All entries for Thursday 16 June 2005

Thursday

Follow-up to Wednesday from Bloggle

Today was quite interesting. First lesson I wa sin the special needs department. It's hard not to feel sorry for the kids there. They were doing textiles and it took them an hour to do about four cross stitches.

In the second lesson I ended up watching James Bond, which isn't really what I'm there for, but hey! I'm not complaining. It was an English I was observing and they were studying media. Of course, it was useful for me anyway to see an English teacher in action to see different kinds of questioning techniques… oh, who am I kidding? I was just happy to spend an hour watching a film!

Lessons three and four were in maths. The classes were doing an experiment in order to generate statistical data. They were playing a game (it's fun give it a go) on the internet to test reaction times and I was helping out with that.

I had an interesting conversation about ICT in classes at lunch. I can't believe the technology in schools now, it wasn't like that in my day! I think interactive white boards are amazing, the teachers can do so much.

The remaining lessons were spent writing up some of my bits and pieces. I can't believe I get money for being there, I spend half my time trying to make sure I'm not in anyone's way. Of course the school gets good use out of me, I'll be invigilating another exam tomorrow.

Getting home was the hard part. A taxi arranged by the IoE is supposed to pick me up, unfortunately the company sent one from their fleet of invisible cabs today. I wasn't sure what to do, here I was in a strange town I don't know from Calcutta, with no definite plan for getting home. Oh dear!

It's hard to know how long to wait in these situations, you don't want to leave and then the taxi turn up a minute later. I'd waited for maybe half an hour when a bus went past so I instinctively leapt on and was whisked off to the centre of Nuneaton – at least I know what it's like now. I got off at the bus station and found a Coventry bound bus. Praise ye to Stagecoach! I didn't even have to wait, it was right there. Even more unbelievably the drivers were polite, I almost fainted. I wouldn't like to think that my being dressed all smart rather than like a scruffy student had anything to do with it. Surely not?

The bus I was now on went very close to the school, so I suppose the first bus was fairly superfluous – how was I to know? I wasn't entirely sure where I would end up either, the driver said it stopped near Pool Meadows, but Hillfields is kind of near Pool Meadows, certainly relative to Nuneaton anyway. Hillfields is the last place I'd want to end up. Well, no, I suppose Iraq would be worse, but I found it hard to imagine that the Stagecoach 48 bus stopped at Nuneaton, Bedworth (No I'd never heard of it either) and Basra.

As it happens the bus stopped very near Pool Meadows indeed. I was so relieved I almost cried. I boarded a number 12 bus (back to grumpy drivers – maybe it was because I'd untucked my shirt and slackened my tie because the previous bus was hot and sticky) bound for campus. I got home fully ninety minutes later than I should have. I'm not best pleased, but it's Friday tomorrow so there's somthing to smile about afterall.

: 16 Jun 2005 19:33 |  Tags: Teaching |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem