All entries for Tuesday 02 November 2010

Stay Classy

In the words of one of my heroes, Ron Burgundy, 'By the beard of Zeus'. I am using this phrase, its meaning being one of great surprise, to be applied to the day.

Now lets start with the positives so far today. I took a double A-level lesson first thing today, teaching them the finer things of Mr Young and why he decided to divide two tensile measurements with each other (stress / strain for those who are lost at thos point). It went well. We had a DJ station to keep the morale high during the practical, and I think they appreciated the lengths I went to to explain all the fundamentals which they seem to have been introduced to, but not necessarily understood. In conclusion, they all have found out the Young's Modulus of Copper is BIG! Now as good as this was, it was a shame of the circumstances how it came about I'd be teaching. In that I was 'asked' to do the lesson when it became clear the teacher couldn't make it. I did not feel I could say no. I can say however I did get a lot of resources to help me prepare for it yesterday.

The week so far has certainly seen the super from super-numery disappear. Am on 'covers' a lot the next two days within science, to compensate for sicknotes, illness and school trips. Calling me 'cover', despite some of the lessons being with classes I am timetabled too, apparently means there is no need to provide a second teacher within the room. So guess will see how that goes. Got my weekly subject mentor meeting in 30 minutes, I'll raise my points there. My mentor is amazing so I am happy she'll have my back if needed!

Another positive from today. Tuesday lunchtime badminton club. Absolutely brimming, and I think the kids are enjoying seeing me act the fool and my relaxed side, whereas in the classroom I am of course a disciplinarian and demand total silence... oh wait, that's not true. It is a good laugh, and is giving me a chance to chat to a lot of pupils, boys and girls, yr 7 to yr 11, in a more relaxed way. I'm getting a lot more 'Hi Sir's than usual now, and the badminton club keeps on growing. 30 turned up today. We'll see how many more tomorrow night.

And in my BTec lesson just, I finally got a good hour's work from the class clown. Their middle name is probably 'Disruption'. But yep, sat him in the corner, where I could do quite a bit of one-to-one work but keep an eye on the class. Worked well.

And where I come from, we love a bit of that.

Steve Essex : 02 Nov 2010 15:17 |  Tags: Strain Stress |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem