Today I've mostly bin...

[giraffe]

His hotel room was booked for 2 nights, so he could easily stay for tomorrow, but I don't know what his work commitments are for tomorrow. Mind you when I spoke to him just before lunch he said he's managed to do 3 hours work this morning, so sitting in a hotel in the middle of nowhere has it's advantages.

[LAT]

Well he's had quite an exciting afternoon anyway!

Didn't think it was on TV, we've been listening on the radio (and watched the highlights the last couple of evenings)

[giraffe]

It's on sky sport 1, which is probably why you've been watching the highlights on BBC.

[Bunnylump]

...Clearing out cupboards. I finally decided I needed to start tackling some of the stuff at Mum's house. She refused point blank to let me clean her house, sort stuff out in the cupboards or anything else while she was alive. Consequently I've been finding some...um...INTERESTING things in the larder. I think the most spectacular out of date item was some Lee and Perrins Sauce which had been there since 1975. I emptied all the spice jars which had been there for at least 20 years, recycled all the bottles and now have a nose full of musty cinnamon and mustard powder. YUK. Oh, and I also found...wait for it...45 packets of paracetamol.


Oh, and by the way, does ANYONE want a cat? One previous owner, very friendly, large fluffy and ginger.

[Laura]

I thought you were going to say does anyone want any paracetamol, cos you're selling it for very reasonable rates!! You could set up a chemists shop!!!

[giraffe]

I think there is an unopened jar of marmite in my cupboard that I bought when the children were tiny in case they brought a friend home for tea and that was all they would eat! (My bestfriend was a marmite lover) It probably says best before 1998.

[LAT]

It won't really go off though. But you could use it in gravy.

[Bunnylump]

Well, Laura, it wasn't just paracetamol. There were about 15 different kinds of beta blockers and goodness only knows what else. I can feel a trip to the chemist coming on, I don't think it's a good idea to fllush that lot down the loo - it'd probably affect the heart rates of anyone in the Three Valleys Water area!!

[Bunnylump]

...Trying to calm teachers down. Our headteacher came back to work for the first time this term today (he's been in hospital having heart surgery!) to get the dreaded "O" word down the phone. They're in on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week. One of the lovely NQT science teachers, who so far has been wonderful, totally went to pieces and panicked in a year 7 lesson when she heard.

I got asked "Aren't you worried?" No, why should I be? Without blowing my own trumpet I do a very good job. I know that, the kids know that and the teachers I work with know that. I refuse point blank to do anything differently to what I have planned already. If a stupid Ofsted inspector doesn't think what I'm doing is good enough, then I DON'T CARE.

[tricia]

Good for you Bunny sock it to them. What teaching experience do they have?

Tricia

[giraffe]

Well said Bunnylump! I can never understand why the teachers go into panic about being inspected, what do they have to hide? Takes me back to my auditing days, some of the clients just used to go to pieces if you asked for an invoice. Quite funny really when the auditors are complete novices in their first weeks of training, and haven't a clue what they're doing.

[Scurra]

As the old saying goes... those that can, do; those that can't, teach; those that can't teach, inspect.

[MBH]

My attitude exactly Sis - in my evening classes I was inspected a number of times - but as far as I'm concerned anyone can come into my class at any time and see what I'm doing.

I can never understand why the teachers go into panic about being inspected, what do they have to hide?

I'm afraid I was the bain of my bosses life with those sort of thoughts Giraffe. The fact is that simply being brilliant is not enough for inspections - you've got to "play their game" and "put on a show".... neither of which I have patience with. They have a number of tick-boxes they want to see happening in any class they visit - wether it is appropriate to that lesson of that class OR NOT.

One visit was scheduled for close to the end of a year, and I commented it would be a very boring inspection as the whole lesson was a mock-exam under exam conditions. "You can't do that on an inspection.... they need to see individual responses, and team work between students, and different teaching methods, and, and, and"

I did point out that if you do "put on a show" then that simply forces all the other teachers to do the same, and they're not inspecting what is really happening anyway. All staff from the 'teaching' world looked at me as if I had just arrived from the planet Zog.

As for the old saying mentioned by Scurra - I never did like that The very reason I can teach is because I can DO, and love sharing that ability with others.

[tricia]

Lost!

I've been surfing the net for some puzzles and came accross a site that allowed me to download a copy of the Tough Puzzles magazine from 2001 - going to give that a try for the next couple of days

Tricia

[Wulfruna]

... Recovering from enjoying the Exmouth Carnival last night! These seaside events are quite a big thing (in Devon at least!). The hour-long procession was full of floats from all over Devon: e.g. Carnival Queens (now called "royalty" but still apparently all teenage girls...) and some quite imaginative ideas for other theme-based entertainment shows. Not to mention all those marching girls described as majorettes - some of them noticeably better trained than others .
We had an interest as amongst the local community groups was one led by my husband which was advertising that Exmouth is now a "Fair-Trade" town - i.e. we have a majority of cafes offering Fairly-Traded tea and coffee, as well as a proportion of shops offering fair-trade goods (e.g. tea, coffee, bananas, chocolate - not to mention two which have hand-made wooden toys, and clothes from fair-trade cotton). He and his committee had gone to a lot of effort designing their float (featuring Cadbury Dairy Milk amongst other stuff) - they won a (well only third....) prize for their efforts!

[Bunnylump]

Ah well, that's still very good! And certainly a worthwhile idea too.


...Today I've mostly bin...

Having a mid life crisis. It's suddenly hit me how old I am, and it's REALLY scary. So whilst in Tesco, being boring middle aged shopping mother, I bought myself a new CD, a big bunch of flowers (no other bu***r is likely to ) AND some LIME GREEN nail polish. I'm wearing it now, in defiance of being too old to wear lime green nail polish

[Biscuit]

I can sympathise there - feeling pretty old myself - and to cap it all today I kept forgetting people's names (I have always been pretty bad) - talk about embarrassing - if anyone can pass on any tips i would welcome them

[Bunnylump]

I know that feeling - in my department at work, we have four people whose names begin with L. Not a hope of picking the right one at any given moment... My old dentist used to always call his dental nurses Linda, regardless of whatever their names actually were. Linda was his original one and he knew he'd always get it wrong!!

[MBH]

.... taking my computer bus to a "Celebrating Learning" event and getting myself wound up about my pet subject [again ]. I really am turning into a Grumpy Old Man

There are really nice people encouraging me to jump through the training hoops (starting with PTLLS) - and they can't seem to understand that I just want to sit down with the joker putting the hoops up and ask him "What the £&^*&£$ are you playing at?"

I refuse to spend my own time or money doing these things, but if 'X' have a fund for it and 'Y' will allow me the time off work to do it during the day, then I'll make a start. The trouble is there are more hoops being put in place and I have NO INTEREST in doing it - but I'm damging my future chances by my 'common sense' attitude

The problem with starting this (in my mind) is it's a continuum with CTLLS, DTLLS, and possible XTLLS, YTLLS and ZTLLS. I'm not trying to be big-headed, but what are they going to teach me that I haven't learned in 14 years classroom alongside 30 years [next year Who's feeling old?] of teaching terrified or resistant office workers systems they don't want to learn?

Maybe I should have put this in the Whinge thread?

[Bunnylump]

I do know what you mean about not wanting to do all that stuff in your own time, but maybe it just might be worth it in the long run? It probably would be in your case. Whereas I did all the HLTA stuff in my own time and THEN it made no difference whatsoever to my actual job. And yes, this probably should be on the whinge thread!!