Does the learning never end?

From Building 4 one only gets the most tantalizing glimpses of the sunrise (if you happen to be in school at the ungodly hour of the morning which gives you the opportunity) which today appears almost ridiculously artificial.  The sky is a deep, comically vulgar orange which is changing as I type to a broken yellow with artistically arranged clouds to give a slight verisimilitude to the scene.  It is hardly the sort of artistic stimulation that needs the abrupt mood breaking contrast of the stark reality of having to teach kids!

Ah, well, that was yesterday and yesterday (in the new dispensation) is a “short” day, one of the you-can-make-it-to-June days that give me the impetus not to despair and to be able to take the day-to-day grind of education!

Although I am up to date with my OU work, it is mildly worrying that the next TMA is due in the dearly days of February and we are now in the last week of January.  In some ways this piece of tutor marked work should be one of the easier ones for me, as it demands that I do some creative writing and then produce an evaluation of the work with a discussion of the process of the writing.  As I intend to write a sonnet I really should be thinking seriously of what I have to do now and not wait for the actual week that we are given to consider our options before submitting.

This evening I will have to crack on and make careful note of what processes and techniques the OU emphasises so that my piece of work can exemplify them.  If nothing else I should have learnt that from the experience of writing the Wiki with the rest (the remains!) of the group.  Sticking to the remit of the task is one of the most important aspects which will ensure a successful completion.  And I am writing this to remind myself of the approach that I need to take.

I am still waiting for someone to get in touch from the Gustav Holst Museum about the first draft of the Spring Rice poem used for the “I vow” hymn but I am not holding my breath.  Though I am still interested in the details of the process of production and hope that there may be an opportunity to finish the “research” that I did for the first TMA which was ruthlessly cut away for the final version submitted!

Today is a full day with the period before my last designated for boring marking.  By the time I finish I will be truly looking forward to my end-of-day swim!

The swim was good but more tiring that it should have been.  But that is something which is natural when one has been a whole day in school!

Today, Thursday, has been one of those days when you truly wonder why you are still in education.  Nothing to do with the kids, however chatty they have been, but more to do with the vulnerability of someone who lives miles away from work which is only reasonably reachable by using the motorway system.  A motorway system that is susceptible to the mind-bending tedium of traffic delay.

There is something intolerable in any traffic delay but there is something much worse in delays which are in darkness.  I have told myself that I have noticed a definite lightening of the mornings, but I am aware that I am basically kidding myself and when I am setting off for the School on the Hill it could just as well be the middle of the night.  So there I was, sitting stationary in a long line of traffic cursing whatever gods might be that I was so early there was no chance whatsoever of my arriving late for my lessons.  And I didn’t.  Though I did, barely, have time for my cup of tea which was more than I managed on Monday!

Today however is one of my shorter days when I fully intend to be as Boojum-like as possible as soon as this class ends.

What happened to Friday?  Admittedly I did a runner and had the afternoon in Castelldefels rather than in the School on the Hill.  A truly excellent lunch on the street leading up to the church and I even managed to do some marking in the evening thus ensuring, in the way of these things, that I will do some other marking during the weekend.

Saturday meant an “early” start at nine, which meant that was two and a half hours later than my normal time for rising!

The new computer gave me a fright, as it seemed to deny that it had an operating system that the Elluminate system that the OU uses for its long distance tutorials actually recognized.  Everything worked out well, however and a generally stimulating time was had by all – in spite of the usual technical problems that best each attempt to get all of us in touch with each other.  I fear than many of these so-called technical faults are nothing to do with the equipment and everything to do with the incompetence of the individuals using it.

The content of the tutorial was good and stimulated me to producing in short order the “follow-on” work that we are supposed to do.  I am sure that the piece of “creative writing” that we had to produce and which I have now posted on line, will not have endeared me to my fellow students but I have to admit that producing it was more attractive than doing the pile of marking which is still waiting for me – with more to follow next week when our students having just completed a multi-examination Mock will face further test, all of which will have to be marked.  This is so we can get these examinations out of the way to make space for the examinations they will be facing soon after they return from the White Week.  Lunacy wealds a red pen!

However, to take my mind off he horrors of yet more marking, I wrote a poem based on another aspect of the tutorial this morning and promptly posted it on-line for my fellow students to critique.  Academic nastiness knows no bounds when it is part of displacement activity!

