All posts tagged: Education

#TalkPANTS with NSPCC

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If you know me at all, you know that I have for many years longed to make a difference in this world and have been actively and vocally advocating for change, especially when it comes to vulnerable children and adults. So, when last week, NSPCC approached me as a blogger and invited me to be part of their Underwear rule campaign, I felt hugely privileged to be allowed to use my public voice to raise awareness about such a sensitive topic like keeping children safe from sexual abuse. I will start this post by saying that as a young girl raised in communist Romania, I consider myself extremely lucky to have had two very near sexual abuse misses. One occurred one hot summer day, when I was visiting my mum in the hospital where she worked. I don’t know where my brother was that time, we usually did everything together and I am sure, his presence acted as a safety shield many times from sexual predators. But this time, he wasn’t there, my mum’s work …

Teaching on the wrong side of town

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I was teaching today. I am what they call in the States a “supply teacher” or a “substitute teacher” here, in Northern Ireland. I get phone calls in the evening or even early in the morning, mainly from primary schools and go in when a teacher is sick or on a training course. Today it was a secondary school, for a change. A couple of years ago I had the privilege to work with some great kids there, from Thailand, Malaysia, India and China, who needed a bit of practice and encouragement with their English.  Today I wasn’t so privileged and had a battle on my hands with every new class who walked through the door. It wasn’t me they were fighting but the institution I represented, the authority they wanted to usurp from their lives because it doesn’t stand for anything meaningful to them.  They don’t see the point in studying and considering their backgrounds, I don’t blame them, really. For many of them, the sense of twisted peer  recognition coming from mocking everything …

Freedom Writers

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I feel like I’ve been shooting my blog in the foot lately because I couldn’t post anything decent and coherent in the last week. But my mind has been occupied by more pressing issues since last Sunday and it’s only started coming back to a more normal state in the last day or so. Our family has been on a roller coaster of emotions, motions and locomotions since August and things haven’t settled yet. It looks like we can’t move forward yet although, as I have said in a previous post, this would have been hubby’s preferred option. So we’re staying in Northern Ireland for a while(sigh of relief from my side!). But waiting has its bad connotations, hasn’t it? It is more often than not associated with missing out on something bigger and better. A hindrance rather than a necessary step in the natural order of things towards a pre-established goal. Waiting room symptoms? Impatience, inability or unwillingness to enjoy the present moment. Irritability at one’s misfortune. Fatalism and indecision. Here’s where we’ve both …

The worst boy in the world

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Last week was a week of excitement and exhilarating feelings. A break from reality we all need sometimes. But it wasn’t a break completely sheltered from reality. Every morning the hotels we stayed in dully provided us with the daily newspaper, either the Irish News or the Irish Times. Of course, when you travel with a toddler you can’t really have a proper read, you just scan the titles. Just to keep yourself up to date with what is going on around you and in the world. Well, on Wednesday morning this title caught my eye, a story of horrendous neglect and abuse in a family with five children, aged between two and nine. I managed to read it through actually as it was succinct and cold, a mere rendering of appalling facts. Children left hungry, improperly dressed and NEVER toilet trained, not even one of them…It took my mind a while to get around the physical facts in order to begin to assess the psychological damage those things alone would have inflicted on those …