Thursday, 23 August 2012


Dear Mr Gove,

Today I had to witness over a hundred 15 and 16 year olds get their GCSE results. In a year where I have never worked harder, and neither have the kids, I was looking forward to celebrating the fact that their blood, sweat and literal tears had paid off.

Instead you decided for whatever politically motivated rubbish reason, you would raise the grade boundary by an unprecedented amount, and that students who had earned their C grades would be brutally downgraded to Ds. A sick joke? You decided not to change the higher paper grade boundary and decided not to change English literature grade boundaries. The kids that were effected were some of the most disadvantaged and hardest working. Grade inflation needs curbing, but this is not the answer.

I have put up with a year where my pay, pension and working conditions have been attacked, constant teacher slating in the media and the head of OFSTED claiming that ‘if staff morale is low, you are doing something right’ but to take it out on children? You should be ashamed.

I chose this job because I wanted to make a difference but the kids are just numbers and figures to you. You didn’t see their faces. How can you sleep at night? Prick.

Yours sincerely,
Miss Dye

Thursday, 26 April 2012

One little musical interlude...


‘If music be the food of learning, play on...’



During my NQT year and school placements I have been experimenting with music and sound in my lessons, although feel that this is an area I would love to give more attention to, and read about! Today, I borrowed some musical instruments from the music department to help bottom set Y10 understand the atmosphere of an Emily Bronte poem: ‘Spellbound’.

They had to plan where the cow bells, shakers and (eek!) drums would be appropriate in order to build up different moods to the poem. The result, from fourteen lethargic fifteen year olds on a Thursday morning, was promising. They loved playing with the instruments and began dictating to each other, and deciding as a class, how to complete the most successful soundscape. It was noisy, at times shambolic, and chaotic, but shouldn’t poetry and creative writing be manic and exploratory? I certainly saw the value when it came to their understanding of the poem, as the whole class were giving some fantastic ideas and personal responses to the poem.

Other ways I have seen or used music in lessons:
  • Calming a class. My calming music of choice is Debussy’s Claire de Lune. Students are not permitted to talk over the music, and many students claim they learn better with background music. Many demands have been made for popular songs, but I am adamant that when students need to be calmed or concentrate, anything with lyrics is a big no no.
  • As a reward. Some students will work much more quickly when they have an incentive to work towards. Twenty minutes detailed work = twenty minutes of work with the radio. Make sure there are ground rules, and make sure having the radio on doesn’t raise the volume of conversation, rather than limit it.
  • Theme music. An interesting starter, that encourages students to guess the theme of the lesson based on the music they hear as they enter. I saw this used expertly in one school, where the teacher would always play a music clip before the lesson, even if there was a highly tenuous link between the song and the lesson.
  • As a creative writing prompt. It can be an exciting change for students to focus their creativity through their ears in an English lesson. Many creative writing prompts are visual so having an auditory prompt instead challenges and stretches students’ imagination, leading to diverse results.
  • Music as poetry. My wonderful top set literature class were getting disillusioned studying poetry they didn’t relate to. I set them a homework task to analyse the lyrics of their favourite song. They were enthusiastic, detailed and fantastic responses, although I did find out most of them have TERRIBLE taste in music (No Beatles? No Boyzone? No Joni Mitchell?)

Working with Y10 today has reminded me how much fun it is to use music in my lessons, although my poor teaching neighbour may not agree! In addition, many of the students in my class were from diverse cultural backgrounds and music can transcend that barrier, and allow everyone to participate. In the fabulously expressed words of Billy Joel:

 ‘I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.


P.S. I want this book…


Wednesday, 25 April 2012

One little interview with Benjamin Zephaniah...



Benjamin Zephaniah is an inspirational person, and I love teaching my classes about his poetry, and expanding their ideas about who a poet is. He is a vibrant, inspirational and truly creative soul. I am fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to interview Benjamin Zephaniah as an undergraduate working for the student newspaper at Exeter University. A copy of the article, as printed in Exeposé newspaper in 2009 is included below.

“Britain’s too lazy for a revolution”.
Exeposé talks to Benjamin Zephaniah about politics, Bob Marley, and why poetry’s not going anywhere…

Dr. Benjamin Zephaniah is undeniably and effortlessly cool. His commanding, enthusiastic presence captivates audiences as he brings his poetry alive in his performance. The Benjamin Zephaniah I talk to before his show is calmer and more guarded than the onstage poet, but his warmth and refreshing honesty are compelling and obvious. He explained how his mum hates seeing him in interviews claiming that his real personality is the figure that comes alive on stage.

Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah was born in Birmingham and grew up in the suburb of Handsworth, which he called the Jamaican capital of Europe. Leading a less than conventional life, he left full-time education at fourteen, and after serving a prison sentence for burglary, turned his life around and published his first book of poetry, Pen Rhythm, at the age of 22. Since then, he has written 15 poetry volumes, four novels, and released numerous musical records. He has written stage plays, radio plays and has experience acting and presenting for television and radio. In 2003, he famously rejected an OBE, claiming that the word empire reminded him of slavery and oppression.

Zephaniah describes writing his poems as unpredictable: 
“You just hear something. Sometimes I hear a phrase and I just think, ‘I like that phrase and I’m gonna build on it’”. 
Much of Zephaniah’s poetry is intensely rhythmic and almost musical in its performance. He attributes this to his background growing up being inspired by a long tradition of oral poetry. “There was a woman called Louise Bennett, sometimes we call her Miss Lou, she was like the national poet of Jamaica, unofficially. She used to do poetry in Jamaican dialect and I listened to cassettes of her and that was inspiring. In terms of my thinking, and I know this is a little cliché, it was Bob Marley. I always thought he was a kind of poet.” Zephaniah talked excitedly about the opportunity he was given to record a single with the Wailers, laughing that he initially thought the producer was joking.

For Zephaniah writing his novels is an entirely different process. 

“I tend to like to write in real time. For me it’s not a kind of intellectual exercise, I will literally do it. I haven’t done any writing courses or anything like that. I don’t come from a family of writing. I’m just making it up as I go along”. 

Zephaniah’s novels such as Gangsta Rap and Refugee Boy, although written for teenagers, are a far cry from a fantasy happy-ever-after world. “It’s quite ironic that I have the same publisher and editor as Harry Potter. I write a big opposite. My novels are in reality; I like my books to be gritty and down to earth. I can’t tie it up, like it’s a novel and I’ve come to the end and I’ve gotta tie everything up. I’m writing about reality and that’s the way I’ve gotta do it”.

Despite formally never finishing his education, Dr. Zephaniah has received fifteen honorary doctorates, including one from the University of Exeter in 2006. Zephaniah explained, “I think you can have education and not be educated. I know lots of people who are educated and don’t have any common sense. Education’s important, because a lot of the people who, all around the world, in the developing world and even here in Europe, people who oppress people, and I use the word purposefully, are usually educated. Educated people know how to manipulate. We have to be educated in simple terms just to know how to confront them, how to deal with them and how to argue with them”. He passionately emphasised 

“you’ve gotta keep questioning, you’ve gotta stay curious, your mind’s gotta be adventurous, not just photocopying.”

Zephaniah is renowned for his political views, and the list of charities and causes he supports is impressively long. I questioned what role students can have in political movements today, or whether he believes youth today is apathetic. He responded: “Students are very willing to come out on the streets when it’s about their money. I think that’s a sign of the time. But generally speaking I don’t go along with this line that a lot of old people say about young people being apathetic. A lot of young people just don’t know where to go. There’s not much difference between the left and the right anymore. A long time ago it was very, very clear.”

“People who think that ‘I can do nothing all year and then vote when a politician comes round four or five years later, knocking on my door, kissing my baby and telling me this that and the other. Then I go and vote and I think I’m playing a part in the democratic process’, well that’s apathy because you think you’re doing something. You’re doing nothing, you’re just playing their game.

“Yet, when I wanna go on the streets and protest, it’s not time to vote yet but I feel passionately about it, you call me a militant you know. I’m the one that’s being more democratic, I’m the one that’s being involved in politics because I’m saying I care about something”.

I asked him how the role of poetry can play a part and whether art can influence politics. Zephaniah paused before his answer, and in a more reserved tone explained: “In Britain I don’t think we inspire people to that extreme but I do think we add to the debate, and we do get people thinking. I think Britain’s too lazy for a revolution; people are too busy watching soap operas and stuff like that. I think we influence individuals and later on those individuals, some of them will go on to positions of influence and power.”

 Zephaniah’s wisdom combined with his thoughtful anecdotes and experiences are the only indications of his true age. Although fifty-one, Zephaniah’s waist-length black dreadlocks and his youthful style of dress liken him to a man half his age. 

“I don’t really get on very well with people my own age because they’re just all the time complaining about young people” 

he explained. “They all just seem so miserable. People very quickly forget that they were young. Of course they remember some things, but the really fundamental things they forget really easily. They talk about young people in a way which sometimes would be unacceptable if they were talking about black people or something.”  Zephaniah’s friends tell him it’s because he’s never had a mortgage and never had children, but he simply stated “I just know that my heart is with young people. When I here people arguing and talking about youth and that, I tend to gravitate towards the side of the younger people”. Attributing his fitness and health to a love of martial arts, and meditation, he claimed he has always invested in his body. His eyes lit up as he described how he plays for an over forties football team, but had to bring his birth certificate in to prove his age to his team mates. He exclaimed ‘I don’t just like the youth, I like youth, I like being fit, I like being able to do things I like being able to react very quickly which is something a lot of older people can’t do.” More demurely he admitted, “I don’t really like the idea of growing old. I like the idea of having wisdom and knowing more things, but I don’t like the idea of growing old.”

Zephaniah has many achievements to be proud of but shows no signs of slowing down in the near future. Continuing to passionately support his many political and charity causes, as well as writing a screen play for the BBC and trying to find time to write his fifth novel, he splits his time between his home in Lincolnshire and his apartment in China, where he spends his Summer months training, meditating and practising martial arts. “One of the things I’m most proud of in my lifetime is that me, with a couple of other people, we created a performance poetry scene in Britain. There was none years ago, in the early 80s, there was none really. After the 60s beat poets, it was all dead really in performance poetry.” He believes the performance poetry scene will continue to thrive as a lot more rappers will turn to poetry. Despite the fact that book sales are down, Zephaniah is optimistic. “Some people are reporting almost the death of poetry, it’s just that they don’t go to listen to poetry, they only go to get it in Waterstones. It’s a different thing altogether. I’ve found that people who like poetry don’t care what gender you are, if you’re gay or if you’re straight, if you’re black or you’re white, it’s what you say. As he prepared for his show he left us with the assertion that 

“poetry‘s not going anywhere. It just goes on and on and on”.

Tuesday, 24 April 2012

One little shopping spree...

Summer’s on its way, (finally), which means I’ve spent a pleasurable evening looking at beautiful clothes on the internet; I’m stubbornly ignoring the wind battering my flat and the rain, as if in league with my debit card, doing its utmost to scream “Step away from the seventy eighth midi dress you have ogled this evening!” Here’s a small selection of beautiful clothes on the wish list. I’ll be browsing charity shops looking to find similar looking, cheaper clothes that are suitable to wear to school (in line with newly implemented school dress code) but that still have at least a splash of colour or style.


beautiful turquoise blazer £19.99 H&M. The colour is my favourite.
Newlook zig zag dress £19.99
Newlook floral print dress £24.99
Topshop Midi dress £46
Mango £39.99
Dorothy Perkins purple trousers £22
£26 Dorothy Perkins
£32 Dorothy Perkins
£40 Baya Linen trousers, Monsoon
£38 Monsoon

Monday, 23 April 2012

Dear Mr Lee

Dear Mr Lee

Dear Mr Lee (Mr Smart says
it's rude to call you Laurie, but that's
how I think of you, having lived with you
really all year), Dear Mr Lee
(Laurie) I just want you to know
I used to hate English, and Mr Smart
is roughly my least favourite person,
and as for Shakespeare (we're doing him too)
I think he's a national disaster, with all those jokes
that Mr Smart has to explain why they're jokes,
and even then no one thinks they're funny,
And T. Hughes and P. Larkin and that lot
in our anthology, not exactly a laugh a minute,
pretty gloomy really, so that's why
I wanted to say Dear Laurie (sorry) your book's
the one that made up for the others, if you
could see my copy you'd know it's lived
with me, stained with Coke and Kitkat
and when I had a cold, and I often
take you to bed with me to cheer me up
so Dear Laurie, I want to say sorry,
I didn't want to write a character-sketch
of your mother under headings, it seemed
wrong somehow when you'd made her so lovely,
and I didn't much like those questions
about social welfare in the rural community
and the seasons as perceived by an adolescent,
I didn't think you'd want your book
read that way, but bits of it I know by heart,
and I wish I had your uncles and your half-sisters
and lived in Slad, though Mr Smart says your view
of the class struggle is naïve, and the examiners
won't be impressed by me knowing so much by heart,
they'll be looking for terse and cogent answers
to their questions, but I'm not much good at terse and cogent,
I'd just like to be like you, not mind about being poor,
see everything bright and strange, the way you do,
and I've got the next one out of the Public Library,
about Spain, and I asked Mum about learning
to play the fiddle, but Mr Smart says Spain isn't
like that any more, it's all Timeshare villas
and Torremolinos, and how old were you
when you became a poet? (Mr Smart says for anyone
with my punctuation to consider poetry as a career
is enough to make the angels weep).

