Let's Try It Again...

Hear ye, hear ye....

It's Sunday.

Sunday Funday to some; days where you go daytime drinking in a pub with your friends after having done a good ol' hike in the countryside. Or days where you chill by the beach/pool and finish off your relaxing weekend with a margarita at sunset.  For teachers, it's Sunday "Fuck-my-life-I-have-the-fear-of-Christ-inside-me-and-my-to-do-list-isn't-done" Doomsday.  My fellow teacher friends, you know the feeling.  The dread.  The tummy upset.  The lack of sleep. The pile of meaningless marking that you probably thought about all weekend but didn't do because, "the weekend is your time, dammit"....We try our hardest to partition work and home, we really do. It's just that our brains don't every really shut off when it comes to work. There's too much pressure.  Let me lay it down to you: if we don't keep on top of our work, doesn't matter what day of the week or year it is, we may screw something very serious up. Could be, we miss a meeting or deadline--meh.  Not so bad....We could even fall so behind we don't get a raise.....What's even scarier....if we royally cock up, we could mess up the education of hundreds of pupils. Then we've got major issues; from the school, the kids, the families of the kids, the city council, etc...Someone famous once wrote a song about pressure....

Anyway, last weekend I found a journal that I was writing in back in 2010. There are some GEMS in there, people!  Basic bitch alert!!  I found tearful notes about a boy and if he actually, really loves me (gag me with a spoon!)....Brilliant little notes I wrote to my future self about what was going on in my life, what I was hoping for in my future and mostly....to-do lists! I have always been a person who wants to be in control....Remember - I'm the biggest bossy cow you'll ever meet. (If you don't get that, read my other blogs.)  Anyway, these to-do lists from 2010, well, they had PRACTICAL SHIT IN THEM. Things about ME. Things that I needed to do to make MY LIFE better. Not crap that I needed to do because the Department for Education says these things are what's best for a child in secondary school. Not crap that I will do and not a single person will give a shit about. Not crap that I might see a return for.  Previously, I would have stuff like.... "mop the kitchen" or "go to the gym" on my to-do list! Very practical things! Never would like have a to-do list solely for getting things done for a job - for someone else.  And yes, I had a fucking job!  I had lists of things to do that improved MY life, made ME feel better, and yes. I am sounding very selfish. But I'm sick. Sick of living for the holidays, giving up my weekends, my evenings, my free time for kids that can't even be bothered to put their phones away, let alone try to learn maths.  I especially am tired of doing jobs last minute for people because they are too unorganised to give me due notice. But let me re-think that last sentence....The people I am doing things last minute for are just as fucking busy as me.  They are bogged down with the same set of soul-destroying tasks, so is it really their fault? I say no. It's the system. And I am bleeding sick of it. I'm going back to Sunday Funday and daytime boozing. Meet y'all there.

I wanted to write about something positive today, I promise! I sat down with the best intentions. Let's try it again, as the New Kids on the Block would say...

Peace on you.

If you can't beat them, join them...

Howdy Doody, y'all.

So, I've been reading more scientific articles online, for fear that Trumpfuck might take down all the educational sites in the whole of the internet before we can say "Make America Hate Again"....two things: 1) LSD stays in your serotonin receptors for 12-18 hours even though it is only recognisable in your blood for up to one hour after taking it! Mental. It gets stuck on the side of each receptor, basically lingering in there for hours like a 1990s Cranberries pop single! I mean, I didn't read this because I'm thinking about doing it...I'm Velcro-ed into the basic bitch constructs of this meagre dimension, and I'm way too fucking scared of that shit. Waaaay too scared. The other article the boy showed me was 2) Scientists have figured out how to transform hydrogen into metal. No. Fucking. Way. This could save the fucking planet, people. It could also devastate the steel industry. But overall, what a good day yesterday was for science, right?!

Hence my light-bulb moment of the day....

Whilst driving this morning in the cold, frosty morning fog...I thought: let's use the internet to educate not to numb the brains of future generations!! Just like I use it for!....You're all sat there going, "Derrrr, that's what I said, like, 5 years ago." And of course, that is absolutely the answer....but how do we do it with all the shite out there?? Ya know, sexual predators named Heather who are really 63 year old perverts called Frank, adverts for black magic pore masks (which I'm totally going to buy!), vloggers and tweeting fucktards like the Kardasians....How do we bypass the crap?!  But the even bigger snag is, ok...let's say we do use the internet/technology to educate, which a lot of great practitioners already do....how do we get young people to "buy in"?  How can I, a corn-fed, middle class, white chick from Nebraska, get masses of British-born, multi-cultural teenagers from all over the world to want to use the internet to promote good, to promote intellectual growth?  How can I make them understand that using the internet to educate yourself on worldly issues is useful for their lives?  How do I make them see that reading an article on LSD may one day help them integrate better into a social situation or make them sound really smart whilst they're blogging?  Maybe I tell them it could help you get really good a pub quizzes, because that's probably the only form of mental stimulation most of them will have in their unpersuadable, BREXIT lives.  I haven't a clue.....But, we know what we need to do....it's just never going to work unless this generation of young people see a need for it and "buy in".

