EDTutor

I was your son! I was brought up vegan, so my mam has a litany of recipes...apparently my fave when tiny was cashew nut custard with mashed banana (fab for protein)...things've moved on a lot since I was young, too, and there are a lot of quick and easy non-dairy alternatives out there...Provamel do loads of brilliant soya products, inc. vegan yoghurts and naturally flavoured soya milk. In terms of bigger meals, ou can do pretty much anything with tofu - the pre-marinaded stuff with sesame seeds is lovely, and you can marinade your own in soy sauce and peanut butter too. Cubes of this with Thai-style veg or stir fry is delicious. Nut butters generally are great for protein injections (almond and cashew butters are particularly lovely), as is anything made with lentils. Halva is good for treats. Dried apple rings, mango etc are good for snacks and as he gets older Whizzers (the vegan alternative to Smarties) and any carob product will satisfy a sweet tooth. Hope this helps! L x

This is a long answer, though by no means a comprehensive one, which I hope goes some way to answering the original question as well as some of the points raised here; I also believe and hope it is what the teaching profession deserves. Education will always be one of any state's top priorities for obvious reasons, and therefore teachers have historically been on the front line of some of the most ill-informed ideological policies in recent political history. One example would be the decision of the last government to drastically cut funding for special schools, based on the woefully misinformed notion that every child should have the same education. This coincided with the late 90s/early 00s idea of doing away with streaming for the same reason. The results, from a state secondary pupil's perspective (I was taught GCSE English alongside kids who could not read), were predictable: disengagement from pupils of all abilities, isolation of those in the year with Downs and severe learning difficulties, visible crushing of teachers' morale. Teachers also had their autonomy curtailed by a restrictive curriculum and unrealistic targets. Schools were threatened with failure and funding cuts if they did not achieve a 30% A-C pass rate at GCSE, so teachers were 'encouraged' not to educate, but to teach children to pass exams. At the same time, knowing that their targets were farcical, the government (as any fool with eyes can tell) lowered examination standards to meet such targets. And so nobody won. Leaving aside the damaging effects this had on the pupils, teachers were categorically disempowed by these measures. Teaching is a PROFESSION - it demands a two degrees and two years of training to attain qualified teacher status; the hours are long, the work is hard, you have to be clever, quick, resilient and bloody talented to do it. Teachers are, in the main, inspired and inspiring people who WANT to teach. They want to pass on not only their love and passion of their subject but to help youhg people find their way in an increasingly hostile world. Not only are they not encouraged in their job, they are berated and belittled at every turn - berated for failing to meet laughable targets and for having an easier life than those in the private sector (most teachers I know work 6 days a week and spend the 'holidays' preparing for term)and belittled by those that think it's somehow a second-rate profession and do not give them the trust and autonomy they deserve to do the job they trained to do. This situation has only got worse. The pensions debate concides with the announcement that schools must now up their pass rate to 50% or face takeover by neighbouring academies. The politics behind this are laughably transparent. Not only does it attempt to prop up the controversial academy system, it reinforces just how out of touch the government are with the average person, let alone the average school. As with many aspects of government, the problem with this policy is self-evident: only an upper middle-class person in power could imagine such a figure being attainable and indeed desireable for the majority. A microscopic percentage of the Houses of Parliament come from a world which has any understanding of a hand-to-mouth existence, or of issues (whisper it) more pressing than a GCSE. A good friend of mine and one of the most inspirational and intelligent people I know works at a school she and her colleagues pulled out every stop for in order to win its current 'Satisfactory' OFSTED rating. She deals on a daily basis with oversized classes, the majority of whom do not have English as a first language and whose proximity to the poverty line/home lives/imminent threat of deportation weigh somewhat heavier on their minds than Carol Ann Duffy. But she and her colleagues, like the teachers all over the country striking on 30th June, in the face of all of this, they still teach. They still turn up and give their classes everything they possibly can. That, in answer to an earlier post, is where the ethics of the teaching profession have their root. As mentioned, this is by no means comprehensive, but it does cover some of the reasons I support teachers, and not just in their strike action this month. Politics be damned: let teachers do their job, and stop using them by turns as scapegoats for ideological ends.

Dan Luker (the cheery bearded chap with the glasses behind the bar at the EDT) is a wonderful portrait photographer - some of you may have seen his work displayed at the EDT kids' club Babble & Squeek on a Friday morning. He gets amazing, natural, personalised shots and is so unbelievably good with children - he takes time to play with them and gain their trust before he starts shooting and it really shows - take a look here: http://danlukerphoto.wordpress.com and also here at his FB page: http://en-gb.facebook.com/pages/Dan-Luker-Photography/175513499163628?sk=photos#!/pages/Dan-Luker-Photography/175513499163628?sk=photos. I've also PM'd this over to you.