Thursday Ramble

Period 1: PSHE with my form. Have observed maybe three/four lessons of PSHE before. Have never studied it as a subject myself nor taught it. Helpfully, our learning manager (head of year) is off sick so I have no idea what we are meant to be studying today. Manage to kill an hour of time with the kids, luckily it was first thing in the morning...by afternoon they were distinctly more challenging.

Period 2: Year 9. Solving equations. I can't believe that there are 14 year olds that still struggle to solve 3x=18. Crazy D has moved down to set 5. I'm not sure whether to whoop; I have a strange concern for that boy. In his place I have Sulky L. You will know her from numerous temper tantrums last year. She sulked today. It was nice to have her back.

Period 3: Year 10. Setting the rules and expectations. I'm no longer stunned by the size of some of the boys. They can tower over me and I can happily rant away. Again, with this class I am shocked at the low ability. Bear in mind that I sat my maths GCSE in Year 10, whilst these kids are mostly level 4 (as a point of reference, most people at my secondary school achieved a level 5 in maths at 11). When we were playing a bit of warm-up maths bingo, some of the questions would frankly insult my Year 7 set from last year, but when I asked the kids if they were finding it a bit too easy, they all resoundingly said no. And they weren't lying. Going over the answers, only one child out of 26 could tell me the square root of 100, and that was after much prompting. A rather menacing child got himself kicked out within the first 2 minutes of the lesson by refusing to sit in his allocated seat. On the street he would have scared me, but in my classroom I have a comfortable feeling of control. Even when the principal tried to persuade me to take him back in, I declined, stating that such attitudes and lack of respect for learning did not belong in our room. I love being able to stick to my guns, not least because it stops the kids steam-rolling me (in theory anyway).

Period 4: Year 8. All the set lists have been lost so we each had to grab any old 20 kids and kill some time with them. Made up an anagram game, which the kids really got into. No maths to be seen :)

My tutor group made me cross in the afternoon. I wanted to set up some circle time stuff with them, but they were all rather restless so in the end I made them sit in silence. I feel guilty about that now a bit, since clearly all the frustrations of the day were unleashed on them. Hopefully they will learn not to chatter when it's lesson time, then I won't have to do that again. Shame we ended sourly since we had been getting on so well in the morning.

And the last thing on a busy school day - got cornered in the corridor by our principal about inspections. We're being OFSTEDed this term, crumbs. In preparation for this, we're having an inspection by our sponsors. And yes, you guessed it, I will be inspected. I completely freaked out with my subject mentor and department after being told. Inspection chills me, probably because it reminds me of the awful summer term. I hate freaking out in front of people, especially when they know me as calm and controlled, and when there's nothing too much to freak about, I'm sure it'll all be fine. Will have to do more to keep on top of things, can't be messing up so early in the term. I knew I'd be on the list, but I'm still not too psyched by it. I kinda feel that it's another hoop to jump through just because I've jumped well through the ones in the past. Similar I guess to the way that kids stop performing well at school, because they know that success will just lead to more work.

Finally may Rhys Jones rest in peace, along with all the many other young people for whom life was too short. I'm not in the mood to talk about guns and knives, except to say that today my Year 8s in maths were talking about the size of a bullet hole as if this was something cool to discover. Why?

Barriers to actually working

Grrrrr. Trying to get anything at all done at school today was near impossible. The sodding server was still down so you couldn't print anything or save to the server. Emails were really temperamental, as was internet access. One of the photocopiers was broken. There was exams in the maths block, which disrupted lessons. The online registration system and the reporting system were both still playing up. Nothing was working, and so it was near impossible for the teachers to be working. Plus, it was raining.

See how dependent on technology we are? But really, it's so annoying when you're trying to do the most straightforward task, but everything just holds you back. Grrr. Another source of workplace stress.

In other news, I was sent on an errand by two of the members of my department last Friday, to buy chocolates for the Y11s. This errand cost me precisely £32.80. Now, I don't want to seem tight, but I'm not a Y11 tutor and had no real desire to spend what is essentially a week's worth of teaching Y8 on a sugar-fest for some right clowns. The question is, how do I get my money back now? I hate owing people money, but even worse, I hate being owed money. But I don't wanna be hassling them for the cash, but then again, if I leave it too long, it'll be too hard to ask for it back. Ho-hum, what an exciting dilemma. Not.

