Dear reader, how do you sometimes have what's called "a bad day"? I think it happens to us all at times, doesn't it, and especially our poor, long-suffering school-teachers - no doubt about that! It's a lot in the papers at the moment, and especially on the local Onion News website.
There's even a story on the crisis today, I notice.
WORCESTER—A shocking report released by the Worcestershire
County Education Department this week revealed that a growing number of the county’s
educators struggle on a daily basis with some form of teaching disability.
The study, which surveyed 25 primary and secondary school
level instructors across the county, found that nearly one out of every five
exhibited behaviours typically associated with a teaching impairment. Among
them: trouble paying attention in school, lack of interest or motivation during
class, and severe emotional issues.
Help is at hand, however, with the Education Dept’s new “Teachers
First” programme, spearheaded by Dr Robert Hughes, a behavioural psychologist and
lead author of the study.
"We're much more sensitive now to the factors that
influence their behaviour: abusive home lives, drug and alcohol problems, or
often, the fact that they never should have been put in regular classrooms to
begin with," Hughes has said. "A lot of these poor men and women have
been told they can't teach for so long that many start to believe it after a
while."
"Rather than punishing our teachers or kicking them out,
we give them a gold star every time they do something right," Hughes added.
"If they write the correct answer to a maths problem on the board, they
get a gold star. If they volunteer to read aloud during English class, they get
a gold star. You'd be amazed what a little positive reinforcement can do. Some
of our teachers have even stopped drinking in their cars during lunch."
According to Hughes, school officials aren't the only ones
excited by the difference the new programmes are making. Many educators have
also responded favourably, realising that they no longer have to act out or
create disruptions in order to get the attention they so desperately crave.
For a few, like Ms Jacobs [pictured above], a Year 10 history teacher at
Bell End High School, being put in a special classroom has
reawakened a love for teaching she hasn't felt in years.
"Now that I know I have a teaching disability I don't
beat myself up so much when I have a bad day or can't grasp the material we're
working with," said Jacobs, 38, who has pinned a number of perfectly
graded assignments up on his wall. "I used to think teaching and stuff was
pretty lame, but now—I dunno—I guess it's all right. If anything, being in
school now might help me to get a decent job when I'm older."
It's quite a "good news" story, isn't it, when you get to the end of it. And let's hope that Ms Jacobs, and all teachers like her, may have a lot fewer "bad days" in future - and poor power to their elbow!
10:00 Well, Lois and I have certainly had one of those "bad days" today, no doubt about that. We arrive at the Royal Worcestershire Hospital this morning for my pre-op session in preparation for next month's hip replacement, only to find that my appointment has been mysteriously cancelled.
Lois and me, pictured today in the pre-op clinic's "waiting area"
laughing and joking, and grabbing a quick snack, just seconds
before being told "Sorry, your appointment's had to be cancelled"
And if there's ever a case for saying,
"I think we should have been told", it's now, isn't it. What total madness!!!
Clinic reception staff are being tight-lipped, but we pick up from whispered conversations behind the reception desk (see picture above), that one factor is the unexpected non-availability of the clinic's anaesthetics specialist - I guess he could have been called to some emergency, but we're not sure, and staff don't seem to be sure either. To give them credit, staff then bend over backwards to get us a rescheduled time next Monday which will combine today's cancelled session with the other preparatory session to do with physiotherapy angles.
So nothing's been lost really apart from the drive time coming in from Malvern, and the terrible charges at the car-park. On the plus side, we've now "sussed out" this enormous hospital site, which we haven't been to before, and we've also "decoded" the usual terrible NHS what-we-call "excuse-for-signage", so next time should be a breeze.
So that's all right, looking on the bright side haha!!!
On the drive home, however, our tongues are wagging in the car, wondering what really went wrong with my appointment - was it some kind of devious plot?
I traditionally leave these "conspiracy theories" and all that malarkey to Lois, who has more of a flair for getting "behind the hype" on these occasions.
I can't even follow the plots in the most simple of dramas, even for the Peppa Pig episodes that Lois and I used to put on TV for our twin granddaughters back in 2015, when we used to look after them 2 days every week, to help out our daughter Sarah with childcare costs.
flashback to November 2015: the twins watch a surprisingly
complex episode of Peppa Pig at our house, the day before they flew to
Australia to begin their 7-year residency down-under
Yes, I have to confess, I can't follow the simplest plots. And yes, I know it doesn't help that I tend to "doze off" intermittently, to put it mildly.
I'm lucky enough these days, however, to usually have my long-suffering wife Lois beside me on the couch, ready to be "pumped" at will, and plied with a stream of dumb questions, like
"What's he doing that for?" or "
Who's that guy in the blue shirt?" and that kind of malarkey.
And as for summarising the plot of something I've been watching, I'm a total "dud" at that - unlike Lois, who can give a word-perfect synopsis of the plot of any book or film, plus an incisive review, good enough to put in a magazine or on "Rotten Tomatoes", and she can do it at the drop of a hat, too.
the mysterious "guy in a blue shirt", who appears in
so many films nowadays, if only for a few seconds - who IS that guy???
And Lois is also good at picking up the obscure "signals" in films too, and guessing unspoken feelings and motivations, so much so that the local Onion News website even did a story on her the other day - did you see it?
WORCESTER, WORCESTERSHIRE—Pointing
out multiple visual and verbal cues that seem to suggest the character is running
behind schedule, an insightful area movie-watcher told reporters
Thursday that she can tell the protagonist of the film she is currently
watching must be late for something.
