Continuing the weekend aka not working now

It's just gone 8pm and I am contemplating an early night. I'm pretty tired and the thought of creating my NQT folder isn't that appealing. I have fourteen teaching days to go. FOURTEEN! How crazy is that?! I don't know where the time has gone. I guess though that by the time those 14 days are up this NQT folder needs to exist. Hmmm. It's pretty annoying that the teaching standards changed this year - it means that we can't just use the folder we made last year, with a few changes here and there. Oh well, I suppose I must have made some progress and development this year...

I went to Brussels with X this last weekend and it was lovely. I love Belgian beer and waffles and mussels and chocolate. Food generally. I also like walking around and sleeping in the sun in the park and doing cultural stuff and lying in bed and generally being away, it's ace. My bro went to Glastonbury and said it was wicked so I am adding that to my list of things to do.

Today I did some research, after visiting La Musee des Beaux-Arts, on the crazy dude that is Brueghel. I went to see his Fall of Icarus but was then completely captivated and freaked out by The Fall of the Rebel Angels, which is too bizarre for me to want to post up here. I also did some research on croquet, which I need to write up in the BoK. Really I should have been working on various folders/presentations etc, but I couldn't be worrying about that what with all the fun stuff to. I did however prepare for the Y12 taster lesson on Sociology I'm teaching tomorrow, using this website as my inspiration. Who knew so many movies had a sociological element?

In other news the tutor group were good today despite lots of behaviour drama. R is back from her second 3 day exclusion and immediately playing up. A is 5 days on blue report still (the pre/post exclusion report). C is being excluded from tomorrow, and K is shortly to be excluded. I am convinced my form has had more exclusions/kids leaving than any other. We have two kids transferred in from other forms now though, so the numbers aren't too low (18 in the class on a good day).

That's pretty much it for now, except this rather dramatic horoscope:

Satisfying as it’s been to deal with unsettling issues and personal dilemmas you thought you’d just have to live with, you’ll be relieved to learn that Tuesday’s move by Mars into Virgo ends this demanding cycle. What you’ve learnt while you’ve delved into these tricky situations since early May will prove handy when you must make swift decisions. True, it won’t be until you consider your reactions in retrospect that you’ll realise just how much you’ve changed. Note these developments, since they will fuel the lively discussions — and occasional disagreements — that end this week and begin the next. As far out as what’s being considered seems at first, within days those ideas could become solid plans.

Midday Blog

I just read this article about "The Death of Pleasure Blogging" and so thought I'd get on here and ramble a bit.

It's the middle of a school day but today I teach lesson 1 and lesson 5, meaning the middle of the day could be usefully spent catching up on marking etc. or even more usefully spent in the park. Which is what we did. Went to the park and chatted and ate sweets and sat in the sun. Now I feel super chilled and in no way refreshed to work. Mmm, there's something about feeling my bare feet on the grass and my face warmed by the sun that is so pleasing.

I have also read this poem by WH Auden and the Breughel painting too, to feel sad, and then tried to memorise this piece by Simon Patterson, to make me feel inspired. This is exactly the kind of art a Virgo would produce. I suspect anyway.

Lunchtime, yeah!

Three Mondays to go!

Another Monday down. Three more Mondays of term left. Hopefully in the future I will never have to "work" on a Monday again.

Weekend was lovely, as usual. Went to Oxford, and also spent lots of time with X, lovely. Legs are very achey after a pretty hard-core gym session, but it was worth it for an excellent night's sleep last night.

Oddly felt a bit restless during the day, but made up for it after my nap in the afternoon, being super-productive marking and writing complaint letters-wise, giving me lots of time to work on the BoK and also look up some WWOOF-ing in the summer. Have decided I want to work at a rural educational centre, so will hopefully learn some agriculture and also work with kids too. Three potential ones in Somerset, Devon and Snowdonia, so would be ace if I could get two weeks or so at each.

What else? The ICT systems failed this morning after a power-cut on Friday so we were left with no means to do registers, use phones, access email and student data, no internet, no access to servers (and thus files/programs stored on servers) and no IWB access. This was the most critical, since our super-high-tech school has made no provision in most classrooms for ordinary white boards. This means that should the network/your PC crash, then you can't use your classroom board. Believe me, it's pretty difficult to teach maths without having something to write on. Luckily only had two lessons to teach today, and I enjoyed having an excuse for not writing my Y10 reports or my Y8 tutor reports. Plus it was pretty ironic that we were told in the staff briefing this morning that we will be having an ICT inspection next week, hahaha.

