After a gloriously sunny afternoon there was a tit for tat payment in terms of the weather when it became appreciably colder. A casual look at the future weather forecasts were not inspiring and there is a positive indication of what can only be described as rain threatened of r a considerable part of next week. I remain firm in the faith that Castelldefels has a micro-climate of its own and that the rains will say well away on the hills which surround us on one side, or out to sea on the other!
After some cosmetic work on The Essay last
night in which I painstakingly added the specific references I can honestly say
that it looks in worse condition than when I started tinkering with it! My damning comments I wrote after reading
through The Essay as teacher rather than pupil still stand; which is
depressing. But come what may, this
weekend is going to see it sent off – in any one of the multitude of meanings
of that phrasal verb!
My first cup of “individual” tea was a
great success and my body is still reeling from its first ingestion of
tea-derived caffeine for months: my eyes are wide and I am ready for
anything. The mixture I created works
well, but as the quantities of each of the teas that I painstakingly put into
the tea bags was approximate, each cup is going to be slightly different – as
it should be. To hell with mechanistic
standardization!
I have now used up my supply of the most
expensive Earl Grey Tea in the world as purchased from the most expensive tea
shop in the world, staffed – if you are very unlucky – by the idiot child, who
seems to have no idea of the stock that he has or the price of anything! Yesterday he was nowhere in sight and I was
therefore served with efficiency and accuracy.
Ah, if only all shopping experiences were as good! And as often.
Meanwhile reality is beginning to rear its
ugly head in terms of the electronic platform for the writing of results. Into which I cannot get. Which is fine by me, but I fear that the
System will demand some form of electronic input and delay as much as I like, I
will eventually have to put finger to key and do something. Well, I have phoned the administrator and I
now await further instructions. More I
really cannot do.
But more I have been asked to do. I have been given a password which is a file
which has to be kept on a memory stick and used each time access to the program
is required! I have never heard of this
before, but . . .
After over twenty minutes trying to gain
access to the program with and without files on computers and memory sticks,
using passwords in every conceivable combination, with growing desperation, I
finally managed to get in to the system which then confounded me with its
mindless complexity. Eventually I gave
in and asked a colleague for help, only to find that only one set of my classes
has been put on the system. Stymied (a
word I have been using fairly frequently this morning) again. And finally.
Enough. They will have to make do
with a list. And be grateful for it!
Our pupils are doing projects as part of
our commitment to Project Based Learning.
Some commitment! Some
learning! The truly sobering thought is
that after the free for all of computer based time wasting I will have to pull
all this together and teach a section of the pupils who are going to be as high
as kites and certainly not wanting to do drama at the end of his lesson. Ah well, at least it is a “short” day - which
is getting longer by the second!
One advantage of leaving in June at the end
of the academic year is that I will not have the pleasure of seeing some of
these kids being a year older and more sophisticated in the way that they avoid
work. I wish my colleagues luck and they
have my sympathy!
The weekend cannot come too quickly! Or go too slowly!
The System has defeated me. So be it.
I will give up with dignity and relief and let the powers that be in the
school work out what I am supposed to do!
Let the weekend begin!
No comments:
Post a Comment