Slow, quick, quick, slow: wikis

Wikiwiki’ is Hawaiian for ‘quick’. ‘Quick’ is not a word I associate with computers.

Nevertheless, recently I started a wiki with my S2 class. They are supposed to be doing a unit on functional writing. A standard sort of task might be to write an information leaflet on a local attraction. Instead we are using the wiki to write about Internet Safety. So far, we are moving quite slowly. I have had moments when I have wondered whether this might not be a mistake. Poor sentence construction and bad spelling look even worse online.

Yesterday I had my Eureka moment. I was thinking, rather dolefully, about the amount of editing we do, for what seems like a little return. The pupils whilst enthusiastic in class, go off task quite quickly.

The wiki lets me know when someone is editing a page, and what they changed. Better still, the pupils themselves can see the editing that is going on.

A new editor- I'm adding them one at a time - had put up her page and I showed it to the class on the whiteboard. I then showed them the history of her editing. The page displays the old words highlighted in red, the new in green. The class looked at it carefully and ploughed their way through her edits. Finally I put up her edited page, which looked great.

A wave of spontaneous applause swept across the class.

Hard work doesn't always get rewarded like that.

Wiki whoo!

Am I boring you?

Vicki Davis blogged recently about a story that she had seen on another teacher's blog, concerning a Canadian pupil getting into trouble for writing an essay about being bored. According to a local newspaper the pupil was not allowed to deliver his essay in front of the class, because the school deemed it to be disrespectful to a teacher. Here's the original story as reported in a local paper.

I was interested in the story for a variety of reasons, not least, because like most teachers I think a lot about how to teach in an engaging way and get disheartened if I think I'm being boring.

Also, right now, in school, I have my S3 (14 year olds) writing a persuasive essay on the future of education and have asked them to look at what they think helps pupils get involved at school. A lot of them are looking at the link between boredom and bad behaviour :) Interesting reading.

I should also confess that I wrote an essay when I was in S3 complaining about boredom which ended up with me in the deputy headteacher’s office. And, no she wasn't delighted with my wit and perspicacity.

I like the comments that this blogging teacher made - ‘Teaching students how to deal with boredom is teaching them a life skill. They think they are bored now-just wait until they hit life outside of school.’ At the same time, as a teacher I am hoping not to provide too many pointers in this area...

In the Canadian story above however, the real issue for me as a teacher, is not about providing pupils with ways to combat boredom, it's about teaching pupils how to critique their world effectively and responsibly. This story after all was not about someone expressing an opinion alone, but about giving the speech in front of a class.

So, the school exercised its judgement and deemed the speech disrespectful to the teacher. They saw the speech, and made a judgement on it. Good for them. Who taught the pupil to write and frame a speech, and gave him the confidence to express his opinion in the first place? Presumably the school. Would they really be doing him a favour failing to teach him about when it is appropriate to use those skills?

Being bored is a complex issue. 'Boring' is code for a lot of things. I know that Pupil X says ‘This is boring!’ because she is finding something difficult to understand. Pupil Y says it because he is trying to get a reaction from me, or as a way of avoiding work. Pupil Z really does find my subject (and me) boring and -sometimes -I will be able to do something about it.

The touchstone I use is ‘Do I find this boring?’ because if I do I will certainly find it difficult to create enthusiasm. If I have to teach something uninspiring, I try to find ways to make it more interesting to myself first.

Why did I write my ‘this is boring’ essay in third year. I was bored. But not for long…

Jock Bauer

Last night when we were eating dinner our power failed. The computer in the kitchen shut down, the CD player went quiet and the fridge shuddered, then stopped making that low, bubbling sound. Power cuts aren’t that unusual in this neck of the woods, so we lit some candles and finished the rest of our meal.

The weekend had started rather inauspiciously with a car crash. On the way home from school, a landrover sailed out of a side road, hit my car on the passenger side and sent me swerving off into a railed fence. I was fine. Not injured, but shaken. My car was not so good.

Then the ‘stuff’ started. If you’ve been through it recently you’ll know what I mean. ‘Phone calls, breakdown trucks, insurance details, complicated re-scheduling and so on…

So last night’s power cut was a pause in a frantic 24 hours. Not quite Jack Bauer, but a Wigtownshire version of it.

It was funny, but it seemed like the first real moment of silence in a long time. And even when we had some electricity restored, we still kept the candles lit and tiptoed about. Later we watched the lunar eclipse and managed one photograph, before our digital camera announced it was out of power.

But that was okay, because so were we.

Handwriting and Keyboarding

Every week I download the latest podcast from Women of Web 2 (WOW2). They have a weekly chat, Tuesdays at 9pm EST. That's the middle of the night our time so I haven’t heard one live yet. I missed the first one, called ‘Keyboarding’. It didn't sound very appealing. I couldn’t imagine how they could chat about that for a whole hour.

However, I’ve come to trust those podcasts to set me thinking about things, so I duly downloaded and listened to ‘Keyboarding’.

I am the sort of teacher who writes ‘Your target is handwriting! Present your work with more care.’ For years I’ve heard people say that typing will supersede handwriting. I’ve not been convinced. I’ve got loads of stories of disasters that all hinged on a piece of bad handwriting: doctor’s prescriptions, military coups, and NASA operations…

The chat on the podcast was discussing how important it was for schools to teach children correct keyboarding skills. They discussed the amount of sustained time children need to become proficient. They assumed that this would be necessary for all children. They weren’t advocating doing away with teaching handwriting, just seeing typing (or keyboarding) as the NEXT natural step.

I had a sort of brain freeze over the idea. Concentrate more on typing? Learn how to use the QWERTY keyboard properly? Yes, fine for people who will need that in the future. And that would be? Oops. Everyone.

What about handwriting? How often in the adult world of work do we actually rely on our handwriting? I can think of several occasions when it is nicer and perceived as ‘more caring’ to handwrite: birthday cards, a personal note at the end of a typed letter, a comment. But for anything of length, especially if we require to edit it, I think typing wins hands down.

If pupils typed efficiently, they could do all their work online. And think of the paper we would save.

Good grief. Next I will be (gulp) reading books online.

Can education really be fun?

I’ve been reading, and pondering Ewan’s post about bringing games and fun into secondary education. Can we really bring play into the main part of our teaching? Play, by definition, seems to be what we do when work is done.

It’s true that if we can add an element of fun to our teaching, things go more smoothly. On the very simplest level, announcing that we will play a game when this activity is over, frequently galvanises even the most lethargic pupil into action.

But games aren’t just about competition. What exactly are they? What is play?

Play is pretending. It’s about trying something out, free from the anxiety that what you do will have a permanent effect. Children play naturally. They play at schools, at work, at being grown ups.

Play and failure really are closely related. Play gives you the permission to fail without there being disastrous consequences.

This is why, when we want to give ‘authentic’ experiences to children, we need to take care that this constitutes a risk which adds excitement, and is carefully structured to maximise success. We choose tasks which we know they can achieve, but won’t necessarily achieve immediately.

There is a tension between school and the real world. And there is a tension between play and real. But tension provides a wonderfully elastic basis for some really brilliant bungee jumps!

How can we use this in education?

Persuasion

'Knowing the price of everything, the value of nothing'

That’s my grandmother talking about young people. And it’s one of the reasons I am a teacher. I want to teach the value or importance of things not just the ‘prices’ or facts about them.

Wanting to be a better teacher led me to blogging. I see young people using new technologies with enthusiasm and I want to use them in my teaching. Of course I’ve realised that this stuff might come naturally to them, but not to me. Apparently they are, according to Marc Prensky digital natives. And I am a digital immigrant.

I’ve got an immigrant’s technological ‘accent’.

‘There are hundreds of examples of the digital immigrant accent. They include printing out your email… needing to print out a document written on the computer in order to edit it and bringing people physically into your office to see an interesting web site (rather than just sending them the URL).'

Well, I’m a tiny bit more fluent than that, thanks to my recent forays into technology.

I’m learning too. The way we teach will have to change. Some of the skills we were taught just don’t fit any more. Remember all that stuff we were taught about how to study –‘find a quiet place’ etc? Well the natives don’t need that. Nor do they like waiting to receive information. They expect to be able to get the information immediately.

But they need us to help them develop critical thinking skills, so that they can process the stream of information that pours through their lives. And they do need our affirmation and encouragement as they face the bewildering world of today.

I am scheduled to teach Jane Austen’s novels Persuasion and Emma, to a group of seventeen year old boys. My colleagues are slightly amused by my predicament. When the class was planned, it was mixed, larger and well, distant.
The lads are bright. But how on earth do you convey the world of Emma, whose sister ‘though comparatively but little removed by matrimony, being settled in London, only sixteen miles off, was much beyond her daily reach’?

I’ve had an idea: I’ve given each pupil in the class the task of presenting, via any media they like, one background aspect to the novels of Austen. I have promised to film and publish online their efforts. Watch this space.

How to motivate learners

Sometimes when I am getting obsessive about something, like the missing apostrophe or whether or not I should just accept the US spelling of colour, I think about Stevie.

Stevie is a freelance safety instructor. And he can’t afford to be irrelevant to his classes. Right now, he is in Iceland giving training to workers on a large construction site. He has been contracted to train operators on the safe use of their MEWPs. MEWPs are Mobile Elevated Work Platforms, not, as you were imagining, Pokemon characters.

Safety training has its challenges. A large number of the trainees don’t speak English -or Glaswegian- which is Stevie’s chosen tongue.

It’s crucial however that they meet the learning objective.

Stevie uses a combination of Powerpoint, video and pictures via a laptop to teach. He builds on prior knowledge, and is not averse to photographing any potential problems on site to help get his message across.

The learners need the qualification to be licensed to work, but first they must pass a theory test and a practical exam. Instructors can license them within one day, so that trainees can have proof immediately that they have been trained. Hence the primary motivation for learning.

Safety instructors have to be accountable in a way that focuses the teaching mind wonderfully. Their instructions might mean the difference between life and death. The practical class involves kinaesthetic learning. How will I know if you have understood the learning objective? You will show me. The big picture is 'You will be safe at work'. Activating this level of motivation should be easy, but isn't always.

Conditions can be unkind. As Stevie says, when we last talked ‘The temperature today was minus 28 degrees. And the last thing you want to do is go outside to 20 metres and work on a platform.’ I decide not to share my story of the leaky radiator.

Stevie’s a member of IPAF. Their website is, well, quite serious as you might expect. But it has a interesting page called ‘The Rogues Gallery’ showing some of the mistakes that no doubt contribute to the truly awful safety record of the construction industry.

I’m sorry to say some of the acrobatics will look horribly familiar to anyone whose school recently had its windows cleaned.

If you know anyone with MEWPs, Stevie's your man. I am his big sister.

sjmtraining@ntlworld.com

School - Passing this way one time only

Every now and again I am struck by the enormity of what we are doing as teachers.

Recently I read a story in class, where a man goes to prison for stealing. His son is unwittingly responsible for drawing his father to the attention of the police. This leads to a conviction and imprisonment. My class had a lively debate on the subject of how much the boy was to blame.

In the course of our discussion, I had to quickly discourage pupils from talking about actual situations. At a certain point I became aware that I had, in my class; children whose parents were involved in the judicial system at several levels: policing, legal or social work; children who had relatives who had been in prison; children who had seen neighbours cope with family members being in prison; children who had never thought about the impact of prison on a family. The views of these different groups were on show, and being articulated in a lively, and surprisingly compassionate debate.

At what other time would people of these varied viewpoints be put together in such a setting? When again in their lives will these pupils be in quite the same situation? When else will they spend regular time getting the opportunity to discuss these issues within the safety of this unique environment? When will they ever have so much in common again?

It’s an enormous responsibility. It’s true that we are not the only source of direction for these pupils. It’s true, that the families they come from will impact them on a deeper level. But it is a responsibility nevertheless.

We’ve got the world in our classrooms. Are we up to it?

Headteacher Wanted

Our school needs a new headteacher. The post was advertised in December, but staff were informed today that the post was being re-advertised due to a lack of applications. Our local newspaper obligingly informed the community that there had been ‘only one’ application.

According to several different sources, it is getting more difficult to recruit headteachers. Browsing around the internet, I found several articles -dating back over the last few years -talking about the crisis in recruitment.

This year-old article from the Scotsman, informs us that half the existing heads are set to retire over the next five years. Our director of education, Fraser Sanderson, is quoted as saying "People are looking at the job and saying, 'I can live happily without that'. It's the workload, pressure, accountability."

I can well imagine being a head teacher is stressful. Do other fields have the same sort of problem enticing people into leadership? If it’s peculiar to education, is it global? And why?

This article from the Guardian looks at some of the questions we might raise.
Should headteachers necessarily be older teachers? Might they be younger? Do they
even have to be teachers?

I’d love to know, what sort of lateral thinking is going on about this situation. Is the model that is being used wrong? What qualities do you look for in a headteacher?

