Bloody oh la la

I JUST got a text from the Young Wan which says (and I quote exactly):

"Im got picked 4 france.! =D =D YAY"

Mmm Im got delighted for her!.

Wonder where she's going to find the €500 for this exchange trip. It is something we have discussed in theory where we agree she should take part in this exchange trip, however we never discussed money until last night when she was telling me she was surprised it was €500 as she thought it would be more... Jaysus they are very good with others money.

So even if the money is found between now and the dealdine which I suspect maybe sooner rather than later, she may sort out her bedroom as you wouldn't voluntarily make anyone go in there, never mind stay.

Student of the Year

I JUST received this text from the Young Wan:

"gusse who shortlisted in student of the year!? :) x.X.x.X."

Herself and four others were put up for student of the year by the teachers, I'm delighted, I will have to have a word about spelling though ;)

It certainly makes a change from 'can do better' :) Well done honey.

RM colum April 4 - Picking the Leaving

RMcolumn April 4 - Picking the Leaving

THE TIME has come for the Young Wan to pick her subjects for the Leaving Cert. As important as this is the preparations into it all feels a bit hit and miss to be honest. Aside from the fact that reaching this stage is urrghh, I can already feel the pressure of LEAVING CERT EXAMS starting to rear their ugly head.

I found the pressure of the Junior Cert dreadful and it was only once it was all over that I was able to give a half sigh of relief, the full sigh didn’t come until the results arrived in September. And the thought of two more years of constant fretting about how much work the Young Wan is or isn’t doing leaves me absolutely cold.

Of course the Young Wan was also under pressure but at times you wouldn’t have known it at all.

So now we are at the choosing the subjects stage and the proceedings were kicked off with a parents meeting in the school during the week.

Oh God don’t get me started on parents meetings; the fact that they are held during the day is one of the most ridiculous and lazy things I have ever heard in my life. I have the utmost respect for teachers, I think they have a very hard job, but take a fecking night and talk to parents, believe it or not some of us work and believe it or not it can be hard to get time off work to attend this things.

And in some cases I am quite sure if a parent can’t make it there would be some who think they are not interested in their child’s education.

The Young Wan’s parent teacher meeting this week started at 12.30, so I was in work a couple of hours before I had to leave. It was due to finish at 3.30pm so it is not even a full morning or a full afternoon, it was half and half meaning that I was only in work for about two hours that day as there seemed little point in trying to head through all the traffic to get back into work for the last hour/half-hour.

I am lucky that I am allowed the time to do this, flash back to a couple of years ago and another work place and that would not have been an option at all.

Anyhoo back to the meeting; we sat there as each teacher got up and in English and Irish and explained about each of the subjects.

“Biology is the study of living things…” When I heard that or something similar, I thought ‘shoot me now’ but I sat on and listened to all the different subject descriptions, how much work they have to do and then my ears pricked up at the mention of a lottery.

All the chosen subjects have been placed into three lines with about three subjects in each. Each student has to pick one from each line but nothing is guaranteed. So far two of her preferred subjects are on one line ruling one of them out. That in itself was bad enough, but I understand that.

However it turns out because so many kids are in her year there will be a lottery for some of the subjects. And most of the year seem to be leaning towards biology which is one of the Young Wan’s best subjects and now she will be competing in some nonsense lottery and may not be able to take her best subject!

I understand the school is understaffed and doesn’t have enough teachers to cover all the subjects but if she doesn’t get subjects she has more interest in and is better at I will seriously be re-evaluating whether or not she can stay at that school.

After all surely it is also in the school’s interests to have their students get the highest results they can, but maybe that just makes complete and utter sense to me. I’ll keep you posted…

The Young Wan gave a talk...

THE Young Wan did a talk in her school this week about how good Transition Year is and how much she has enjoyed it. The evening was for held for the third year students and their parents to tell them all about the forthcoming Transition Year and they had three students talk about their experiences, one of whom was herself.

Just listening to her tell me about it, it sounds like she did brilliantly. I am VERY proud of her. If she keeps going on this vein I won't have anything to write about her or in my column ;) I asked her to tell yourself about the evening and over to herself.

Howya? Well tonight i was talking in front of the whole of third year =S <----That described my stomach before i went on,and of course i had to go first just my luck, but it was fun when i got into it :D.

See i wrote a really good speech before hand sitting in my friend's kitchen with her adorable kittens sweep and simba (Who spent half the time clawing his way up my skirt onto my knee).

