A Guide to… Verbification

I’ve been teaching my year eights poetry (the same year eights I taught to be racist). One of the poems we’ve been looking at is Pike by Ted Hughes. Pike is an important piece of poetry for one reason only: it shows the unfairness of life. Because Ted Hughes is a poet, he is allowed to use fake words. If my year elevens do that, their Quality of Written Communication marks get dropped. When Ted Hughes does it, it’s given a name: verbification. When my year elevens do it, it’s given a different name: wrong.

Verbification is when you take a word that does exist – usually a noun but it can be any word that isn’t a verb – and you turn it into a word that doesn’t exist, specifically a verb. Ted Hughes does this when he writes ‘tigered’ and ‘jungled’. Interestingly, ‘tigered’ is now a modern slang word, usually involving cheating on a partner or a retribution involving golf-clubs.

The easiest way to verbify something is to get a noun and add -ing or -ed to it. You will actually use verbification a lot more than you think, as a lot of verbified words have made their way into mainstream English. This includes ‘elbowed’, ‘eyed’, ‘googled’, ‘hoovered’, etc. A lot of brand names or company names become verbs when you’re using that particular item. B&Q’s slogan, “You can do it if you B&Q it”, is a prime example.

Michael McIntyre identifies one use for verbification in his ‘How posh people get drunk’ sketch.

 

As usual, verbification needs to be used with caution. I have this friend who, when he wants someone to pass something to him, he turns it into imperative verb and ends the command with “me”. Unfortunately, his wishes wouldn’t sound out of place in Benny Benassi’s Satisfaction. So far, his requests have been for someone to

• “milk me!”
• “spoon me!”
• “cup me!”
• “glass me!”

Most of these requests have been directed at me. I do sometimes wonder what he actually thinks our friendship consists of.

A Guide to… teaching casual racism

It happens. In some of your lessons the children won’t learn anything. It happens to every teacher. In some lessons, you may even unteach them something: where they go away more confused than before. But don’t worry about it. Why? Because it is way better than what I did. I taught my students to be racist.

It’s not as if I set out to do that. I didn’t write in my lesson plan that the learning objective was ‘to use racial slurs’. I didn’t specify my differentiated outcomes as ‘All will be able to insult one nationality, ethnicity or people group; Most will be able to insult two nationalities, ethnicities or people groups; Some will be outrageously offensive to a most groups in society.’ Let me make it clear: I do not actively go out to create immoral, hate-filled students. It just happened.

And it happened to one of the sweetest, most pleasant year-eight girls I teach. Imagine a kitten or a baby rabbit, and that’d be almost as sweet and innocent as she is. I took her doe-eyed gaze and turned it into the eye of Sauron, casting hate and evil on all it looked upon. That is how bad a teacher I am.

I was teaching them about ‘Real-Life’ Stories in magazines and all the conventions that they needed to follow. I told them their heading needed to be a quotation and in first person; their topic sentence was to be in third person with an embedded clause; the rest of the story was to be in in first person; etc.

I got them to write it, collected them in and began to mark them. Some of them were quite good and imaginative, playing with the conventions (like having it from the perspective of two formerly conjoined twins), using emotive language and similes. Then I got to one, read the name, thought about how sweet and innocent this was likely to be. I was wrong. I was very wrong.

The heading read: ‘I was nearly killed by a black man’. My heart sunk as I read a story about a young, white girl who was snatched outside Buckingham Palace by a masked and hooded black man. Indeed, I was shocked at her racism. Also, I was surprised at her level of symbolism: an anonymous and faceless man from an ethnic minority attacking the innocence at the heart of the nation. I suppose it was some consolation that if I did teach her to be racist, at least I taught her to be sophisticated about it.

Fortunately, nothing in the Assessment Foci mentions marking down for bigotry so she got a reasonably good level for it. When life hands you lemons, eh? Even if they are bitter, racist ones.

How can we be surprised that this happens when we are teaching books like these ones?

A Guide to… Similes

An important piece of arsenal up any English teacher’s sleeve is the humble simile. It’s easier to explain than the metaphor and simple to execute. You just explain it as a comparison between two things using the words ‘as’ or ‘like’. It’s as easy as apple pie. Unfortunately, students’ lack of appreciation for nuance and subtlety doesn’t make it as nearly as tasty. Quite often their attempts at comparisons are clichéd or bizarre. Here are some that you may want to avoid.

As bald as a coot: It doesn’t make much sense until you google ‘baby coot’. Then you may gag a little, because they are freaky little critters.

As black as…: The students will cry, ‘racist!’ as quickly as a cheetah runs.

As high as a kite: Some naïve students may use this to describe happiness, when in reality it only describes crack-whores.

As busy as a beaver: Due to the word ‘beaver’ being an unfortunate American euphemism, we can assume we’re still talking about the crack-whore.

Find a needle in a haystack: Apparently a lot of farmers are on crack nowadays; trying to prove it is like trying to find a…

However, similes executed perfectly can create a perfect mental image.

• The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
• Her lips were red and full, like tubes of blood drawn by an inattentive phlebotomist.
• Her new hairstyle looked like it was cut with a knife and fork.

Can you think of any brilliant or ugly similes? The baby coot looked like…

Extracurricular

I have just survived my first parents’ evening as an NQT. This has meant that I have just done a 12 and a half hour day, with little break. This being said, it was quite rewarding and parents were pretty positive. But it got me thinking about what things we teachers do outside our classroom teaching.

So far I have done

• about eight hours of break, lunch and after-school detentions;
• seven and a half hours of mentoring day appointments;
• three hours of parents’ evening appointments;
• twelve hours of school trips;
• two hours of preparing for INSET days;
• six hours of moderation;
• one hour of phoning parents;
• one hour of covering a lesson.

Due to all this I have lost six hours of free lessons (although I did gain two hours due to year 11 exams). In total, this is about forty hours of things that go beyond classroom teaching and all the preparation that goes with it. And this was only in the last five weeks (because I can only remember that far back), not the whole of last term.

In the next four weeks I will be losing a further four free lessons, going on another school trip, helping run some INSET training, writing year nine reports, helping with the Christmas carol service, calling more parents, going on an NQT training day, running more detentions, starting up an after-school club, planning a school trip…

I’m sort of glad that I get to do so much stuff outside of the classroom teaching. It keeps the job varied and stretches me and stops me getting bored. That being said, it’s also exhausting.

Kids write the funniest things

On Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et decorum est:

“The tone would be very drowny…”

Another student had an interesting interpretation on the effect of Owen’s experience of the war.

“Owen was a soldier who died 2 weeks before the war. This helped him wright [sic] his poems…”

The other day, one student piped up and said,

“Didn’t Hitler live in Jerusalem?”

What things have you heard students say or seen them write?

The Not Quite There

The Not Quite There can be seen from a mile,
With deep dark bags and a faltering smile;
And they’re clutching at coffee with quivering hands
Whilst frantically looking for long term plans.
What’s the first unit? And how long for?
Where are the levels for key stage four?
Who are my EALs, SENs and PPs?
And where is the list of all my tutees?

It’s the fourth of September; school has just started,
But comes an announcement that makes them fainthearted.
The office that deals with qualifications
Has waited until the last day of vacation
To tell them the news that ruins their plans.
And behind this news is an odd looking man:
Like a pig in a wig with sticky-out ears,
And a big bulbous head full of silly ideas;
And a big bottom lip and a Thunderbird’s chin;
And small beady eyes filled with evil and sin.

So the pig-like-man said from his puppet-like jaw,
“The Speaking and Listening shall be no more!
For those poor children whose writing is weak,
But have good ideas when given to speak,
Should be, in my judgement, seen but not heard.”
Which, I might add, is quite frankly absurd.

Scrapping work that had been completed?
The poor students would clearly feel cheated!
But teachers then thought of a genius plan,
And entered the kids in November’s exam.
This early submission would surely secure
The marks the poor students had done the work for.
So reassured by this hopeful belief,
The teachers all sighed a sigh of relief.

But the pig in the wig with sticky-out ears
And a big bulbous head had other ideas.
With a menacing grin the pigman said
(raising his eyebrows to the top of his head),
“From now on league tables will purely be set
By the first grades the children collect.
Requesting fresh chances is far too bold;
This country has standards that it must uphold!”

The Not Quite There heard the confusing new news,
And waited to see which path they would choose:
Would the poor kids be withdrawn from exams,
Or would the school keep to the original plans?
The staff were all thrown into a blind panic;
The Head was becoming completely frantic.
A Governors’ meeting was quickly convened,
To think how to respond to that pigheaded fiend.

The submissions will stay! The exams will be taken!
And, although the staff were considerably shaken,
A decision was made and this cheered them on,
What else at this juncture could go possibly wrong?
The Mocks! That’s what could go possibly wrong.
For, when the papers were looked upon,
The grammar was grim and the spelling was dire
The department had found themselves stuck in a mire.
The exam was too soon! Was it too late
To turn the tide? The ask was too great.

Extra sessions were scheduled. Targets were set.
Papers were practiced so they would not forget,
The skills that they needed to pass the exam.
Staff taught the students like battering rams,
Repeating advice, “Use capital letters!
And winsome words to make your work better!
And use an ellipsis and paragraphs too.”
The answers improved and confidence grew.

And, although this was good, the work was not done.
Targets were set, extra session were run,
Papers were practiced and then given marks.
This was all quite a formidable task.
The teachers were white-washed, completely expended,
Dead on their feet when the half-term had ended.

Was it enough? Well, we’ll just have to wait!
The exam is after they return from their break.
But at least you have been able to see,
What the first eight weeks were like for the poor NQT.

Why I hate Wrecking Ball and Story of My Life so much

I know this is a bit late to be jumping on the Miley Cyrus controversy band-wagon, but there has been something bothering me about Wrecking Ball for a while and, with a little help from One Direction, I finally realised what it is.

No, it’s not the nudity. Nor is it the amount of saliva in the close-up shots. It’s not even her bizarre relationship with that sledge-hammer (new word of the day: paraphilia). The problem was that it reminded me of something and I couldn’t work out what it was.But I knew it was something disturbing and deeply, deeply wrong.

Yesterday, One Direction’s new single, Story of My Life, came out. And then I had that same feeling. There was something in that song that bought about the same feeling of disgust and the taste of bile to my mouth.

But what was it that invoked these feelings? What was it that linked these two songs? Then two words came into my head. Only Teardrops.

There are sections in both these songs (the “Don’t you ever say I just walked away” section in Wrecking Ball, and the lines in Story of My Life that go “She told me in the morning she don’t feel the same about us in her bones”) that sound very similar to the Eurovision 2013 song, Only Teardrops. This offends me for many reasons. First, the song won. I’m still very bitter about it. Second, why would people want to perpetuate the memory of it by using its repetitive and folksy melody in their songs?

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, have a listen.

Wrecking Ball:

Only Teardrops

‘Dear Mr Gove…’ An Open Letter to the UK Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove

Read this letter to Michael Gove:

 ‘Dear Mr Gove…’ An Open Letter to the UK Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove.

Facebook Giraffes

There is this ridiculous riddle that is going around on Facebook and if you get it wrong you have to put a giraffe as the profile picture.

via metro.co.uk

If anyone wakes me up at 3.00am and wants breakfast, I know what the first thing I’ll open is: the gun cabinet.

S**t happens

PGCE students are told lies and this is one of them: if a lesson goes wrong it is because you have not prepared for it. We are told that you have to expect the unexpected (which is of course is paradoxical, just like Mr Gove’s assertions that all schools must perform above the national average) and if things happen to go badly it’s probably your fault.

I was getting ready for the one lesson of drama I teach a week. When sorting out my timetable, I thought teaching drama would be a really fun way to ensure I reached the necessary hours. I was wrong. This group is really hard. There is a bunch of hyperactive and rather dramatic boys that have a penchant for throwing themselves on the floor or getting into stage fights (or throwing themselves on the floor whilst getting into stage fights). Drama is not my specialist subject and it is very different to the usual ‘sit at the desks and do your work’ I am used to.

The lesson was after break, so at the beginning of break I thought I would set up the classroom I was teaching in. I went over to the room and tried to get in. The door was locked. I spent all of break looking for members of staff with the key. The bell went and my fidgety class began arriving. I finally found a teacher with a set of keys. She was teaching her class but she stopped, got her keys and came over to me.

She softly said, so her class would not hear, “The chairs are around the edge of the room but there is one chair in the middle. Don’t move that chair: it has dog mess under it.”

“What?” I screamed, “How can you think I can teach in that room? Why haven’t you arranged a room change? Why hasn’t it been cleaned up?” Of course, I did not do that. She had her class there. Instead, I smiled sweetly and thanked her. I thanked her for the fact that somehow a dog had made its way into a classroom I was expected to teach in and defecated on the floor.

I opened the classroom and let the restless class in. I told the students that, under no circumstances, should they move that chair. Now, given the urges of the boys to throw themselves on the floor and roll about on it, I thought it best to abandon any idea of practical work. I have a DVD about the Lion King theatre production they could watch and comment on the characterisation of the animals. That would work.

Except it didn’t. I placed the DVD into the DVD drive of the very slow computer. I turned on the projector and bright orange images with animal silhouettes appeared on the screen. We should have been instantly transported into the African savannah. But there was no sound. I fiddled with the computer screen. I stared at the speakers, willing them to work. I did not know what to do. I tried not to let the look of blind panic fall over my face. The children were getting really restless and at any moment the boys would end up rolling all over the floor… and the faeces in the middle of it.

At this point the caretaker walked in with a spray bottle of blue liquid and a blue J cloth. He got down on on the floor, sprayed the offensive smear and wiped it with the cloth. This is going on while the children were saying things like “What is it?” “Has someone been sick?” “It smells like poo.” “Why is there poo in the classroom?” “Can we open the windows?”

At this point I had this strange out of body experience. I’m no longer in the classroom with the fidgeting children and the bemused caretaker. Instead, I’m in the Head’s office, with a group of Ofsted inspectors that are all wearing suits and clipboard; some governors that are are all old, wearing tweed and have massive glasses. I can see myself; I am pleading for my job. “What more do you want? There was poo in my classroom! The PGCE didn’t prepare me for this.”