I have to make my NQT folder, which will be a tedious paper trail I suspect, but I guess it has to be done. I also have to have my "transition point 3" meeting to talk about what I have learnt this year and what I will do with it. I made the joke that I am "transitioning to freedom" in the staffroom today, which got some laughs. It's true though.

Apart from that, nothing major to report, except little brother is back, which is really cool as he is fun, but also a bit tricky since we argue a bit and I nag a lot and he does things that wind me up a lot. Fingers crossed we will get on alright. I think we are just too similar as people. Oh well, I will try and be a bit more easy-going.

Right, time for some Stephen Fry.

WWOOF weekend

So I got accidentally distracted by the joy of getting my glasses back. I made the impulsive move to drive home and take my contacts out, and then I started sorting the laundry and reading my mail, and before I knew it it was an hour gone and so I decided I best come back to school.

It's so good knowing I don't have to teach until period 5, excellent :) It means I can usefully spend some time beginning my Book of Knowledge - I've done the entry for Mongolian Tents :)

Before I begin the ramble on our WWOOF weekend, I thought I'd mention that I had an excellent observation with my "special" Y7s yesterday, which was just so good to hear because my teaching has been a bit up and down this year compared to last year, but it's great to hear I'm back to being ranked a 1 for "outstanding" as opposed to a "3" for satisfactory. It's so strange how we have the mentality that satisfactory means not good enough. On a downer though, lesson one today was a write-off since one of my top set Y7 kids threw a penny at another one and so the whole lesson was spent trying to sort out who had done what etc.

Anyway, on to more exciting things, my first WWOOF.

We (me, X, one of my maths colleagues, and one of her friends) spent the weekend working on a farm in Polstead, a small village on the Suffolk/Essex border. It was simply lovely. They were an old French and Australian couple, and they lived in a beautiful thatched cottage that is heaped in mystery and intrigue as there was a murder there many years ago. You can read more about all of that here. They had 18 acres and worked the land, which was what the area is historically famous for, but sadly has experienced a real decline in local agriculture. Two of the couple's children live locally still and all three are creative souls, suggesting that country life brings out the more interesting sides of people. P and D themselves were terribly interesting and knowledgeable - full of stories and experience and life.

The work itself was wonderfully satisfying manual labour, enough to make you feel a pleasant ache, but not so much that you grew fed up. We preserved the water around young trees using straw; we scythed down thistles using scary Grim Reaper style scythes; we cleared a meadow of logs; we worked hard in the vegetable garden (my favourite - planting, weeding, making compost, picking fruit, pruning roses, learning all about living off the land, ace); we learnt about the sheep and the animals and the day to day workings. They were such lovely and generous hosts and I really enjoyed working in the morning and having the late afternoon and evening free for fun. We played football with their grandkids and ate glorious feasts full of home-grown ingredients, yum, so tasty. If anything I have a new found inspiration to grow a herb garden too.

On Saturday night we had a cheeky ale and played some darts in the village pub, and then got scared in the dark on the way home by "ghosts" (really a drunk old man), which to me seems like proper country life. The only thing I would change would be the "guard geese" as they were scary and mean and kept chasing me around. I realised I was being a wimp when I saw a 6-year-old just kick at them and then walk past, but by then it was too late, they could sense my fear. Heehee, apart from that though it was excellent, I can't wait to go again!

The whole concept of WWOOF is so clever and useful - workers trade their physical labour for shelter and food, alongside the joys of good company and conversation. We weren't quite back to basics, but far freer than we are in the city, and it was really pleasing and comforting to know that life like that is possible. I urge you to go, just to try it, just to see what life could be like.

Feeling a wee bit freer

Good morning :) I don't usually blog in school but now that my Y10s are off on work experience, there is such a glorious sense of relief and freedom that I feel tempted to post my controversies through the school server. Risky business perhaps.

Yesterday, today and tomorrow I only have two periods that I have to teach, which leaves me ample time to do my school work. Supposedly. Realistically I find plenty of more entertaining things to do rather than mark books, plan lessons, or write reports. My latest pet project is called The Book of Knowledge (notice I have written it in italics, as if it were a real book), which I have decided to make after finding that I spend a lot of time not knowing things and then trying to remember to look them up and then forgetting what they were within days of my research. Thus the book of knowledge will hold all the "useless" facts and concepts that I look up, making them forever concrete and available for perusal.

