Out of the way!

It is finished! 

It sounds a bit blasphemous, but I do understand the sense of completion.  The Essay has been sent off.  As usual the most annoying part was the writing of the bibliography; but I did use an idea passed on to me by Paul 1 who said that the easiest thing to do was to write the titles of the books etc. on Excel in a single cell per book and then simply ‘sort’ to get the alphabetic order so beloved of the pernickety - and copy and paste!

I will have to ask Paul how he got the lines of information to fit on an A4 page – knowing such things is the difference between serenity and mindless panic at the end of an assignment!

I am now “free” as far as TMSs are concerned until the middle of June, when the next course will have started up and enough will have been done for the first of the three TMAs to be sent in.  Though, thinking about it, that will be before the end of term – if I am still in the school.  Which looks less likely the more the “Meetings” loom large!  Long before that I will have to sit the exam for this course, of course.  Now when did I last sit an exam?

I feel that my revision will have to be a little more directed than it has been in the past and, given the way the OU approaches these first level course examinations, I will be guided pretty comprehensively towards what I need to study.  I must take heed of the help and abide by the advice!  That, in itself, is going to be difficult!

The Family has descended for lunch – but bringing with them calçots and various forms of meat that they have barbecued and served – and excellent it was too.

I am a little disturbed because the work I had to do this weekend has been done.  Not, admittedly the work that I have to complete for school and the dreaded meetings on Monday and Tuesday, but the work for the OU course has been done.  Done.  Done.  Done.  Thinking about it – when did I last do revision?  Dear god, talk about reviving old, well-lost abilities!

As long as I can get through this last week next week, then there is a holiday until the 5^th of next month.  That is a much more acceptable way of putting it because as sure as god made little fishes, we do not have the clear fortnight which is a god-given right in the UK.  Best not to think about it too closely because that way lies madness!

Having failed to find free app which allows me to watch British television, I had to listen to Radio Wales and let out various whoops and hand claps as Wales trounced England and denied them The Triple Crown and the Grand Slam and the Championship.  Sweet!

We must make the most of this excellent win against England because we know that our moments of delight are going to be tempered by bitter loss in the future and we have to have these frustratingly irritating (from the English point of view) victories to relish in memory!

And Scotland are not doing too well in their job of forcing France to accept the wooden spoon in so far as they don’t appear to have as many points as the French.  One doesn’t want to disparage our northern neighbours but the Old Alliance seems to be coming into play!

Well, Scotland may have lost but we won - and that is the important thing.

Only a long week to go!

After a gloriously sunny afternoon there was a tit for tat payment in terms of the weather when it became appreciably colder.  A casual look at the future weather forecasts were not inspiring and there is a positive indication of what can only be described as rain threatened of r a considerable part of next week.  I remain firm in the faith that Castelldefels has a micro-climate of its own and that the rains will say well away on the hills which surround us on one side, or out to sea on the other!

After some cosmetic work on The Essay last night in which I painstakingly added the specific references I can honestly say that it looks in worse condition than when I started tinkering with it!  My damning comments I wrote after reading through The Essay as teacher rather than pupil still stand; which is depressing.  But come what may, this weekend is going to see it sent off – in any one of the multitude of meanings of that phrasal verb!

My first cup of “individual” tea was a great success and my body is still reeling from its first ingestion of tea-derived caffeine for months: my eyes are wide and I am ready for anything.  The mixture I created works well, but as the quantities of each of the teas that I painstakingly put into the tea bags was approximate, each cup is going to be slightly different – as it should be.  To hell with mechanistic standardization!

I have now used up my supply of the most expensive Earl Grey Tea in the world as purchased from the most expensive tea shop in the world, staffed – if you are very unlucky – by the idiot child, who seems to have no idea of the stock that he has or the price of anything!  Yesterday he was nowhere in sight and I was therefore served with efficiency and accuracy.  Ah, if only all shopping experiences were as good!  And as often.

Meanwhile reality is beginning to rear its ugly head in terms of the electronic platform for the writing of results.  Into which I cannot get.  Which is fine by me, but I fear that the System will demand some form of electronic input and delay as much as I like, I will eventually have to put finger to key and do something.  Well, I have phoned the administrator and I now await further instructions.  More I really cannot do.

But more I have been asked to do.  I have been given a password which is a file which has to be kept on a memory stick and used each time access to the program is required!  I have never heard of this before, but . . .

After over twenty minutes trying to gain access to the program with and without files on computers and memory sticks, using passwords in every conceivable combination, with growing desperation, I finally managed to get in to the system which then confounded me with its mindless complexity.  Eventually I gave in and asked a colleague for help, only to find that only one set of my classes has been put on the system.  Stymied (a word I have been using fairly frequently this morning) again.  And finally.  Enough.  They will have to make do with a list.  And be grateful for it!

Our pupils are doing projects as part of our commitment to Project Based Learning.  Some commitment!  Some learning!  The truly sobering thought is that after the free for all of computer based time wasting I will have to pull all this together and teach a section of the pupils who are going to be as high as kites and certainly not wanting to do drama at the end of his lesson.  Ah well, at least it is a “short” day - which is getting longer by the second!

One advantage of leaving in June at the end of the academic year is that I will not have the pleasure of seeing some of these kids being a year older and more sophisticated in the way that they avoid work.  I wish my colleagues luck and they have my sympathy!

The weekend cannot come too quickly!  Or go too slowly!

The System has defeated me.  So be it.  I will give up with dignity and relief and let the powers that be in the school work out what I am supposed to do!

Let the weekend begin!

Tea's the word!

A cold start, but it has brightened up considerably and the sun is now shining satisfactorily – if frustratingly - as I am inside and the sunshine is, at it were, outside.

There was a moment of pure horror at break time when I was informed, in an insultingly casual way, that I was “down” to work with a 2ESO class last period today.  A class, I might add, that I do not teach.  As this is a “short” day you can appreciate my concern!  Luckily, with a straightforwardness that is totally refreshing, the head of department told me to ignore it.  That is the sort of authoritative advice that I like to hear!

I did nothing about The Essay last night, but I did have a siesta before dinner and I think that was more beneficial.  However, I have decided that enough is enough and today is the day when The Essay is going to be sorted out and sent off - with any luck.  I can then concentrate on revision for the exam, which is now beginning to loom large in my imagination - and in the calendar!

There are now seven teaching days left until the end of term and just to make that ending a little more exciting, the school has arranged meetings after school for three of the five last days of term!  A 60% misery rating!  And as each meeting is going to be a minimum of two hours long, that is equivalent to an extra day’s teaching.  In the last week.  Such timing!  Such consideration! 

This is going to be a real test of my disengaged way of operating in the school, because my lack of presence will be thoroughly noted in these meetings.  Whatever happens, I am sure that I can get out of one meeting and of the other two I can fail to go to the first before anyone has time to work out what I should be doing!

My problem is one that is self-imposed.  Some of the meetings that I have cut have had, buried deep within the tedium and irrelevance of the greater part of their length, one or two reasonably interesting points.  One of these pieces of information was how to enter results on the new electronic platform.

I have just asked one of my colleagues how to do this and he started asking questions to which all the answers where in the negative from me and this caused him to shake his head in a way which brought the phrase “weary resignation” to mind, and his further statement that “it would take hours” has made me decide to submit a list and hope for the best.  I cannot be doing with a complex way of doing something which should be simple, especially as this is going to be one of the only two times that I will have to face The System!

I have now managed to penetrate the system (small letters) in an attempt to get to The System (large letters) but have failed miserably.  Well, I tried and now I am more than prepared to give up.  As I said previously, I am more than prepared to fabricate some sort of list but really, without some sort of password that I assuredly have not been sent – what can I do?

Now on to more important things. 

I have come to the end of my tether with the caffeine-free tea bags that I have been ostentatiously using.  They are, I have finally had to admit, relatively tasteless.  I am going back to full strength and buying some decent tea caddies for school as well to celebrate my return to the full-strength fold.

I have been trying and failing to get DIY tea bags.  The sort I want are the herbal ones – little muslin bags with a tie-string so that I can put my own mixture in each.  I think that would be the high point of pretention in my school, so it has to be done!

A quick visit to the most expensive tea shop in the world here in Castelldefels and I now have 100 self-fill, empty tea bags.  They are not the ones I really want, but these are the ones that are readily available so they will have to do.  I have put a pinch of each of my three loose teas in each one so that I now have custom made tea bags.  As I am ever prone to WASP denial and delayed gratification I am prepared to wait until tomorrow morning in school before I try them out.

Crac or Crack or whatever it is called (the Catalan equivalent of the ubiquitous Chinese shop) provided me with two hinged lid tins so with Ty-Phoo tea bags and my homemade variety I am now fully prepared to face my long and short days in school knowing that I can be fortified by conspicuous caffeine concoctions!

And it’s almost the weekend and the last week of term!

Technology and Silence

I suppose there is something to be said for the computer in education. 

The kiddiewinks are now all in front of their machines and tapping away with two, or sometimes daringly more fingers getting their thoughts down on paper.  I am not sure that there is any planning about what they are doing but they are relatively quiet and that, considering that we live in an imperfect world, is all that matters.  Especially on an overcast day when there is no gleam of healing sunshine to make things look positive.

The rain has now set in and Barcelona has disappeared under a soft white gauze of wetness.  The soft slap of water spilling from clogged pipes is surrounded by the pizzicato of falling raindrops splashing onto the tiled terrace – and I’m pissed off with it all!  We have had too much of this (perfectly seasonal) rain and I want it to stop and I want summer here now.  If not sooner.

How can I salvage something out of the wreckage of my Essay if I am constantly staring morosely out of the window and not seeing sun?  And the days are ticking down to the cut off time.  Still a week left, and I can concentrate a little more now that the sets of examination marking are out of the way.

The rain has continued relentlessly all day and we have been accompanied by gurgles and tricklings and splashes wherever we have gone.  Traipsing from building to building has been a very unpleasant experience hopping inexpertly from puddle to puddle and hoping that my recent assiduous polishing of my shoes has made them truly waterproof.

Today was the day of the start of the Credit of Synthesis in which various connected projects are loosed on the kids and they work in groups to get their various tasks done.  I was hurriedly drafted in to take the first lesson for one group mainly because they were using material that I had written last year.  This was from a unit of work on the concept of the Hero.

I have to say that I rather enjoyed the lesson and found revisiting the old stuff stimulating.  The kids had to research a list of names and then give them a mark for how heroic they thought they were – and most importantly be able to justify their judgements.

There were a few glitches.  Typing the name Jason into the computers did not lead with information about the Classical Jason, he of the Golden Fleece, but rather the Jason from a slasher horror movie!  Similarly Jesse James appears to be some sort of sports star rather than the infamous Western outlaw!

The project based learning will go on for the rest of the week and next and will end up with the kids giving presentations in their groups of what they have learned during the week.  All good clean fun which should take us up to the end of term and the start of the Easter holidays and a long awaited rest! 

January, when I came back after Christmas seems an awfully long way back in distant history and June seems equally distant in terms of the future!  But it will come round soon enough and I will be truly retired at last!  Hooray!

Meanwhile, I will do the referencing work on The Essay this evening and attempt some restructuring.

And try not to think about the rain.

At all.