Category: Serious Sunday

On Sundays I post my thoughts on more serious issues.

Serious Sunday: Living the Dream.

As part of teaching during Holocaust Memorial Week I would give my learners a drawing of a suitcase. I would then ask them to imagine there had been a knock on the door, their home invaded by uniformed strangers, told they had to leave and given 10 minutes to pack a suitcase.

What would they put in their suitcases? Some answers were practical. Medication, phone, phone charger, change of clothes. Some were poignant. Family photos, a keepsake, a favourite teddy bear. One learner chose a pet cat, a supply of cat food and a bag of cat litter.

How did the learners feel about this exercise? The most common response was that it was so hard to choose.

So close your eyes and turn your back on your room. Imagine a sudden bang, so loud it bursts your ear drums. Open your eyes. Everything you hold dear, the possessions you take pride in, the home you have worked so hard to create all gone. The dream you were living reduced to a pile of rubble.

You are a teacher, a doctor, a bank worker, a healthcare worker. You are anything and everything you worked for and dreamed to be. You are ordinary and you are special. You are the victim of a war you neither asked for or played a part in.

And you are lucky. Lucky that you have enough savings to be able to pay for a passage to a life. Not a better life because you already had a great life. But a life. You know you will not likely work in the same capacity as you have previously done. You know that your children will likely learn to speak and write a new language before you do and that they will likely miss school or college when you need a translator. This is not the life you dreamed of for them. You know that you will likely be exploited as cheap labour and forever be looking over your shoulder should your asylum claim not be granted but you will have a life.

So imagine you have to make a choice. Who will you take with you? Elderly parents or grandparents? Sisters and brothers? Cousins? Children? How will you choose?

Imagine exchanging your life savings for a perilous journey across land and sea.

Imagine clinging on for dear life to your hungry and thirsty little ones whilst the baby in your belly turns cartwheels.

Imagine finally sighting the land you have been heading for; so near yet it may as well be thousand miles beyond your reach as your companions desperately try to bail out the sinking dinghy that holds everything you hold dear in the world.

Imagine your peril and distress is pointed at, filmed, broadcast around the world. You are an educated woman. You know that Article 98 of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea states that:

Every State shall require the master of a ship flying its flag, in so far as he can do so without serious danger to the ship, the crew or the passengers:

(a) to render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost.
(b) to proceed with all possible speed to the rescue of persons in distress.

You also know that nothing is allowed to get in the way of a good news story and that the same news agency that is profiting from your peril is also stirring up hatred against you in the country you are looking to for asylum.

Imagine waiting your turn to be rescued. Clinging on to your babies, boats circling like sharks around your tiny dinghy, every swell and pull threatening to sweep you overboard or drag you under. News reporters in their boats shouting to you. “Where are you from?” “How did you get here?” Welcome to the dream!

Serious Sunday: How the other half live!

Before Lockdown it was estimated that 4.5 million children in the UK were living below the poverty line. That number is set to grow by at least one million during 2020.

What does this mean in real terms? Well for some of my learners it means having only one set of clothes to wear. A set of clothes that is often still damp from having been washed the night before and, over time, begins to give off a musty, mouldy smell that sets apart the wearer in every sense of the word.

For other learners it is going without regular meals so that younger siblings can be fed. Such learners can apply for a means-tested free meal allowance using a thumb-print payment method. Every individual human thumb-print is unique but as a collective, in this instance, they mark off individuals as living in poverty.

What has really struck me whilst teaching during Lockdown is that it is a poverty of opportunity that is having and will continue to have, the most negative impact on the futures of those caught in the poverty trap.

A system is in place to monitor engagement with remote learning. For my particular group of learners engagement has been, for the most part, hit and miss.

Were they less inclined to engage with remote teaching and, if so, why? They were usually good attenders, maintained focus in class and responded positively to learning opportunities. They are very tech-savvy and had no problem interacting with virtual learning platforms when in college.

What was going on with these guys that was causing them to drop off the college radar?

I finally got to speak to one parent who explained that she had four children all trying to access school and college work from one laptop that she had borrowed from someone.

Another mum told me that they do not have access to WiFi and are using up data allowance on their phones to try to get the children’s school and college work done.

