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.

Space!

Today was a test day.  I ran away from school at a time which was unprecedented in the history of the institution.  I was home before the lunching hour of one!  This pushes my inviolability to the limits. 

I thought that I had tested the tolerance of the school by brining out a chair and sitting on the patio and watching the kids during my so-called invigilation of the morning break, but my disappearance during the times that I am not teaching is pushing the school to the limits of its tolerance. 

I suppose that I can say that it is their choice; they accept my rules or I walk!

Today I have been able to utilize the day not only to complete my teaching requirements but also to complete a little academic work and go out for an enjoyable evening with the head of secondary in the local British school.  We were eventually joined by the head of pastoral and, for the first time in my experience of working in the school, I actually saw her sit down!

An excellent evening and I look forward to future evenings of the same kind!

Tomorrow will be a defining day when my departure today will either be an important feature or it will be treated as I want it to be: as unimportant.  And thus the rest of my time in the School on the Hill will be defined as acceptable!

Tomorrow the way of the school reinforces itself as we lurch into the examination season yet again.  The Mock Examinations (how apt that adjective is!) start tomorrow and I lapse back into my default position of marking Paper 1 with my tried-and-tested cut-out marking scheme.  I think that my offer to mark my traditional burden of Paper 1 was greeted with a certain degree of delighted acceptance and I think that I might have talked myself into that unwelcome burden when I might have been able to remain aloof!

But the year is rolling along and I have to play my part in it.  Yesterday in bed I tried to work out just how many weeks were left until the end of June, but it was simply too depressing to contemplate with any degree of equanimity!

Meanwhile the teaching has to go on and I have to be there to ensure its continuation!  Or something.

At least we seem to be clearer about when the Third Annual Chocolate Week is going to take place: the second week in February.  I will have to start rooting around for white chocolate recipes to ensure that Julie is contained within our celebrations!

And tomorrow is already the “tipping day” when we begin to work our way towards the weekend.  Such ways of thinking are the ways to get through the week.

Unfortunately there are lots of weeks left before I can feel the tension of educational responsibility drift away!

Long live differences!

Sometimes getting up at six-thirty in the morning is earlier than at other times.  This morning was one of those crack-of-dawn type experiences when the obscenity of early rising was more pronounced.  And the traffic was worse and there wasn’t even a decent sunrise to gladden the heart.

And you have to teach!

The hysteria connected with the distribution of iPads continues with a hierarchy of smugness directly proportional to the sveldtness and elegance and practicality of the “cover” rapidly emerging.  This was an obvious next step for a group of people who had all been given exactly the same machine.  I am thinking of writing a short monograph on “The sociological implications of technological innovation in a closed community.” 

My previously stated plan to shock people with an ultra-thin keyboard of satisfying expense (it has already been ordered) looks as though this will be plan of merely private satisfaction as the visible ownership of an iPad will mean automatic enrolment into the slave ranks of the feeders of the iPad who will, for the next number of months up to the advent of the new intake in September, be producing material as if there is no tomorrow.  Yet tomorrow will inexorably come and no matter that there will have been months to prepare, it will be as if nothing had been done and there will be howling and wailing and gnashing of teeth as the entire system collapses on Day 1.

When I arrived home the keyboard was waiting for me and, remarkably easily the thing clamped magnetically onto the iPad and worked its magic.  It does look elegant and, more importantly, it works.  Alas!  It looks so impressive and professional that it screams for academic work to be fed into it, so I fear that it must remain another of my guilty gadget secrets!

But I will be far away and the sounds of distress will be as distant echoes in a waking dream.  With any luck.

My teaching day was less than satisfactory and most of the negativity was my fault.  There is something infinitely depressing in analysing poor lessons and working out that the factor of failure was down to the practitioner, i.e. me!  At least with the drama lesson it means that the next one will be much better as I have to teach four parallel classes, so at least I get another chance to redeem my reputation.  As I keep encouraging myself, if you can tell that you are teaching badly and work out strategies for improvement then you are still capable of professional thought!

Tomorrow is an early start, but also, with any luck, a very early finish.  One of my drama lessons has been moved to another day and so (in theory) I can leave before lunch.  This approach is being tolerated at the moment and I am not bruiting it abroad basing my strategy on the notorious “Don’t ask; don’t tell” policy of the US armed forces with the only negative aspect being one of my colleagues who notices each time I am not there.  My habitual response of “I was lying low” is beginning to wear a little thin – and it’s going to be a damn sight thinner by June!

I have begun my musical homework for the next opera “Les Contes de Hoffmann” and have used YouTube to provide an extraordinary Powell and Pressburger 1951 version which prompted me to view their Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) which was a much better film and one which I found engaging and emotionally charged with amazing performances from the two leading men and an overall impression of moral authority remarkable for the time.

Finding an entire film on YouTube will, I think encourage me to use YouTube to try and find some of the more obscure films that writers have enthused over and that I have long desired to view!  Even more opportunities for pretention beckon.

But an early start tomorrow so oblivion calls!

Keep the faith

Finding a parking space outside, or indeed anywhere near, the swimming pool this morning was incredibly difficult.  I ended up a fair walk away from the pool and made my way towards it with a growing depression as I imagined the number of kids and their parents that had to be cluttering up the pool, getting in the way of we dedicated swimmers.

It therefore came as something of a surprise when I finally got to the water to find the surface of the pool untroubled by any perturbations from other swimmers.  And indeed I was alone from almost the whole of my time ploughing through the water.

I think that the parking spaces had been used up by legions of jubilados who were playing boule with the sort of single minded dedication that makes the SAS look like casual Sunday School teachers!

I think that I made a mistake with my timing and I spent more than my allotted twenty minutes – or I have suddenly become less proficient in a single day.  Which is not impossible I suppose.

Yet again, as soon as I left the water a child appeared closely followed by another.  I think that I must have a built-in detection device to warm me about the proximity of neophyte humans!

Exercise taken (fairly) early in the afternoon meant that I could go out to lunch with Irene with a (fairly) easy conscience.

My first task was to explain and justify my apparent complete U-turn about the concept of retirement.  I am not sure that I managed to get my point of view across as she maintained an expression which could best be described as “sceptical” throughout our discussions!

One result of our calling in to a supermarket was my acquisition of a Lindt chocolate bar which comprises a shell of dark chocolate enclosing a filling of “extra creamy” tiramisu.  I haven’t yet eaten any, but simply holding the bar one registers a very satisfying weight suggesting a profundity of taste which will only be heightened by delay in gratification!

I am now eager to get my ultra-slim keyboard for my iPad as I am hoping that this will revitalize my use of a machine which seems to have fallen woefully down the pecking order with the advent of the iMac and Kindle Fire.  Let the battle for my attention commence.

I have now downloaded the marked TMA 01 which has been returned electronically by the tutor.  We were informed, in a vain attempt to make us feel better about the difficulties of working together as a geographically disparate group of relative strangers that the part we had to do as a group was usually the part which received a higher mark than the individual effort; not in my case – and I don’t know if that is good or bad.  I will assume the positive choice.  And I now have a few weeks to prepare for the next assignment.  And I am now working in the School on the Hill.  The best laid plans etc etc!

I will also have to start thinking about my next course as the conclusion of this one is rapidly gaining on me and I need to have a constant course content so that I can build up to the courses that I need to do if I am to gain a degree in Art History – which is the long term plan.

Long live learning!