Abi

She's three and a half. I got her when I was in Year 6, so I was 11. And we were doing this play Alice in Wonderland, and I was just sitting backstage all the time reading about rabbits. I was really excited. And that was really fun. That was my favourite thing at primary school we ever did. I never really had a big part before, and now it would be my worst nightmare, but then, it was all I ever wanted. I was just so happy to have that part [the Queen of Hearts]. So she reminds me of that. And I have had her all through secondary school. I got her from a breeder. Now I am more against breeders because of all the animals in the re-homing places. But I wasn't really aware of that because I was eleven.

11.00 Religious Studies

10.35 break time.

This lesson starts with a 30-minute exam, in silence, focusing on ‘Christian ideas about the sanctity of life’. The teacher explains: ‘it is a good indicator to how well you will do in your actual exam', adding 'then I’ll show you some youtube to relax you, after’. As promised, the last 20 minutes of the lesson is a screening of the start of M Night Shymalan’s The Village. ‘It’s about reality…. If you know the twist don’t say it.'

As we leave I ask Abi how her day is going. 'Boring,' she says.

12.00 Lunch.

Outside on the edge of a playing field, Abi sits down with a group of mainly girls, about ten of them, although there are two boys, one of whom is playing on a Gameboy and rolling on the grass. Lots of them have phones out.

We pile out into the corridors, cross to the main building and go into the canteen. On one side there’s a long queue for snacks, opposite an even longer one in front of a screen, where students are putting money on their cards for the ‘cashless system’ of the school. Abi’s friends crowd around her. The noise is deafening.

You can read a plot summary here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Village_%282004_film%29

They talk about the taster days they have been to at local sixth form colleges. They seem to take pleasure in each other’s company, to talk to each other kindly. One girl has a badge saying ‘student leader’. She asks if she can plait her friend’s hair, the friend agrees and lays her head back as she starts to lift up thick handfuls of it…

12.40 Maths

09.40 Spanish

There are 16 students in the class: Abi sits on her own. The teacher begins by talking about some recently completed assessments: ‘you should be happy with what you have handed in’. She takes the register on the computer, students respond ‘si senora’. Then she tells them they are starting the topic of ‘the environment’, which comes up in the reading and listening paper. The blinds are lowered to darken the room as the lesson is played from the EdExcel course materials. Then students answer questions from the textbook. Towards the end of the lesson, noise levels are rising. ‘Boys and girls, shhh’. The teacher summarises: ‘you’ve learnt some vocabulary that might come in the exam, and some strategies, like elimination. I will get you some past papers on that topic’.

There are 17 students in the class, sitting in three rows. The topic is Loci and Construction (Revision). It’s very quiet. Students work away steadily, using protractors, compass, rubbers, pencils, sharpeners, etc. The teacher and a teaching assistant circulate and talk to students individually. Oe student engages the teacher in a discussion about whether she gets to have tea ‘whenever she wants’, which leads to talk about favourite tea and biscuit types. Towards the end of the lesson different students are assigned to make sure homework is given out, workbooks collected, equipment tidied away. They stand in silence to leave.

08.35 – 09.35: first lesson, English

13.40 tutor group

The lesson is in the library’s computer pool, which is arranged such that students either have their backs to each other, or have high screens between them to cut down on eye contact. The task is to write up two essays and to email them to the teacher at the end of the lesson. Abi is at the outermost edge of the pool, furthest from the teacher, and fairly effectively hidden from any eyes. In between typing, talking to the friend next to her and occasionally texting her mum, she picks at the holes in her tights.

Students pile downstairs to an ICT suite and sit down, each in front of a desktop computer. Very quickly the screens show a number game (‘one of the few that isn’t blocked’, Abi comments), BBC iplayer, BBC Sport, etc. The teacher is a regular supply teacher. She calls ‘Shh! Year 10s!’ and does a countdown from 10 for quiet. She reads out notices about the ‘right gear’ for their sixth form college taster days, who has detentions (these names are also written on the board), then tells them they are to do 'something useful this session, like homework, CVs, revision'. Abi gets on with the maths homework she’s just been set on conversion of units, using Google to find the answers. Next to her Emily is booking something online. She and Abi look at some Trip Advisor reviews of a tea shop: ‘cream tea at its best!’. A poster on the noticeboard highlights the dangers of posting personal information online.

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My notes here contrast students' banal / benign uses of the online, with the 'risk' discourses common in e-safety policy documents and practices. Andrew Hope has written insightfully about these, see for example: (2014) Schoolchildren, Governmentality and National E-safety Policy Discourse. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.

