Friday Funny

'It's broken!'

How often have you heard a student claim that a piece of equipment is 'broken' when in fact they just aren't using it properly? Maybe they've turned the dial on the multimeter to the wrong setting, or connected up the oscilloscope incorrectly, but in my experience at least 60% of 'broken' equipment actually works fine if you know what you're doing.

Yesterday the physics trip to the Vatican observatory headed off. They don't come back until friday so there are quite a few lessons which need to have cover work set. The trip was booked months ago, so naturally the teachers had prepared everything well in advance - yeah, right! With an hour to go before departure astroboy was still sorting out all his cover work. He came into the prep room looking really stressed and said could he e-mail some of the work to me to print out for him because, and I quote, 'the photocopier is broken'.

Once he'd sent me the work, I headed off to the copier room to see just how badly 'broken' the photocopier actually was. 30 seconds later I had cleared the paper jam and it was working again.

*sigh*

Friday Funny

XKCD

A useful meeting!!

We had our regular termly technicians' meeting with the Head of Science yeaterday. My HoD was there too, because as from Easter next year he is taking over as HoS and so will be managing all 3 technicians, not just me.

It was quite a productive meeting for the most part. We highlighted the fact that since we switched to iGCSE the number of practical lessons has really increased and we are starting to get a bit frayed around the edges at times. It's been agreed that we are going to be more strict about requisitions being handed in on time. This has been a grumble of mine before and hasn't really improved over the past couple of months so we will see if a stern reminder from HoS changes anything. At least we now have his backing to refuse late requests if we are already swamped so that is a step forward.

The other main outcome is that teachers have been reminded that pupils should put equipment back where they got it from, and that teachers should be checking that everything is returned at the end of the lesson. Again this is something I've mentioned in the past so it will be interesting to see if anyone takes it seriously this time!

Trips

The CERN trip went very well, all things considered. Travelling abroad with 30 teenagers is rather stressful, and feels a bit like herding cats at times, but to their credit they managed to be at all the meeting points at the right times and we didn't lose anyone.

Next on the agenda - Rome. The trip to the Vatican Observatory heads off in under 3 weeks so we have to finalise the paperwork for that.

It never ends!

CERN here we come

Tomorrow we head off to Switzerland for our 4th annual visit to CERN. I'm looking forward to it, but as always I am at the stage now where I am terrified that something will go wrong and it will be my fault.

We started booking flights etc pretty much as soon as term started, in September, but it's really difficult to pin down some of these kids and their parents. One lad's family seemed to feel that his passport was in some way classified information and were incredibly reluctant to give us the details we needed to confirm his flight. Another lad has decided that, even though his parents filled in all the paperwork, he doesn't actually want to go on the trip.

My eternal nightmare for every physics trip is that we will turn up to the airport and find that not everyone has a plane ticket, or that I've booked it for the wrong day. At least I'm not responsible for booking hotel rooms. HoD dealt with that, so if we don't have enough beds it's not my fault!

New Toy

I'm so happy! Yesterday, along with an order of batteries, magnets and all the usual stuff, I got this:

Can you guess what it is?

It's my new soldering iron kit. Isn't it beautiful?

I've needed a new soldering iron for ages and when I saw this kit, I just couldn't resist. It has 3 different sized bits and even a desoldering pump. Can't wait to get soldering. :)

Friday Funny

From xkcd

Nearly there

Tomorrow we break up for half term after an incredibly hectic 7 weeks. The term from september to christmas is always the hardest and this year is proving no different. Most of the teachers and students seem to be virtually sleep-walking through the day.

So, to those who are counting the hours, I have this to say:

It's raining!

Well, of course it is. It's October and that's what the weather does lately - rain. This rain, however, is slightly different because it's not in the usual place (outside) but is instead happening in lab 3.

We are on the ground floor of the science block, and directly above us is the chemistry department. They seem to have issues with the sink traps in one of their labs which become dislodged when the kids kick or rest their feet on them. If no one notices that the trap has become dislodged then every time water (or anything else) is poured down the sink it comes through the ceiling into the lab below.

3 times so far this term we've had this problem and it's getting beyond a joke. It's not so bad when it's just water. The clearing up is a nuisance, but not major. What worries me is that sooner or later it won't just be water and someone could get chemicals in their eyes. Alternatively the ceiling might collapse. Either way, not good.

