The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

You can't really work in education and not get some exposure to children's TV. I'm always interested in it- for one thing I think it's really important to understand kids interests and using those interests has led me to teaching some of my best lessons. But beyond that, children's TV shows are strangely fascinating, especially when you start diving into their logic.  Some kids TV shows intentionally reflect the real world. Balamory for example is basically a soap for young children with less murders than Eastenders and everyone wearing outfits which match the exterior of their house for some reason. Shows like Postman Pat  and Fireman Sam  reflect real world jobs.  Pat's career appears to be going well and since my childhood he has been promoted from a neighbourhood postman to being in charge of special deliveries and has the use of a whole fleet of vehicles from a snowmobile to a helicopter. Every delivery seems to involve more drama than the average postal wo...

 This week is anti-bullying week and it got me thinking about my own experiences of bullying.  I was bullied a lot during my childhood. I often don't feel like a normal adult but I was certainly even less normal as a child. I had a love for learning and that probably contributed to me being more academic than at least three quarters of my peers at school (this is not meant as a brag and there is certainly much more to life than knowing things and getting good results). My dyspraxia meant I was pretty rubbish at sport and generally disliked it and it also meant I was generally awkward and clumsy, not that I realised this at the time. I don't believe there is every a reason to be bullied but from my experience at least bullies seek out points of difference. I was certainly different to the norm- I wasn't obsessed with football, I loved school and I had an awkwardness about me. In films bullying is usually portrayed as an endless persecution my one nasty child, usually with tw...

I've spent far too much time over the last twenty-four hours considering possible names for the sequel to lockdown. Lockdown- The Revenge? Lockdown 2: Electric Boogaloo? Lockdown 2: Judgement Day? Lockdown with a Vengeance? 2 Lockdown 2 Furious? Honestly, there's plenty more where those came from.  The point is, here in England we're going into lockdown once again. I think most sensible people understand that it's a necessity (we've all seen the graphs with the edges cut off the screen) but it's still not something any of us really want.  This image has been very useful this year The feeling is that the government could have handled things better. Over the summer they encouraged people to 'eat out to help out', a scheme which this week was shown to cause an increase in Covid cases. Then they started telling people to go back to work before realising this was also not a good idea and making a U-turn, a regular occurrence this year.  The biggest point of c...