So, what I'm really facing at school is this: children obsessed with their phones, the internet, gaming, and celebrities, living their lives "always on" and through an app...And when I'm challenging their behaviour (usually for disobeying the simplest of rules: put your phone away), they are seeing it as an attack on their lives. Because it's all they know.  They are taking it personally. You'd think that I trapped their pet hamster in an Asda bag and suffocated it to death!  This is then having a spiral down effect and they are losing the ability to be respectful....And never-mind being respectful, they struggle to be in most social situations and have conversations with people not of the same age as them! The relationships I'm trying to form with these young people do not stick. We have some good days, but mostly really bad days. Tables being flipped over, screaming, kicking in doors, and lots and lots of "fuck you" s being tossed around. Our relationships have life spans much like their attention spans.

There's loads of research out there about measuring the closeness of relationships, the different realms or levels of friendships people have in this day and age, as well as work done to categorise the types of internet users. Perhaps it's within research like this I can find my answers--Cos I know it ain't at the workplace!!  Everyone keeps saying to me at work, "Oh, it [the children's behaviour] doesn't even faze me anymore" or I'm hearing this, "Like water off a duck's back" and "If you can't beat them, join them."  I feel that statements like these make the teachers part of the problem; allowing young people to suck at holding real life conversations, not making them face consequences for misbehaving, and it's this complacency that's making me want to quit being a teacher...

I'm off to use the internet to make myself understand what the fuck is going on with this generation.

Happy Friday, bitches.

**Jesus Christ on a bike! I just tried to get a pic of water off a duck's back, thinking I'd get only pics of a duck....NOPE, just found out that a drag queen has tagged that as her bloody motto, hasn't she!! She's everywhere. The internet is fucking insane.

Chronic Complainer?

Morning, you lot.

Here's how I feel today:

Not sure what it is, but there's a bug inside me. Sucking the life out of me. Making me even more cynical and contemptuous. I actually had a really nice night last night; got a head and neck massage and then had friends over for dinner. I should be buzzing. But I'm feeling worse. I did all those things middle class people do - I made a nice vegan meal, showed my mates around my new house (they especially liked my office), we drank wine and bitched about our lives. Classic female, PMS-y behaviours. I had a chance to vent, to clear my thinky-space. But now, my head's in a thicker, much more London-like fog. The kind of fog that causes planes to reroute and land someplace sunny.....maybe that's it! Maybe I need to just get away from my rat race for a bit! Spain? Italy? France? I'll drink red wine until my lips become purple and gout sets in.

But before I do that, let's get down to it: you know that creepy video of the children "dancing" and dying off stage one-by-one? This is what I think is wrong with my career: kids are disappearing. I don't teach children anymore. I teach little mini-adult robots that try very hard to copy everything they see on youtube, twitter, insta-I-don't-give-a-fuck-gram. Their little souls aren't being fed by real stories of the past, they aren't being shown by their families how to appropriately put on makeup or how to cook a good meal.  They aren't playing on swing sets and eating mud pies with their friends.....Some stranger on the internet is showing them how to contour their faces and get to the next level on Gears of War.  Parents are sitting back and letting their kids grow up by "googling" it.  Look around! How many parents do you see on the bus or train or plane (on a phone) with kids on a tablet or smart phone or some kind of electronic device?  I once went to a fancy restaurant in Chamonix, France, right...I'm talking $130 for a meal for two type of nice.....and there was a family of four at the table next to me. THEY WERE ALL ON A TABLET. Every single one of them! I watched for nearly a half an hour in disgust. They played and tweeted whilst they ate, drank, etc. Less then 10 words shared amongst them!  I almost mounted my high horse, galloped over there and physically shook the shit out of those parents. That's no way to live. But alas, that's how most do.

That type of home life (or worse) is why I catch kids on snapchat or whatever the fuck it is they love wasting their lives on during EVERY lesson of EVERYDAY.  The generation of young people I teach are obsessed with being "plugged in" and having an "always on" feature. They probably don't know how to talk to their families and/or hate them and sit on their phones in their rooms all night, eat cheetos and drink vimto for dinner.  It's all they know.  That is what they love.  They probably can't make and/or keep friends in real life; their self-esteem is too low to be nice to themselves and others.  Their parents are blissfully unaware that they are creating anti-social, future mass-murderers. You cannot tell me that they haven't become dependent on their phones and social media.  You cannot tell me this isn't having an effect on their attention spans and their attitudes toward school.

