Educational Ping Pong

Going back to school was filling me with dread:  What if I'd forgotten how to teach?  What if the kids were really horrible this year?  What if all the staff are so stressed they've lost their sense of humour?  The news was full of politicians playing ping pong with education.  Each side claimed the lack of school places were the other side's fault, they all claimed that education was broken and that they could fix it with a bit more tinkering.  Free schools hit the news.  I'm a bit confused by Free schools.  I might have mis-interpreted it but it seems to me that people can open a private school, which doesn't need to follow the rules that state schools follow, and parents don't have to pay for it. It all made me feel very depressed.  Who wants to work in a broken system, with kids who are never going to learn to read and write properly?

I needn't have worried though.  In the real world, with real teachers and real pupils that aren't just the statistics of politicians, life is great.  Children are individuals, with their own humour and personalities.  They still look at you like rabbits caught in headlights when you tell them that they are going to learn the Greek National Anthem in Greek.  Some laugh when they ask you what it means and you say, "It's all Greek to me."  They all want to do their best.  They all want to please.

My day was made absolutely brilliant today by my colleagues, who are funny, irreverent, caring and bonkers.  Being 'drawn' to a certain child, huge wrap and naff but delicious cake were my favourite parts and mean that I'm very happy to go back tomorrow.

It seems that anyone can set up a free school https://www.gov.uk/set-up-free-school so if I lose my job when the government next decide that unqualified teachers can't work in state schools I might set up a free school, where the focus of the curriculum is 4 hours of music a day http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-09-music-lessons-quality-school-life.html, joke telling to develop a sense of humour, eating cake, going for walks in the rain, reading any book you want to and ping pong (to keep the government happy).  Who's with me?