u/BrightonTeacher

Hello,

I am a first time dad to a happy 5 month old and play with him every day for several hours on a weekend and an hour(ish) on a weekday.

Does anyone else sometimes find playtime...dull? Like I feel bad for even thinking it! This is meant to be the formative moments, the times I look back on with wistfull eyes.

Don't ge me wrong, I delight when he locks eyes with me and gives me a big gummy smile or I make him laugh by blowing raspberries on his chubby belly.

Instead it is the time when we do more "independent" play where I need to be there (toys abound, don't want him smothering himself with his fav crinkly blanket toy...thing) but he is largely on his own, doing his own baby stuff and just looking over to me now and again.

Should I be fully "present" in these moments? Marveling? Or am I ok to have a single wireless headphone in and listen to my podcast about WW2?

Hey team,

This is something that has been on my mind for a while and when I have spoken to people about it at work it has proved divisive. I'm just wondering what other people thought.

My school, like many others, has seen an explosion in: toilet passes, laptop passes etc.
I am in no way saying that these students should not have these provisions (even if they cannot always be provided due to funding). What I am saying is that I often wonder if some of these students (more laptop passes and other "lighter touch" interventions) are being let down by a system that priotises the short term "win" over a more sustainable approach that may be better for the kid in the long term.

For example: I have this one year 9 student who uses a laptop (starting this year) due to slow writing. This laptop is not able to do: circuit diagrams, organic molecule drawing etc. This student is now very reluctant to do these in class as they are not on the laptop. I know he CAN do them as I taught him in year 8!
This, of course, is only an anecdote but I have seen it repeated in different forms many times and they are becoming more common.

In a stretched system it must be very tempting to go "give them a toilet pass" instead of trying to deal with the actual issue (feeling overwhelmed for example). By going down the low friction route, is there a chance we are eroding resiliance and not setting them up for the "real world" (hate that term but you know what I mean!).

Another example is letting kids fail, but I won't repeat the argument as it is largely the same as above.