Term starts

It was Thursday 11th and the school year had started. I had two parents who wanted me to teach their 14 year old GCSEs. They were afro caribbean parents who were very concerned about the bad influences and poor expectations that come as part of the deal in many schools in our area. We sat down and planned that I would teach him IGCSEs in Maths, English, History, Geography and Biology with perhaps ICT thrown in. He would be taught French elsewhere and would continue his sporting and cultural activities elsewhere. I was to teach him for 2 hours a day and set homework. This would mean much work to teach these subjects competently and to bring a Christian perspective to them. Two of my own boys and a girl from another family would come on a part time basis to some of these lessons.

In the meantime I had been put in touch with another Kosovan who heads up a community organisation. She phoned me and invited me to her office for about an hour to talk about teaching her son and some others.

On the Tuesday I went along to the home of one of the families (Sri Lankan) who had come to our meeting. The woman was a trainee teacher who was very impressed with the work she had seen us present and was really disappointed that we couldn't offer "full time" education to her three and a half year old. Anyhow I did a little informal assessment on him and introduced him to "Serving God with Language" our self produced introduction to phonics. I took details and after 40 minutes left. I said that if our plans developed I would get in touch.

The next day, Wednesday, saw Pauline came along to the interview with the Zimbabwean mother (one parent family). This doughty woman was thinking of driving the half an hour drive each day to bring her sons in for teaching but she was to think this over as it wouldn't be a full day. I told her that my hope was that I would be able ot teach a couple of children such as hers and then perhaps build up a small number and see if it was feasible to start something more substantial.