I was really quite happy with it, and relaxed on the bus back to school. All the parents were going into the hall when i went to look for it...Yep you guessed it i lost it and had to rewrite it again, I wasn't a happy hippo i'll tell you that much. So anyway i finished it in good time with the principal's fancy pen :)

So we listened to them blab on for a good bit and then the fourth year coordinator called me up first, I was a bit shakey at first but i got into it quick enough and i was comfortable after a while, I was telling them about all the courses we did and the courses i enjoyed and what being in 4th year was like. But i didnt know how to end it so it kinda went like *ehhhh......Tadaaaaa?*

That got everyone laughing :)

So yup i'm quite pleased with myself at the minute

Isn't she great ;) Well done Honey. (Ooh and this is post number 700)

What joy WHAT JOY

OH what joy, WHAT JOY! I just got an excited phonecall from the Young Wan who has received her school report AND it is great! No herd of elephants flew by the window either so it must be true.

Some of you long-term readers (if there are any :) ) will know of my utter disgust when my smart girl started secondary school and I stopped receiving the reports I was used to in primary school. Before I would get reports or go to parent teachers meetings where I heard amazing things about my wonderful intelligent child. I was soo gobsmacked the first time I went to a parent teacher meeting in her new school, I was just not used to hearing about her not doing her best in school.

We had the Junior Cert and survived, with honours and all and just enough under achievement to boost herself into pulling up her socks without giving her a bad Junior Cert. After all if you don't study and get good results you could be forgiven for thinking you are able to wing these things. At least with a low honours grade, the Young Wan was disappointed with her own performance knowing she was capable of better, I felt the same but still was delighted that we were not looking at repeating the year or some awful stuff like that. I don't think I would have had it in me, it was stressful enough first time around.

And now she is really flourishing in Transition Year, of course that has a lot to do with no hectic studying, not that it was being done before anyway but she is really enjoying all the different classes. She is loving the opportunity of trying new things, work experience, you name it, she is loving it. So it is all good despite my misgivings about Transition Year.

And now the cherry on the cake is the deliverance of an *ahem drum rolls please* excellent school report. Methinks the Young Wan will be receiving some love in the shape of phone credit this evening. Well done Honey, I am delighted.

RM column October 19th - Transitional fun

RM column October 19th - Transitional fun

Well Transition Year so far is a blast, the Young Wan is having a ball and loving every moment.

The year is divided up into segments and she is just about finishing the first one and if that is anything to go by it will be a good year.

So far among the new things she has done is Spanish, music and home economics; she has also had an outdoor activity break as well as a trip to a hospital to talk to some people who work in various roles within the health service.

Home economics has been great and we have enjoyed her newly-learned chicken curry on a number of occasions. Her lasagne didn’t make it home because she said it was awful but her brownies (which looked more like they should be called creamies) were lovely and her chocolate muffins.

Trouble was her cooking partner hates nearly everything so the first time she made the curry she didn’t use any veg at all because of the other girl. So we had a chicken curry with about 10 pieces of chicken swimming around a frying pan with lots of sauce.

However that’s a minor complaint and not really one at all because at the end of the day she now has a dinner she can make, a dinner that could be ready some evening when I get home from work.

And on top of it all and probably more importantly she really enjoys it.

The day to the hospital also seems to have been massively enjoyed by her class.

She came home ranting about wanting to be a radiographer having been to a talk where they were shown funny x-rays and the like.

My own suspicions of her new career path is that it has more to do with seeing such films of the crazy things people do to themselves.

She laughed her head over one x-ray which showed a man to have swallowed a lighter.

I hadn’t the heart to tell her not everyday would be that, eh, fun. But I am impressed that staff in the hospital managed to impress a gang of 15 year olds, no mean feat.

Once this rotation of different classes ends the Young Wan will begin the next batch involving other new and exciting possibilities.

While I am still dubious about Transition Year I am delighted to see the pressure off herself, I am delighted to see her enjoying new subjects, she is also enjoying being a senior in the school.

I remain to be convinced about the benefits of not studying fully for the year but as I said I appreciate the pressure being taken off.

The next big fun thing, or so she thinks, is work experience. Apparently other kids she knows got paid for their time and I have tried to tell her that getting paid for work experience is extremely rare and not normal at all.

She looks at me like I am mad, but we will see just how mad I am when she finishes up her week and is given a big smile and hearty handshake for her troubles.

So for now for me the jury is out on Transition Year, it has been fun, informative and all sorts of things but only time will tell on the whole picture. But I can say I am glad the pressure is off because I don’t know who was more stressed over the Junior Cert exams, her or me…

Young Wan's Junior Cert Diary - Day 1

STUDYING and other things permitting, the Young Wan and I are going to attempt a Junior Cert diary. She is going to talk to me and tell me about it and I am going to attempt to put it down true to her telling here.

