I haven’t written anything for here for a while. Trying to stay alive during a pandemic in the absence of confidence-inducing leadership has taken up quite a lot of energy. Apart from surviving, I’m also trying to write something longer than these pieces, that involves reading and understanding other people’s points of view. I’ve disappeared […]
All posts by: Angela Keane
Most days, I’ve seen newspaper and social media headlines about the impact of the pandemic on children and young people and arguments about how to make amends. Much of it is about how to help with an academic ‘catch-up’, with periodic reminders (usually initiated by the footballer Marcus Rashford) of the impact of the pandemic […]
Over the course of last week, after the last votes were cast in the 46th presidential election in the United States, many of us developed an increasingly problematic compulsion: a need to stay tuned to CNN’s rolling coverage, its interactive map and the graphics of votes cast that changed at glacial speed. For me, the […]
Do you remember results day? Most of us have experienced at least one day where our exam scores were made public. The current cohort of Year 11s and Years 13s have also had SATs results at age 7 and 11 and those coming through high school now will have passed or failed a phonics test […]
In one way or another, I have been involved in education for fifty years: as a pupil, a student, a lecturer, a parent, a PTA organiser, a primary and secondary governor, a trustee, a trust Chair and a school counsellor. From as early as I can remember I was aware that aware that people went […]
I. After this I’m writing the day after a second three week lockdown was announced here in the UK. While there was an inevitability that the first three week period would be extended, and for many it is a relief, it was another reminder that life has changed beyond recognition for most of us. In […]
Our kids are growing up and out: their peers matter more to them than their parents. In evolutionary terms, they’re attaching themselves to a tribe outside their biological family to gather the support they’ll need for their adult lives. As they can join more than one tribe, they can also reinvent themselves; at home, you […]
I have a Twitter habit. It’s the first place I check the news and where I browse to find current information and debates on my hobby horses of counselling, education and dogs doing surprisingly human things. I have curated a timeline of wry, gentle souls; they form an imagined community who broadly reflect back to […]
In the latest episode of Phoebe Waller Bridges’ astounding comedy Fleabag, (BBC1, 25th March) the eponymous heroine finds herself in one half a Catholic confessional. Reeling with grief for her mother and best friend and desire for the man on the other side of the confessional box, she utters a lament that sounded to […]
Today I received a call from my son while he was at school: he was feeling ill and wanted to come home. We went through the usual to-ing and fro-ing with the gatekeepers at school reception and my own maternal gatekeeper (‘is he really ill enough to stay off school?’) before he was allowed […]