| Digital - teacher | Education in a technological world

Letter from a parent

Some days are better than others, and today is (so far) one of those good days. It started out well as I had a very interesting note passed to me from a child this morning as I was taking the register.

Health woes

It's the Easter holiday. A time normally when I might catch a cold, the flu or some other sort of snivelly disease that only strikes at the end of a term when my body is tired, aching and exhausted from the pressure of term time.
This holiday though my body went one better and decided not to give me minor illness, oh no this holiday it went all out and dropped an unexpected heart attack on me late Saturday night!
As a result I've spent 4 days in a cardiac unit being operated on, probed, monitored, and pumped full of pills.
I am now home but with strict instructions to do nothing, and very slowly begin to exercise with short walks.
What this has done though is make me think long and hard about lifestyle, and there are big changes that I need to make - soon.
I do have time off work to recover, and my consultant has indicated a gradual return to work at some point, but not just yet.
In the meantime I have to see just how long I will feel tired after climbing the stairs, and get used to doing much less.
What a start to the Easter holidays.

Who trains the trainers?

I heard the good news yesterday that I am to be given Wednesday mornings out of the classroom for a few weeks in order to train up our T.As to make full use of the technology we have in school. High on the list of "things to be taught" is use of the visualiser, as well as video capture, smartboard tips and going through some of the software in order for it to be used effectively.

I'm really grateful that I get the time out to do this, as I thought I would be using lunch / afterschool sessions to train up the T.As, however one thought does occur to me; I use one type of visualiser in my class, and the others school are of a different type. I need to make sure I know the finer points of those visualisers before I start talking to staff about them. The same is true of the Smartboard and software. I need to know them inside out so as not to be caught out when asked a question. 

There is no-one in school to go and ask. Along with the HT, I am the one who "knows everything ICT" apparently.

So, that leads me to ask the question in the title of this post - who trains the trainers? I suspect the answer to this is that I train myself first, in the time I can find; evenings, weekends, searching on the web, and tweeting on twitter. Then I can pass any knowledge on to others.

Ssshhh, i'ts report season!

This time of year is the most hated by teachers, surely. It's hated for one simple reason: reports!
Well I've managed to complete all of mine, and did the usual "check for any spelling mistakes" to make sure nothing comes back to me to be corrected. Now I am fortunate, I'm using a piece of report writing software that offers me phrases set to correct levels.
However, I can't believe that it won't do something really basic that I expected it to, namely check EVERY report for spelling errors, grammar errors and gender errors in one go. Nope! It does them one at a time - and it won't even run the three checks at once. I have to do a gender check, followed by a spelling and grammar check. Once it's done I move onto the next report and repeat. How time consuming is that? To check through 28 reports, it's taken me over 1 hour.

I want one button that says "Check all reports for gender / spelling and grammar errors" and with a single click checks through every single one of them. Is that asking too much?

3c or not 3c

It's been analysis day today (Inset - no kids in the building) and we've been looking at how much progress the pupils have been making this year. We've started using a new grid system that shows the level a child arrives from the infants with - and where they should be each year following on from that.

Well, year 3 did not look that good at all. Many of them were positioned below where they "should" have been, but we then did a bit of back checking. If we re-aligned them to the level they got when we retested them on the Yr2 SATs paper back in September, then suddenly all the children were working at the level expected of them, or even working at above expected levels.

That opens up a conversation - why did they arrive with such inflated levels? (we knew they were wrong a week into term - and our retesting proved it). Was it because they were assisted in their tests? did the staff inflate them to make their progress look good? (and drop us in it as a result), or is there a discrepancy between marking levels at KS1 and KS2?

Fortunately now we have evidence to back up our claims if ever Ofsted question us because they will - of course. They'll just look at the level a child left infant school with, add at least 12 points to it and expect them to hit that in Yr6. We're stuffed, but gathering evidence in our defence.

Year 9. Option time.

Four words that put the fear of God into secondary pupils.

Tonight I was at my daughters secondary school to listen to the Head and Deputy emphasise how important the choices that the students have to make are. I sat through 35 minutes of them both standing in front of a Powerpoint slide show and reading out what was written on the screen. Arghhhh Death by powerpoint. I'd only talked about this the other day, and here was another example of it. They could have printed it out and given me the sheet to read in my own time, rather than make me sit and listen to them.

Anyway, with the Powerpoint torture over, it was time to go and discuss the actual content of the lessons that she might opt for. ICT was first. What would the course contain? Well, nothing had been finalised (new course content - still writing it!) but it seems that in Years 10 and 11 they'll be learning to use excel to make spreadsheets, publisher to make posters / adverts etc, and (wait for it) using video to make multimedia content. I don't want to sound smug but my juniors are doing this now. And as for the exam paper - the example I read had some classic questions "what does multimedia mean", "what is a flash stick used for".
History seemed better than I remember it when I was at school, and her languages options (French and German) were OK too. So it seems sorted. All four options chosen. Hopefully.

Back to that old routine

Well, after a scorching (!??!) summer break, it's back to the day job. These first few weeks are always the killers. If it's not the feeling of exhausting from going from a sedate speed in the summer to all-out-rushing in the space of a day, or the feeling of how different this class is (and the thought "will I ever get them to the standard of last years?"), then it's the battle against the first virus invasion that enters the school with the kids.
So far, I've suffered just from the first and second, but I can see children hacking in class and thinking it's only a matter of time before their bugs strike me down.

The Swimming Pool Saga - Part Two

So we've gone through the problems of walking to the swimming pool for a lesson. But hey - that is a breeze compared with the living hell of the BUS JOURNEY. If there is one thing that you would never want to inflict on anyone, it's the prospect of sitting with a class (or two) of children heading towards the swimming pool on the school bus.
Why is this so bad? Well, where shall I begin.
There is of course the stage before even reaching the bus. The actual act of getting bags and coats together for every child can prove to be more difficult than trying to program Deep Thought to find the answer to the question of life. I mean, how can it be that when the class are lined up outside the classroom you still have to check every child and still have to ask those questions;
- Where is your coat
- Where is your jumper
- Where is your swimming kit (how on earth can a child forget to pick up their swimming kit when they are going swimming???)

And then of course you get to the bus, (assuming that it has actually turned up at the school to take you to the pool). And what a bus it is. I look at it and it reminds me of the buses that I used to catch into town when I was a child. Why does it remind me? Because it is the same thing. It's a retired public transport bus, sold to a contract firm and put back into use as a school bus.
Peeling paint, broken windows, chair seats falling off. What luxury!
The children get on and sit down, the belts are pulled on and then we're off. With rattles, crashes and bangs we head to the pool. No air conditioning on a hot day, no heating on a cold day. Could you ask for anything less?

Of course once at the pool, you are then at the mercy of the bus driver. Because he doesn't hang around at the pool. He's off to another school to pick up another lucky class. And if he's late back with those, then guess who doesn't have a lift back to the school. Yep, you got it! Standing outside in the snow, rain and cold wind after a swimming lesson with wet hair is not ideal.

Now the journey back to the school is the ultimate travel experience. 30 children with the smell of chlorine oozing from their hair, the windows steaming up, boys with their can of deodorant that they have just sprayed on them wafting up and down the bus, and girls with their perfume mixing with the other smells to produce a truly unique aroma.

Could there be any other disasters that a swimming lesson could bring? Oh yes, and they will be written about soon...

The Swimming Pool Saga - Part One

Who decided that a swimming lesson in the school day was a good idea? They obviously have never taken a class to a pool themselves.

Take a class I taught several years ago. They went to a swimming pool close to their school. Walking along the street in pairs, with a teacher, a teaching assistant, a parent or helper strategically placed every 3 pairs to avoid problems.
Where was I? I was always walking with the 'unique' boys. You know the ones that I refer to. The ones that can manage in the split second that you are looking the other way to have caused some sort of catastrophe. The ones that when you ask them what have they done, they reply with that standard answer of "I didn't do it, it was [add name of other disruptive child in class]".
You do wonder if they will ever learn that teachers find this inadvertant grassing up of their friends refreshing to hear.
Anyway, after a walk to the pool it was a changing frenzy - in less time that it takes to hang a coat on the hook, and change shoes for some indoor poolside ones, they are changed and ready. Can they write this fast? Can they learn there tables this fast? NO. But they are able to change for swimming at the speed of light. Of course! Can it be explained though, of course not. It shouldn't even be thought about.
So finally at the poolside, they slide into the freezing water - somewhere there is a leisure centre manual that states under rule 15, section 27, paragraph 40, that under no circumstances should the pool temperature for school swimming lessons rise aboove 1 degree celcius. The poor children shiver and shake before starting to swim backwards and forwards. Backwards and fowards. Endlessly backwards and forwards. Legs only. Arms only. Arms and legs. Back to legs only because they've forgotten what to do with them since they were taught a mere 5 minutes ago. Questioning the group asking whose float is serenely bobbing off towards the deep end of the pool way out of the reach of anyone at all. Simply cast adrift and allowed to explore the pool.
So the lesson ends, and they head back to the changing rooms. Forget changing at the speed of light, now we have the opposite problem. Children unable to dress themselves faster than an arthritic snail. Reminder after reminder to get dressed, and the constant questions to ask them;

 * "Whose socks are on the floor?"
    * "Who's left their towel on the floor?"
    * "Has anyone seen Jeffreys trousers? He can't find them!"

And the all time best one that I have had to ask, once all the class were dressed and lined up;

 * "Whose pants are these? Who forgot to put them on?!!"

Finally, the group is ready and the trudge back to school begins - in pairs, all the girls busy trying to brush their hair, and all the boys trying to make their hair stand up.
And has the swimming lesson worn out the unique children I am walking close too? No, of course not, now they decide that rubbing their bag against the railings makes a great sound, that bumping into each other is a great game, and that finding out just what annoys me is the best way to walk back to school.

But what about when the little angels travel to the pool by coach. That is a whole new story.

More to come...

From the chalkface

Over the years so many weird things have happened to me either in the classroom, or else have happened externally with my classes that I thought I would write them down and share them with other teachers.
I can imagine others reading my recollections and nodding in agreement at some of the things that children say and do.
I'm starting with the swimming pool - scene of many a stressful moment.
The first part is coming soon...