We keep reporting the issue, but I'm not holding my breath that anything will happen.

What's our job again?

I've mentioned in the past the wide range of extra curricular activities that we do here in the physics department - trips, astronomy, solar car etc.
Just lately though, it's feeling like we're starting to forget that the main focus of our jobs is supposed to be the teaching of physics!

The solar car project is having a big launch event on saturday. We've got Cambridge University coming along with their car as well as potential sponsors including McLaren and Jaguar. It's a really big deal and if it goes well then the project will really take off. It's a lot of work though. My HoD has been running around like crazy for the last couple of weeks putting arrangements in place. Meanwhile the organisation of the 2 overseas trips that are happening before christmas has mainly fallen to me and I'm worrying that it's all going to go wrong.

Lesson planning is virtually non-existant right now and last minute requests are becoming the norm. It's as if they've all forgotten that lessons are happening because they are so caught up in other things. I really hope that once this weekend is out of the way we can get back on track, or I'll be heading for a nervous breakdown by new year.

Friday Funny

ISA time

Got a lovely big parcel yesterday with all the bits I need to start preparing this year's AS and A2 ISAs. Obviously I'm not allowed to talk about what the ISAs consist of, but they don't look to be nearly such a pain to set up as some we've had in the past, which makes me very happy.

I'll be trialling the experiments over the next few weeks and then I expect we'll start doing all the practice ones. At least this year we have no GCSE ISAs.
Hooray for iGCSE!

Girls and Physics

There's a story on the BBC website today about the disparity between the numbers of girls and boys studying physics at A-level.

My first reaction was 'that's not news!'. Anyone working in science education has known for years that biology classes tend to be girl-heavy, chemistry tends to be a 50/50 split and physics is almost always male dominated. We've made quite a lot of progress on this front at my current school. When I started here almost 5 years ago, we had a couple of girls in the A-level and IB sets. We currently have over 25 girls studying post-16 physics. In face one of our upper 6th IB sets is only girls.

So what's changed? I think what has made a huge difference is that we have a department staffed by physicists who are enthusiastic about the subject. We don't just teach the stuff you need to pass the exam, we have a whole range of extra-curricular activities, particularly the astronomy club and the solar car, which help students see that physics isn't just some dry science that you do in a lab, but is actually a hugely exciting subject which can take you in a variety of directions.

However, it's not just girls who seem more interested in physics. We have almost twice as many post-16 students of any sex than we did 5 years ago, and I think that's the important point. Surely we want everyone to consider the sciences as a career option, and we need to start by looking at the teachers.

Over the course of 11 years working in 3 different schools I have met at least 20 PGCE science teachers. How many do you think were physicists? Go on, take a guess.
3.
If we want students to be excited by physics we need the specialist, passionate teachers and there just aren't enough of them out there.

Where's my class?

Last september I wrote about the problems we were having with overcrowding in the labs.
This year things are much better on that front and the majority of classes are small enough to fit in nicely. The way that has been achieved is by creating more sets, which has led to a different issue.

We now have an extra year 9 set and an extra year 11 set on top of what we had last year. In physics we also have one more upper 6th set. Obviously these extra classes have to be taught somewhere, but increasingly that is not in the science block.

We have 9 labs spread over 3 floors. Right now there are 13 science lessons on the timetable. Clearly they don't all fit in the science block, so where are they all? Well, we are having to use maths, psychology and business studies rooms which means that there are science lessons in just about all four corners of the school site. Business Studies is about as far from science as you can get whilst still being on site!

Some teachers are better than others at managing this game of 'musical classrooms'! When I get their requisitions for the week ahead I am occasionally having to point out that the practical they want isn't actually going to be possible in the room they will be teaching in.

I'm sure they'll get it eventually. Won't they?

Adapting dynamics trollies

Your basic dynamics trolley looks something like this:

We mainly use them for experiments on velocity or acceleration and generally use a light gate for the measurements. In order to break the light beam you have to attach some sort of 'sail' to the back of the trolley which up until now has generally been a piece of cardboard stuck on with sellotape or blu tack.