However much I prevaricate the marking which is upstairs on the Third Floor will have to be done before Monday. 

So roll on Sunday!

Good intentions!

Saturday morning was taken up in a confusion of intentions.  My lunchtime appointment in the centre of Barcelona took a number of attempts before I was safely on my way.

Arrangements are the very devil when reality tries to frustrate them.  I was supposed to meet Julie and John on the train from Sitges and join them for the journey into Barcelona and our meal.  After having received no telephone call to finalize the arrangements, and after I had discovered the original (lost) email which started the Arrangements I panicked into setting out almost at once.  To me “mediodia” means midday (though I later discovered that just because the words can be translated like that it doesn’t necessarily mean it) and I was therefore catapulted into action a couple of hours before I was ready.

By the time I had reached the station Arrangement had caught up with me and a closer definition of mediodia mean that I could return to the house while calling into the supermarket to get the little delicacies that I would normally have bought to take to a meal.

We did finally meet up and it was a relief to get onto the train and escape from the thoroughly unwelcome rain that had irritated me throughout the morning.  After a brisk walk and some indecision we arrived at our destination.

The flat in the centre of Barcelona on a very fashionable street was exactly like some of the more opulent residences that you see on the television and this one was packed with art, sculpture and other nice things.  Some the nice things I would very much like to have had.  But my breeding got the better of me, that and the fact that there were far too many witnesses!

The meal was very enjoyable, but stressful at the same time as much of the conversation was in Spanish.  I tried my best but it is impossible for me to be anything like my normal self in a foreign language.  I know it is my fault that I have not made more of an effort to be fluent given the amount of time that I have now spent in Spain – but there it is.  And I think I exploit my status as “false beginner” to an extraordinary degree.  And as soon as I learn a few more tenses and a few more verbs to go with them, there will be no stopping me.

I returned with Julie and John on the train, as they were off to spend their first night in the new Sitges flat.  Toni and I cannot wait to see exactly what they have done with it.

Maybe it’s the weather, or perhaps it was the amount of walking in the rain that I did, but my legs were hurting by the time I got home and I was grateful for my bed.

Sunday was going to be a restful day, but The Family appeared at lunchtime and I retired to the Third Floor to get some OU work done and brood.

I realized today that the weekend should also have been a time when some much-needed work should have been done, as Monday morning was something of a nightmare.

Put not your trust in machines.  What should have been a simple operation of getting a document form one computer to another via a memory stick turned into an epic struggle of failure as all aspects of my attempted transfer (apart from the computer) failed to work.  Perhaps it was just a sort of mechanistic grin that allowed the document that I wanted to work with to be so clearly displayed as, without a cup of tea, I set to work in the early morning night-time.  The computer in the odd little pseudo-classroom that I use for the 1ESO doesn’t link to anything – including the Internet most of the time.  It refused to recognize my memory stick and left me fuming and impotent.

I was eventually helped by a fast speaking Catalan whose dexterity on the computer keyboard both mystifies and frustrates me.  He eventually got things moving but not soon enough to be of any real use to me.

Having switched to Plan B I worked at a frantic pace to get the work done for a colleague and then found myself stymied by the whole of the school Internet system crashing yet again!

Still without my cup of tea I walked down to the other building and set about getting results transferred to a central data base (or stapled photocopied sheets) and then discovered that one set of papers appears to have gone missing.  I did what any sane person would do given the amount of work waiting for me to do and systems crashing right, left and centre: I pretended that everything was alright!

With a lurching sense of unease (having completed the examination setting work I had to do) I realized that I had not designed and made the folder for the Drama workshops I take.  Ten hysterical minutes later and the folder was complete and eventually, while waiting in fuming impotence for a charming colleague to finish her interminable photocopying, I had the necessary numbers of folders for my next class.

And so the day progressed, wobbling from one unsatisfactory work linked experience to another.  Although wearing to the soul, I did actually get quite a lot done.

This week sees the second part of my Puppet Project in Drama.  This is a three-week experiment to get the kids in Year 7 to write and design a short, filmed production using the simplest forms of puppets and backgrounds.  It will be interesting to see what comes of it.  And what will be more interesting is to see what I will do next.  I have a completely free hand in what I do in these four lessons a week and I intend to take full advantage of such an opportunity and make the most of them.  The only thing that I am determined not to do is to mount four dramatic productions at the end of the year to which parents are invited.  I have seen with mine own eyes just how much extra work this entails and I am determined to have none of it!

