Learning on the job

I’ve often wondered what men talk about when women aren’t in the room. Apparently I’m in good company here, as Jane Austen famously never...

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an...

I love our new house. I especially love the big dining table that we can finally put to use now restrictions are lifted – what a joy to...

I’m ill. Send pity. Not the covid kind of ill, thank goodness, just the “I’m a teacher and it’s September” snivelling kind of ill, the...

September: a significant month in the life of a family all involved in education. For years, every September I had a recurring imposter...

It’s my 25th blog (google tells me this is a ‘quadranscentennial’ event, what a lovely ridiculous Latinate word!) and I reckon it’s...

My youngest found some photo books with pictures of our family from before he was born. He was quite forlorn to see his brothers having...

I love the Radfords and the Duggars and TV shows called things like “15 kids and counting”. Homes with big sibling groups look like so...

Returning from holiday is undeniably effortful. Not least for my husband who does all the driving and takes care of all the big practical...

We’re teachers and we’re caravanners, so we get to go away a lot, lucky us, including long summer trips normally down to Devon and...

It’s not a complete overstatement to say that I wasted the first half of my life wishing for boys, and then wasted the second half...

“Children thrive on routine. Make sure you establish a routine early on if you want a settled child.” “Be led by your child – don’t try...

In the opening scenes of ‘Hamlet’, Queen Gertrude questions her son, Prince Hamlet, why he feels so strongly about his father’s death,...

Something happened this week which really tickled me: I’d arranged for an outside speaker to come in to give a talk to students on...

I like to make myself indispensable. In my previous school it was almost a joke with myself to see if I could get a message in every...

Two of our three boys have tic disorders. For us, it’s nothing like in the comedy sketches with the funny inappropriate swearing (only a...

There’s a wonderfully warm wise Welsh woman I know. Her early years were spent on a bicycle practising midwifery in London in the 1960s,...

We were once at a party in a friend’s garden, a goodbye party to be precise, for her grown up son who was emigrating to the States with...

The first school I worked out boasted an impressive number of established members of staff, the ‘old-timers’ who had worked there for...

I have a very evolving relationship with homework. As I student, I tolerated it; as a teacher, I enforce it; as a parent… a little bit of...