I finished How To Be Free and am inspired by 90% of it. I think I was subtly trying to be free before, but now I am making a conscious effort to do things right. The weekend WWOOF has started me off in fine stead for this. More on WWOOF-ing in another post to follow shortly.

Now that I am slightly more free than usual (despite having meetings/detentions/clubs every day after school this week) I am due to make a long-awaited return to my urban dance class tonight. This will be exciting since after Into The Hoods I feel my calling is in dance. It's perhaps more of a whisper than a calling, but good fun all the same. Hopefully I will make it there, but not being around on the weekend + the imminent return of LIL BRO means all kinds of household chores like sorting and tidying my rooms may have to take precedent. I hope not.

Right, I will do a little bit of admin work and then return to ramble on the joys of WWOOF-ing. Stay tuned.

Words of Wisdom

Pretty tired and busy with the usual stuff, so instead of my rambles, have a read of these sent by my mother instead. I particularly like the last bit.

Anger is only one letter short of danger.
Great minds discuss ideas;
Average minds discuss events;
Small minds discuss people.
To handle yourself, use your head,
To handle others, use your heart.
If talking is silver then silence is gold.

The tongue weighs practically nothing,
but so few people can hold it
Many people will walk in and out or your life,
but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart
He who loses money, loses much;
He who loses a friend, loses more;
He who loses faith, loses all.

Beautiful young people are acts of nature,
but beautiful old people are works of art.

If someone betrays you once, it's his fault.
If he betrays you twice, it's your fault.
Wealth is found in contentment
Peace is found in isolation
Freedom is found in abandoning of desires
Love is found in abandoning inclination
Pleasure of a long life is found in patience and contentment in a short life

Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become character.
Watch your character, they become destiny.

The weekend

I am going to do my marking in 16 minutes. I hate marking. In six weeks I will be free from marking, woo!

A glorious weekend, with an interesting share of drama. Went to see Into the Hoods on Thursday night on a school trip, was awesome, made me want to be a professional dancer, see it if you get a chance. Then went out drinking and went back to X's as I had a doctor's appointment on Friday morning, thus could have a lie-in. But drama strikes - my car got towed on Friday morning so had to go and rescue it from Hornsey and thus missed everything, whoops! Was WELL ANNOYING, can't believe some loser called up to get my car towed, they coulda just left me a note or something. Made me bemoan the state of society.

Anyway Friday went ok teaching-wise, then went home to bed, then went out to see SATC, which again was good and funny and I liked it a lot. I watched SATC a lot whilst at school and uni, but then kinda stopped, but it was good to see the film. I really want this book from the film, but apparently it's fictional. This is the closest I can get to it. We bought pick'n'mix (which I am loving at the moment, along with whippy ice cream from ice-cream vans) and it cost almost £3! The next day, whilst rambling around Epping Forest and then along Wanstead High St, we bought a similar amount of sweets from Woolworth's and it cost only 13p! So the cinema was a complete rip-off, am gonna sneak my own in in future.

What else? Yesterday tried to go to StokeFest in Clissold Park, but it was rammed, so went to Finsbury Park instead, and basked in the sun with X, lovely. I am loving all this X time :) Interestingly, apparently when I was small I used to ride my tricycle around Clissold Park, wow.

Teaching was ok today, but tiring. Some awful Y8 drama - a girl that was excluded for carrying a knife filmed herself with a boy in Y11 doing you know what, and it's been spreading like wild-fire across the school on mobile phones. Technically it's child pornography since she's only 13, so it's sad and shocking and illegal, thus we have been busy trying to stop kids getting hold of it, and also getting the police involved. Poor girl, she's a mess, I wonder what will happen to her?

In other news, I have looooads of work to do. Part of the joy of not working all weekend means I have loads to do tonight, when it's so nice and sunny that I just want to go and sit outside and read Sunday's papers/ It's ok though, I've been napping, now I'm gonna blitz it. Woo! Then I will read all the match reports from today's Euro games.

29 teaching days to go!

And some wise words from Dinky...

A blind girl hated herself because she was blind. She hated everyone, except her loving boyfriend.

He was always there for her. She told her boyfriend, 'If I could only see the world, I will marry you.'

