All entries for Friday 17 June 2005

Friday

Follow-up to Thursday from Bloggle

Today kicked off in the Staff Room listening to the bi-weekly staff briefing. The main topic was a game some of the Year 9s are currently playing which has been dubbed "killer". The idea is to go around choking each other until they go blue in the face and pass out. No kidding. I think some neolithics at my school had some kind of wrestling equivalent – nothing to do with me, a prerequisite for taking part was having an IQ of 50 or less – but this is in a whole other league of stupidity.

I wasn't in a classroom much today, mostly it was spent between talking to various membeers of staff about their roles in school and lesson planning. I do seem to have spent a long time planning the lessons I'll be teaching next week, so hopefully they should be reasonably good – I'm dreading turning up and having run out of ideas after five minutes, I have absolutely no idea how long each thing I have planned will take.

I invigilated another exam today, which was kind of dull seeing as the novelty value had worn off from the first time. I felt sorry for the kids sitting the test, they were only Year 7s and it was boiling. I could hardly concentrate on invigilating – ie. standing around a bit – it must have been really tough sitting what for them was probably a really hard exam. The most funny thing was being asked for that technically named piece of mathematical equipment, the "angle measurey thing".

Again I waited ages for my taxi to show, fortunately this time it did. And it was worth the wait, they sent a Mercedes of all things! Talk about luxury, I stepped in from sweltering heat to the nice cool air-conditioned interior of Stuttgart's finest. Very pleasant indeed, today the taxi stopped to pick up some other people on the same scheme from schools in Coventry. It was nice to chat and exchange experiences.

Next week as I mentioned I'm actually going to be teaching a class. I've come across them before and they seem a nice bunch of kids, I hope they don't turn into horrors especially for me. The normal teacher will be there anyway so I don't reckon I'll end up skinned alive and I'm quite looking forward to it.

: 17 Jun 2005 19:56 |  Tags: Teaching |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem