Jasmine

11:00am - Morning break

We drift back into the common room for morning break. Jasmine's friend goes straight to the computer and puts on more videos on You Tube. She laughs loudly at the 'fails'. The other students watch quietly. Most of them seem to have seen the series of clips before before but they laugh anyway.

10:03am - Lesson one: Business and communication skills

11:05am - Back in the classroom

Methodology Moment: I wrote down the name and link to the You Tube clip the students were watching but it has now been removed 'because its content violated YouTube's Terms of Service'.

Jasmine and three other girls go into a small classroom lined with computers. With their teacher they plan a trip to a nearby retail park and plan the work they will do today. Each student logs on to a computer to do research about the local retailers they will shortly be visiting and researching.

Jasmine works quickly, unsupervised. Another student joins the group and is assisted by the teacher. The room is very quiet. There is only the sound of the keyboards and occasional, relaxed conversation.

Jasmine's second lesson of the day is English. We return to the computer suite and the same teacher who taught the first lesson. She hands out exercise books and takes the group through a series of reading and comprehension exercises.

Jasmine is quick to answer the teacher's questions at the beginning of the lesson but starts to feel increasingly unwell. By 11.35am Jasmine is setting motionless with her head on the desk and her hood up.

09:50am - Waiting for school to start

11:50am - Art lesson

We drift next door for the third lesson of the day. The art teacher gathers the group around a central table and explains that the group are going to make origami boxes.

Two students work quietly on their own projects. The other three are all given a piece of brightly coloured paper and shown how to make an origami box and a lid.

They help each other to make more boxes with different paper. Jasmine chooses paper to make a box and a lid for someone's birthday present. She takes it home with her at the end of the day.

Jasmine heads to the kitchen opposite the nursery. She leaves her lunch in the fridge and starts eating the birthday cake. Next door is the common room where her friend is using the computer to look at you tube clips whilst eating her lunch for breakfast.

There are other students and staff milling around. Someone puts the projector on so we can watch the you tube videos on the big screen. At 10am a teacher comes in and says 'It's time' and starts taking the register. The youtube clip is still playing in the background.

09:40am - Arriving at school

12:30pm - Lunch time

It's lunch time and Jasmine goes to the kitchen to heat up the food her foster carer made in the microwave. She sits down to eat in the common room where her friend L. is trying to get a Beyonce cd to play on the computer.

The cd won't play so we return to watching You Tube clips. These are chosen by L. who searches for 'funny' things to play. Jasmine and a few other students watch, laugh and occasionally comment. One young woman from Jasmine's class sits on the other side of the room reading a book. This continues until a teacher comes in to start the afternoon sessions.

At 9.10 there is a knock at the door and Jasmine is delighted to see that it is her favourite cab driver who used to take her to school every day. We pile into the car and Jasmine's foster carer gives her a large plate of food and piece of birthday cake to take with her to school.

When we arrive at school Jasmine's friend is getting out of a cab in front and putting her baby into a buggy. We walk into school together chatting and head straight to the nursery so that Jasmine and her friend can settle in their daughters before the school day starts.

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Methodology Moment: When I asked the nursery staff if I could take a photo of the nursery room I was told that there were too many pictures and photos of the babies around the room. They are only able to take photos of the babies once the mothers have signed permission forms.

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08:38am - Getting ready for school

1:25pm - Science lesson

A Day in the Life of

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It's Friday morning and Jasmine is getting herself and her 6 month old daughter Rhea ready for school. Jasmine is in the kitchen preparing Rhea's bottles whilst Rhea sits in her baby chair in the living room, screaming. Jasmine tells me that Rhea is teething and soothes her with a cuddle.

As we wait for the cab to arrive to take us to school Rhea becomes unsettled. Jasmine uses the Net Flix app on her phone to play children's television programme Bubble Guppies for Rhea.

Jasmine reluctantly heads to the science classroom. The students are part way through a controlled assessment and have to agree a method for their group experiment.

The teacher spends the first 15 minutes introducing the lesson and encouraging the students to play around with the equipment. The room is very quiet. Jasmine plays absentmindedly on her tablet and looks fed up.

Jasmine

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2:32pm - Gym

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After 20 minutes of hanging around Jasmine's class leave the school premises and walk through the adjacent college to use the college gym.

The students warm up on the gym machines. One of the teachers puts on a radio. The room is noisy and relaxed.

The female teacher who took the art lesson this morning leads Jasmine and another young woman through a set of exercises on the mats. The male teacher calls out to the young men using the machines whilst he boxes first with Jasmine's friend L. and then with Jasmine.

Jasmine is lively and energetic - a fast boxer.

4:06pm - After school

The school day finishes at 3.15pm. Jasmine walks back from the college gym to the school premises to collect Rhea and her belongings. There is another cab waiting to take us home.

When we arrived home just after 4pm Jasmine's foster carers are outside trying to get a mattress to fit in the back of their car. Inside two of their grandchildren and one of their sons are watching television. We join them and sit on the sofa.

Jasmine plays with Rhea's feet, takes a selfie of her and chats to her foster carer and the boys. After a while they all leave the room leaving Jasmine, Rhea and I watching television. Jasmine's phone rings and I decide to leave. Jasmine is looking forward to a bath before going to babysit for her sister.

From the present: Lipstick and earrings

From the past: a stuffed unicorn

Jasmine doesn’t have a favourite thing right now (apart from her daughter!). She chose two things that she loves and uses a lot - a new lipstick and a pair of her sister’s earrings.

"I don’t really have a favourite thing and they’re my most recent things that I’ve like fallen in love.…I reckon these are gonna be my favourite things for a while….lipstick lasts forever (laughs)!"

Jasmine's favourite thing from the past is a stuffed unicorn that her mum gave to her when she was 3. She says its particularly important to her because her mum gave it to her and because she didn't have many things when she was younger.

"[It’s] at my old house…‘cause umm I couldn’t find it for like over a year. And like I just kind of gave up like ‘oh I can’t find it’. And then my mum like came upstairs with it I was like “oh my gosh” I think I was still like 13. Ha, I was so happy!...But [my mum] doesn’t even live there any more so she’s taken all the stuff so my mum most probably has it."

Listen to Jasmine talk about her new lipstick!

Listen to Jasmine talking about her favourite thing from the past.

Jasmine's

Favourite Things

Changing over time: make up

Jasmine's room

A year ago Jasmine's favourite thing was her liquid eyeliner, but she doesn't wear it much anymore. Jasmine imagines that in the future she will still be wearing earrings and makeup but she isn't sure what her favourite thing will be.

"If I picture myself when I’m older, I do picture myself earrings, lipstick, all that stuff. But I think it’s because I never used to wear earrings all the time, I got my ears pierced for my birthday when I was 10, but then one ear kept closing up, so I just haven’t been wearing earrings. And I never used to wear lipstick, I used to literally just wear a bit of bronzer and some eyeliner.

Listen to Jasmine talking about her favourite thing from one year ago.