Today’s otter comes via Hilary Chambers on flickr.
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: Life
Soggy here, innit? 
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
Getting out the ‘yes’ 
100 books by women in 2016 
Hoyden About Town 
Over the last few months, mr tog and I have been quietly catching up on various films we never got around to seeing over the last few decades for one reason or another. This has mostly been a pleasurable exercise. However, I want 15 minutes of my life back from Jean-Luc Godard, because that’s how long we endured his King Lear before deciding that we couldn’t wait any longer for some sort of narrative to start unfolding. At 15 minutes in we hadn’t yet seen a glimpse of Peter Sellers even, but we just couldn’t be bothered.
Father’s Day: do not want.
I’ve got a uni assessment and also a deadline tomorrow, so this is going to be a slightly daunting day all up.
Arwen from “Raising my Boychick” has welcomed her second baby.
Via twitter.
Congratulations on the safe arrival of you baby, Arwen.
*your*
Congratulations Arwen!
testing testing – I had some trouble posting a comment in another thread this morning.
Oh well, that one worked fine.
I saw otters at the zoo yesterday! They were lovely.
In other news, I am job hunting. It is horrible.
In Bettina “Agony” Arndt’s latest nonsense, she opines “”The strong male libido remains, even if the inner goat now must remain firmly tethered.” Behold, this strong male is wearing his inner goat on the outside… and it’s squee-rific!
Via Boganette, of course.
My lovely eldest daughter, aged 12, nearly 13, she who was speaking in full sentences at two years old (literally – the day after her second birthday she said, “No Mummy. No nappies today. Today I wear purple knickers.”), who has read all of Jane Austen, and all of Colleen McCullough’s First Man in Rome series, in the space of about three weeks, who can come up with an analysis of a book she has just read of this order – “Hmmm…. it was okay, but really, it just had a plot for the sake of having a plot. It didn’t really have a story to be told.”, who noted concerns about confirmation bias in her science fair project (not in those words, but that was the concept), who does algebra in her head… you get the picture. Bright girl. Not super, gifted bright, but very bright indeed.
Today, on the way to school, she commented that she was doing a workshop on scriptwriting and drama, which she was looking forward to, but she had really wanted to do the workshop on dramatic monologues, but that was for “the bright girls.”
I think that’s coming from her classroom teacher, who has favourites. She’s a very straight teacher, which has its advantages, but she sure as hell is doing something wrong when it comes to my daughter. Ordinarily I would say that it doesn’t matter too much, except that my daughter seems to really believe this about herself. And that attitude sure as hell isn’t coming from us. Also, this is not the only incident of this ilk… there’s been a string of things which has me worried. On top of this, she’s sitting entrance tests for the local high school on Friday (state school, non-selective, but they do offer streamed classes for some students). Selection into those streamed classes is based on results in the entrance tests, and the child’s Year 8 [last year in primary / intermediate school here in NZ (13 years, Year 13 in NZ = Year 12 in Oz)] evaluation. Written by their Year 8 classroom teacher.
I’ve made an appointment to see the principal tomorrow.
Good luck Deborah, it does sound like something is seriously awry there. Take some of your daughter’s writings in with you. I certainly wasn’t writing anything like she does in Yr 8 and I was top of my class *nerd*.
Oh Deborah… I’m going to email you about this.
First impression of the Julia/Tim sitcom on ABC – super superficial. Facile, I think, is the word.
P.S.. Deborah – didn’t mean to not engage with your current problem, just too busy WTFing about it.
How dare anybody make your obviously bright daughter feel unbright. I understand limited resources and place limitations for various workshops, but surely there’s a way to manage that without making obviously clever girls feel like they’ve somehow managed to fail to make the cut on a hard-bright classification.
Actually, I don’t think that selection into the various workshops was based on bright or not. I think that’s my daughter’s perception of it, rather the reality, but the very fact that she has that perception of herself speaks volumes. And that’s what I need to talk to the principal about. Unfortunately, the appointment for today has been cancelled (bereavement leave, and it’s entirely right and proper that the principal should take the leave), but I have just for once been somewhat insistent on getting a fresh appointment scheduled as soon as possible, and I’ve talked about the timelines with principal’s secretary.
I think my daughter will do well no matter what, but I do want to work on this bright / not bright thing. Girls and women have enough trouble realising that they are good enough already, without extra helpings from teachers.
@tt, no worries re engaging or not! I don’t expect it, nor have I any right to expect it. However I am deeply appreciative of having this space in which to write about something that’s upsetting or worrying me. I didn’t want to put this on my own blog, because my daughter and some of her friends read it, and I couldn’t Facebook it for the same reasons. It’s so good to be able to come here and share my worries with a community of thoughtful women and men.