teach.

it's lily cole, but you get the idea. the chameleon is far less attractive.

i know it’s been a while, but after today, i felt like updating things.

i had an observation from an outside person who works for the local education department. her and her colleague are coming in because we’re a failing school and they’re checking all these things. her speciality is maths.

she shall be know as chameleon, because her eyes are too wide apart.

teach.

it’s been a while i admit but i thought i should post something at least.

the reasons for not posting are many and i’ll keep this one short. my hands hurt for a start.

so i’m constantly tired and am working 10 hour days every day. oh, and then i come back home and do another 2-3. suckness.

class is getting better, am bonding with the kids, am glad i’ve got my class and not some of the others and i had an observation on monday – scored a good rating so that was a relief.

found out today some boy i shouted at (and made cry/beg for “another chance”) has some real issues. this is a new one: turns out his mum hired a hit man to kill his dad.

that’s what i thought – but even worse, it happened (ie he’s dead) and she’s currently in prison for it. the boy went into the care of his uncle who’s the brother of the dead guy so pretty much took out all his anger on the child. boy is now somewhere else but as you can imagine, fucked up beyond recognition. but in my defence, he was being a complete dick.

can’t remember whether i’ve written this but there’s a girl in my class with 53% attendence since september. why? because her mum is usually too drunk to take her to school in the morning so she sits on the sofa wearing her school stuff all day, hoping mum will get up. so we’ve starting going to her house to get her and bring her to school. i have to wait with her everyday to see what condition her mum is in before i let her go because last year her mum turned up drunk out of her mind. in a tesco trolley. being pushed by a man she’d just met. the police were called.

other than that things are good. the weeks are flying by and i’m not getting as much cool shit done as i’d hoped but i like the school, am learning to deal with all the new shit that’s coming my way and still getting away with as much as i can.

we’ve got an inset day tomorrow so i’ve got slightly less work to do tonight before school.

teach.

i thought about it quite a few times during our pdm. that and fish fingers.

i’m not in a good mood. i don’t particularly like my job and i had a big smile on my face half way through our second pdm (professional development meeting) this week simply by thinking about getting up, saying “thanks, but no thanks” and walking out the door and never coming back. i’m laughing about it now in fact.

teaching isn’t what i thought it would be.

teach.

4s class charter

what a week.

teach.

i made this as an a3 sized poster to print out and stick up in the classroom from their answers.

[updated]

i’m reading through the ‘getting to know you’ booklets i made for my new class at the end of last term. i asked them questions like: favourite food/music/ film/thing in the world, when i grow up i want to be, if i could have a superpower etc. i designed it to get some deeper answers out of seemingly innocent questions. mwah ha ha.

some of the answers are funny. others, not so much.

teach.

der de da, da der duh duh, de duh duh duh da

well, summer is almost over. this weekend is the last weekend before i have to start working and i admit it’ll be nice to get back to school. of course i’ve done nothing in terms of planning but there are a few days left to sort that out.

teach.

i'm done.

i got back around 4pm yesterday, slept for 2 hours. slept in this morning.

yesterday was my last day at school, last day of my course. i’ve got my certificate and i’m finally finished.

i’ll update this with a few highlights in the next few days but atm i’m looking forward to a long coffee and some bacon n’ eggs.

teach.

my story mountain

i feel sleepy. its been a long, average week but today i had my last ever appraisal and got my grade for the entire course. you’re reading tired words from an o.g. with the highest grade you can get for a pgce and one who got a masters level grade on his dissertation. motherfuckers act like they forgot about dre.

teach.

andrew's story

two weeks left, or to be exact, 9 teaching days.

i’m starting to breath easier, see an end in sight for this pgce and look forward to the next year. new town, new job, new stationary cupboard to abuse and hopefully a new laptop from school. plus the whole reward of ‘teaching’ etc.

teach.

yep.

had to teach a group of year 3’s followed by an interview. dominated.

i start in september.

deserves this. loudly.

will catch up on posting over the next few days.

teach.

this one's fake

zomg i’m so bored. i’ve spent this week working. monday was hours of writing three weeks worth of poetry planning, yesterday was two weeks of maths planning and the next few days are going to be filled with writing my dissertation. i thought i had a couple of thousand words to write, but rereading the hastily put together formative assignment (which the dissertation is based) it looks like i should rewrite quite a bit. on the other hand i might just fuck it off.

i had actually collected good data from the last school but somehow lost all the questionnaires so had to make them up from my limited memory. the main problem is the guidance we’ve been given is from a man who is so vague you can interpret anything he says in practically any way you want, so you’re not really sure what to write to get a passing grade. e.g. in a tutorial i had with john, one of the problems i wanted him to clarify was “is this an academic study or a opinion based essay”, i’d rather the former because i know where i stand. instead john gave me at least three other significant questions to consider: ict coordination for policy, what preparations should be made before introducing technology in class and whether teachers have a duty to understand the effects of technology in the classroom.  that’s a ton of extra reading that i’m really not prepared to do.

one good thing, this is the first half term when i haven’t been ill, but the pain and duvet time seems like a nice holiday right now.

