I’ve been on my workshop weekend, which was brilliant and the girls had a wonderful time with DH, his brother and his brother’s girlfriend.  I’m tired out though - concentrating for long periods of time is very tiring in a completely different way to the way caring for two children is.  This morning I’m attending a coffee morning for the mums on the antenatal course I’ll be providing the bfing evening for, then this afternoon (DH’s day off today, btw), I’ll be working hard on planning an exercise I vaguely thought up during the workshop and needs rather a lot of work on it to make it do-able.  I’m planning to practice it at my tutorial on Thursday evening, so that I can make any changes before the big day (which is next Tuesday).  On Thursday I’ll be doing more class-planning, and on Sunday (the only other day I have a chance to work on things), I’ll be practicing the exercises on my guinea-pigs (DH, my cousin and my parents!).  Then on Tuesday it will be last minute changes and that evening…eek!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  And it’s not all over after that!  I’ve got a 3000 word assignment to write based on how it all went after I’ve done it.  So lots and lots of work to do over the next couple of weeks but, and it’s a but with a capital B, once I’ve handed that essay in THAT IS IT!  MY COURSEWORK WILL ALL BE FINISHED!!!! 

To change the subject completely:  Carlotta has blogged about this particular ‘news’ item - internet schools.  Now I’m not anti-tv or anti-computer - I’d prefer the girls not to spend a lot of time in front of screens, but we try to be non-coercive in our household so they watch/play when they want to in general (actually, they don’t really ask for either very much and have worked out for themselves a very acceptable level (to most parents, I imagine) of screen-time).  But it really does worry me that these internet school-children are spending so much time in front of the computer - not because of it being a screen, or the lack of exercise (although those are reasons enough!), but because of the very well-documented effect on backs, wrists, necks, eyes, heads etc. of long-term computer work.  This is usually talked about with reference to adults, who choose to do a job that involves a lot of computer time, and whose bodies are fully formed.  Children’s backs are not fully formed, nor are any other part of their bodies - won’t the children who ‘attend’ this school grow up with serious back problems, short-sightedness, wrist problems, chronic headaches?  And, worse than that, these children don’t get to choose to sit in front of the computer for hours on end, so they don’t have the chance to listen to their own bodies and do what their bodies are telling them.  If my back/head/wrist hurts at the computer, I assume it’s telling me to take a break and I do.  If I were at work, I’d go to Occupational Health, or get another job.  If you’re an internet-school child you don’t have a choice and that really concerns me.

HT: Carlotta