The school I work in has started introducing The Creative Curriculum.  To cut a long story short, let me explain..

The Creative Curriculum is a thematic approach to learning and teaching, designed to support children’s natural curiosity and stimulative their creative abilities.  It puts a high value on direct experience and the learning experiences that the local community of the school can offer.  This allows for learning in meaningful contexts – no more learning about obscure places and events that children can not relate to real-life.  Hurrah!

For our kids, this means one thing – learning is going to be fun.  For teachers?  It means that initially, planning is going to be a bitch.  But in the long term, children are going to enjoy a meaningful learning experience that teachers actually enjoy teaching.

For someone like me, on the brink of going into teaching (by which I mean, after a year of being paid peanuts, and another year of studying, I’ll finally be there), this is all pretty exciting.  I remember being back at school, and constantly wondering why we were learning about things we would never use after we left school.  I remember sitting exam after exam, based on abstract concepts, knowing full well that I would erase the knowledge I’d learnt the second I stepped out of the exam.  Back then, graduating primary school, middle school and high school could all be related to passing a driving test…  Driving lessons didn’t teach you to drive, they taught you to pass a test, and you learnt how to drive afterwards.  School didn’t teach you how to live, it taught you how to graduate, and you learnt how to live after you’d left.

In the words of Vampire Weekend – who gives a fuck about the Oxford comma?
Or to put it another way, why teach children things just so they can pass exams?  We should be teaching them how to learn, giving them the skills to go and learn about the things that interest them.  Aside from basic numeracy and literacy, who gives a fuck about ancient history and algebra?  I certainly don’t, and I can honestly say – with a full set of qualifications, I couldn’t do algebra if someone held a gun to my head, and I couldn’t tell you one single thing about the ancient Greeks.

I fully support The Creative Curriculum, and think although it may have it’s flaws, it’s a wonderful idea.  I’ve seen the beginnings of it implemented, and the change in attitude from both teachers and kids has been wonderful.  Learning should never be a chore, it should be an interesting, exciting experience that leaves you wanting more.  The CC is the first of what I hope to be many steps to ensure learning is a positive and relevant experience, and I think it’s fab.

If you haven’t already heard of The Creative Curriculum, or you’re interested in how your school might implement it – click here.

Have The T-Shirt’s recent post has inspired me!  With the dismal cloud of Christmas looming over us, I’m going to follow in her footsteps, and make a list for Santa!

This isn’t a list of presents I’m going to buy other people, nor is it a list of presents I’d like.  It’s a list of (mostly unrealistic!! things I would love to have for Christmas (if I had a magic lamp, and a totally hot genie)..

- I’d like a dressing room.  Yes, an actual room.  A whole, enormous room dedicated mostly to shoes.

- I’d like a disgustingly enviable collection of shoes, of which at least 60% should be made by Jimmy Choo or Gina.

- Obviously, I’d need a bigger house in which to accommodate my enormous shoe collection.

- I’d like two Shar Pei puppies, who would absolutely, definitely, not eat/bite/annoy my little bundle of fluff (that would be my erm, cat.)

- It would be wonderful to not be allergic to my little bundle of fluff, whom I love dearly, but brings me out in a bugger of a rash.

- I want an extra button in my car, which, when pressed – emits a deafening voice that says “Stop driving up my ass, you incompetent dickhead.”

- Oh, and another button which (somehow) bitch-slaps any incompetent dickheads (particularly those driving 4×4s, who seem to think they can railroad my car off the frigging road..)

- Screw it, I’d like a super fast, super speedy, kick-ass, midlife-crisis car.  I don’t know what kind…  A sexy, dirty-hot one! :)

- I’d like to actually want to give up smoking, let alone have the willpower to do it.

- I’d like to just be qualified to teach, now, without having to actually train to do it (obviously all the knowledge would be stored somewhere in my brain, without me having to learn it).

- I don’t ever want to see a child suffer.  I want all the children I teach to come to school in warm, clean clothes, after a good nights sleep and a proper breakfast. I want to see parents who actually give a shit.

- I want my own childcare business, with wonderful staff, and plenty of money behind it.

- And a great big stack of cash.

- I’d like the finances, and the guts, to travel the world.

- I’d like to put my old boss out of business, and be able to laugh a great big “fuck you, lady.” right in her face. :X (Yes, I realise that makes me a massive bitch, but she totally deserves it.)

- I’d like my best friend to just not make a massive mistake, and to either get married and have it work out, or not get married and be ok with that.  Either way would be quite satisfactory, thank you!  Oh, and if he has to get married, could I please not look like a total dickhead in my bridesmaid dress? Pleeeease?

- I’d like the prospective-mother-in-law to not be such a racist assbag.  Or, if that’s slightly impossible, to just come with a mute button, so I can stop her mouth making so much pointless noise all the time.

- I’d like to have a steamy, kinky threesome with Alan Rickman and Mel Gibson (I’m aware he’s an ass, but my God, I would totally violate that man).

- I want to no longer be reliant on medication, for anything at all – to be healthy, without help.

- I want to live in France, with a vineyard at the end of my garden, and a filthy-hot gardener with a tight little bum and some polished abs, to erm.. garden?

