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Completely irrelevant, but if you click the link I can win stuff.
I like winning stuff.
Tuesday 29 March 2011
Monday 28 March 2011
Trips
.. as in visits, not accidents.
We're taking a group of 20 sixth form students to Rome on thursday to visit the Vatican observatory. Should be a great trip and I'm looking forward to it.
Drowning in paperwork though!
We've got everyone's permission slips, copies of passports, all the flight info printed out, info about the hotel, copies of the school's insurance policy, risk assessments, all the info about getting to and from the observatory and probably a lot more besides that I've forgotten about.
Before we leave it'll all have to be photocopied half a dozen times because all the staff on the trip need a copy, and there are a couple of people at school who have to have it too.
I can't wait to get on the plane and forget about paperwork for a couple of days. Until we get back! :(
We're taking a group of 20 sixth form students to Rome on thursday to visit the Vatican observatory. Should be a great trip and I'm looking forward to it.
Drowning in paperwork though!
We've got everyone's permission slips, copies of passports, all the flight info printed out, info about the hotel, copies of the school's insurance policy, risk assessments, all the info about getting to and from the observatory and probably a lot more besides that I've forgotten about.
Before we leave it'll all have to be photocopied half a dozen times because all the staff on the trip need a copy, and there are a couple of people at school who have to have it too.
I can't wait to get on the plane and forget about paperwork for a couple of days. Until we get back! :(
Friday 25 March 2011
PAT Time
It's nearly Easter, which can mean only one thing.
No, not me stuffing my face with loads of chocolate (although I'm sure I will).
Nope, it's Portable Appliance Testing time again.
Because the testing always happens over the Easter holidays, I most likely won't be here when the PAT men are in so I need to get everything out onto the benches for them before we break up next week. There's a lot of portable appliances in physics. I've found somewhere in the region of 300 so far and everytime I think I've got them all, I turn around and see another plug waving at me.
The annoying thing is that half this stuff probably won't get tested anyway. Last year the PAT men managed to miss my prep room, and the year before they missed Lab 1. My money is on Lab 4 getting missed this year.
No, not me stuffing my face with loads of chocolate (although I'm sure I will).
Nope, it's Portable Appliance Testing time again.
Because the testing always happens over the Easter holidays, I most likely won't be here when the PAT men are in so I need to get everything out onto the benches for them before we break up next week. There's a lot of portable appliances in physics. I've found somewhere in the region of 300 so far and everytime I think I've got them all, I turn around and see another plug waving at me.
The annoying thing is that half this stuff probably won't get tested anyway. Last year the PAT men managed to miss my prep room, and the year before they missed Lab 1. My money is on Lab 4 getting missed this year.
Thursday 17 March 2011
Staffing
One of my teachers is leaving in the summer to become head teacher somewhere ridiculously exotic. I'm really pleased for him and he'll make a wonderful head.
We haven't seen too much of him over the last couple of years because as well as being a physics teacher he's also SMT and therefore has a really light timetable, but I'm still going to miss him a lot. He interviewed me when I came for this job and he's always been good to me.
Here's the problem though - the school aren't replacing him. Oh, of course they'll be advertising for a new director of studies but not for a physics teacher.
The thinking is that he only teaches 9 hours a fortnight so colleagues should be able to cover that. Nice idea, but it ain't that simple.
From september we're going to have an extra IB set in year 12 and an extra A2 set in year 13. That's 14 more teaching hours to find from somewhere on top of the 9 we're losing. Suddenly we're down by half a teacher!
That's ok though! The physics specialists can teach 6th form and years 10/11 and year 9 can be taught by biologists and chemists. I don't know about you, but if I was paying many thousands of pounds for my child's education I'd be pissed off to find that they weren't being taught by a specialist.
There is of course one more issue that no one will have spotted. Some one is going to have to show these non-specialists how to do the practicals. Guess who's going to get that job?
*Sigh*
We haven't seen too much of him over the last couple of years because as well as being a physics teacher he's also SMT and therefore has a really light timetable, but I'm still going to miss him a lot. He interviewed me when I came for this job and he's always been good to me.
Here's the problem though - the school aren't replacing him. Oh, of course they'll be advertising for a new director of studies but not for a physics teacher.
The thinking is that he only teaches 9 hours a fortnight so colleagues should be able to cover that. Nice idea, but it ain't that simple.
From september we're going to have an extra IB set in year 12 and an extra A2 set in year 13. That's 14 more teaching hours to find from somewhere on top of the 9 we're losing. Suddenly we're down by half a teacher!
That's ok though! The physics specialists can teach 6th form and years 10/11 and year 9 can be taught by biologists and chemists. I don't know about you, but if I was paying many thousands of pounds for my child's education I'd be pissed off to find that they weren't being taught by a specialist.
There is of course one more issue that no one will have spotted. Some one is going to have to show these non-specialists how to do the practicals. Guess who's going to get that job?
*Sigh*
Tuesday 15 March 2011
Resistors, more resistors and some capacitors
There's an A2 ISA tomorrow morning. Cue the mass panic!
Obviously I can't go into specific details (despite the fact that kids have been discussing the items in various forums since september), but there's A LOT of electrical components needed. The instructions say that the resistors need to be clearly labelled. Now, when I was in year 7 I got taught the resistor colour code.
It's not that complicated, and it means that any resistor you pick up is already clearly labelled. Apparently that's too complicated for our year 13s though. It would tax their little brains to have to work out the resistances for themselves! As a result I have had to spend hours printing labels and attaching them to the appropriate resistor.
Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse - the capacitors need labelling so the little dears don't connect them back to front. Foolishly I assumed that our capacitors were already sufficiently labelled. After all, they have a very clear 'minus' sign on one side, and the leg is shorter on that side. Not good enough! More labels required.
The icing on the cake however came with the batteries. I had put the batteries in their holder with the pre-printed 'plus' and 'minus' clearly visible. Surely that would be ok?
Of course not! Each battery pack now needs a printed label attached to the 'plus' terminal.
So far I've spent a good 5 hours over several days prepping just this one practical. I'll be in early tomorrow to get it set out in the lab. Joy!
The icing on the cake however came with the batteries. I had put the batteries in their holder with the pre-printed 'plus' and 'minus' clearly visible. Surely that would be ok?
Of course not! Each battery pack now needs a printed label attached to the 'plus' terminal.
So far I've spent a good 5 hours over several days prepping just this one practical. I'll be in early tomorrow to get it set out in the lab. Joy!
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