Yet another mum spoke to me in whispers down the phone. She didn’t want her daughters to know that their violent father, who mum has a restraining order against, had forced his way into the house and smashed up the one tablet they had because he thought mum was using it to visit dating sites.

Any learner without access to ICT equipment and/or WiFi can request to borrow a laptop and dongle. Unfortunately some will not receive these until early June when the academic year is nearly at an end.

There are other solutions. I have mailed work to some of my learners but due to cost and safeguarding constraints, they have no way of returning it once completed.

If a learner is able to submit electronic versions of their assignments I can mark these electronically, give constructive feedback, track progress and ensure that learning is sequenced and structured just as I would in a classroom.

Learners who are receiving work through the mail are excluded from this essential element of the learning process and are, as a result, at a disadvantage compared to their peers. How do they know what they have done well? How do they know what they need to do to improve? How do they recognise opportunities to push through barriers so that learning does not plateau?

Add to all this the compound loss of routine, interaction with peers within the virtual classroom and meaningful contact with teaching and support staff.

“How the other half live!” I once wrote this as a rather flippant comment on a report for a learner who, when asked why he was late back to class in the afternoon said “Well I went to Wetherspoon’s for a bit of lunch.”

Lockdown, remote teaching, difficult conversations with parents have truly shone a light on how the other half live.


Serious Sunday: Where do you go to my lovely?

As part of its Corona Virus coverage The Guardian newspaper has posted a series of short films on its website one of which is about an hotel in Shrewsbury that has opened its doors to some of the city’s homeless for the duration of Lockdown. It is, for the most part, an uplifting story. The guests talk about recovering their dignity, feeling safe and being in the rare position of being able to plan for the future. Both staff and guests describe the shared sense of family. The local residents and businesses have shown their support by donating food and clothes with the exception of a few whose behaviour and attitudes towards the hotel’s new guests are described by the manager as “discrimination”.

The first homeless person I ever knew was a schoolfriend. Not homeless in the sense that she was wandering the streets with her possessions in a backpack but homeless in the sense that she hadn’t the security of having one place she could call home.. She could not get on with her mum’s partner. He gave an ultimatum “It’s me or her!” and, well, it wasn’t my school friend. She moved in with her gran which was OK. Except at weekends Gran’s boyfriend would stay over and they wanted the house to themselves. So where did my friend go at weekends? To other friend’s houses where she slept on the sofa. One friend’s parents let her sleep in their shed if the weather would allow.


Twenty years forward in time and one of my students was living with her aunt having been removed from the care of her mum who refused to ditch her violent partner. My student regularly absconded from her aunt’s to be brought back by the police after a couple of night’s rough sleeping. Her aunt tired of this and said she could not cope with the responsibility of caring for her niece any longer. So where did my student go? To council-approved bed and breakfast accommodation. A temporary solution until more suitable accommodation for a 16 year old girl could be found but she was still there six months later.

About a year ago two guys were rough-sleeping in the multi-story car park I use for work. It was relentlessly cold and draughty but, I guess, safer and more private than a shop doorway or subway. One of them told me his girlfriend had thrown him out and until his benefits claim went through he had no choice but to sleep rough. I promised them a couple of sleeping bags but the next day they were gone; moved on following complaints from other car park users. Where did they go ? Maybe somewhere that wasn’t as safe as the car park.

Last night as we left the supermarket a young man with a dog stopped us. His first words to us; “Please don’t judge me on what you see now. I’m not really like this”. He told us he was trying to get together enough money for accommodation for the next two nights . For £15 a night he would get bed and breakfast at this one particular place he described and they accepted dogs. When we drove past him he was smoking a cig and chatting to one of the guys from the supermarket. They looked about the same age. Maybe they went to school together. Where did he go that lovely young man? Did he use the money he was given for his two-nights’ accomodation? If he did where will he go on Monday night?

One of the things that came out strongly in the story of the homeless at the hotel was a sense of optimism about the future. Two of the guys were planning to apply for jobs at the hotel and there was an overwhelming sense that, for the hotel staff and their guests, whatever happens, they will always look on each other as family.

