Intellectual Bohemian

I recently had a rather weird incident occur where a group of students got rather passionate about RE.

I had been teaching a group of Year 7’s about Old Testament Prophecy. The previous lesson we had looked at the personal qualities that some of the Major Prophets had shown through their lives. The students then had to take this information and turn it into a job advert for a prophet focussing particularly on what qualities the prophets would need to have.

Unfortunately, the pupils’ homework were very lacking in both thought and effort. As a result I turned the lesson into a recap of that homework, to make sure they but both thought and effort into it. I really berated a few of them who put limited effort into the work. I left it at that and thought that the matter was closed.

I then had to teach another class before lunch. On the way to lunch I walked passed the office of the Deputy Head, and found one of the pupils from my class sitting there, looking very sheepish. I asked him what had happened:

• Me: What you doing here then?
• Pupil: Got into a bit of a fight sir.
• Me: Why and with whom?
• Pupil: Well after we left your lesson sir, we were lining up outside our next lesson, when M turned round told me that my RE homework was “S**T!”, so I punched him.
• Me: You punched him!
• Pupil: Yeah, I punched him in the face … he’s got a black eye now.
• Me: But why did you hit him?
• Pupil: He called my work eh eh crap sir!
• Me: But it was … wasn’t it?
• Pupil: Well yeah, but I didn’t like hearing it.
• Me: I am glad that you care so much about RE, but next time try not punching someone over it please.

See my pupils do really care about their RE! or is it that they don’t coz the work wasn’t good in the first place? … I all confused!

On a separate note Simon and myself were interviewed by Chris via Skype for the Virtual Staffroom Podcast on the success of our recent wiki. The praise for it and the students is still coming in daily and we have both been taken aback by how much praise there has been. I would like to thank Simon for his help and taking the initiative in making contact, and all the pupils involved for the hard work and high achievement.

On this weeks podcast I talk about:

• My School’s Year 10 Retreat to St Vincents, the Southwark Diocese Retreat Centre, in Whitstable, Kent.
• The events and themes of the retreat.
• The Gospel reading for the Fifth Sunday of Easter.

Link to mp3 file:
Episode 3: Year 10 Retreat and Discipleship.

Play file here:

Chris posted this on his blog yesterday and I thought that it was interesting and would follow suit.

Rather than ensnare you in an email chain, let me just instead share what I’ve done and invite you to do the same. Google your first name, followed by “goes” and press ‘enter.’ Then watch the googlerific results spill forth.

This is where I am going …

• Neil goes for a swim.
• Neil goes off the wall.
• Neil goes to the wire.
• Neil goes public.
• Neil goes Nubian.
• Neil goes to Holywood.
• Neil goes caveman with fire.
• Neil goes to work by car and he listens to the radio.
• Neil goes missing.
• Neil follows the footy and takes a trip to Switzerland.
• Neil goes on to express his worry over the daffodils not arriving on time.
• Neil goes through the mud pit and gets sideways.
• Neil goes to make some food.
• Neil goes out of the gate.
• Neil goes shark hunting.
• Neil goes outside and starts picking on a kid named Ian; he gives him a wedgie …
• Neil goes to an abandoned drive-in movie theater to exchange the stolen bonds for money.

An finally, I click on the Images tag and found out that Neil goes for a world record!

In this week’s podcast I speak about:

• The progress of the FlatPlanet Wiki and how it compares to the sister wiki that I have started with a lower ability class.

• The Ten Commandments, Modern Society and Year 7 Pupils
• The changing nature of A Level lessons and classes, and the start of a Philosophy Blog: Questioning Reality.
• A thoughtful and rewarding pupil
• The Readings for the Third Sunday of Easter and the theme of Discipleship

Since I am fairly new to podcasting I would welcome comments and suggestions please. If you would rather not leave a public comment you can email me

Link to mp3 file:
Episode 2: Teacher’s Tales and Discipleship.

Play file here:

Things on the Flat Planet are going really well. The first week was a little slow, the previously mentioned web problems didn’t help, but is going and growing fast now. The first week was spent mostly with the pupils getting to know each other and learning how to use it. It seems that we really underestimated the time this would take as according to the schedule the groups should be a little further along by now, but we have allowed an extra week at the end for consolidation and formatting. The pupils are really growing in enthusiasm and time put into the project and keen to excel.

Running in parallel to this I have set up a sister wiki for a lower ability class to measure the difficulties in doing the project with mixed ability and lower ability teaching. The main issue seems to be breaking the task down enough and keeping the pupils on task enough to do enough work. The pupils’ enthusiasm is growing more and more, they are in teams and as such seem to be moving each other along. Their academic styles and ability isn’t there as much as with the higher ability class, but they are definitely learning and exploring the topic thoroughly.

On a separate note a pupil of mine offered a favour to me. A gaming shop near his house was closing down and they were selling all games for £10 and he offered to get me any game I wanted. I felt really proud of being thought of an asked. Mind you this is the same pupil who thought of me when David Prowse, (Darth Vader), was coming to visit his Youth Club, and managed to get by 1977 first edition paperback of “A New Hope” signed by him for me.

I have also received some potentially good news, but I will post more about that in about two weeks time.

All in all, it’s been a very good day … and it’s only Monday.

I’ve been trying hard not to do too many memes for a while, but this was called to me with the force.

Your Star Wars Name And Title

Your Star Wars Name: Neila Calon Your Star Wars Title: Alpur of Lezah

Sounds cool and realistic to me.

The Flatplanet Wiki is now running, several discussions have commenced and there have been numerous posts on the blog. The pupils seem enthusiastic and energetic towards the project and it all seems to be in place now.

BUT there is a problem. As I may have mentioned before there were issues in getting the urls unblocked on our school network, (It took the IT guys about a month to get it finally unblocked), well now it turns out that the sign in pages and help pages are all blocked. So whilst pupils can view the pages they can’t log in to edit them at all.

Aargghhh! I was trying really hard to make sure that the IT problems didn’t get in the way. And it looks like some sort of update over the holidays as spoilt things, temporarily at least.

But as I said one step back, but two forward. The enthusiasm and energy of the pupils more than make up for the problems and fingers crossed the problems get sorted out soon so it all works well from school and from home.

In this week’s podcast I speak about:

• The start of the FlatPlanet Wiki and Project
• The start of a new term in school and a possible OFSTED inspection
• The best way to relax and how useful the Wii is in relaxing
• The Gospel Reading for the Second Sunday of Easter - Doubting Thomas

Since this is my first podcast I would welcome comments and suggestions please. If you would rather not leave a public comment you can email me

Link to mp3 file:
Episode 1: New Starts and Doubting Thomas.

Play file here: