School update

Thursday, whoop. Thursday is usually meeting day. Cue a 2 hour department meeting apres school. Actually not so bad. Am starting to vaguely understand the point of all the things we discuss and can occassionally make useful comments. True, today I just joined in the bitching (I know, how awful, I'm not a bitch, what has happened to me?) but also realised that being a head of department is even more work than just teaching, if that's even possible.

Spent another day as 7A tutor. Having covered them for almost a week now, am starting to really like the little blighters and am even getting to know them etc. Told them the story of how marathons got their name. The kids in my maths group now think I am super obsessed with marathons, but I'm not really, they're just topical and full of interesting maths and other stuff. Think I will be a bit sad when I have to give them up - 7A, not the marathon obsession. Before it was always fun to move around the year 7 tutor groups and get to know all the kids, but now I'm kinda looking forward to having my own group next year.

Timetabling discussions are going on at the moment for next year. Speculation is rife about my timetable, what with no-one really knowing exactly what I'm teaching. New Head of VIth form approached me about teaching A-Level Sociology. Obviously have no experience of teaching social sciences or KS5, but why should that stop me? Jumped at the chance, then realised that I was probably already looooooaded up with maths, so some negotiation may have to take place there.

Was observed period 2 today by a visiting professional tutor (due to the continued sick leave of my actual professional tutor). He turned up a late, halfway through the lesson in fact, which obviously sent my little angels off the wall, but still got a pretty good review afterwards. My Year 8s did their listening paper as part of exam week and then watched Mr Bean. Is it wrong that I'm dreading actually having to teach them properly again next week? And then through all of Year 9, where it is fully expected the real nutters will reach their peak of madness?

As you can see then, my life is chocablock with school. So much so that I haven't been to the gym in two days because every evening I am busy planning lessons, writing up evaluations, marking tests, writing reports, completing risk assessments, collecting evidence for OFSTED etc. Bring on the 6 weeks of freedom this summer, bliss. Better yet, drinks tomorrow night and maybe a little pizza too at that special place we never ever go to :)

Special Times

This is my 100th post! How exciting!

In further special times news, Sunday was my 6th month anniversary of teaching. 6 months eh, can you believe it?

How have I celebrated? By falling spectularly ill. Good choice. I haven't been to school since last Friday.

Admittedly Monday was a SS day, and I was only slightly coughing through that. To the untrained eye, I appear to be fine. I mean, I'm sitting here writing this blog aren't I? But you have to remember that "I am a machine". Yes. So despite not appearing to actually be properly ill, I am not my normal energetic self. The fact that I am home is a big thing since so far I haven't taken any time off and I can't remember the last time I actually had to skip stuff because I was ill (if you don't count the torn ACL that is).

So clues that I am ill:

1. Spent about 80% of each of the past two days in bed with a nice pot of Vicks.
2. Been wearing pyjamas since Monday night.
3. Haven't been to the gym, played my piano, or attended mid-week lash opportunities
4. All meals consist of toast or soup or toast and soup.
5. My body feels like a broken bag of bones (this is probably the best clue on the list)

At first I thought I had TB (paranoid) but now I don't really know what is wrong. In any case, I am hoping my super combo of vit c, zinc, echinacea, water and bed will do the trick.

I feel remarkably guilty about missing school and my kids' lessons, but then as soon as I contemplate having to stand in front of a class all day, my head thumps a little louder. Besides, I wouldn't want to spread any germs would I...

Something to inspire any other sick teachers out there...

TFTs: a good blog on EAL in Canada...can't be slacking off WA3 now can we?

PS A downside of sleeping all day means you can't sleep at night, so check out the updated links. Mouche and Ange, I have officially given up on you guys!

EAL

Subject Studies Days are becoming more and more useful as we finally get all this teaching jargon under our belts and begin to connect it all together.

Today we studied dyscalculia and EAL (English as an Additional Language - but really you should know that by now!) - specifically barriers to teaching and learning and strategies to overcome them.

Lots of wonderful discussion and sharing, but one of the most interesting things for me today was Sanju's 10 minute "lesson" to us in Bengali. Essentially she took basic arithmetic concepts and launched straight into a lesson on them entirely in a foreign language. She began by just reciting the numbers, then she wrote them on the board and kept asking us to do sums with them. Despite having a pretty thorough understanding of arithmetic (I know that 3+7=10!), I was pretty thrown by the new words, sounds, letters and questioning. Further, I found that I couldn't say that I was confused because I didn't have the words to do so.

During the lesson it was amazing to see the reaction of the class; a good proportion simply gave up on the lesson and completely switched off, whilst the ones that were trying to understand just giggled nervously and stared blankly when questions were asked to them. How many times have I seen this in my own classroom?

I honestly felt totally out of my depth but I did try to understand and even got some of the questions right, but maybe that was just fluke. That was only for 10 minutes though - imagine sitting through days and days of school having a bare minimum comprehension of what is going on...nightmare.

I have loads more respect and understanding for these kids now, particularly since our schools are tough places anyway without having to deal with a strange language and culture, along with all the emotional scars and baggage a lot of them come with.

They gave us lots of ideas to try and help them, but ultimately I feel it's just a case of time and exposure to the language. We were told that once the language kicks in, EAL kids often zoom ahead with their learning. In this sense being EAL isn't so much of a disadvantage since at least it can be "fixed". It's not a quick fix mind, but having heard stories of kids speaking no English at all in Y7 then getting an A* in maths five years later, there's hope there. Sadly there's nothing so simple for the life-long SEN kids; language isn't the only barrier for them.