Children Watching

Today did not work out as planned.  All I seem to have done today is supervised recalcitrant children who needed just enough supervision to make marking difficult, unfair or impossible.

I did, eventually mange to get one set completed and the marks put into the machine.  This is not as easy as it sounds as there is an element of difficulty involved which makes the putting in of results something of a via doloroso.

On the positive side I have now discovered how to use Excel to change a series of marks each of which has been given a different percentage of the final global mark into something coherent. 

I don’t really understand the meaning of the symbols that I use to get the answer, so in that sense, it takes me back to my “solving” of quadratic equations, where I sometimes got the right answer to questions I didn’t understand using techniques which I didn’t understand to get marks which I felt I richly didn’t deserve. 

However, if it works, don’t knock it! 

And I have written down the gnomic sequence of letters, asterisks and dollar signs, all within brackets of course, which get those right answers.  At least I think they are right answers, but the row of figures that I have produced is so beguiling that I do not have the nerve to question their accuracy!

I could, of course do some marking at home – but I am in that school for at least (!) eight hours every day and they have no right to any more of my time outside the institution.

The school has begun its annual implosion as normal lessons are suspended and what we used to call “project work” commences.  The word “project” is now the exclusive property of Project Based Learning (which is of course a system of teaching for those with no life outside school and an insane interest in the perverse concept of pure education) and comes with theoretical structuring. 

 

The word “rubric” which used to indicate those parts of the religious service where an explanation (in red print) was called for now refer to a series of descriptions of what gets you what mark from unacceptable to outstanding.  What used to be called grade descriptors are now the essential add-ons for any self-respecting pupil-centred piece of teacher work.

Having to write the bloody things (and finding out just how difficult they are to write) shows how little most of we professionals actually think about what we want from a piece of work before we see the end result that we hadn’t thought or fully planned for!

What this project means in practice is that I spent the last period in school watching part of “Wall-e” a beautifully produced cartoon with serious issues packed into its narrative which shamelessly draw on a whole raft of other films for its storyline.  In my view the theme of the film, in the way it is slowly and lovingly developed by the two main robot characters in the film is more geared towards the adults accompanying the children in the cinema rather than the children themselves.

It remains to be seen what the kids in our place make of the film as the basis for their work.

Each year has its own basis for this project week and in the penultimate lesson of the day I listened to a talk given to our second year kids who are going to develop a questionnaire about travel to school and produce a report at the end of the week.  The excitement just goes on mounting!

Tomorrow I will try and get another set of papers marked and attack the computer program to get the results into some sort of digital form.

The holiday on Monday (hooray!) will be little enough compensation for the marathon meeting on Tuesday to which I will contribute precisely nothing – apart, I suppose from a few figures!

The weather continues bloody with only unconvincing scraps of sunshine to let us know what this country could be capable of if it lived up to its reputation for opening its skies to our nearest star!

I live in hope.