I don't think Franco would approve of that foreign nonsense... it is the "contubernio" all over again!

Do you mean that in English literature people don't die when they are put at the bottom of a well?
During a cover today a student doing the work asked me who Lady Macbeth was married to. It all makes sense now.

Definitively, did not watch the play.

No necesitas más actividades: necesitas mejores estructuras El gran engaño de la variedad: cuando cambiar de actividad empeora el aprendizaje

No necesitas más actividades. Necesitas menos… pero mejores.
👉 Muchas “actividades distintas” son la misma estructura con otro contenido.
👉 Cada novedad exige explicación.
👉 Y la atención es limitada.
Menos variedad superficial.
Más estructuras de alto valor.
open.substack.com/pub/investig...

In most schools I´ve worked DO NOWS are just about behaviour management and often they had a fixed structure that applies to the whole school, like a multiple choice. In one of them we had to do the register, circulate, SLANT, give five narrated positives and check the answers in 5 min.

How did it come to this?

A new one: at an Oxford years ago it was said that with the amount of native speakers taking ALevel, they required an A for entry, not A* like other subjects. Now it is A*. I don't think their supply of candidates has massively increased. Now even philology is in danger.

My GCSE students attended a programme where they were told about the opportunities for medical students to do placements abroad. I don't think it convinced any "science students", but I reminded them of Cuba's accomplishments in medicine and how much they could learn in a different context.

😷

I am tutoring remotely already, and considering going part-time. Working two hours only because of my broken humerus became 5+ most days. Back full time now, back to 8-9+.

At my age I need a better work-life balance, I am not so excited by learning the ropes like I was when I started.

AI learns language from skewed sources. That could change how we humans speak – and think | Bruce Schneier Large language models aren’t trained on real-life conversations. As we encounter their language, it could affect our own

AI learns language from skewed sources. That could change how we humans speak – and think

I am tutoring a very sweet and hard working student who got a conditional offer from Cambridge. To be honest, I am mostly doing it because I miss teaching A level.

You reminded me of the times when we had to write detailed lesson plans for SLTs. Plans included a box called "the big picture", where I always wrote Las Meninas. I don't know whether they assumed that I was Manuel from Barcelona or whether they did not read the plans, but they never challenged me.

I would not be surprised if this appears in the A Level speaking cards: Lorca poem's found by a flamenco singer. It cannot get more AQA!

From the other side... you bring evidence of what you have done, how you achieved it and how it can be replicated. They give you the job and your supervisor is bothered every time you have an opinion and dismisses your opinion as the hunch of a native speaker.

Content doesn't matter, progression is just a list of numbers unrelated to content.
Cargo cult teaching that takes hours out of your life. And they give you Y10 students saying mi comer and mi como, fossilized in so many aspects, but after two years they are my results.

Exactly! The only times I have been able to improve achievement and behaviour was when I had a set of benchmarks to reach by end of year and I could get there how I saw fit. Now assessment good practice is seen as constantly fiddling with exams so that they are more like the GCSE one.

Last time I was only applying for jobs with A level Spanish in schools that gave me freedom to teach the way my qualifications and 20+ years of experience saw fit.
Guess what? Hierarchy trumps experience and knowledge.

I've heard advise about writing SoW using AI. Which sounds to me mad and refusing to engage with the most important part of the job: plan and monitor progression so that you can reinforce it with feedback. When I was allowed to do this my students' behaviour and achievement were better.

As Arthur Daley said "Did Magna Carta die in vain?"

Can we please keep this man from government? Haven't we suffered enough? Isn't Trump a warning big enough? Brexit, which nobody seems to ask him about? NHS privatization that he champions?

Doesn't that say I cannot be bothered to think of why I want this job? I would prefer somebody who said I can do the job and your school is within easy reach from my home. Seems more honest.

Zelda taught me the importance of play – and has helped me deal with work, parenting and grief I initially dismissed the Wind Waker’s cartoonish visuals as juvenile. But now I try to carry the game’s sense of joy into all aspects of my life

I am a fan of Zelda and Metal Gear, rich games with complex worlds. Anybody who argues Metal Gear is realistic tends to also argue that Resident Evil is realistic. Violence and death in videogames are mostly cartoonish and unrealistic, regardless of the visuals.
www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...

My brother - learning French in the 70s - was taught phonics rules, only they were called "se lee así", practised by reading aloud and speaking. I think Barry Smith's method is similar. When I started teaching French I was using those rules, just reading aloud, reminding and modelling.

Standing cat with arched back facing right created with vertical strips of wood with peeling paint, all against a light blue background

'Scaredy Cat' by Cornish artist Kirsty Elson who trawls the beaches of her home collecting driftwood as the raw materials for her artworks #WomensArt

Enjoy! It seems that you are lucky with the weather.

I have been taking friends and relatives to Camden Market for 20+ years. They used to love it, the more recent ones thought it is a tourist trap. Last summer there was even a middle aged punk who would appear in your picture for a reasonable fee.

But I cannot challenge "mi comer" and "mi comí" because if I had taught them the progression of grammar that NCELP predicts, they would not be using this mistaken and very common forms. So the next exercise will have them deciding whether he makes plans is "hago planes" or "hace planes".

The myth of languages being badly taught in secondary casts a long shadow. Today I was told that phonics was not taught before NCELP... so next week my Y8 will listen to recordings of people saying "ejersisio" and centro and they'll decide if the speaker is from parts of Spain or from America.

Amazon Accused of Hiding Worker's Death for a Week, Making Employees Keep Working as Corpse Lay on Floor According to a shocking new investigation by The Western Edge, Amazon tried to keep the April 6 death of a worker a secr

Amazon warehouse workers have been trying to unionize for years, largely in response to the corporation's well-documented unsafe working conditions.

But Amazon continues to squash organizing.

Every worker deserves to be safe on the job.