“It’s all implied beneath the
surface, of course, but the references to the lead character’s lateness are
there—for instance, the fact that he overslept is, I believe, strongly
suggested by the shot of him waking up, seeing the time on his alarm clock, and
bolting out of bed,” noted the observant woman, who also referred
reporters to the shot of the protagonist hopping around on one trouser leg and
scrambling to get dressed as a subtle yet apparent indication that the
character almost certainly has an appointment of some kind for which he is
currently running late.
“This moment here, where he’s
shoving his arms through his coat while holding a cup of coffee in one hand,
informs the viewer, if only on an unconscious level, that perhaps this man is
worried about not arriving on time to a location where his presence is in some
way expected or required. That’s what I get from it, anyway, although I admit I
have a tendency to over-analyse this stuff.”
NB The woman pictured in the Onion News's lead story today isn't Lois by the way!
Just saying haha!!!
The website publishes huge numbers of stories about us, but for some reason substitutes younger people when it comes to the photographs. Well if that isn't "ageism", I really don't know what is!
flashback to February 3rd: the last time that Onion News
did a story on us, substituting a younger couple in the photo
What a crazy world we live in!
14:00 The most alarming part about Onion News's coverage of mine and Lois's "antics" is that they must have our house comprehensively "bugged" - we know that from the numerous verbatim reports of our conversations that appear. Or are they somehow able to listen through our smartphones, especially as Lois has a Chinese one?
Well, after such a frustrating morning at the hospital, we get into bed this afternoon for nap-time, looking for some solace - no question about that!
And it's not long before Lois's Huawei is beeping again under the bedclothes, as soon as my Samsung starts diddling, which is nice!
And we're delighted to see the reason for all this diddling and beeping, may I just add!
It's all happening to "notify" us that one of our favourite pundits on the quora forum website, T. Barczuk (crazy name, crazy guy!) has been "sounding off" about the vexed question of so-called "supercontinents", and exactly when we can expect the next one to "come along"! We've often wondered whether there's "another one coming along in a minute" - what bus company inspectors used to say about the ill-famed "No 11 Bus" - do you remember?
Barczuk writes, "Pangea was the last supercontinent that broke apart in the Mesozoic Era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, but there were more before this one, like Gondwana, Pannotia, Rodina, Nuna, or Ur. Pangea started to fall apart around 200 million years ago when a rift formed between what is now North America, South America, Africa, and Europe.
"The volcanism associated with this event might have been the cause of one of the most severe extinctions. It led to the decline of dominant relatives of crocodiles and alligators, some of which were scary and bipedal. This paved the way for dinosaurs to become more widespread, and the Mesozoic is now known mainly as the age of dinosaurs.
Barczuk then adds, "It turns out that humans happen to exist in a very unique moment in the history of our planet. The Atlantic Ocean has been growing for 200 million years and made Africa, Europe, and the Americas as far apart as they are now, but the seed of the reversal of this process began in the Oligocene 24–34 million years ago in Gibraltar. In this location, the oceanic crust started to be subducted, and the Atlantic will now slowly begin to narrow. The signs of this are still rather faint. The Gibraltar Arc is currently on pause, but it is expected to reawaken in the next 20 or so million years, and the narrowing of the Atlantic will accelerate."
Well, Lois and I missed out on most of these supercontinents - yes, we're not as old as we look haha! But obviously we want to catch "the next one" if we possibly can.
And the question is, "Should we get out of bed and watch out for it?". After a bit of debate we decide to stay under the bedclothes and turn the electric underblanket up to max. Well, wouldn't you if you had the chance - be fair !!!!!
And luckily Barczuk gives us a hint later about possible "time-slots" or "windows" for the next supercontinent - it won't be happening for at least a quarter of a billion years, apparently. So it turns out we made a good call on this one, that's for sure!
21:00 We go to bed on an amusing lecture by conductor André Previn on the role of the modern conductor.
Lois and I didn't know that having a conductor standing in front of an orchestra is a relatively recent development in the history of classical music.
picture showing Haydn "conducting" a performance
at Eszterhaza, Hungary
And in the court of Louis XIV of France, apparently, there was a composer called Lully, who used to thump out the rhythm of the piece being played with a large walking-stick.
Eighteenth-century French composer Lully, seen here with
the huge walking-stick he used to stamp out the rhythm of his pieces
Also a dangerous practice, because Lully's "Te Deum" was composed to celebrate the hoped-for recovery, from a very serious illness, of King Louis XIV. And during the first performance of the work, Lully happened to hit himself very sharply in the foot with his huge stick, and it developed an infection.
The King recovered from his illness, but sadly Lully died, from the wound to his foot.
What a crazy world they lived in, back in the zany, far-off times !!!!
Previn tells us another story from the time when he was still just a pianist, and hadn't yet become a conductor. A suggestion had been made that he should play the solo part in the Richard Strauss Burleske for piano and orchestra, with the great George Szell, the acknowledge Strauss expert.
Szell asked Previn to come and see him at his hotel suite in Los Angeles. The two men discussed the Burleske for a while, and then he said, "Ok, fine, will you play it for me?". Previn then looked round for a piano, and Szell said, "No, I have no piano, but it's perfectly all right, I know the piece very well. Play it on the table."
Previn, feeling, he says, "like really one of the biggest idiots in life", sat down at Szell's table and started thumping away on his table-top, but after 5 seconds, Szell held up his hand to stop him.
And Previn also recalls tonight his very first performance as the new conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of the world's leading orchestras.
It's nice, however, Lois and I think, that this "slapstick moment" probably prepared Previn for the later performance that, sadly, probably most TV viewers in the UK remember him for - his appearance on the "Morecambe and Wise" Christmas show, starring north-country comedians Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise.
Previn was conducting the piece, Grieg's Piano Concerto, and Morecambe was "on piano", but making a bit of a mess of it, to put it mildly - remember?
Tremendous fun, though, wasn't it!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
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