Day 1 - English

Last night I wasn't nervous but I was this morning. It was hitting me, oh my god, my Junior Cert, this could affect my Leaving Cert and everything. I got up at 7am and looked over some of my English notes and then I left early and went into school to find everyone was there already.

We just sat about talking for a while waiting to register for the exams. Then we all got called up to the library with the Sixth Years where a nun from the school said special prayers for us, all the guys were laughing in the background and then the principal started going mad saying 'everyone who doesn't want to take the communion, just get out'. The whole of our year walked out, no one stayed and some of the sixth years walked out too.

We then went down to the hall to find our seats and I am on the third row. They started going on about how important this is and all the rules and one of the guys who looked really stern talked about mobile phones and that you can't turn them on and make sure they are off. His phone went off twenty minutes into the exam.

English 1

It was fine and is mostly about my personal writing, functional writing. It was okay only after a while my hand kept cramping up so I had to shake my hand a lot.

I wrote an essay with the title 'the day started the same as any other nobody could have known by that evening I would be ruler of the universe'. I wrote about my friend and I finding a magic goldfish with a funny Dublin accent that helped us become rulers of the universe.

I think my Mum would have liked 'the teenagers guide to life' in the personal writing section but I didn't do it.

English 2

The first question was about drama and I took the Shakespearian one from the Taming of the Shrew. It was perfect, great. I looked at the others but I didn't like the questions so I did the Shakespeare one.

The poetry was fine, it was a comprehension on the poem and I had to choose another one. The poem I choose was 'Stellar Manipulator' by Paul Durcan, one of my favourite poems and that also went fine. I had to describe why the title was interesting and say why it appealed to me, an easy option I think.

I wasn't too sure about the fiction as I was finding it hard to concentrate at this stage. I couldn't spell Roald Dahl and had to write it down a couple of times.

Overall: I am happy with today.

Tomorrow: Irish 1 and listening test, Maths 1

RM December 7 - Phonecalls from school

I JUST received a semi-deranged phone message from the Young Wan during school time. Having missed the call I listened back to the message where she ranted at length without taking a breath about how unfair a teacher was being.

“It is just not fair. I didn’t finish my business homework, well it isn’t that I didn’t finish it, I couldn’t do it. I COULDN’T do it. And I wasn’t the only one. And it is only the second or third time I didn’t finish my homework this year. Hardly anyone in the class finished it. It is so unfair because she picked on me, nobody else. She is going to call you later. It is not fair. Can you call me at 1?”

Have we gathered how unfair it all apparently is? So I am to expect a phonecall from her teacher at some stage today. Great.

At one stage last year her emo-ness appeared to single her out on a range of misdemeanors that other kids got away with.

While some were certainly silly, childish nonsense, that we will laugh about in the future, they still needed appropriate punishments and others were just plain silly.

One incident involved a phonecall from the school while I was out driving with a boss in her car.

“I just wanted to let you know that the Young Wan was given out to earlier after another teacher heard her say she hated her.”

“What” I said, “why did that happen”.

It transpired the Young Wan was overheard speaking English to her pals in the playground at lunchtime and was told off about it by the teacher. Speaking English at anytime is a no no in a Gaelscoil.

As the teacher walked away the Young Wan was overheard muttering to her pals “I hate her”.
As I sat with my boss listening in complete disbelief at this most appalling crime of the year, I thought ‘have youse nothing better to do than make this phonecall?. They tried to claim that maybe she wanted to be heard, and I do know this, no she did not.

Those teachers need to get a thicker skin. While I am not condoning this rudeness at all I have to say I was overheard while in college by one of my lecturers saying the exact same thing and I was in my 20s.

One thing I have learned over the last year from my dealings with the school and other parents is that I am not a precious mother. I know all kids including my own are capable of being complete eejits.

But I resolved last year after one incident where the Young Wan was ‘implicated’ (how the principal described it) in the sending of rude text messages despite the fact she didn’t have a mobile phone at that time, that I would give her the benefit of the doubt, or at the very least a hearing on the alleged incident.

As it turned out the Young Wan was implicated after the sender and receiver of dirty text messages was asked who her friends were and the Young Wan’s name was mentioned. Implicated indeed!?! I learned from that to be persistent in asking questions. At that time it was all the principal would say and I won’t stand for that again. If they perceive her to be implicated in something, either tell me how or don't bother me.

So I have resolved that if I had anymore phonecalls from the school about behaviour or whatever, and this goes for other parents and anyone with a complaint, that I will say ‘thank you for that, I’ll have a chat with herself and get back to you’. After all if I am not sticking up for her – who will? So wish me luck with my forthcoming teacher phonecall.

EDIT: It turned out that I didn't get a phonecall at all, the teacher must have been having a bad day and as we all have some of those all is forgiven.

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