- I want a baby.  And for the other-half to actually want a baby. Now. Or at least in the next year or so..

- I would love multiple orgasms. On a daily, is not half-daily basis.

- I’d like someone to say ‘Thank you’ for working so hard to make a difference to childrens lives.

- I want gambling to just disappear completely.  It ruins too many lives.

- I want an apology from a whole host of people, and forgiveness from a whole host more.

- I want fifteen minutes with my Granddad, to tell him how much I love him, and to ask him if he thinks I’m doing the right thing.

- I want a Happy Christmas, this year, just once.  No tears, no arguments, no stress, no fuss.

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.
- Burton Hillis.

- Oh, and I want a totally hot, six foot tall Santa to appear on my doorsteps on Christmas Eve, so I can sit on his lap and tell him what I really want for Christmas. ;-)
(That’s such a sordid fantasy, I know, haha).

What’s on your list?

Visit Have The T-Shirt – you’ll love her as much as I do (I promise!).

I can’t believe it’s September already.. This year has flown by..

If you’re celebrating the start of Ramadan today – may you have a blessed Ramadan Mubarak.

If you’re not, keep this quote from the Qur’an in mind anyway..

“A good word is like a good tree whose root is firmly fixed and whose top is in the sky.”

Remember, a few kind words go a long way. Tell someone you believe in them, and their limits will be endless.

Mighty Oaks From Little Acorns Grow.

This site contains a (strangely, horizontal..) list of polaroid pictures of real people, each with a caption that states what that person would like to do before they die.

Here are some of my favourites polaroids from the site..

What do you want to do before you die?

My answer is below. :-)

Some people never cease to amaze you..

I bumped into a girl I went to school with, in the pet shop this morning. I was keen to get the polite greetings over with, and just get on with buying cat litter. She, however, wanted to have a full-on recount of the past God-know-how-many years in which we hadn’t seen each other.

No, I’m not married.
Yes, she tied the knot two years ago.
No, I don’t have any children.
Yes, she has three.
No, I’m not an IT genius, I work with kids.
No, she doesn’t work, she’s currently sapping state benefits while she sits on her ass and does fuck-all else.

And isn’t it a terrible shame that I’m not married yet. And isn’t it awful for me that I haven’t had any children.. Of course, my children would be ‘half cast‘ and it would surely be really hard for me accept that my kids would be ‘coffee and cream babies’.

Excuse me?

It’s actually not a terrible shame, nor is it awful that I’m not married and don’t have kids. It’s not exactly what I’d say was my choice, but it’s hardly the end of the world. And the fact that if the other-half and I spawn some kids, they will be mixed race, really doesn’t concern me in the slightest, nor should it concern any other human being. Half Cast is a derogatory word, which yes – was used years ago to describe someone of mixed race, but is now incredibly un-PC, and is quite frankly just unac-fucking-ceptable.

I can categorically state that my children will benefit from knowing about two different cultures, two different worlds, and that will not in any way hinder them in being perfectly rounded individuals. In this day and age, how can any grown adult view a child of mixed race as any different to a child who’s parents are from the same race and/or religion?

She really pissed me off. And I made it perfectly clear that she was incredibly lucky that I hadn’t knocked her ignorant, stupid little head right off her shoulders. Coffee and cream babies.. For fuck’s sake.

It never ceases to amaze me how people can still be so ignorant, how they can still be so judgemental and narrow minded.

Sure, I worry that my children might be picked on at school, or that some people may look at them a different way because they don’t fit into some neat little category of race. But I’m 150% sure that not only will I be able to handle that in a positive way, but that I’ll be able to educate and reassure my children that anyone who treats them in a negative way does so simply because they are undereducated, ignorant, racist and small minded.

I first read the poem below when I was fifteen, and instantly fell in love with it. I chose it for my oral work and read the entire poem in dialect, much to the amusement of my idiot classmates..

To me, it perfectly explains how someone can use a word, whether innocently or not, and end up creating all sorts of insinuations about another person. It’s a piece of literary art that I’m sure I’ll read to my kids one day, so that they too can understand that every person is a whole person, no matter who they are, who their parents, or even the parents of their parents are.

John Agard is a legend. And it’s probably worth me pointing out, that the poem isn’t ’spelt wrong’ – it’s written in dialect. Just incase there are any ignorant readers out there that were about to let me know I hadn’t turned my spell check on. :-)

Half-Caste by John Agard.

Excuse me
standing on one leg
I’m half-caste

Explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when picasso
mix red an green
is a half-caste canvas/
explain yuself
wha u mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when light an shadow
mix in de sky
is a half-caste weather/
well in dat case
england weather
nearly always half-caste
in fact some o dem cloud
half-caste till dem overcast
so spiteful dem dont want de sun pass
ah rass/
explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean tchaikovsky
sit down at dah piano
an mix a black key
wid a white key
is a half-caste symphony/

Explain yuself
wha yu mean
Ah listening to yu wid de keen
half of mih ear
Ah looking at u wid de keen
half of mih eye
and when I’m introduced to yu
I’m sure you’ll understand
why I offer yu half-a-hand
an when I sleep at night
I close half-a-eye
consequently when I dream
I dream half-a-dream
an when moon begin to glow
I half-caste human being
cast half-a-shadow
but yu come back tomorrow
wid de whole of yu eye
an de whole of yu ear
and de whole of yu mind

an I will tell yu
de other half
of my story

The money shot – arguably the most highly featured ejaculatory scenario in porn. What is it with this visual?