“increasing number of educators found to be suffering from teaching disabilities”

"i used to think teaching and stuff was pretty lame"

perfect timing, i’m bored writing a medium term plan for year 2 unit 3, ’silly stuff’ (poetry).

cheers, onion.

teach

my powerpoints rule.

it’s almost all over.

college finished on last friday, i’ve had the first couple of days this week to work on my main study (read: catching up on feeds, researching scorpion stuff). recently i’ve visited a couple of schools before handing in job applications. there’s about seven weeks left and then i graduate. so a couple of thousand words and an ict presentation are the only things i have to finish. apart from the teaching but that’s easy, first day we went on a school trip in the morning and on friday it was half day inset, basically tidying up classrooms.

teach.

the owl who was afraid of the dark

i just came back from looking at one of the worst schools i’ve seen. i had the afternoon off so thought i’d better do some more job applications and arrange visits. i made one for a c of e school next week and when i spoke to an inner city one she said i should come this afternoon because the deadline is monday. so i arrived, from the satellite photo the area looked quite nice, but i wish we had streetview in portsmouth. i walk into reception and in the room next door and a bunch of kids are being shouted at. to be fair it wasn’t the best time to go, late on a friday afternoon, the kids are going mental.

anyway, i noticed that the first thing i did when i got back into the car was lock the door.

its been a busy week: science presentation prep, emas, folder hand ins, maths, geography, art, pie corbett, and science presentations this morning.

teach.

my notes from this morning.

as you probably could have guessed i did nothing over easter in terms of work. well, not enough to actually make a dent in what i need to do anyway.

it all started again on monday with a lesson given by shit sandwich and some idiot called karen.

here’s a quote from shit sandwich early into the ‘lecture’:

“its not just weighing the pig, its feeding the pig“.

me either. welcome back to college.

teach.

the bye bye board

ah, the last day of the easter holidays (apart from the weekend). but this is the last day i know other people are at work, and hence a real holiday (not the weekend).

i wanted to put an end to the previous placement before i go back to college and get bored. its hard to sum up, a mix of good and bad. but to be honest one of the main reasons i wasn’t posting so much about it when i was there was because it was so exhausting. i did things i didn’t want to (ie shout a lot), i found things i liked (bossing kids around) and things i needed (the support of other teachers).

but when i think of the few children that ruined, and i do mean ruined, lessons or whole days, i’m glad i’m not going back.

teach.

tute on son, tute on

i’ve had the whole week off this week because of illness. i went in on thursday and was sent home after about half an hour. admittedly i felt better on friday but since i’d already had four days off, it seemed better to sit in my dressing gown, eat vegetable fried rice and watch house.

teach.

realising that there’s two weeks worth of things to catch up on i probably won’t do the lot, but as a taster – this happened today:

• first thing this morning, one of the nice, quiet girls in the classroom came up to me and said “look what my mummy did”. she rolled her sleeve up and had three big gash marks across her forearm. i asked how it happened and she said “mummy was giving me a bath last night and she was drunk. she was shaving my arms and cut me.”
• some kid in another class slammed a door against a staff members head as they were walking through leaving a nasty bruise. he was excluded for four days and his mum was called to come and get him. she declined and said she’d had enough. his dad turned up, went absolutely mental, calling him a “stupid fucking sod”, “worthless piece of shit” etc in front of the other children and staff. the dad dragged him out of school. we later got a report that he took his son round the corner from the school, threw him to the ground and then threw the bike he cycled to school with, onto him. we called the police, social services etc.
• a mum turned up late to collect her child after school. drunk. again.
• a dad of one of the kids in my class came up to me after school and asked how he’d behaved. i said he’d been disruptive in assembly twice, but owned up the second time. his dad said that he’d had just about enough and was ready to leave (the family). he then sort of slapped him lightly across the back of the head and face.
• i’ve been asked to keep a log of one of the boys in my class because his family aren’t washing their children. the other children are now noticing and starting to call them names.
• oh, and on a lighter note – one of the girls in my class spat on another child in assembly.

teach.

