"You're right," cried Alice, "This is the world's longest blog!"

I have a lot to say in this blog. So clear your schedule and prepare for the following outpouring of bloggage. If you consider yourself easily offended or prefer censored blogging, log off now and find yourself a good, decent blog about puff pastry or microdermabrasion therapy. From hereforth, this is a place FOR ME to blog and get things off my mind. I am no longer here to entertain, amuse or share. This blog is purely therapeutic. Many of you will not like what you read if you choose to go on. I really suggest you don't and I am not just saying that in an urban legend, Blair Witch Project type way. It is a genuine warning.

NB: Funny that I wrote that blog intro as if it was addressing somebody. Normally, I think, I just type it as if it is a diary entry. Today I have something to say to the masses. Or something that I feel I want to shout at the top of my lungs and I don't care who hears. Today a little bit of my spirit was crushed. I had set expectations which were not met. And as the DM theory of expectation states: Met expectations = satisfaction, Unmet/Failed expectations = dissatisfaction. Thus, the latter state became mine today.

I finished off what was a relatively happy and constructive day. I fell further in love with my treasured Year 8 class and further out of love with my other trashed Year 8 class. (These classes are starting to sound like a car boot sale!) I then happily drove to our meeting place for what I was expecting to be an energy charged, exciting, inspiring meeting with experienced and enlightened others. And that is where my expectation was mostly not met. The usual crew were all good and ready for it too. And then I met he who is to be known herein as the learned one. I went into the meeting on the back foot to begin, having been told that I had inadvertently offended him in my blog. Already I was thinking...isn't a blog mine and mine to speak openly in. Is that not why I chose to write it. I know I have blocked it from being a publicly searchable blog, so I feel comfortable that aside from the 3 people who I have ever given my address to (and whom, based on that, I assume are the only readers) nobody else can read or access this blog. I felt that the things I said were not valid or intelligent enough and I felt positioned into acting and reacting in a certain way. Some of this came from my own insecurities and some of it came from the positioning of the meeting place we chose and the expectations/conditioning of such places in my own personal psyche. However, I was entering a very foreign territory. Before me was a person who knew me intimately through reading my blogs, had accessed my inner outpourings (and admittedly without my permission) and was no criticising them (which I don't think I will ever feel comfortable about). Furthermore, because this person knew me more than I knew them, I was trying to use comments and the social conditioning and social modelling that I had learnt from ym family and friends to make it a more comfortable and less structured meeting. I felt that my attempts at this were blocked and I felt that I was reacted to like a "dumb young female blonde", which I'm not even anymore. Perhaps I over-reacted to this. Perhaps none of this was happening, but I felt that surge I get when I want out of a situation. It starts with showing disinterest (tapping, looking away, less nodding in agreeance), to defiance (showing that I was happy for us not to meet later, further disinterest, isoalting from the person who was making me feel this way) to the ultimate "dumb blonde" response- tears. Even now I feel dumb writing "crying" because it sounds so babyish, so for my own peace of mind and poetic license I will use the more appealing and sentimental "tears" instead. The delightful other who was with us was in tune with my feelings and her comments (positive and comforting) made me desperately want to go to one of my three happy places, those maternal places that make you just want to curl up and crumble. So I went to one of them (my car) and made my way to the other (home and boyfriend). The third place (Mum's arms), makes me well up with tears just thinking about it, but I think I will have to leave that for the weekend. I very much need my mum at the moment.

Now I am not sure what I want to do. I just did not get a positive vibe from this planning and team work. Even a person I have come to trust was changing the subject, I felt, to avoid me further embarrassing myself by offending this person with my "crudity". I felt like an outsider who was not aware of the adornment this person was worthy of. Like the odd one out of the circle of worship. No I did not go to MU, No I do not know who this person is, other than a name at the end of an email and No I do not yet see what I have to worship. It all comes back to the unapproachable hierarchy of English teaching and Education. It is people like this and those who elevate such people, who exclude the rest of us common folk from PD, workshopping and becoming involved in a valued and serious way with the educational community. Not just as test subjects or "a little bit of fun for a change". I know who I want to work with on this project and I know who I would prefer to work indirectly with. I'm not even sure how much criticism I can take regarding my writing and my blogs yet. I don't blog for other people and I don't blog in a pretty, delicate and precise way. If something is rough around the edges it is because it is exactly reflecting how my thoughts are in my mind. My mind is not structured and orderly when I feel crap or worried or bothered by something. It runs all over the place, quicker than I can type and quicker than my language skills can process them. Unfortuantely, my blogs may well be the worse for it. But they are not designed for being published. It is my outlet!!!