 And here I am....with my "holier than thou" attitude about what should and shouldn't feature in a child's life, my demanding classroom routines, and bossy cow attitude toward learning....What's annoying is that I am the mad one here; I am the one telling them they don't need their phones, that what they are seeing is all bullshit, that they aren't experiencing real life.  I am telling these young people, most of whom are from very broken homes, that what they know, what they love, isn't necessary for life. But it is their life.  I'm fighting a losing battle against this generation.  It's like trying to climb K2 in a pair of M&S patent leather high heels.

Yours Truly,

Chronic Complainer

Basically, We're Still Going Back...

So, I've decided that I need to write blogs from "my office", as most middle class people would. Cos we all have "offices". Little rooms where we hide all of the crap we really don't want to sort out. The crap that we want to keep because, "one day I'll need it".  You know the one: old text books, boxes of receipts in case we get audited, a Buddha statue your friend gave you 6 years ago that you haven't found a home for yet, a mason jar half full of coins that you'll "turn into a holiday one day", and crafty things that you swear you will find time to use.  And aren't we all lucky to even afford a house with an "office"?  Just to make my office come to life, I've been mega edgy and bought a vintage lamp and mini cacti for my Ikea desk. Cool, right?

Anyway, from my cosy office, the internet is about as slow as AOL dial-up was from Mrs. Anderson's classroom back in 1997. Like, how totally annoying, right? Oh my gawd. But yeah, how mad.... That was ONLY 20 years ago! Look at how life evolves; back then I was being super cool and creating a Smashing Pumpkins fan site to share what I loved about my life. Now I'm enlightening the internet with my ebullient, scholarly ramblings....Wait. Hold on. Aren't I still just telling the interwebs what I like about my life? What has ACTUALLY changed?? Fuck all is what. Again, time. That basic bitch construct. Why is my life on a loop?!

Hold on, I didn't come on here this morning to blab about a fucking office full of shit from Ikea. Or AOL. I came on here to tell you about my career choice. Or rather, the career that chose me and why it's playing with my motherboard, causing a glitch in the system. ....when I was 15 it turns out I  had a big mouth (gasp!) and was very good at articulating what I thought and what needed to get done. I was focused. I was keen. I was, naturally, a bossy cow.  So, I became a teacher. And I loved it. I loved the give and take it had about it. The natural flow of expert to novice, then back again. The feeling you get when your pupil nails what you've shown them is marvellous; it's as addicting as street grade coke. And no. Not done it (I'm too basic and scared of the law), but I could imagine it would leave you wanting more. Anyway, I followed this feeling of, "holy shit, I've just taught somebody something and now they are actually good at it".... And here I sit, literally half of my life as a teacher; a teacher of dance, maths, and cultivator of future experts. But I've come unplugged from the matrix. No longer titillated by the joys I once lavished in. No longer feeling like that semi-naked lady in the summer fragrance adverts running through a field of wild flowers at dusk.

So I leave you with this: What's causing this upset? Is it you, or is it me? How could a perfectly "normal" chick end up with this much dissonance? Maybe the answer isn't that hard to find....I'm just gonna leave this gem here:

Let me take you back...

So... I've picked the most basic template for this blog - it's called "simple" view.  Sounds about right. It's mostly because the options are crap, but also, if I pick an "edgy" background I might come across as a bit of a cunt. A '"try-hard".  And that's not me....or....

Let me take you back. Back to the same old shit really. My life seems recorded on an infinity symbol, continually folding and turning upside down and back around on itself. If you're dumb and don't know what an infinity symbol is, here's a pic:

You see, the top becomes the side and then the bottom and then the side again and it keeps playing this same song in a continual loop....until death. So, when I say, "let me take you back", what I really mean is, "let me tell you a story that I have already told, that I will probably tell again with different characters at a different point in my life". This actually leads my thought process to time. Time is just a basic bitch construct to help us stupid humans deal with our reality. Like Brian Cox and the Nolan Brothers, I too believe that our lives are not linear. So the fact that I'm sat here writing a blog (again) about my basic life with basic issues (again) isn't a surprise. I've already written this blog, it's just that the events in my life right now have nudged me to publish them right now. Or something like that. 

Anyway, what I'm trying to do with this blog is self-medicate. Make myself feel better. I'm trying to get my emotions "down on paper" to make myself breathe a sigh of relief.  Also, you reading this and you commenting on this will help my self-esteem.  Isn't that why we all do this? Because we cry about our lives but make out like they are "totally sick, yo" on the internet? 

But alas, I've got 99 basic bitch, first world problems. And yes, a bitch is one.  What are they, you might ask? What could it possibly be that's bothering this healthy, corn-fed white girl from a middle class nuclear family?....Well, the bitch is me and the problem is my job. Not only my job; it's my career choice. But, I'm gonna be late for hot yoga; peace out.