That was never really an ideal way to do it. For starters it looks a mess, and the sails are often not stiff enough and will bend or fold over and not break the beam as cleanly as we want. I've been trying to come up with a solution to this problem for ages and it suddenly struck me a couple of weeks ago.

I had a load of these clips in a drawer which I didn't really have a use for. I think they're for holding pipes or cables. My thinking was, if I attach the clips to the back of the trolley then they could hold and support the sail. Even better, I had some 10cm squares of hardboard which we used for an old ISA which I thought would make ideal sturdy sails.

Initially I just glued the clips to the trollies to see if the concept was sound, and the teachers loved it! I've now screwed the clips on and hopefully our velocity practicals will be a bit smoother now.

The finished article

ps. It's now half way through lesson 1 on tuesday. Still no requisition sheet from astroboy!

Requisition sheets

The concept of the requisition sheet or book should be one familiar to all senior school science teachers. It's the method by which they let me, the technician, know what equipment they need for each lesson.

My requisition book

There are various methods that I have heard of, but the one I prefer is for each teacher to give me a copy of their timetable with their requirments written in for each lesson. I then take the sheets and transfer all the information into my requisition book which is a day to a page and I can see instantly what the days lessons are looking like.

I like this method because as I'm transferring the information into my book I can see where there might be clashes or rapid turnarounds and it helps me plan my week.

This only works though, if the teachers get their sheets done in time. The official science departmant policy is that all requisitions should be handed in by Thursday lunchtime of the preceeding week. I give a little more leeway than that and have told my guys that Friday lunchtime is ok. But how many of them manage that?

Well, I have 4 teachers this year. 1 of them doesn't do much practical, but when she does, she manages to plan well in advance. This week she came and wrote in my book on thursday. NQT did his sheet on friday with a number of trips to the prep room to check what we have available. This is great, because it means that he has only asked for things that are actually possible. HoD did his sheet some time on sunday and emailed it to me. Not a huge amount of help since I didn't see it until this morning.

And then there's astroboy. Just lately he seems rather more interested in the observatory and astronomy club than the mundane business of teaching physics. It's currently half way through lesson 1 on monday morning and I have yet to see any sign of his requisition sheet. I guess this means he doesn't want any equipment this week?!

The prep room travel agency..

... is open for business.

Can it really be that time again already? Yup, I'm afraid so. Today we book the flights for this year's CERN trip. We've got the largest group yet - 32 of us altogether including the college chaplain which should be 'interesting'.

We're meant to be heading back to the Vatican Observatory in early december as well, so I expect I'll be booking more flights in the very near future.

An offer I can't refuse...

The lovely people at Timstar currently have a 'Back to School' clearance brochure out with an extra special offer - if you spend £100 from the brochure they'll send you free biscuits!

Never one to pass up a freebie I duly placed my order, along with a load of other stuff from the regular catalogue. Sadly, the majority of the items I wanted from the clearance brochure are already sold out but they're going to send me the biscuits anyway! Hooray for Timstar!!

Here we are again!

It's almost time for the start of another new school year. Where on earth did that last one go??

So, what happened over the summer?

Well, I didn't win a Salter's award, but considering I never expected to get down to the final 8 I'm still really pleased with how it went. I know there are a lot of amazing technicians out there and I'm sure it's not that I did anything wrong during the visit from the awards committee, it's just that others did better, so massive congrats to whoever the lucky winners were!



On a more positive note though, my application for Registered Science Technician status was approved so I can use RSciTech after my name and I have a lovely badge to put on my lab coat. There's been a lot of discussion within the technician community about whether RSciTech is worth having or not. It's still early days but it certainly can't do any harm to my career so I figured it was worth going for.

It's all quiet in school today, but all the teachers will be back in tomorrow, so I'm making the most of the peace to get my stationery order unpacked and start sorting out the timetables and set lists.

My RSciTech badge :)

I hate goodbyes

We're rapidly approaching the end of term which means that we're beginning to say our farewells to staff members who are leaving us.

This year is worse than usual here in science as we have 3 teachers going. One is retiring, one is moving to another school in the UK and one is going to teach in Hong Kong! They are all lovely people and the department really won't seem the same without them.

However, let's try to stay positive! If we are saying goodbye to some old colleagues, that means that come september we will be giving a warm welcome to some new colleagues. 4 of them in fact in science. They have been in for visits over the past week or so, and from what I've seen I think they will fit in really well.