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08.00 - Walking to school

14.15 Last lesson of the day: science

A Day in the Life of

Introduction & Navigation Information

We queue up and wait for a few minutes before filing into the science lab. This is a big class – 28 students. The room is airy and cool. ‘OK year 10’ says the teacher. The task for today is preparing for a controlled assessment, an exam they have the following week. Abi and Emily finish their graphs and talk to each other, intently and face to face. Some students approach the teacher, who is sitting to the side of the whiteboard, to get their graphs checked. Abi gets out her iphone (later she tells me she is listening to My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade - a concept album about death and revenge). The teacher announces (not very insistently or loudly) that she is going to run through the experiment with them again and that they can come and watch it if they like. About half the class do gather round the long front bench, the rest are wandering around, chatting, flipping each other with rulers. There's a Friday feeling about this lesson!

This multimedia document represents a 'day in the life' of Abi (aged 15 years) and was recorded on Friday 27th June 2014. The day was recorded by a researcher as part of the 'Face 2 Face' project, using a range of sound, visual and written materials. Abi's name and other personal details about her life have been anonymised.

'Face 2 Face' is an ESRC funded research project (2013-14), jointly organised by the Universities of Sussex, Brighton and the Open University. You can find out more about the project here:

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/esw/circy/research/currentresearch/face2face

Abi and her friend Emily leave the house just after 8 to walk to school, talking together quietly and intimately all the way. It’s a beautiful summer day, warm and sunny. There is the sound of birdsong, wood pigeons cooing. We go down paths with old, high walls on either side, through a covered market where fresh fish are being unloaded, over a railway bridge. Gradually groups of students converge and join forces, although there is little greeting or acknowledgement of each other. The sound of a computer game on a mobile phone breaks the general quietness. ‘Finn!’ pleads a boy, ‘let me have a go!’

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Navigation information:

You can explore this multimedia document either in 'presentation' mode - which presents a chronological account of the young person's day - or by moving around the document by scrolling and zooming with your trackpad or touchscreen.

You can interact with multimedia content along the way by zooming in on pictures and playing video content. Audio clips (where available) will play automatically on each slide.

Key:

Abi

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15.15 Walking home from school

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Abi’s route home is slightly different from the morning as she has to pick up her brother Dylan from primary school. He leaves the school by himself but isn’t allowed to cross the busy road by himself so has to wait until she comes. When we see him, he waves and is about to step into the road. Abi turns to me and says ‘you see why he can’t come home by himself!’

15.45 Home / work

Once home, they head for the kitchen and get drinks. Dylan gets a laptop, kicks off his shoes, sits on the sofa and starts playing Minecraft. He is ‘talking’ to his Minecraft friend, lots of typing. He has two loom band bracelets, which he says he was given rather than made.

Abi gets out her science revision. She scribbles in silence for a while.

16.00 Home / play

There is a strange scratching noise in the living room; Abi has been looking after two rats all week for a friend of hers, they are in a big cage at one end of the room. Abi feeds them, lets one of them sit on her shoulders for a bit, then gets out her iphone. She’s playing Quiz Up, answering questions on 1 Direction against an unknown opponent, ‘a random person’, but losing - ‘she knows so much!’.

17.00 Waiting for teatime

Both Dylan and Abi are on different sofas now. Two pairs of shoes in the middle of the room.

Someone rings Abi on her phone – I guess, and ask her if, it's her mum, she says yes and that she’s the only one who rings her, her friends always send texts.

Eventually her mum arrives home and I leave them to their evening.

.... or maybe the iPad

For 'her present and her past' Abi chose her pet rabbit:

Cause like everything I do is on here. Photos, Twitter, emails, videos, saved pieces of writing, everything really. In Year 7, I had a pink laptop, but it broke, I just decided to get an iPad… cause they are like really amazing. I am so protective of my iPad. It is ridiculous, when my friends come round they are like, “Can I have a go?” and I am just really paranoid about it. Unless I have like checked beforehand that there is nothing like embarrassing or something. Now I am trying to have it for about an hour when I get back from school, and then I will try and do like revision because (.) we have just got to be constantly revising (laughs). And I just wasn’t revising enough so… I try to limit it to an hour after school.

Listen to Name talk about...

Listen to Abi's rabbit munching food!

Abi's

Favourite Things

Title

One Direction

Text:

"Quote."

You can do the present, but the future is really difficult. Maybe something to do with One Direction...

Abi has been interested in One Direction since February 2011.

I heard a couple of their songs, and then I started watching interviews on YouTube. I can’t find any interviews now that I have not seen. Then, I got Twitter. And then there are so many people that are like Fangirling about it. So when you talk to people who are like that too, you are just like more and more obsessed … I followed One Direction in all their separate accounts at first because I didn’t really know how to use Twitter and then if something got re-tweeted I would be like, ‘oh they look good’, and then I would follow them, and now I am following hundreds (laugh). I think it is Twitter that does it. Because you might like something, but then if you go on Twitter it is just mad because everyone else is on there liking it loads, and tweeting pictures, keeping you constantly up to date. So you just get like obsessed with it, you constantly know where they are, and stuff.