Tidying up does have its advantages.
I am not interested in the obvious ones like keeping the Black Death and other interesting diseases at bay, but rather the much more interesting ones like finding the right power lead for the right power recipient.
Don’t let anyone tell you that you can power up gadgets just as well via the MSB socket as from a power lead connected to the mains; even if your MSB socket is actually lined to the mains. My e-book readers remain as stubbornly unfulfilled with the pap power from the MSB as if I had merely waved the gadget around in the vicinity of a socket in the wall.
Tidying, however, revealed the True Power Lead and suddenly I am able to read my way through about 3,000 pages of the collected works of Raymond Chandler. Admittedly this is the large print version of the books and short stories where the size of the print does at least mean that you can read it easily whatever the light no matter how bright or how dim.
Restraining my desire to re-read “The Big Sleep” (the only English novel I took with me on a trip to France in the hope that by constant re-reading I would at last understand who was killed and why) with considerable difficulty I have read the introduction to this immense compendium and started reading a selection of the short stories, some of which do not reflect the final choice of the name Marlowe as the only and authentic appellation for such a famous detective. It is strangely unsettling to find someone speaking in Marlowe’s voice and acting in the way that one has come to expect from reading the great novels and yet not having his name!
Reading for me is a powerful drug and I should be careful about the way in which I indulge my passion as I tend to retreat into my own (or rather the author’s) world and being recalled to an inevitably mundane reality is often something of a shock!
The books from the WJEC have finally arrived and I have spent some time in reading the latest approaches to the teaching of media studies which will be one of my areas of pedagogy in the coming year. The book produced directly for the WJEC by teachers in Wales has been of less use than I expected and the Heinemann text book looks like something much more directly linked to what actually has to be taught. I expect that a judicious use of both books will eventually form the basis for m approach. I hope!
The work for the history of art course continues with my delighted enthusiasm, although I am amassing a vast number of books in which illustrations and photocopies could be used and I have to weigh up the difference between my photocopying them at home and taking the weighty tomes into school, finding somewhere to keep them during the day and cart them all back again. I know that the real solution is to put everything on a pen drive and then print out. I am working on it!
The other elements of the courses that I am teaching will just have to wait until I get back into harness. This, I realize with horror, is now next week! Dear god!
We have a week 9-5 of time without the students. This looks generous until you compare it with last year when we had a fortnight of 9-1 without the students. This means, in theory, that we have exactly the same amount of “time” for us to attend to those administrative and educational tasks that we managed last year, but anyone will tell you that a fortnight of breaking for lunch is nothing like the same as a week full time.
It also means that there is an extra week with students in a term which is crucifying long as it is. In Spain there is no half term so it is a solid unimaginable wilderness of weeks before the Christmas Break. There are one or two “Bridge” days which link into weekends to give some respite but they are few and far between so teachers look thoroughly shell shocked by the time the commercial horrors of the Nativity are upon us!
Constant checking of the progress of my teachers’ pension on-line does not make the “60% complete” gain a single percentage point more. I do understand that the normal retirement day for teachers will be the first of September or a week later, whenever the autumn term starts and mine is towards the end of October. I have to expect that the bulk of administration will be taken up with the people retiring before me, but it would be gratifying to find a little more progress so that I can be confident that everything will be ready for the Great Day.
Meanwhile I shall enjoy the last few days of the holiday and keep thinking positive thoughts.
No comments:
Post a Comment