So even though the department will be quite different next year, that doesn't necessarily mean it will be worse and I'm looking forward to whatever the future brings us!

How hard is it?

I placed a small order a couple of days with a well known supplier of electrical bits and bobs. When ordering, I clearly stated 'please mark for the attention of labtech666'. (Well, actually I gave them my real name, but you know what I mean!)

Order arrived in school today with no name on it, so the office had to e-mail everyone to ask whose package it was.

So annoying! I couldn't have made myself any clearer and it's not the first time I've had this problem with this particular company.

It really IS rocket science!

Our rocket building day with the pre-prep on monday was so much fun!

We gave them a little talk about rockets, and where in the solar system we have visited and then we began the build. Year 1 made simple cone/cup rockets and year 2 had some rather more complex kits to build. I ended up helping the year 2s, explaining what to do and helping them with the fiddly bits. Once the kids went for their lunch break, HoD and I had just over an hour to fit the engines to all 40 rockets and get them ready to fire and then we headed to the field to launch.

Rockets on the launch pads

Some of the kids were quite nervous about the prospect of loud noises and explosives, but most seemed quite excited. and the launching went really well!

Tell you what though, those little people can be hard work! They never stop talking! By the end of the day I was utterly shattered.
We had a lovely email yesterday from one of the pre-prep teachers saying how much all the children had enjoyed themselves and how enthusiatic they were about rockets.
Makes it all worthwhile!

Kaboom!

Don't you just love it when a package like this arrives?

We're building and launching model rockets with the pre-prep in just over a week and the kits arrived to day from the wonderful Model Rocket Shop. We've done this before and it's always a load of fun. The kids get so excited by it!

Can't wait!

PDR done

I had my suspicions that doing my PDR might bring me to the verge of tears, but I thought that would be due to frustration or anger. I never dreamed it would be as a result of people being nice to me!

I filled in the self review parts of the form, being as honest as I could about what I see as my strengths and weaknesses and then turned it over to my HoD and the Head of Science for their comments. When i got it back for signing I could not believe how much praise they lavished on me.
HoD described me as 'one of the best' and 'incredibly supportive' and Head of Science said I am 'exemplary in all areas of work' and 'proactive in improving the department'.

I knew that my HoD values what I do, but it is so nice to hear it from elsewhere and it is a massive boost to my confidence to find that people think I'm doing a good job. :)

PDR

The last time I had a Performance and Development Review was 8 years ago - not at this school, or even at my last school, but at the first school I worked in - so frankly it's about time for another!

I was informed today that PDR for support staff is going to be happening some time during the next month, and the Head of Science has sent us a copy of the form that we'll have to fill out. I don't exactly find PDR a lot of fun, but I do believe that if done properly it can be a worthwhile exercise. My heart sank then when I looked at the form. The very first 'Area of Work' on which we are to be reviewed is headed 'Customer Focus'.
I do hope someone will tell me who exactly the 'customer' in this scenario is meant to be! Is it the teacher who orders the practical equipment from me? Or is it the students who benefit from carrying out the practical activities? Or is it the parents who pay to send their kids here? And how am I supposed to be focussed on the customer? I do my job to the best of my ability at all times. What more do they want?

Why do I get the feeling that this is going to be another pointless box ticking exercise and that this form was just borrowed from somewhere else without considering whether it's actually relevant to the types of jobs done by the employees concerned?

It's my birthday.

Woo! Or not really, because I'm at work today.
When I'm Emperor of the Universe no one will have to work on their birthdays. Sadly I'm not Emperor yet though, so here we are.

About 5 minutes into period one my HoD came dashing into the prep room with a slightly panicked look on his face. 'Teacher X has a problem, can you come and help?', he said, so I dutifully followed him into lab 3 at which point the whole year 9 physics class began to sing 'Happy Birthday' and the teachers gave me a card and flowers.

I was horribly embarrassed and probably went a delightful shade of beetroot, but it's really sweet that they remembered me.

Apparently, I'm awesome!

Well, we already knew that but now it's official.

A month or 2 back I persuaded my HoD to nominate me for the Salter's National Awards for Science Technicians and I found out just recently that I have been shortlisted in the final 8.

