In PSHE today we were doing about seatbelts, why you need to wear them and so on. I showed the pupils a video of an advert that was on television a few years back. It starts with a woman driving a car with her kids in the back and the narrative goes something like 'Like most victim Julie knew her killer...' After a bit of justified paranoia about a white van behind being driven like all white vans are driven - three inches from the car in front - she crashes and her head gets smashed by her son who is thrown forward because he's the dopey sort and hasn't got his seatbelt on.
I got the pupils to write a newspaper article about seatbelts. I suggested they used the advert as though it were an actual story and base their work around it. So they wrote about Julie, but they struggled to think of a surname. It's hard to think of random names, there's always going to be some reason for picking a name. Some played it safe and stuck with 'Smith' but others were more adventurous and so we ended up with three articles about the tragic death of actress Julie Walters. I couldn't help but laugh and had to apologise to them and explain.
They thought the name sounded familiar.
I love this job sometimes.
