Culture Week approaches and I find I now know more about Welsh love spoons than is reasonable and proper.
Those kids don’t know what they are in for next week: dragons, flags The Welsh National anthem, Welsh hats and feathers, clay, paint and sweat!
And no money to make it happen of course. I only hope that Dianne’s largesse arrives in time to add a certain gaiety to the occasion. Then at least there will be music and a real flag to wave!
Still, in terms of our school, next week is whole mad incidents away and not to be thought of as immanent.
My planning for the week after next has to be in tomorrow. The fact that I can type that without dissolving into a quivering mass of neurosis shows how far I have developed or degenerated – depending on your point of view.
I have discovered a hitherto unrealised fascination for the Wirral. That splendid local authority there has devised a whole scheme of mathematics for primary school children. On the web. Available. Downloadable. Understandable. Wonderful!
Without the internet our school would grind to a halt. Well, I certainly would!
Of course, the really important element in planning is akin to the truism that voting is unimportant, it is who counts the votes that is the crucial question. Planning is all very well, especially when it is printed out in a detailed format – but who is teaching it?
Since I have been in the school no one has looked at a single lesson that I have taught. It follows, therefore, that I could have been teaching anything. I might even have been following the planning that I submitted. Who knows?
Who cares?
We are getting nearer to the date when I will know if I am to be teaching in the school next year. You might well ask, why, if all that I have written is even remotely correct, could I even consider continuing in the place. A fair question.
It is sometimes said that a teacher’s class is his or her own kingdom. If I can make that a reality for next year then continuing is a possibility. Assuming that I am allowed to continue. All is up in the air.
Each day the kids in front of me urge reality while the ‘going ons’ around me in the larger academic context suggest that a Surrealistic approach would be the best attitude to adopt for survival.
I think that my present responses are more a function of the rather unsettled weather that we are having (and are due to have) than a placid philosophical stance.
Perhaps I will be more reasonable after the visit to the opera tomorrow evening: a double bill of ‘Bluebeard’ and ‘Diary of one who disappeared’. Leoš Janáček and Béla Bartók. You have to be impressed with a programme which includes composers with so many accents. Such sophistication!
Culture indeed.
Those kids don’t know what they are in for next week: dragons, flags The Welsh National anthem, Welsh hats and feathers, clay, paint and sweat!
And no money to make it happen of course. I only hope that Dianne’s largesse arrives in time to add a certain gaiety to the occasion. Then at least there will be music and a real flag to wave!
Still, in terms of our school, next week is whole mad incidents away and not to be thought of as immanent.
My planning for the week after next has to be in tomorrow. The fact that I can type that without dissolving into a quivering mass of neurosis shows how far I have developed or degenerated – depending on your point of view.
I have discovered a hitherto unrealised fascination for the Wirral. That splendid local authority there has devised a whole scheme of mathematics for primary school children. On the web. Available. Downloadable. Understandable. Wonderful!
Without the internet our school would grind to a halt. Well, I certainly would!
Of course, the really important element in planning is akin to the truism that voting is unimportant, it is who counts the votes that is the crucial question. Planning is all very well, especially when it is printed out in a detailed format – but who is teaching it?
Since I have been in the school no one has looked at a single lesson that I have taught. It follows, therefore, that I could have been teaching anything. I might even have been following the planning that I submitted. Who knows?
Who cares?
We are getting nearer to the date when I will know if I am to be teaching in the school next year. You might well ask, why, if all that I have written is even remotely correct, could I even consider continuing in the place. A fair question.
It is sometimes said that a teacher’s class is his or her own kingdom. If I can make that a reality for next year then continuing is a possibility. Assuming that I am allowed to continue. All is up in the air.
Each day the kids in front of me urge reality while the ‘going ons’ around me in the larger academic context suggest that a Surrealistic approach would be the best attitude to adopt for survival.
I think that my present responses are more a function of the rather unsettled weather that we are having (and are due to have) than a placid philosophical stance.
Perhaps I will be more reasonable after the visit to the opera tomorrow evening: a double bill of ‘Bluebeard’ and ‘Diary of one who disappeared’. Leoš Janáček and Béla Bartók. You have to be impressed with a programme which includes composers with so many accents. Such sophistication!
Culture indeed.
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