One day, someone donated a pair of eyes to her. When the bandages came off, she was able to see everything, including her boyfriend. He asked her,'Now that you can see the world, will you marry me?'

The girl looked at her boyfriend and saw that he was blind. The sight of his closed eyelids shocked her. She hadn't expected that. The thought of looking at them the rest of her life led her to refuse to marry him.

Her boyfriend left her in tears and days later wrote a note to her saying: 'Take good care of your eyes, my dear, before they were yours, they were mine.'

This is how the human brain often works when our 'status changes'. Only a very few remember what life was like before, and who was always by their side in the most painful situations.

Life Is a Gift

Today before you say an unkind word -Think of someone who can't speak.

Before you complain about the taste of your food - Think of someone who has nothing to eat.

Before you complain about your husband or wife - Think of someone who's crying out to for a companion.

Today before you complain about life -Think of someone who went too early to heaven.

Before you complain about your children -Think of someone who desires children but they're barren.

Before you argue about your dirty house someone didn't clean or sweep - Think of the people who are living in the streets.

Before whining about the distance you drive -Think of someone who walks the same distance with their feet.

And when you are tired and complain about your job -Think of the unemployed, the disabled, and those who wish they had your job.

But before you think of pointing the finger or condemning another - Remember that not one of us is without error and we all answer to the Divine.

And when depressing thoughts seem to get you down - Put a smile on your face and thank the Divine you're alive and still around.

Serious things then liberating things

Last night I went along to a poetry rehearsal for my mother's old school reunion show. I was welcomed by two lovely old ladies, who proceeded to sing a rather odd version of what I thought was a poem. This was all very funny and amusing, particularly when I got my mobile out and tried to record them so my mother could hear it when I got home. But then I started to take it more seriously as one of the old ladies told me the story of the poem. When she was a small girl in Sri Lanka, she studied at a convent school established by Irish missionaries. They used to sing a song about Ireland and how beautiful it was and how much they missed it. Even as a little girl she understood the strength of their feeling and felt sad for them. Later when she was forced to leave Sri Lanka because of the civil war, she composed her own variant to express her sadness at having no place to call home. Once I realised the real tone of the poem and the longing they both felt to return to where they grow it, things weren't so funny any more. I guess I'll never know what it's like to have to be uprooted from all that you know, but I hope that one day they can go back, or at least they can go somewhere where they feel at home.

The old lady was a teacher and quoted Sir Walter Scott's Native Land word for word, which was lovely and made me feel it even more. In the end I realised I couldn't read that poem or sing with them after all, it wouldn't be right, those words coming from me.

In other news I had to unexpectedly take the bus into school today and thus was 40 minutes late, meaning my tutor group weren't registered and my Head of Department had to cover the start of my lesson 1. A lot of people get quite stressed when they are late, and I do sometimes too, but today was liberating since I knew that I was going to be late and there was nothing I could do about it, so once I had accepted my fate it was lovely. I think it was also because I have just started How to be Free and it mentions letting go of time and unnecessary pressures/obligations and instead just enjoying things (including riding on the top of a bus...if you have to use public transport that is). I also continued my research on WWOOF-ing and have decided I either want to go to Wales or to the South West. And I found this lovely little blog on the Times to do with allotments, or what the author affectionately refers to as her "lottie".

I have been marking lots of exam papers recently. One of my colleagues, who I share a class with, did one exam paper in her lesson with the shared class, but then asked me to mark the papers. I reluctantly said yes, feeling pretty resentful that she had the free lesson but then gave me the work. Later however, when I mentioned my protracted bus journey, she immediately offered to give me a lift and was really lovely and generous, making me think that 1. I shouldn't be so bitter, I should just get on with it 2. when I do good things, good things will come back to me. Plus I gave someone a lift home on Monday so I have been collecting up my good deeds.

My knee keeps popping and clicking, which is discomforting and disconcerting but hopefully it'll stop soon. Last lesson with Y10s tomorrow before a two week work experience break, woo!

A good day's worth of ramblings

I was going to lesson plan but I really wanted to ramble on my blog first so here I am.

A good first day back, mainly because my head of department came and shouted at my Y10s again and then they were good (albeit perhaps for one lesson only) meaning that we actually did some work and I didn't have to shout over them and thus the rest of the day was good. Disappointingly I had to move my classroom tables from the group work formation they were in back into rows of desks so that I could split up the kids and hopefully stop them talking a bit. I also had to go back to seating them in alphabetical order. Two kids just wouldn't conform to the new set up and so truanted, while one was kicked out twice. Thus I spent some time calling parents today, but that was ok.