Sometime in june they are going to come to the school for a chat with the Head, HoD and me, and then we have to wait and see.
It'd be brilliant if I won. Not just for me, but also for the department. We're always trying to raise the profile of physics in the school and every bit of extra positive publicity helps.

Fingers crossed!

Health and Safety gone mad!

Over the Easter holidays, our H&S manager decided to take a look at our little observatory.

We don't have a fancy automatic roof (although we're trying to get the funding for one), so when we want to use the telescope one of the teachers ahs to climb up an external ladder onto the roof and open the dome.
H&S decided that this was too dangerous and had a safety rail fitted.

So what's the problem? In theory, nothing. I'm all in favour of safety and would never want to see any of my colleagues get hurt if it can be prevented. The problem with this particular safety rail, however, is that no one thought to ask anyone involved in Astronomy before it was installed. We got back after the Easter break and found a rail which blocks the view through the telescope! I suppose it does fulfill its purpose - no one will fall because the observatory was rendered utterly useless.

Thankfully after a number of testy e-mails a compromise has been reached and we will be getting a much smaller rail. If only they'd just consulted us in the first place!

End of term

I've got that friday feeling, and it's hugely magnified because it's the last day of term and I don't have to come back for 3 whole weeks.
The department is lovely and quiet today, with 2 of my teachers off having fun in Rome, and there are no practicals ordered, so I can just get on with clearing up and shutting everything down for the break.

Here's one final 'Friday Funny' to end the term:

xkcd

Have a great Easter and eat lots of eggs!

Friday Funny

xkcd

The sad thing is, I know some people like that!

Travel chaos

It's nearly time for this year's trip to the Vatican Observatory and as always I have been acting as travel agent. I'm not even going on the trip this year (to find out why, see my other blog) but I've still booked all the flights and sorted the paperwork.
It's seemed a little more chaotic than usual this year. I think the recession etc has made itself felt, as a lot of kids just couldn't afford to come and those that are going have been quite slow to confirm. As a result I've had to book the flights in about 6 seperate batches. I just hope I've got it all right or there will be trouble next thursday when they get to the airport!

All change!

It's that time of year again, when those who are off to pastures new hand in their notice, and we start to look for replacements.

We've already hired our previous physics PGCE student, which brings the physics department back up to full strength, and they also hired the biology PGCE who was here at the same time. She will be teaching mainly psychology because that dept is getting too big for one teacher to handle, but she'll do biology as well.

We all knew that we were going to be down by 1 chemist because we have a retirement that's been known about for ages, but we're also losing another chemist, a biologist and the HoD of biology. I've been trying to persuade my best mate to apply for the HoD job, but I don't think she will because the hours and the workload are just insane!

I hope we get some good candidiates. *fingers crossed*

Mini eggs for all!

The lovely people at Timstar tweeted earlier that they are giving away FREE mini eggs if you order from them.

I intend to take full advantage! :)

I don't want to hear it!

There are certain words and phrases that I really don't want to hear uttered by a teacher when they walk into the prep room. Sadly I hear most of them every week!

1) Help! - usually cried out in anguish by my HoD as he charges into the prep room. This generally means that he needs some last minute photocopying or that I'm going to end up doing a lot of tedious paperwork which is probably not my job.

2) Could you just.... - I HATE 'just' jobs. They always take 5 time longer to complete than the teacher concerned has estimated.

3) Can I do the ISA? - first things first. Which ISA? Are we talking GCSE, AS or A2? If GCSE then do you want P1,P2 or P3? If A level then do you want P or Q? And anyway, no you probably can't because they take far longer to set up than any teacher realises.

4) Are you busy? - You're about to make me far busier.

5) Can you just sit with my class for 5 minutes? - I'm not meant to be left in charge of a class at all, and 5 minutes has a nasty habit of turning into 15 minutes.

6) At my last school... - You aren't at your last school, you're at this school and we don't have the expensive piece of equipment that you are asking for. No amount of pouting or puppy-dog eyes will cause that piece of equipment to miraculously appear.

Friday Funny

xkcd

I still get this dream with alarming regularity!

My hours, part 2

Just had a meeting with the Head of Science and, amazingly, it went the way I'd hoped.

He thinks that slightly longer hours during the week and fewer work days during the holidays is a much more sensible option, and the other 2 technicians are happy to go along with that. *victory dance*

Now he just has to have a meeting with HR (Boo, hiss!) and see if they will go for it.

Friday Funny

Can't remember where I found this, but i <3 Kermit!

My hours

I didn't want to get into another fight with HR, I really didn't, but somehow every time I have to interact with them it turns into a fight.

My contract says that my hours of work are 8.30-4.30 during term time and for 15 days during the holidays, but there are a number of reasons why I prefer to start work at 8 instead.

I live a stupid distance from work and the roads are so much quieter if I leave home at 7 than if I left at 7.30. Also it's much easier to find a parking space before 8am. It's also better for the department if I start earlier. 3 days a week lessons carry on until 5.15, so any equipment they've been using won't get cleared away until the morning and it's good to have more time for that and I also get a chance to see my teachers before they head off to assemblies, tutorials etc.

Anyway, I've been working from 8 for well over a year now, and for some ridiculous reason I thought it might be a good idea to formalise the arrangement, so I e-mailed HR and said that I would like to either work 8-4 or  alternatively 8-4.30 but with fewer days during the holidays. The total number of hours would be the same either way as those that are set out in my contract. I foolishly thought that this was a simple request and could be resolved quite quickly. How very wrong I was!

Apparently my hours can only be changed if the Biology and Chemistry technicians also change. Why?? We are doing different jobs in different departments and I can't see how the hours that I work can have any impact on my colleagues. There are technicians in DT and Art as well. Should they be working the same hours too? After all, they are technicians too.

Thankfully my HoD has my back as usual. He thinks HR are being ridiculous and he's going to make that point very strongly when he meets with them.

Friday Funny

xkcd

Newbie

Our new PGCE student started yesterday.

He's a chemist, but the Head of Science has given him a yr9 physics set to teach so he came to ask me for a text book. He seems so young!! The last PGCE we had (who got the job - YAY!!) was ex-military and in his 40s. The new guy is clearly fresh from uni and looks about 17. I feel so old! I suppose in a couple of years we really will have PGCE students who are young enough to be my children and I am not looking forward to that one little bit.

Anyhow, he seems really nice and I had a bit of a chat with him about making sure he gets his requests in on time etc. Be interesting to see how he does.

What we do ...

I don't know if you've seen the new internet meme which seems to have been all over Facebook the last few days. It's basically abunch of pictures illustrating what various people think your job consists of.
I've seen a couple of lab technician ones which made me smile, so I 'borrowed' them.

Anyone else got a good one?

New Blog!

Not remotely related to science, but I've just started a new blog devoted to my twin passions of choral singing and heavy metal.

If you want to take a look, it's here.

Inspection over!!

I'm not allowed to say much until we get the full report, but all the stress and hard work was worth it!

In praise of steam engines

Yesterday one of my teachers did an energy transfers circus. The kids had various things to play with - torch, dynamo, pendulum, solar cell etc - and they had to think about what forms of energy were involved.

As a demo I gave him our lovely Mamod steam engine, which went down an absolute storm! The year 9 pupils had no idea such things existed, and several of them wanted to know where they could buy one.

I couldn't believe they'd never seen one before, but then I was brought up by an engineer and spent numerous childhood weekends wandering round steam rallies (I highly recommend Tinker's Park) looking at the real thing. There's nothing quite like the sound and smell of a steam engine, and I'm so glad some of our students got to experience it even on a small scale. :)

Inspection - Day 3

Another insanely busy one. Loads of practicals and lots of stressed out teachers.
To help with the stress, I bought a box of chocolates and put them out on the side in the prep room with a note saying 'For Stressed Physicists'. The chem tech stopped by mid-morning and eyed the chocs, asking 'What about stressed chemists?'. I told him that chemists need to look after themselves. I'm a meanie!

Inspection - Day 2

We're fully in to the inspection now, and the teachers are getting noticably more stressed!

The H&S inspector yesterday seemed quite happy, which was a good start. He was particularly interested in seeing the radioactivity store and then chatted to me a bit about my science background. He was quite a sweetie really - fairly old with a huge shock of hair growing out of each nostril! I managed not to stare too much (I hope!)

