile colleagues. They do it by sitting at the back of classrooms with clipboards and looking for empirical proof that education is happening.
No. I got that wrong. They do it by ticking boxes on a form, to say that the latests government initiatives are being delivered. And God only can help the teacher whose form doesn’t have all the boxes ticked - even then only on a good day with the wind behind Him.
And this week the bastards are in Darling Wifey’s classroom - her whole department.
She has worked miracles in her new school (I know, proud hubby & all that, but the statistics speak for themselves. Last year - before she arrived - the department was failing, this year - under her aegis - it is the most succesful in the school.) But it doesn’t suit the government to make judgements on the basis of results. They have to check that her paperwork is in order and make sure that she is using the proper procedures - who cares whether they are as good as the ones that Darling Wifey is using? They are the official ones, and no matter what happens, they are the ones that should be used…
Deary, deary me…