You may have to give up the day job

Excuses pupils give for not doing homework are fairly predictable. It helps being a parent as well as a teacher, because you get to witness at first hand some of the peculiar manoeuvres students will embark on to avoid doing things.

‘Of course you can wash my car, but haven’t you got homework?’

Recently I have become aware of another kind of excuse coming from senior pupils.
‘Sorry miss, but I was working all weekend.’

My instincts tell me that this sort of excuse, when genuine, should be handled with a little more care than my normal ‘not good enough’ face.

It’s difficult not to be impressed with pupils who are willing to work at anything. This is especially the case when you’ve just had a ‘demented ringmaster’ lesson with 3B. You know, that lesson where you seem to be running round strategically placing fireworks. (I was struck by psychologist Alan McLean's thoughts at an INSET day on schools ‘being places where young people come to watch old people work.’ You can read an overview of his take on motivation here.)

I started getting a bit concerned about the jobs issue, round about the middle of last term. My thoughts crystallised when a number of pupils came back to school exhausted after the holidays. All night parties? Probably. But for many of them the reason they are exhausted is much simpler; they’ve been working. On farms, in hotels and supermarkets, in local restaurants and shops, they’ve been taking on hours that would tax most adults.

Holiday jobs are fine. Term-time a few hours a week can work. But when your senior school candidates are looking decidedly lack-lustre and missing classes so that they ‘can sleep’, things are not good.

I hope this settles down as we head towards our prelims.

This is the sort of area which might be worth discussing in the light of the present movement towards curricular reform - A Curriculum for Excellence. How do we balance the positive value of these experiences which help our young people become ‘confident individuals’ with the continued enthusiasm and wisdom they will need to become successful (lifelong) learners?

It has to be more than just frowning on their jobs as ‘interfering ‘ with school. That interaction with the wider world can change priorities and sow the seeds of ambition and hope in young people. It might involve discussions on work-life balance and thinking long-term about decisions. As teachers and parents we need to examine their motivation to work and ask ourselves why school might have failed, so far, to activate it.

Is this happening where you are?

What is blogging?

A few posts ago when I was complaining about not understanding technical people’s explanations, I fantasised about ‘dictating our blog’. I saw myself released from the horrid technology by some computer which did exactly as it was told.

Recently a pupil drew my attention to an article describing a new(er) voice recognition tool from Nuance Communication called Dragon Naturally Speaking. The software according to the makers will ‘make blogging easier and faster’. Bloggers are being invited to try out the voice versus typing test.

Being contrary, I read it and realised that I didn’t want to ‘dictate’ my blog after all. Yes, I would like to not worry about the html and so on, but I actually like writing my blog.

I think the blogging writing process is something special.

I thought writing a blog would be like keeping a diary. It isn’t, because this diary talks back. Which is wonderful. I also thought that it might be like writing little articles, but it isn’t because so often the thing you are writing about is still percolating away in your mind and not set in stone.

It’s true I am having to work very hard at understanding the technology. But it is starting to look a little bit less hazy. The gulf between me and the techies is getting smaller. I can actually hear them talking to each other. I am beginning to pick out words which mean things…

Gosh. All because of a blog.

What do you think blogging actually is?

Five things you don't know about me

I prefer reading blogs that have a point to them, or a mutual interest. But from time to time I do wonder a bit about the person behind the blog. So, I've been rather intrigued to see people asking other bloggers to write down 'five things you don't know about me'. Tess Watson has asked me to take part. So here goes:

1. I was named after my grandmother Elizabeth Grant Neeson (nee Davidson) who was born on the same Highland Estate as the Elizabeth Grant who wrote ‘Memoirs of a Highland Lady’.

2. When I was 18 I saw the great Ginger Rogers, in a musical review called ‘Anything Goes’ in Detroit, Michigan.

3. I met my future husband when I was sixteen -at a prayer meeting. We disliked each other instantly. We met three years later, by which time he had improved enormously.

4. In 1998 we adopted our youngest son (Jerry) from the Philippines.

5. I persuaded my oldest son Sean David (known as Sid) to start his own blog recently.


I'm not sure if they have been tagged already but I'm going to tag:

Neil
David Gilmour
Mrs Blethers
guineapigmum
Andrew Brown

Trials of a NVT (Not Very Technical) Teacher

Oldest son is home from uni. He’s busy on his laptop writing an email whilst having conversations with several people via some form of instant messaging (the names change just as I get the hang of them. Meebo? Peepo? Don’t know).

Out of the corner of his eye he is watching me trying unsuccessfully to upload files to my new mp3 player. I can’t work out how to change the settings. He leans over in mid typing rattle, presses a button, and suddenly it’s working. I stare at him aghast.

‘What did you do there?’

He shakes his head.

‘You just try out things.’

He sees it as a game.

He doesn’t read manuals. He can only show me what he does by doing it. He approaches technology with a spirit of 'now-what-happens-if-you-click-that-and-then-that-mmm-interesting’.

Me? I approach it like a soufflé in the oven, which must not feel the slightest cool air current or it will be RUINED.

Why? I think it’s because that’s how I was taught. By uptight people to uptight people. You might BREAK something. You might make a MISTAKE. You might DELETE something. Younger people don’t have this technology anxiety.

On the other hand this might explain why my mp3 player ‘support’ website was totally useless to me. It was cluttered up with troubleshooting information. I haven’t learnt how to get into trouble yet. But I'm getting there...

Jings! Crivvens! Help ma blog!

Sorry about the title, but we're getting really excited about Christmas here in the O'Neill house, and reading our new 'The Broons' annual is a big part of that. If you are bewildered by this, you might want to click here

We're happy to report that here in Wigtownshire a lot of those words that your granny used are still alive and well. When we moved here we re-discovered some of them. Children are amazing copycats. Our son, aged seven at that point, had just perfected his London accent -we'd spent a couple of years down south. A week in a local primary school and he was coming 'hame' from school asking for 'twa' biscuits. We bought him 'The Broons' to improve his vocabulary.

Anyway it's great to hear these words and ponder on the versatility of language in our culture, which allows us to dip into both English and our shared Scots wordbank. It also gets me thinking about our presence online. Will we be able to sustain our identity in global conversations? Do we want to?

Does a Scots blog have a Scottish accent? I'm not talking about dropping in those 'wee' Scotticisms. I'm thinking more about viewpoint, philosophy, and yes, language.

What does it mean to be Scottish? The BBC reported last May on a survey carried out by the Scottish Centre for Social Research at Edinburgh University.

Read it here.

It does seem to suggest that language, and specifically accent, holds the key to identity in most people's eyes. It gives me one concern: what about those people who come to Scotland, enrich our lives, but don't pick up our accent? Will they never be part of us?

Maybe we should be handing out more copies of 'The Broons' and 'Oor Wullie'.

Ideas to chew on

If you could make three changes in your (old) school, what would they be?

Here's three ideas I thought up this morning:

1. Begin the school day an hour earlier. Make the final hour voluntary classes that pupils have to sign up for giving a reason why they wanted to take part. These could be vocational or study based.

2. Develop links with other schools that pay more than lip service to the idea. Each school should have a genuine exchange programme that would allow pupils and staff to spend time in the other school.

3. Have schools nominate a key 'value' or virtue or strength, which they will focus on. Put it on their blazers ( or sweatshirts...) Reward schools that do this with imagination and commitment.

What do you think of these ideas? Got any of your own?

The Secret Knowledge

I have to post this because it's coming up again and again, especially when talking to other people about the Internet. A long time ago when I first discovered email (1995 -yes, child there were computers in those days) I also discovered 'the secret'. What is the secret? Well, it goes like this:

I am an IT person. I get it. You don't.

I am not especially good at IT. In fact, to be honest, the odd way that you have to write in code (HTML) in order to, say, put a link on your web page fills me with horror. I look forward to saying in the future: 'Yes, in those days, you won't believe it, but we had to write a special instruction around the words we wanted to link with!'

In the future we will simply speak aloud to our computers when we are dictating our blog. 'Italic...cease italic' or 'Put in the link' and 'Choose image, something with clouds and a little flower, pink, no purple.'

In the meantime, why don't computer literate people stop showing off and start talking plain English? I think that's one of the reasons a lot of teachers are put off blogging. They sense that it involves secrets that they will not find easily accessible. And to be honest, they get enough 'trying to guess the right answer' at school.

Do you feel kept out of the secret knowledge? Let's talk about it!

What's next?

The Seattle Times reported last month on a grant given to the Bellevue School district (Washington) to allow them to put their entire curriculum online.Read the article

According to the Times , 'The grant ... will develop the district Web site to help teachers build and share lesson plans and ideas and help parents stay on top of what their children are being taught'.