Men may enjoy seeing some scantily clad (if at all) Lolita kneeling before them while they shoot their load all over her submissive little face, but quite frankly – I don’t.

I’d love to say I have high enough morals to find this degrading, an insult to women. In reality, I just find it.. *yawn*.. boring.

Ms Naughty highlights that this is an opinion shared by many women:

They, like me, wonder why on earth a man would have fabulous sex for half an hour and yet withdraw at the last minute and masturbate to orgasm.

They, like me, can’t help but wince when they see the woman kneel before the man and smile subserviently at him while he deposits globs of semen in her eye.

They, like me, roll their eyes at all the worshipful fuss made over a few spurts of bodily fluid.

They, like me, wish they could see the man’s face as he reaches orgasm, because male facial expressions are primarily what most women experience when their man is in ecstasy.

So why are we still subjected to this scene in nearly every piece of supposedly erotic media?

It’s not the actual visual that I find stale and boring, it’s the notion that the money shot provides ‘closure’ for any pornographic sequence..

While the woman’s enduring carpet burn on her knees, smiling and licking semen from her lips (which have undoubtedly been subjected to infinate amounts of botox), I can almost visualise her thoughts..

“Thanks. Wait! What?!?@#!? That’s it? Are you fucking kidding me?”

And there we have it – the male orgasm remains the be-all-and-end-all of even modern porn movies.. It’s over, as they say, when the fat cock shoots.

* Link to Ms Naughty’s blog post.

To me, virtual/online worlds conjure up images of freedom…

I’ve never participated in a community in Second Life – but after reading about SL in various media articles, I gave in and checked it out.

If I’m going to be brutally honest, it looked horribly boring.. A game without rules and restrictions, or a fancy, pixelated extension of internet chat rooms. Either way, I wasn’t interested in participating. But I was interested in the sociology of Second Life – in how it’s residents interacted and whether this virtual society was impacted by social norms from the ‘real world’.

I carried out a study on the social norms and relationships between people on IRC, four years ago (possibly the only part of my degree that I actually enjoyed..). I’ve been a participating member in various IRC communities for around a decade. The social norms and the general sociology of online communities has fascinated me ever since I first logged into a chatroom and began thinking about how a virtual world was different from the ‘real world’.

I wont flatter myself into thinking that anyone (or many people, anyway!) would be interested in what I think about the ethnology/sociology of Second Life. However, The Bryant Park Project have filmed an interesting video.. It may not be rocket science, but it’s interesting nonetheless – I can practically guarantee will get you thinking (even if you’re adamant that you just don’t care about the sociology of online communities!)

A virtual world is free of social and cultural ties, free of the pressures of conformity, free from the confines of the social norm.. Or so we may imagine. The question is,

Are we ever as free as we think we are?

If you’re interested in this sort of thing – check out The Daedalus Project – The Psychology of MMORPGs.

I came across this post whilst browsing my WordPress tags.. It documents this post, where a white male talks about his first dating experience with a black female.

He describes how people reacted to them walking down a street together – ‘examining us for clues” [re: why they're together] – and how these reactions would differ from black males and black females. He clearly views the relationship between them as ‘out of the norm’, by not only blogging about it, but by documenting it as a ‘novel’ experience.

Why should he be suprised that other people stare, viewing the partnership as ‘unusual’ – when he does so himself?

It’s sad to think that an adult would embark on a relationship with someone who they view as ‘different’, whether that be by culture, religion, race or background – just for the experience of it. Just for the “I’ve nailed a black woman” notch on their bedpost..

Moving on from this point.. The post in question repulses me, reducing the memory of this man’s sexual relationship with a black woman, to ‘the contrast between the white jizz and black skin’:

After a while we barebacked raw dogged it (thanks, roosh) and the money shots were incredibly stimulating for me. I loved how aesthetically pleasing was the contrast between the white jizz and the black skin. Like modern art, the geometric arrangement and bold ejaculatory strokes set against the dark canvas of her smooth skin prompted me to admire my handiwork like I was pausing in front of a particularly abstruse painting in a museum to contemplate its majesty. Plus, it made finding the mess easier for cleanup.

Embracing the differences between ourselves and other people is one thing – but to degrade those differences into something so crass, is just repulsive.

The author of that post, in my opinion, is a fine example of the type of person who helps to define mixed-race relationships as socially deviant. I would be very interested to know whether he was interested in this woman as a person – or whether he wanted her because she was black.

Just to clarify – I don’t think this man is racist, I don’t think he necessarily disrespects women. I just think he’s an idiot – responsible for degrading the woman he blogs about, by using her race to define her before anything else, and by reducing her down to one thing – the first black woman he nailed, as though he had fulfilled his quest.