There is much debate now about our lives post- lockdown, how things will never be quite the same and that we will have to adjust to “ a new normal”. The guests at the hotel are already living “a new normal” having put down shallow roots there and invested in their temporary home by carrying out odd jobs and helping with chores. Will their inevitable departure merely signal a return to their “old normal” and where will they go?



Check out the Shrewsbury hotel story here.

Serious Sunday: Death in the time of Corona virus

Sunt lacrimae rerum


There are tears at the heart of things in these times when everything seems tinged with sorrow.

For me some of the saddest stories are those of lonely deaths. A little boy dying in hospital with mum and dad not able to be there to comfort him in his last hours. The elderly and vulnerable passing away in care homes distanced in every way from their families. A married couple, he with a terminal illness, making the decision that, should either contract Covid 19, they would not be separated but face death together.

It is also heartrending to think about families faced with not only having to organize a funeral but to have to make a choice about who can attend. As a society we no longer ritualize death in the ways that our predecessors did and in many respects a funeral is the only opportunity for family and friends to collectively mourn the passing of a loved one.

My mum died suddenly in September of last year. The days, weeks and months since have, for me, passed with the discomfort of having blurred inner vision. I find myself having to gaze intently, both inwardly and outwardly, at almost everything. Nothing about this new life without mum seems to be the right shape. The details of this new life don’t always make sense.

However, I never thought that I would look back on mum’s death and think how lucky we were; myself, my dad, my brother, my husband and my son but lucky we were.

We were lucky that, the week before she died, Mum was able to go on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of our Lady of Walsingham which was,
I think, her favourite place on earth.

We were lucky that she died so suddenly and peacefully with my brother at her side.

We were lucky that we had a last two precious hours to spend with mum after her passing.

We were lucky that we were able to hold a service of thanksgiving for her life at the church she had attended all her life.

We were lucky that so many of her friends and family were at the funeral and that her cousin was able to serve on the altar at her funeral mass.

For anyone who has lost a loved one during the time of Corona virus there are, indeed, tears at the heart of things.

My mum, Stella, on the left, with her cousin Vera in the gardens of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham September 2019

Serious Sunday: We Real Cool.

I teach in F.E. More specifically I work with 16 to 18 year olds with social, emotional and behavioural issues.
I have done this for 20 years and, honestly, my learners are some of my favourite people in all the world!

I have been thinking about them a lot whilst in Lockdown and worry how the current situation will impact on their already limited opportunities.

I think about M, a “child prostitute” who, at fifteen, was trafficked to the UK 6 months pregnant with a baby whose father could have been any of the men who abused her.

I think about D who, with cripplingly low self-esteem, when I asked him to write his name on his class file wrote “The fat one”.

I think about J, desperate to escape a toxic relationship but whose mother secretly gives J’s new numbers to her ex. Why? Boredom I think. The inability to cope unless life is lived in chaos.

For M education was her chance to escape her horrific past and make a good life for herself and her son. By the age of 18 She was in a relationship with a much older man and pregnant with her second child. Why was no one looking out for her? Well, who was there?

For D education has been a disaster. Rather than address the relentless bullying he endured; his school suggested “home schooling.” So no GCSEs, no lessons in developing resilience and transferable skills but plenty in delivering pre emptive strikes in anticipation of the next blow.

For J education has offered up opportunities which some would say she has squandered. In reality if something isn’t recognised as an opportunity then it isn’t an opportunity.

J is one of many young people I have taught who have developed a brittle veneer of protection against the idea that other people might view them as failing themselves. This veneer is a marvellous construct of defensive deception. So for their own peer group:

“ He got kicked out of school for head butting a teacher. Cool!”

“Ha Ha she didn’t turn up for her work placement so they’ve sacked her off. Cool!”

“ He smokes weed every day. Cool!”

“She’s got kicked out of her house so the council are going to find her a flat. Cool!”


“He’s in court next week. He reckons he’ll get sent down but he’ll be OK he’s got loads of mates inside. Cool”!


I’m reminded of a project I was reading about, “The Favorite Poem Project”, led by Boston University, where people of all ages and backgrounds made and uploaded films about their chosen poem.

One of these was a young man called John Ulrich and his choice was one of my own favourites.

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

It makes me think of and makes me scared for some of my favourite people in all the world.

Check out John Ulrich’s contribution to the Favorite Poem Project.