The current Bellevue School District Curriculum Web already gives detailed information about what is being taught at each level. But the long term plan, according to the executive director of the school district, is to have everything a child is doing at school available to parents. This would mean for example, 'a parent who has a child who comes home baffled about a lesson plan can log on to the site and look to see what the student was supposed to learn that day.' There would even be 'the possibility for the child to watch the lesson again'.

Teachers from other districts (countries?) would also be invited to the 'wikipedia' like site, to log on and offer their insights and practice.

Do you like the sound of this level of openness?

Please comment.

Can you contact the school please?

A few years ago a request to contact the school meant either your child was sick or an INCIDENT had occurred which the school could not keep to themselves.

Either way it was bad news.

This week I was accused, as a teacher, of not wanting to return the phone calls of a parent. The reality was that I thought I was having a dialogue with the parent via the pupil. The pupil was passing on a message from her mother 'that she wasn't available this week.'

I should have seen that one coming, but had a daft idea that this pupil would respond better if involved in the process.

One of things which I have re-learnt from this, is that the conduit we use for communication, normally the pupils, isn't always the right one.

Scenes of child at kitchen table with strong light being shone in his face.

‘But who exactly said that?'
‘I don’t know –maybe it was George.’
‘MISTER George the headteacher? Or George your wee pal?’
‘I can’t remember, but we have to have it in for tomorrow.’

Well, I am exaggerating. Schools send home letters. Good parents remember to dismantle the school bag each evening in search of them. Don’t throw anything away, that scrunched up paper inside a banana skin might just be the news that Friday’s fun day has been cancelled, and your child should not now arrive dressed as a character from a book. (I speak from bitter experience.)

Maybe it’s just my children. Girls apparently are much better at relating news.

I’m interested in things that help communication. What works? Some schools have websites. Would it be a good idea if parents could email teachers?

What about Glow –this is the new intranet which is being piloted by teachers like Tess Watson. To quote the website ‘Glow is the new name for the Scottish Schools Digital Network, the national intranet which will link Scottish education safely and securely’. On the GLOW site there is a scenario of how it might be used by parents. Check it out if you are interested.

In the meantime, aforementioned parent and I did meet up and had a good talk about our mutual interest -doing our best for this child.

Is school a window on the world?

On a previous post Tony suggested I do some sort of survey on what young people think education is. Ask pupils what they think they are doing at school and I am sure they would say things like ' to learn stuff' or if they are older, 'to get qualifications'. They have a pretty good idea why they are there.

Or have they?

If you are a teacher, or at school, or in education, do you think that schools (and colleges and universities) are giving pupils what they should be? What do you think they should be doing?

Have you learnt anything at school which you think was a waste of time?

Just to start the ball rolling... I had an interesting conversation with one of my classes recently on something that was never (to my memory) broached when I was at school: money. In the course of discussing a character in a novel, we ended up talking about debt, and someone asked what a mortgage was. I couldn't help noticing the interest that was stirred up by this question.

I know schools provide some Financial education. I've taught it in a Social and Vocational Skills (SVS) class. It comes under the heading of 'life skills'. I can imagine it being a small part of several subjects. I wonder whether it -and other skills like it - should be given greater prominence in our curriculum.

What do you think? Do we need more of this sort of education for real life? Or would that be too functional an approach to education? Are some sorts of knowledge more important than others?

Please comment.

What a difference a decent book makes: Buddy

Just have to post about my current experiences in teaching English using the novel 'Buddy' by Nigel Hinton. We use 'Buddy' with s2 -and I think I can safely say that all of the teachers in our department enjoy teaching it.

The story is set in the UK -and although it was published a while ago it manages to remain up-to-date and interesting for our pupils.

'Buddy' has a great central character, and looks at themes like racism, family breakdown and teenage anxiety in a sympathetic, but thought-provoking way.

'Buddy' also provides a way into the whole issue of parenting and fatherhood -which, to my mind anyway, doesn't really get enough coverage in a secondary school!

Buddy's dad, Terry, is a 'teddy boy' who uses the music of Buddy Holly and his era to communicate. His character develops alongside that of Buddy. The kids love it! It's the sort of book you have to count back in at the end of each lesson, as they are always sneaking it home to read it...

Nigel Hinton has a website (www.nigelhinton.net) with some useful background to his work on it.

Finally, there is a brilliant TV series which goes along with the book. I hope that the BBC run it again. Email Nigel Hinton via his site for details of how to get a DVD of the series should you require it. Our school copy has been used so often it's starting to sag a little.