PS Dear Laurie, please don't feel guilty for
me failing the exam, it wasn't your fault,
it was mine, and Shakespeare's
and maybe Mr Smart's, I still love Cider
it hasn't made any difference.

-- U A Fanthorpe

I listened to a fantastic radio 4 programme about this poem yesterday. My students have been studying a UA Fanthorpe poem, ‘Case History: Alison (Head Injury)’ which is a wonderful depiction of brain damaged Alison reflecting on her past life and achievements. ‘Dear Mr. Lee’ really appealed to me, as many lines resonate with my role as a teacher, both in humorous and tragic ways. I recognise how tight exam constraints don’t allow me to study poetry in the way I wish with my students, and how the creative whole is compartmentalised and highlighted and annotated until all original meaning is lost. Begrudgingly, I’ll also admit I am fully familiar with awkwardly explaining Shakespeare’s highly sexualised puns to hormonally charged, and often bemused, fifteen year olds (happy 448th birthday Will S). I love the idea of students being inspired by set texts, but more realistically feel that an enforced reading habit won’t result in a burning passion for the bard, or a new found appreciation for Steinbeck’s use of language to portray Lennie. I have been lucky enough, in my first year of teaching, to break away from Mr Smart and occasionally find a way to foster pure, rich, discussion that doesn’t stick to assessment objectives, but such glimpses and opportunities are rare and precious! Consequently, I want to challenge my own teaching methods so that I can allow literature to ‘live with students’ and to see things ‘bright and strange’.

My strategies:

  • Set up a monthly sixth form (and Y11) reading group, aside from A-Level study that is driven by student interests and enthusiastic discussion (tea and cake will always help). There should be no homework, no set question and no preparation. Let the students choose the material!
  • Indulge in my own love of literature. Continue to expand my horizons and get stuck in a book, and remember why I am passionate about my subject. Joining a reading group set up with a group of friends has helped me to challenge my own reading interests and is incredibly valuable in allowing me to choose new books and authors that I would previously have dismissed.
  • Let the students recommend their favourites. Similarly to point two, I have read some books specifically recommended by students. I have loved the books they’ve picked, and they have loved discussing them with me, in equal parts smug and delighted that I have taken their advice.

Although Mr Smart inevitably exists, especially considering we are careering at a gazillion miles an hour towards the upcoming exams, I hope I can always remember what really counts and banish Mr Smart back in his box, to be replaced by the truly dazzling Little Miss Loveoflit as often as possible.

Sunday, 22 April 2012

One little Sunday afternoon...

As I start this blog on a rainy Sunday afternoon in term time, ignoring the mountains of marking, and pretending that Monday morning is more than a few hours away, I wonder how many of my students are procrastinating too. My year thirteens are simultaneously bored of endless revision for their upcoming exams, yet gripped with fear; they will soon be leaving the relative safety and comfort of the sixth form common room for the great unknown. Meanwhile, my year elevens are grappling with the last of their controlled assessments and trying to remember their Steinbeck from their Shakespeare ("Miss, I don't get Shakespeare, it was written, like, sixty years ago!"). Having just watched the London marathon and tales of extreme commitment and challenges, to kick off my blog, I invite you to share three motivational videos that show determination, courage and that hard work pays off. Now where's that pile of marking...

Number one: 'If you believe in yourself, you will know how to pass your exam'
I used this with my year eleven class, who are struggling to see the light at the end of the 'longhardrevision' tunnel last week. They loved it!

Number two: A colleague showed me this inspirational video, where two incredible women push themselves and their bodies so completely to achieve their goals.

Number three: A few classic quotes from Gandhi, Edison, Churchill and er... Yoda?

Enjoy!