Oooh and a quick update on my wild mane of hair. I think it's almost 3 months since I last washed it with shampoo, and it feels pretty good. Washing with just water seems to work, even with horrid smokey hair or sweaty gym hair. It has a kinda natural oil feel to it, which isn't too bad, plus I swear it's stronger and thicker. So yes, going strong on that front.

Nothing else of note to say except that I have so much paperwork to generate for my "portfolio" for OFSTED that I'm just not gonna do any of it. Mwahahaahaha.

Timekeeping

I told myself that I had to get all my work done by 9pm. Lo and behold, I did. Clearly when it comes to setting myself mini-deadlines, I can stick to them. Why is that the case? Well, because this is the very last opportunity I have to plan my full day of lessons tomorrow, so procrastination was down to a minimum and my time was well used.

More generally though, why can't I use my time well all the time...or, more leadingly, why am I often late? The answer can be found in this article in yesterday's Sunday Times. I was surprised at how many psychological traits I share with the chronically late (anxiety, being messy and easily distracted, perfectionist habits, low levels of self-control or a penchant for thrill-seeking...I have all of those to a degree, with thrill-seeking and perfectionism right up there). So that's my excuse then, I was meant to be late.

This is seemingly at odds with being a Virgo, and true, I'm not late all the time - mostly when it involves going somewhere different from my routine. I'd say the best explanation from the list is that I underestimate how long it takes to do something, or even just how short a minute is. This is clearly evidenced in my early lesson plans, where I'd plan impossible amounts of material for a lesson and then feel like I'd failed when we couldn't cover it all. I know that I'd patently be one of those people still reading two minutes later in the test where you're supposed to stop reading after 60 secs. This is actually quite hard though - I did something similar with my Y11s where they had to shut their eyes and put their hands up when they thought a minute was done - the range of time during which hands were put up was hilarious, with one boy putting up his hand after about 20 seconds and another girl waiting for almost 2 minutes!

In other news, it was a training day today so fun and games. All about the new building and our move into it. Cue lots of drama about equipment and classrooms and planning and who gets what etc. Fun.

And finally, it turns out that OFSTED are only coming to see me, not everyone, thus I am the only one who has to prepare all the paperwork. Further, I figure it's quite a big deal. My professional mentor, who consistently ignored my emails last term, failed to pass on details of observations, didn't hold our IRB meeting or tell us our IRB gradings, hasn't got us an SSE, and barely checked in at all, came right up to me first thing this morning to talk about the visit. My subject mentor did the same thing, so it must be important.

Sometime this week I will make a little OFSTED list of things to bring up, that way I won't forget.

Oh and finally, yes, I know, he's totally instantly fit, and has a magnetic personality too. Sadly he is of the others. Boo. Puja, use the comments! I love getting comments, it makes me feel like I'm not rambling away to myself. Even though I mostly am. Right, bed time, it's a school night!

PS Crumbs, I accidentally posted this to the OUWAFC blog, whoops! Sorry MT!

Distractions from OFSTED

It arrived in the post today. The dreaded letter from CCCU confirming that OFSTED would be coming to observe Team TF at our Academy. Woohoo!

Apart from lunch during the SI, I have no real experience of OFSTED. Thus, my fear could be construed as irrational. It is based almost entirely upon the myriad of OFSTED anecdotes that have come my way during my brief spell of teaching, the highlight being my Head of Department detailing how he'd had a minor breakdown when they'd last visited. Excellent.

So I have a big long list of things that OFSTED will want to see. Unfortunately, it will be difficult for them to actually see these things because for the most part they don't exist. Yet. Believe me though, if I have a lot of work to do, the other TFers at my school will have double or even triple that (I am widely regarded as "the organised one" - toot toot, my own horn sounds good). Before even thinking about this work, I have to go through a period of denial and distraction. Here we go then:

1. It's Tamil New Year - happy New Year!
2. I have a cold. Excellent.
3. If my Dad thinks I am a bit of a brat, well, he should read the story about that girl who caused £20,000 worth of damage to her house during a house party. How awful!
4. Grand National - come on Numbersixvalverde, let this be your year!
5. Twitter.com - heard about this ages ago on this internet start-up business blog, but am pleased this is finally getting some serious recognition.
6. Professor Mankiw's blog - how exciting, the smart guy who wrote our Macro textbooks communicates to his students. Surprisingly light-hearted but frank for an economist! Plus, finally, someone who blogs more regularly than me!

No doubt more distractions later, hopefully in the form of alcohol.

Berts, hope you had a safe flight back, tell Grandma Pink and Carmela I said hi!