The Paroking Diaries - Blog 10: The Midas Touch and Rotting Fish
The ‘against all odds’ daughter is on King Midas and the Golden Touch. In this Greek blockbuster – King Midas is granted a favour in return for helping the ill and malnourished satyr that is half-man and half-goat. He wishes that everything he touches turns to gold; he has probably been hanging out with Rishi Sunak too much. I consider, however, that he may not be wishing for a pony like the ‘against all odds’ daughter does at every birthday, only to be disappointed, because it is an oddity to spend all of your time with creatures with furry legs, but whatever floats your boat in lockdown.
The ‘against all odds’ daughter reads the story aloud in between bouts of pausing and stumbling over tricky words not to mention losing her place and refusing to use a good old fashioned finger to keep track because apparently this has to be done now with a coloured overlay with a pink hue as fingers are redundant in modern teaching techniques. She repeatedly says ‘Minus’ instead of ‘Midas’ which is ironic considering that when we see the word ‘minus’ in the context of primary school subtraction she claims she knows very little about the process. She has demanded two hot chocolates and a comfort break at this point which involves some play dough that unusually wasn’t so hard it could be hurled at the wall and, makes a cup and saucer. I wish it was a glass to pour G&T into because I need one right now, even though it is only 10.30 am. She then forgets to go to the loo which was the original request for the break in the first place, but I expect she’ll save that as an excuse in about five minutes time to stop work.
The ‘middle child’ is reading Michael Morpurgo’s, Private Peaceful, whilst eating two boiled eggs. He looks up from his protein fix and says, “Midas,” (at least someone can pronounce it). “I have a skin on Fortnite which turns everything into gold. I’m trying to get to level 140 because then it will be fully gold.” The ‘teenager’ who has headphones on and is doing equations with a bored looking teacher says, “Yep my skin is fully gold already.” He adds, “See I told you that Fortnite is educational mum because it is based on Greek myths,” “Well I say, Epic Games may have weaved in some teaching point but their spelling leaves a lot to be desired because you don’t spell a two week period like that – it’s FORTNIGHT not FORTNITE.” The ‘teenager’ rolls his eyes and says, “Why do you have to make English so perfect.”
The ‘middle child’ has moved onto science. “Is copper sulphate reversible?” I have no idea and the ‘against all odds daughter’ is distracting me by rubbing her fingers forwards and backwards across her butterfly sequin top. My pupils are being dazzled with flickering lights sending me into some kind of trance that is fixating my mind on the playdough cup in front of me whilst my brain is working overtime wondering about why everything today is about transformation when change is outlawed currently as we relive a series of groundhog days. I ask Alexa because she has become my best homeschooling friend and is clearly the genius that I am not. She declares it is reversible and the ‘middle child’ responds ‘yes’ into the text box. He also likes Alexa because it means his brain doesn’t even have to get the cogwheels started.
The ’against all odds’ daughter looks at the comments made to the fish fossil exercise in which she must order the sequence of events from the fish dying to being immortalised in stone. She lost interest after the fish sank to the bottom of the water and since there were eight stages to label, I end up completing it because I am out of energy and my eyes are finding it hard to re-focus. The teacher responds with a generic feel good, ‘well done’ but comments that stages six and seven have been mixed up so could she have another look at it. I’m feeling a bit of a failure at primary school education because my mark for the ‘middle child’s’ essay on the feelings between the two brothers in Private Peaceful was also miserable and sent back with a comment from the teacher to say that he should stick to the strategy that they had learnt in class: point, evidence and explain (PEE) and not go off on some tangent that is not recognisable. I blame it on an inner fear to PEE publicly especially at school, it just feels ill-mannered. Yet at the same time I don’t remember at any point the ‘middle child’ saying that my attempt at his essay was way offline from what they were doing in class. Although to be fair he was face down in a Tik Tok video whilst I was sweating over his work when the nod of affirmation came. I have now failed year three science and year six English although I have a degree – so go figure.
Still it’s 4pm and time for the ‘against all odds’ girl to join in her weekly modern tap dance lesson with the ray of sunshine that is Miss G – she is the Mary Poppins of Essex with pink hair and the sunniest of dispositions so that when she asks the girls how the homeschooling is going and the answer should be, “Absolutely terrible and all we do is argue and not do the work,” the girls reply in a sweet chorus, “Great.” She is the Midas of teaching and I wonder if I can employ her permanently so that the ‘against all odds’ girl can look at her in that adoring way that contrasts with the venom that normally accompanies our dalliances with the core subjects.