The Invisible Woman

My HoD had a meeting, so he asked me if I could supervise his lower sixth class. They were doing a practice ISA which was a fairly straightforward experiment so I agreed.

We have 2 AS physics sets and this was the lower ability group so some of them needed a fair bit of help setting up their circuits, designing results tables and even understanding what the instructions meant. Obviously in a real ISA we wouldn't give them much help but as it was their first practice one I was nice and gave all of them as much help as I could.

Towards the end of the session one of the lads asked me if I teach physics. I explained that no, I don't and I am in fact the physics technician. Then he asked me what a technician does. I explained that I'm responsible for all the physics equipment and that I get it all ready for every lesson they have. They looked so shocked! I don't know where they thought the equipment comes from but clearly they hadn't realised that it's actually someone's job to manage it all.

This made me wonder whether all our students are so unaware. After all, these sixth formers have been with us for over 3 years now and for all that time I've been in and out of lessons doing my job. Did they never notice me? Also most of this group came on the trip to CERN in October, but never questioned my presence.

One thing I found very interesting - at the end of the lesson they tidied their equipment away with far more care than I have ever seen from one of HoD's groups before. Maybe realising that someone has to deal with their mess made them rather more considerate.

I think from now on I am going to make a point of introducing myself to classes at the start of the academic year.