Tomorrow is an ESAEF day (Early Start and Early Finish) by which means I think it possible that I might get to the end of the year without terminal harm!

We shall see.

Are the days getting longer?

Today the early morning seems just a little darker than usual and it takes the happy information that at 6.30 am here it is already five degrees warmer than the projected high for Cardiff of a measly two degrees of coldness!

Today the examination season starts in earnest with all the world having to do a Mock Examination (capitals intentional!) so that we can have an overview of all the pupils and make decisions.  What decisions those are, I know not, but they will be significant and meaningful.  Honestly!

Today is also a full day when my last lesson takes me neatly up to the last second of school time and precipitates me directly into the maelstrom of parental egress when double parking is de rigueur and triple parking more than acceptable – especially if this barrier of steel is blocking me in.  But, in theory this hellish experience should only be mine twice a week, and that is just about bearable.  Just.

At the end of that particular day I was totally exhausted; I think that it is a case of the amount of energy I expend being now suited to a more restricted teaching load and, when I actually have to be in the place for the whole day, I feel the my reserves being drained whatever my actual teaching periods are. 

The spacious timetable that I have inherited at the moment is perhaps the only one which makes this extra-retirement jaunt possible.  As all teachers know just being in a school is exhausting, let alone being there and having to teach!

Consequently I should be able to make a trip to Terrassa today to get rid of the wildly expensive chocolates bought as an extravagance to repay the munificence of the Christmas Festivities supplied by The Family, without making tomorrow a total misery as I chase my tiredness debt throughout the day!

We are making our way towards the so-called “White Week” when the majority of the school goes on trips and excursions leaving only a dissatisfied rump in the institution itself.  During this week of truncated days there is a planned programme of instruction on the finer point of the utilization of the iPad in everyday teaching.  I would very much like to join one of these groups, as my knowledge of the details of this machine is strictly limited – and anyway it would give me an opportunity to show off my new ultra-thin keyboard!

As I suspected the management in the school has slightly different ideas.  To be fair, my not having an iPad given to me by the school is because of the perfectly acceptable reason that they are only for those members of staff who are teaching the first years next September.  As I have asked various people to do the right thing and shoot me if I show up in September 2013 it follows that I will not be teaching the fresh-faced youngsters when they eagerly flock to their new classrooms clutching their shiny iPads.

However, I still would welcome more instruction – even if my machine of choice is the MacBook Air!

I have approached the appropriate member of staff and have been given the disturbing news that they have “other plans” for me and that might mean doing some sort of “drama” with “primary.”  All of this is disconcerting and may well mean that I actually end up doing more teaching during a week of half days than I would in a so-called normal week!

I have now watched the 1951 film version of “The Tales of Hoffmann” twice and certain of the musical pieces are beginning to grow on me.  The Internet is awash with versions of the Barcarole, but as that is the one piece of the music that I knew before I listened to the whole opera, it is also the least useful in getting to know the music which I didn’t know.

The opera itself is, I feel, deeply flawed.  Not only is the score unfinished it is also basically three one-act operas stitched together with a flimsy connecting narrative.  I look forward to a production which makes sense of the disparate elements with wit and verve.

The singing is taxing too with Olympia’s song calling for coloratura of a high (!) level.  I look forward to my first live performance with great anticipation.  I only hope that it is justified.  Certainly at the price that I am paying for a seat!

So, as the recurring story of my life in this place, I am now in front of a class of students who are all set out in regimented lines and they are doing the first of two examinations which will fill in their day.  Given the amount of time that they spend in tests, it's amazing that we ever have time to teach them anything!

The Mock Examinations for the entire school are, of course supplemented by the day-to-day tests that are the life blood of the institution and a whole series of examinations for those who failed the last set of tests and, within a week or so we will have the tests to check that what we have learned in the vast length of time from the 8^th of January when term started until now, some nine days later has firmly lodged in the hapless pupils’ minds.  It is truly at times like this that sunny June seems eons away from the plodding present!

Still, I have an unexpected free next period and then a single lesson to teach and I can escape. 

Not too bad a prospect! 

Even if lunch is going to be a little late today.