No more Mr Nice Guy

Mad panic, lesson in an hour, I print sheet after sheet of poems and story extracts and reading comprehensions and grammar exercises. I realise I have almost used up all the materials on BBC Bitesize as well as all my paper and ink and start to get into a frenzy. Do I REALLY have enough material to keep a lesson of two hours going? Can I honestly say I have prepared enough to earn my much needed £25?

When I arrive however it turns out the agenda has been set. The concerned pregnant mother wants her children to drastically improve their punctuation and grammar. So it’s away with compliments and free open discussions and on with a drastic critique of every word, sentence and paragraph written in their last homework I commissioned, as well as every phrase they utter. In the two hour lesson we went through a mere three pieces of homework.

Instead of a nice tick and a few useful comments for improvement, I initiated formative assessment in one devastating swoop. Far from making a few tentative suggestions for future essays, I massacred the work of my two lovely pupils, effectively making them rewrite it in its entirety.

They endured me with my cruellest persona yet: NO you are not allowed to use good as an adjective – it does not MEAN anything! Why are you repeating yourself? Did you really think that sentence was interesting or meaningful? Do NOT write ‘I think that’ write ‘It IS the case that’, Your younger brother does not write like that! REPETITION. That word is pointless, as is the sentence, in fact cross out the entire paragraph! What could you have written instead? Is that sentence logical? Really?!

It was rather a lot of fun and required absolutely no preparation, it even had the added bonus of making me feel I was genuinely teaching them something useful. Indeed, this style of lesson radically reduces lesson planning to as little as a minute – I decide what insane amount of homework I will give them for discussion next week. At the moment I seem to have a backlog of undissected homework, so I guess I can sit back and relax.

My fear is simply that too much criticism demotivates and demoralizes. I’m also dubious about the usefulness of the pupils writing down verbatim all the improvements I suggest. They need to think for themselves and be encouraged to do so. At the end of the day, though, I must do what I am told by the mother and wage payer. Who knows, maybe the kids will improve at a crazy rate. No more Mr Nice Guy.

Life as a Parliamentary Intern

Admittedly its glamorous: your pass gives you unfettered freedom to walk around the beautiful Parliamentary estate, bump into MPs you may or not recognise off the telly and occasionally go on trips to see the Olympic stadium or to glamorous events like the Lib Dem Arts Launch with such notables as Sally Phillips from Smack the Pony, Richard Dawkins and famous directors.

Yet day to day life revolves around a stuffy fifth floor office, choc a bloc with documents, not enough space and a tiny TV showing Parliament News 24/7 or Euronews for variation.

It wouldn't be too bad, but the room is like a sauna. This is the result of efficient workmen, who when told we wanted new windows to keep the rain out, decided it would be a fantastic idea to glue them shut instead. Well, it solved the rain problem, but it also meant we were unable to get fresh air and respite from the heat. Fun things to do in the attic-like office are look out of the window at Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and the like and watch the motorbike protesters, or the woman who always seems to have a megaphone.

Every day there seems to be a new protest, and whilst some protesters are clearly crazy, many have a valid reason to complain, and so it annoys me when my office make disparaging comments about them. Protesters are there to be noticed and listened to, they are meant to annoy in fact, and when people miss that point, it is very frustrating.

No one knows better than a Parliamentary intern how far 'appropriate action' will get you. Writing to Ministers, nine times out of ten, they will reply, 'Thank you for your letter informing me about your constituent's concerns. We understand their concerns and already have this regulation in place which actually makes everything OK and means their point is invalid. I hope this is helpful'. Well surprisingly, no it bloody isn't.

Take another form of daily work: telling the MP which EDMs to sign, sort of mini petitions ranging from This House shows our respects to servicemen who died in the war, to This House urges the Government to stop battery farming, to This House speaks out against Christian persecution in Mosul. Potentially helpful, but on average about 10 MPs sign each one, with about 10 new ones being written every day, and considering there are 647 MPs, let alone Lords, the chances of an EDM being noticed are pretty slim.

Similarly, tabling Parliamentary Questions, whether oral or written, is a daily job. We write maybe 10 a day, the MP has to OK them, then we wait for the Minister to reply. This is admittedly quicker than writing them a letter, but the answer is generally the same. They will provide statistics begrudgingly, but they will not say: Yes, I see our actions were wrong and shall remedy this asap.

Despite most answers to Parliamentary Questions being a few lines or seconds long, they cost a staggering amount of money according to Parliament's website. A written question is said to cost £154 on average, whilst an oral question costs an outrageous £425. How on earth can this be justified?

So do I end the day feeling fulfilled and glamorous or frustrated and small? All I can do is hope that in small way my actions are subtly encouraging the Government Ministers they need to change their actions and listen to the needs of the people. If this is not the case, maybe I'd be better off joining the protesters.