In other news the general incompetence of the people in charge of internal exams meant that the maths exams for Y7 and Y8 didn't happen today after all, and so we had to teach them. My impromptu lessons were ok though, I am pleased and I managed to write up one set of Y7 class reports, meaning only one more class to go there, yay!

Most of the day was spent thinking random thoughts that I wanted to post up. Firstly R, one of my colleagues, told me about WWOOF, which is this cool organisation whereby volunteers go and work on organic farms and gardens in return for food and accommodation. She went to Norfolk over the half-term and had an awesome time, so I am thinking maybe I will get a bit more self-sufficient by learning some of this stuff myself this summer. Secondly she told me about a book called "Grow It Eat It" about fruit and veg growing and recipes to cook with, which was a lovely book (made for kids!) and really captured my imagination.

I also spent some time contemplating how relaxed my holiday has made me in that things that normally stress me out haven't (and hopefully won't). For example I was called up in assembly today to give out merit certificates for my tutor group and accidentally had the clip on my trousers undone and the kids pointed it out to me, which should have been mortifying, but was actually quite funny. Also facebook keeps messing up when I try and load my Malta photos, but that's ok, I can do it another day. Also my little brother is running for the Cambridge Union, meaning he is now officially a hack, yuck, but oh well, whatever makes him happy.

Going back to assembly, it was on the environment and the UN World Environment Day. In an exciting move forward our school is finally going to get its recycling sorted, yay! The assembly itself was pretty inspiring and carried the message "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" which I am going to try hard to do. I made my first big step today by switching my credit card, bank account and mobile phone bills all to digital versions, meaning less paper posted to me.

The last thing I was thinking about was how much drama there is with football managers at the moment, what with Mourinho going to Inter and Sven formally getting the boot and maybe being replaced by Mark Hughes, and also how great it is that we have the Euro tournament to tide us over until halfway through August when the Premiership kicks off again. Football is so dramatic and ridiculous sometimes. I mean, can you believe that the Glazers would potentially turn down £70m from Real for Ronaldo, even if he refuses to play for Man Utd, and instead just force him to sit on the bench just cos they can?! Talk about trying to prove a point.

I had a nap at 7pm today after dinner, against my usual belief that 7pm is too late if you still wanna go to bed at a decent time, and am feeling mighty refreshed from it. There was an article in the Metro about sleep spas and how 39% of people surveyed said that they felt so tired at least one day a week that they just wanted to go home from work. There was also this woman that lost 3 stone over a year simply by taking power naps. I knew naps were good for the soul.

Right I really should get back to my lesson planning if I want to read any of the books I am browsing through at the moment. I currently have three and picked up a fourth today that I want, so I think maybe I will put the other three aside and read this new one, and then come back to them. Hmmm, but perhaps that is the mistake I made each of the other times? Perhaps I should just focus on one.

Oh and finally, I can't remember if I mentioned it already, but please make sure you see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull just because it is so awful it's funny. And if you're still bored after reading all of this you can text 'JOKE' to 118118 today for free to get a nice joke from them, hahaha!

End of Half-Term Blues

It's been a while since I blogged I think. Have been wonderfully busy doing fun stuff, yay!

It's now Sunday evening right at the end of half-term and I am feeling all kinds of glum. End of half-term blues I suspect.

I had the best week in Malta and generally an awesome 10 days (I think because I spent every single one with X and am now suffering quite severe withdrawal symptoms), but alas all good things must come to an end, and so it's back to school tomorrow.

In the spirit of my general feeling of tedium when it comes to my Y10s, I have decided not to plan any lessons for anyone at all this week until tomorrow. Good drama. Hopefully there will be the promised exams for at least some of the kids. Relying on this is a recipe for disaster but frankly not worth worrying about right now.

35 days to go. I can't wait for the summer holidays! But first reports and marking and planning and naughty kids to deal with. Sigh. I need more half-term. But I can't get that so instead I will distract myself by looking at the myspaces of some of the excellent acts we saw at ID-Africa last night. I think my personal favourite was Last Mango in Paris - wicked Streets like socially conscious/humorous/comedian chatter.

Hope you're feeling good wherever you are.