I teach Year 3 children on Mondays and Tuesdays this term. It is lots of fun, and today was especially fun as we used the Roamers in maths ( little programmable floor robots that turn through 360 degrees and go forward and back, so you can make a maze and make it go round it), had testing absorbency of paper towel experiment in Science and did 'bang and crash' music - aka composing with untuned percussion. The length of the music lesson is directly linked to the volume of noise produced, ie the louder, the shorter. They sang 'Dem rats' in a round which went well, despite my inability to sing in tune or play any musical instruments.

Aha! My point! The rest of the day was pretty much taken up (apart from Literacy and spelling test) with the children presenting their homework, which was to present a short talk on a job done by someone they knew; so they had interviewed someone, and then had written their notes and many had got photos or props, and some had done a Powerpoint presentation. Move over Matt! These guys are 7 and 8! The quality of their presentations was fantastic, and they maintained the audience's attention. ( NOT that I am saying you don't achieve that, Matt, obv...)

There was a great range of jobs discussed, midwife ( someone's granny - 997 babies delivered over her career), 2 policemen ( 1 with a car, 1 in an aeroplane), a solicitor who works for the police, a manager of a golf club, a dental receptionist, someone who sells Motorola radios to the emergency services, a firefighter, a carpenter, an upholsterer, someone who owns a building company, someone's whole family make roof flashings and run their own company, a hairdresser, a plant hire company owner, a motorhome salesman, insurance for caravans sales person, someone who makes water purification plants for oil rigs, administrators for holiday company and debt collection agency, a pony riding instructor and ski instructor..... and on and on it went.

The great thing for me was that none of them sounded better than being a teacher! Good eh? I was thinking often as they talked that I could not be passionate enough about any of the things they mentioned to want to do it for more than a day. Or a minute in the case of the lead flashing or the water purification plant. I am very blessed to be doing work that I love and find fulfilling. And that is not just teaching, but my church work, and being a mum. That is the unpaid bit, but the best. H played 'Hanglady' in bed with her teddy. Her teddy is a she, so 'Hangman' is obviously not right for two liberated girls to play. Her teddy won, although the drawing of a hanging lady was nearly complete - close call, Teddy. H is the daughter I am very proud of for her use of gender neutral terms like 'firefighter', 'police officer' and her own one, 'snow person'. We do struggle to find an appropriate term for the bin men. Refuse operatives, I guess. I have never seen a female version, although Rachel in Fair Oak says they had a female refuse operative on their round. Fair Oak. Centre of the universe for women who want to push through that glass ceiling and make it in the refuse world.