It was year eight parents' evening on Thursday night. I'm feeling a bit of a dab hand at these things now. A couple of years ago and I'd have butterflies having a rave my stomach, but now it's much more natural. This time I'd been warned that one of the parent's was quite full on and could be a bit of a problem. Her son's dyslexic and she's incredibly keen for him to do well and receieve the correct support. They say forewarned is forearmed so I braced myself.

When she turned up on the evening it was all completely fine and I wondered what the fuss was about. She seemed a perfectly nice lady, slightly manic perhaps, but I'd been expecting some sort of malevolent tyrant, possibly wearing a Viking helment. Actually I found her strangely attractive.

It was a useful conversation as she told me some ways her son's other teachers had made work more accesible for him. He struggles to keep track of the question he is on if working from a sheet so his maths teacher last year wrote the homework questions actually in his book. A tactic she herself uses when he does homework is placing a rubber under the question he should be working from.

It's shocking how sometimes as teachers we don't know enough about how to help our pupils be successful. But no way am I writing every pupil's homework questions in their book.