education – Afterwards

Probably well deserved.

You’re not all special!

I popped to the engravers this morning to pick up some trophies for a rugby festival I am running tomorrow and noticed a large pile of parcels for the local grammar school.

Seems they are awarding 4 trophies for their top ‘A’ achievers, a good recognition for the ‘merit’ pupils and two very special ones indeed.

Nice to see the school telling it like it is.

Mmm Bacon

Salty goodness

A young Muslim was really quite shaken

When he realised he rather loved bacon

He tried to be devout

But he rather loved snout

Judgement day he is sure to be shakin’

There’s nothing like a private education

All the top politicians love to shape young minds. They’re such good types.

Politician in Lords, landed Gentry

loved to instruct young boys by the plenty

every night as a rule

he’d head down to the school

and insist “open up, give me entry!”

X is for X-Rated

The time I nearly taught a class of 11 year olds about fetish sex by accident

A few days ago I wrote here about volunteering to teach code in a nearby school. I expressed a degree of nervousness over the endeavour but was nonetheless excited at the prospect of sharing something of what I love.

Last Thursday came and went and for the most part it went rather well. The children were engaged and excited by the lesson, I am now known as “Mr Code Man” – which I absolutely love, and I will be returning this week.

It was touch and go though because of an issue with the content of my internet browser.

If you have read my blog then you might know that I wrote a whole series of posts on the crazy sexual fetish’s that are out there and much of my research came from a Huffington post article. Now there is nothing deviant or inappropriate on my laptop. My theory on such things is dont lie or hide things then you don’t have to remember anything.

Seems though that I happened to bookmark this particular site. Just imagine the scene…

I hook up my laptop to the gigantic electronic screen in the classroom and it displays my desktop for them to see. There was a small matter of XBOX alerts popping up because my kids were enjoying a snow day at home and I monitor their messages on my laptop. Nothing untoward though and I quickly turned the alerts off. It actually earned me kudos with the older boys in the class.

So there I stand, facing the twenty or so little faces and another 5 teaches and I click the browser and it opens up and there on the screen, projected to a size of 3 metres wide is this. Now I only have 2 bookmarks in my browser and here they are…

Now I noticed it straight away and as fast as I could fumbled around to close it but eventually yanked the output cable from my screen somewhat flustered and closed it down, my heart pounding in my chest.

I looked around and it seems I got away with it but god, can you imagine if I had clicked it by accident…

V is for Volunteering

Try imagine this…

The company I work for encourage its staff to play an active part in the community. I used to think it was all just a bit of PR but my experience over the last few years has changed my mind on that. It is easy to be cynical I admit but in addition to matching any charitable fundraising we do (to a limit of £500 a year) they also, to a degree, support us with a certain amount of time off work to pursue these causes that matter to us most.

Using some of this time, this week I will be embarking on something of an adventure as I

start to volunteer teaching code in one of the small schools one town across. As part of

Code Club I will be teaching 9-12 year olds how to code in scratch for an hour a week on a Thursday afternoon.

There aren’t enough coders around and I believe it is a skill that breeds creativity and develops problem solving abilities that will be critical later in life and I just figured if no one else is going to do it I will.

Code Club is itself critical in this though and a wonderful endeavour and it provides a wonderful framework within which to work. You don’t even have to be able to code to be able to teach it. I can though so hopefully it will help immensely.

Initially I was rather enthusiastic and following a visit to the school though it was a great

idea but as Thursday looms it has dawned on me that will be teaching up to thirty eager

coders never having taught children before. I have taught adults plenty at work but they are different and wholly more docile.

I may well have bitten off more than I can chew, and I am uncertain if I am the type to be shaping young minds and I am concerned that they will make me cry. But, it is now too late to back out and by all accounts they are rather excited and if I do run away I

imagine they will hunt me down and go all lord of the flies on me because that’s what children do.

Oh well…