Two of my teachers have been observed this morning. It mostly went ok, except that water started dripping from the ceiling in Lab 3 onto the kids while the inspector was in the room! That often happens when chemistry have their sinks in use upstairs unfortunately. I've put an urgent note in to maintenance, so with any luck it'll be sorted before any more inspectors show up.

A fond farewell

We said goodbye to our PGCE student today.
It's been really nice having a physicist. They're usually biologists.

He's coming back at the end of the week to interview for our vacant teaching position though, so hopefully we've not seen the last of him.

Inspection - Day 1

All quiet on the western front - so far!

It snowed over the weekend, so everyone was a bit worried as to whether we would all make it to work today, but thankfully the roads aren't too bad and we all made it in 1 piece.
This morning we're expecting a Health and Safety inspection consisting of 2 inspectors, the H&S manager and the Estates Bursar. I spent some time last week making sure all my paperwork is fully up to date (especially the radioactive sources file) and I'm wearing my white coat so I at least look professional.

Fingers crossed!

Panic Stations!

We've just been told the the dreaded inspection is happening next week. 9 Inspectors are expected on monday.

Cue many worried looking teachers. I am battening down the hatches (metaphorically speaking) and preparing for the worst.

Now hiring

Yippee!! We're advertising for a physics teacher to start in September.

As I mentioned previously, we've been short staffed this year because a teacher left but wasn't replaced. We've had 2 chemists and a biologist filling the gaps which hasn't been easy on any of us, and to make matters worse one of the chemists has been off since october with major family trouble so we've had a cover teacher (also a chemist) filling in for her. That cover teacher has been off sick for the past fortnight so HoD has been covering for the cover teacher. Phew!

We've been warned by senior management that they consider physics to be one of the best departments in the school(!) so when the inspection happens they will be steering inspectors in our direction. That's very flattering, but also a bit of a worry.

It'll be lovely to have a full complement of physicists again, especially since a lovely teacher I worked with at a previous school is thinking of applying. I have my fingers crossed that we get someone awesome!

Just another monday morning!

We've already established that I am not a mind reader, but some of my teachers are continuing to vastly over-estimate my powers.

My HoD didn't get his requisition sheet for this week handed in by close of play on friday, and instead e-mailed it to me yesterday which meant that I didn't see it until first thing this morning. For lesson 2 today he's put down 'electromagnets'. That's all. Just 1 word.

Maybe he's doing a theory lesson and is going to talk to the class about electromagnets. Maybe he wants to do a demo or a class practical. I don't know, because he didn't say and I couldn't get hold of him before lessons began because he was in a meeting.

In the end I gave him a class set of long nails, lengths of wire and paper clips so that the class could make simple electromagnets. Amazingly that was what he'd wanted all along.

Maybe I am psychic after all!?!

Friday Funny

xkcd

An inspection looms

The fear of inspection is most definitely growing!

Last week I did a lovely notice board display with the photos from the most recent CERN trip. This has apparently indicated my supreme skill at putting stuff on the wall so I've now been asked to do another board highlighting all the extra-curricular and enrichment activities that we are involved with.
Once we started making the list it was actually quite an impressive array of stuff!

The latest big idea is to design and build a solar powered car with the ultimate aim of competeing in a race across Australia. It's a huge project and it'll be amazing if we can pull it off!

Sadly that is somewhat in the future and for now I am helping my HoD sort out the schemes of work so we've got something tangible to show the inspectors. No one will ever actually work to the scheme, but management want them done, so we have to do them. Lots of photocopying, laminating and organising files involved! Remember what I said about stuff that isn't my job? Yep, lots of that.

Happy New Year (slightly belated!)

Woo!! It's 2012 and everything is... well pretty much the same as 2011 actually.

Term is underway although thankfully there are mocks for 5th and 6th form this week so we get to ease ourselves back into things gradually. Once the exams are over though we'll have to hit the ISAs, especially for the 6th form.

The other headache on the horizon is that we are expecting an inspection this term. Word on the grapevine is that it'll be the week after next so the first signs of headless chicken syndrome are starting to appear. For my part, I shall attempt to carry on as normal although I may spend a bit of time making sure the notice boards look pretty. That always seems to make teachers happy.