Mid season break!

The old saying is there are three good reasons to be a teacher - Christmas, Easter and Summer! 6 if you include the good old half term breaks.  Which I am now in. Made it. Survived a term with my headspace largely intact.  I guess my overwhelming feeling from the term is one of 'meh!'  But that might just be an effect of the medication.  I'm less bothered by circumstances but less excited too.  Which is a problem.  I'd like to be able to describe my new role in school but I'm not sure that I can.  I think I am doing a Teaching Assistants job but for lots more money.  Which is fine ... I like money.  It's just not that satisfying and I still miss the sheer excitement and day to day lunacy of working with Early Years.  Made the mistake at a recent book look of looking at the Foundation Stage learning journals - do so miss it.

The good news is that I still have to go through an observation cycle for 'appraisal' purposes!  The better news is I have one on the week we go back but that's ages away!  Now a full time class teacher teaches 190 days a year or 380 sessions of a morning or afternoon give or take 10% PPA (preparation, planning and assessment) time.  I class teach .1 so 19 days a year or 38 sessions.  They get three observations a year so one every 63 teaching days (ish) and I also have three observations a year so one every 6 days (ish).  My observation will happen on my sixth class teaching session (my third with year 6) so that'd be like a regular teacher having an observed lesson on the Wednesday of the first week of term.  Anyway there's no use complaining or trying to point this out or that at my last occupational health assessment it was pointed out that this would/could be quite damaging to my health.  It's the times we live in folks.

My crystal ball prediction is that the lesson will be graded 'requires improvement' or just a little bit crap.

We'll see.  I'll report back later.

On a much more positive note I had a lovely time at another local primary school telling stories to their reception and Year 1 classes and drawing at the same time.  I was very anxious beforehand but I was well received and it all went very well.  So a big shout out to Weston All Saints Primary school in particular their Little Wasps!

apologies

It's been nearly two years since my last post!

Soz!


Maybe I should explain.  There I was so happy as an early years practitioner when the senior managers decided it was time to move me.  The reason given was, well there wasn't one really.  From what I understand I needed to be moved because I hadn't moved the year before!  I imagine there were other reasons but no one was saying anything. Well at least not to me.  So I got moved into year 4 (8 and 9 year olds).  Long story short it did not go well.  And the senior management team took great joy in reminding me every opportunity they got to tell me it wasn't going well and February 2016 I went off with anxiety and depression.  What my Occupational Health Doctor described as 'knackered, under appreciated and pissed off syndrome'. He wasn't far wrong!

Anyway it is now September and I am going back.  Actually been back for two Inset days. WOFT.

I don't have a class and I don't think I'm going to get one.

So I'm back to work.  Medicated. But not dedicated.

Shanghaied

Lots on Breakfast telly this week about Chinese Maths teachers coming to teach and train English maths teachers.
Couple of interesting points firstly Chinese Maths teachers just teach maths at primary age whereas english teachers are 'expected to be jacks of all trades' which was said in a very disparaging way.

Secondly and it was said by a Chinese teacher right at the end of the interview and probably missed that Chinese children don't start formal school until age 7.

There's a lot of talk of school readiness in early years usually meaning are they ready for a diet of listening and sitting in one place!  But it is right that children need to be ready to learn.  And I wonder as we head towards assessing and therefore some would argue failing children age 2 if we are going in the wrong direction.  It's the one thing that government ministers don't notice when they visit these places - the children are older!

It's Observation Time Again

Remind me


What's the point of classroom observations?

NUT Magazine

The NUT – National Union of Teachers (when I started teaching you had to be in a union – not sure with the rise of Free Schools and Academies whether that is still true?) of whom I am a member have sent me their new school year magazine with ‘a manifesto for our children’s education’.  I have had a quick read through and am shocked by the number of letters and articles and references to the apparent ‘culling of 50 plus teachers’ – that’s age not waist size!  Though the latter may well be vulnerable as well.  It looks like there’s a lot of it about.  Nobody wants us 50+ teachers, male or female! Apparently.

The main method of getting rid of them seems to be competency and lesson observations!  Hmm my last one was RI (which seems to be the acronym for ‘Requires Improvement” – like I have said before show me a lesson that doesn’t require some improvement – I digress!) and I hear ominous cello music in the background … There’s an encouraging letter, name and address supplied, from someone who managed to go to tribunal and get an unfair dismissal verdict and one hopes a good cash payout.  But it seems most just drift off quietly, like Scott’s Antartic explorers!  Feeling the chill, someone close that tent flap!

As was so kindly pointed out to me on our First INSET day – I am the oldest teacher in the school!  Oh there are ancient teaching assistants amongst the teachers I am the oldest. Actually the head is a year or two older than me but I am still in the classroom.  I think I should be treated like the leader of the house!  It was interesting in a recent staff meeting where we were tracking data that I was the only teacher who knew what the current year 6 children were like as infants (they were my second year one class after moving down from Year 6) and therefore the only person who knew where they had come from.  I think it’s important that a school has people who can do that, who know the children not just as data on a spreadsheet.  I do so love a spreadsheet.  It’s quite hard to type sarcastically!

Anyway it’s time for my nap.  Peace Out!

Political?

I’m not political.  I was but New Labour destroyed my politics for me.  Too much like old Tory.  I suppose the centre ground drift of politics generally might be good for stability but it’s so bloody boring.  That said I do watch the Andrew Marr Show on the BBC of a Sunday morning.  Today we had a double treat.  Michael Gove the Secretary of State for Education and all round twat and Tristram Hunt who is the Shadow blah blah blah! And possibly Cockney Rhyming Slang?

Michael Gove (I gove him a chance and listened?) who has one of those faces that you feel like punching,  (I bet he was the school snitch) was on mainly talking about how to battle Islamist extremism in schools.  And Tristram (not a real name surely? Tristan yes! Tristram no!) was there declaring a ‘Master Teacher in every classroom.’ Now I’d not heard of ‘Master Teachers’ apparently it’s an idea from Singapore.  The ‘Master Teacher’ would be ‘better trained’ or it would be a continued training from qualification and they would … well, that wasn’t made clear.  Part of the argument was that to progress in teaching you have to go into management so and I quote ‘Too many good teachers leave the classroom to become heads.’

Class teachers up and down the country are raising eyebrows (and a glass) and saying ‘Really?’ very slowly as they contemplate their own head teachers. 

Now I am all for the opportunity to progress as a class room teacher because that’s the job I love.  You can keep the rest of it!  But I’m not sure ‘Master Teacher’ is the route.  Who decides?

The argument went from a ‘Master Teacher’ in every classroom to one in every school in a matter of minutes.  ‘Master Teachers’, of course, would be more expensive than ‘Mistress Teachers’ – ‘Journeyman Teachers’ – I’m not sure what teachers who aren’t ‘Master Teachers’ are going to be called.  What head, went the argument, wouldn’t want a ‘Master Teacher’ in their school.  Heads like cheap teachers!  That’s the holy grail; a ‘Master Teacher’ who costs the same as an NQT! 

I have a feeling that it is too late for me.  At my age I’ll be lucky to find another job let alone be allowed to make any progression in my so-called career.  The whole system seems to be aimed at making the job untenable for people of a certain age so they can be replaced by shiny new cheap versions who last a couple of years and then burn out to be replaced by newer shinier versions.  Or is that too cynical?