This is helping.

Two problems were presented to me tonight also. The first, should blogs be censored or changed to avoid libel action or defamation. I think not. A blog should be an online journal. A place where thoughts are posted a) because my laptop is already experiencing low memory b) because we are just not a paper using society like we used to be c) because I can type faster than I can write d) because unless I give out my address this blog can't be found lying around in my bedroom or tucked under my mattress (that's where all good diaries are kept, isn't it?) and e) because we live in a democratic (cough, cough) society where we should be able to say what we damn well want on a html related page that sits in cyberspace and if some cad comes across it and is offended then they should get over it and stop looking for things to offend them. The second issue I have with the whole business of blogs is that I'm not yet comfortable with the idea of blogging something for the sake of creating a blog about that topic. I wouldn't go, hmmm, I want to include a blog about postmodern English perspectives in my Year 8 class in the next article I am writing, so I will just go and whip it up now. Isn't that kind of like what we ask our students to do..."Write a letter about the quality of the school canteen that I will pass on to the principal so we can all watch nothing get done about it! Yaaay!! Now that's authentic and real life, kiddies!" Sorry...doesn't work for me. Blogs should be real time, immediate, said because you mean it not because you want to look good. By all means if other bloggers want to have blogs to profess their talents and expertise in- blog away- but for me, I have to be spurned into blogging. Usually, it starts as either a deep gnawing feeling that I can't get away from or that heavy choking mass that sneaks into your throat right before you cry.

Steering away from blogs for a minute...and remembering that I warned this was going to be the world's longest blog, I am having really great collegiate discussion with the new teacher in my staffroom. She is first year out, but older than me by a few years, which makes for a great combination. I am as much a mentor to her, as she is to me, without the structured, formalities involved in the assigned relationships that schools dictate nowadays. The thing that surprises me most however is that where many of my same generation/same age/ same interests type colleagues agree with alternative teaching styles and exploratory learning etc etc, ML is more traditional. I am really starting to question what works for me and what doesn't. And how my pedagody (groan, groan- I feel I have to put that groan in so people don't think I'm too self absorbed) is VERY different from that of people like me... not just the older generation who I knew from day one had different teaching styles. ML has opened my eyes to some very age old debates that are still new and fresh to me because of my limited teaching experience. The first people text based assignments and themes. ML commented that she finds it difficult to motivate and plan when she does not have a text with which to link themes and topics. Eg: the book box work is really troubling her. I find, on the other hand that I teach to an assignment or set of fun activities I have found and then weave these into a text study. The second interesting ongoing debate we are having at the moment, all under friendly fire I might add, is about language and grammar studies. I am unconvinved (more so after reading Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue) that language and grammar is relevant and worth teaching to our students. It concerns me that by teaching such closed and black or white structures to students might limit the compositions that may naturally occur. Language is evolutionary by nature and so it seems that what we say is right now and must be obeyed, may well be wrong in 10-20 years time. Even less given the rise of digital literacies and the net generation. At the moment I circle and mark incorrect lyf, 2, u, c, luv, lol, 4, bcoz etc. yet in the Ye Olde Days, they probably marked many of the words that I correctly use now as incorrect. It is all a matter of context and timing. I cringe to think what would have happened to Shakespeare's (Shakspere's, Shakspear's- Bryson ref.) unique compositions and word creation if he had had every script edited and "red penned" each time he wrote something/sumfing. Taking all of this back to the classroom, the English classroom in particular, where is the value in teaching students something that is only right because as Bryson claims some school boys' teacher's brother's cousin's doctor once told him it was right and therefore it has stuck and been passed on to the circle of people who have encountered that person and their corrections. I want students to have the basic language and grammar skills and the confidence and creation skills to know how to make the rest up as they go...in a socially acceptable way. But I doubt this will ever happen...so back to the text book I go. Trudge, trudge.
I should also point out that I do not see any benefit in teaching students the long way of doing something that a calculator or computer can do for us. Lets use the programs and equipment we have available to us. The same as few people use abacuses now that calculators are so readily available. Change, progress....change, progress.

I'm not done with this blog yet. However I will rest it here and take up part two at my next available opportunity. I am concerned that I am become less coherent and clear with what I want to say because i am getting tired.

Today, to end positively (in line with my affirmations) I am appreciate of KR for his support P6, BIL for her caring words and knowing when to listen, flit my hair around and tell me positive and helpful things and sneak serviettes to me when I started crying and couldn't hold the tears in and to CD for being a stable and understated positive in my professional life.

I'm sure I never used to think this deeply in the past...

Bye for now,
M x