he looks remarkably like this. i typed "fat scary child" into image ripper.

its the end of my first full week at the new school and i’ve had a pretty good time. i had my first observation and got a ‘good’ rating, i’ve got to know the kids and they like me and i’m starting to think this place isn’t so bad after all.

well, most of the time. we had a staff meeting on monday night and one of the topics was facebook. turns out that parents have been going on and talking shit about other parents, children in the school and staff. then this morning i was casually walking down from the staff room with my cup o’lemsip (another dose of child germs) and i heard the headteacher remark casually “oh that’s good news” when a fat man-ish woman rolled behind him saying “i didn’t get arrested in the end”. just another day. for you and me. in paradise.

teach.

it was unexpected.

its the day before the start of the new term. i’ll be teaching from tomorrow for six weeks and am really looking forward to it.

i spent most of last week in my dressing gown having caught another cold/flu from a new set of children/germs. before we broke for half term i agreed to do the maths planning for this week and said i’d have it over to my mentor by tuesday. i let her know it would be late and by friday i was feeling better. we’d already worked out the bare bones of it and i just had to create the filler – i started on friday afternoon and emailed it across a few hours later. i have to admit, it wasn’t my greatest effort but i had some good ideas in there. i was pretty surprised when she sent that email.

i’ve gotten used to doing all the planning for every subject i teach because that was the way it was done in my last placement. they said you’re teaching x, its about y and i got on with it. because there’s more than one year 3 class, i’ve been emailed lesson plans for pretty much the rest of the term so i think i might be rolling on easy street from now on.

there’s something else i’ve realised. i’ve done a weeks worth of planning, but it won’t be just me teaching it. other teachers (and students) will be teaching from it this week too and that’s pretty fucking ninja.

cheers, meg.

teach.

our last dt lesson

the last couple of weeks seem to have gone by pretty fast.

i’m in my second placement now, a very, very different school. more on that after i briefly talk about last week, the couple of days this week i had in college and the last ict lesson – that i taught a part of.

oh, and i made three children do lines yesterday.

“i will listen to the teacher”.

teach.

'adollf'. ha.

another week, another weekend of work to avoid. there’s only a couple of weeks left before i go into my new school and i’m really looking forward to it. i spent some time with my new class teacher and found out our new topic is egypt. awesome.

this week i’ve had: english presentation prep time, art, writing assignments, history, planning with mentors, english and design and technology. i’ve came back yesterday from my old school after going in with a lot of chinese food i cooked the night before as part of their cultural week banquet. it went down well.

oh, and i’ve sort of got a teaching job in september.

teach.

thursday afternoon, p.e.

quite a mixed week this week, some great learning and fun, some mindyawning boringness. inclusive education, emas, maths, behaviour management, music, ict, pe, science.

one of the girls who was at my next school last term told us this little gem in behaviour management. an eight year old girl in her class came up to her bawling her eyes out so she took her to one side and asked what the problem was. the girl explained her grandfather had died over the weekend and she was really upset, so was allowed to sit out of class and asked to draw some pictures. the girl drew nice pictures of her with her granddad, little hearts around them and seemed to be cheering up. an hour or so later at home time my classmate noticed the grandfather standing outside waiting to pick the little girl up. the girl turned to her, gave her a knowing look and said something along the lines of “and you fell for it” and walked out. an eight year old.

w.t.f?

teach.

yes i was bored

i’ve got the day off. there were some scheduling issues apparently. score.

this week i’ve had book reviews, art, writing assignments, maths, ar&r, literacy planning, geography and numeracy planning. and yes, its been another snorefest, but now with added cretinism. maybe its because i’m not part of the facebook group; but the current ‘beard growing competition’ (no, i’m not) and ‘who can hold their hand under the cold tap for the longest’ competition strike me as retarded. luckily i’ve worked out that two lecturers don’t seem to care if i have my laptop out in their lessons so i can escape to sense.

teach.

fireman sham

those were the days. and they will be again, but between then and now i’ve got about a month of college (theory), seven weeks in another school then its back to the glory that was key stage 1.

as you can tell i had a great time. i finished with a ‘good’ rating and got the highest mark you can get in my last observation (science – electricity). in fact, i got a higher mark than the class teacher when she had her observation. collars were popped.

unfortunately i’m back at college and its kind of like being on a bus full of england supporters – some are loud, some are obnoxious and one girl raised as a point of discussion during lunch that “cum makes me gag”. funnily, i’ll be working in the same school as her next placement so its quite a journey i’m on folks. i just sit back, quietly and exchange faces with the others in a similar position.

its boring.