End of term thoughts

Today is the last day of a very hectic and hugely enjoyable term. It was always going to be a challenge switching schools after so long in one place, especially since anxiety is practically my middle name, but it really is the best thing I could possibly have done.

I've gone from a medium sized boarding school in the middle of nowhere surrounded by fields to a small day school in the middle of town. Being a smaller school means that there is much more of a community spirit than I'm used to which could have been quite intimidating but I took the decision early on to try to get involved and become a full part of the team. This has meant occasional trips to the pub after school on a Friday, where the Head buys everyone a drink and then leaves! It's also meant joining the staff choir and performing at the carol concert which was just brilliant! This afternoon I'll be attending my first ever staff Christmas party, after avoiding them for the past 17 years. Part of this is obviously due to a change in my mindset but it's also the atmosphere of the place and the people.

The really big difference though is in my relationship with the teachers. At my last school the physics teachers quite frankly took the piss! They's say 'you're a superstar' or whatever but only because I was putting up with their shit without complaint. Yes I'd get a bottle of prosecco or similar at the end of term but I don't think I ever really felt appreciated and valued. It's easy to say to someone that you value them, but it means nothing if you don't show it. Here things are different. On a number of occasions my HoD has missed his break or part of lunch to help me clear up after a particularly big practical. Not because I asked him to but because he cares enough to want to help. The other physics teachers are the same. Not a day goes by without one of them asking if I need help to carry things around or to put away the equipment. Honestly that's worth more than all the fancy bottles of wine in the world!

Hello again!

Good grief, has it really been almost 3 years since I was last here?

There is a good reason, honest. I've spent the past 2 years out of the prep room, working as a Science Administrator which has mostly involved spreadsheets and minute-taking. Not exactly thrilling, either for you or for me! Eventually the mind-numbing tedium wore me down so around Easter this year I started looking for technician jobs and I got lucky.

A lovely school much closer to home than my last one was looking for a Physics Technician so I applied and I got the job! I've been here for a week and am starting to get settled in and I really think I'm going to be very happy here. The other technicians are lovely and the HoD has been really supportive. Students don't start until Friday, so that's when the job really gets going and I honestly can't wait.

Just a normal Monday...

Sometimes you have to stop work and go outside because the fire alarm has gone off.

Sometimes you have to stop work and go outside because an 'old boy' from the school is going to fly past in his spitfire.

Today it was the second one!
 

Start of Term catch up

We've been back at school for just over 2 weeks now and everything is starting to settle down.

The main change in the physics department is that we have a new teacher. She used to be a technician before crossing over to the dark side and so far she seems very switched on and organised, which is a dream come true in comparison to my other teachers! 

The big change for me is that I am now senior technician AND will shortly be getting an apprentice technician to train. Our apprentice is only 19 and makes me feel very old! I'm going to have to remember that I'm his supervisor and not his mum.

I also finally finished my Teaching Assistant qualification. This year I have been given 3 classes to work with but just this morning HoD came to tell me that the new chemistry teacher, who is also teaching some physics, is having trouble with his year 9 set and I might need to start helping him out as well.

And so it begins!

Becoming senior

It seems reasonably certain now that when we start the new academic year in September I will be senior technician. I'll still be a TA for around 10 hours a week as well, and our bio tech is wanting to go part time, so at the moment HoD is trying to convince HR to hire at the very least an apprentice although someone with experience would be better.

This then is about the worst possible time for our new chem tech to go directly to HR and complain that she doesn't have enough to do! Any fellow techs reading this will currently be choking on their coffee. There's always something to do, if in doubt ask your HoD for some tasks. HR have of course taken this as a sign that there isn't really any need for extra help and HoD is really angry.

In fairness to her, chem tech has never done this sort of work before and probably doesn't realise quite how the workload ebbs and flows through the year and if she's complaining of boredom then she obviously hasn't fully grasped what a technician's role actually involves. There's so much more to it than just prepping experiments.

HoD asked me to have a word but I pointed out that since I'm not senior tech yet, I don't have any authority to tell her what to do. What I have done though is sent a friendly, chatty email with a list of all the jobs I try to get done during this quieter term as well as some suggestions which are more related to chemistry. Just tidying and reorganising the labs could easily take the next couple of weeks.

Apparently HoD has forwarded this to HR and pointed out that there is in fact plenty of work. I really hope this doesn't mess up our plans for next year.

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.

Panic stations!

Last week we got the call all schools dread - it's inspection time again. Usually this is the cue for science teachers to go mad ordering all manner of complicated experiments they've never tried before in an attempt to impress the inspectors and be judged 'outstanding'. Inevitably all this achieves is a huge amount of extra work for the technicians and the inspector probably never came to the lesson anyway.


This inspection is slightly different and the panic is coming from a different side.


As a boarding school we are not only judged on the education that we provide, but also on how well we care for the students and this current inspection is an interim one focussing on boarding and welfare. For the teachers there is very little impact, but senior management have been bombarding us with emails about the various welfare and H&S policies and wanting to make sure that we all know the official line on anything an inspector may want to talk about.


The Health and Safety manager had warned that they would be very interested in seeing the science facilities and checking all our H&S paperwork, so we made sure we were all prepared before he brought one of the inspectors round yesterday afternoon. What an anti-climax! The guy asked me where we keep the radioactive sources and that was it.


Don't know why everyone gets so worked up.

More time in class?

So, the TA thing.

Just before the half term break my HoD took me aside and asked if I could help another year 9 set. We have a chemist teaching 2 year 9 physics groups this year and it is becoming clear that she is struggling. I was already TAing with one of those classes so it sort of made sense for me to take on the others too.

I just heard today that our scarily-efficient physics teacher is unwell, possibly long term. There is a chance she may be missing all of next term. Obviously we're concerned for her, but also we have concerns for the department as that would be a lot of lessons to cover. We had a similar situation last year when action man was off and it was massively stressful for everyone.

HoD has been saying for months that he'd like to see me make the move into teaching and I'm wondering now whether he might see this situation as an opportunity to push me further in that direction.

If he asked me to take over a couple of her sets, I don't know how I would respond.

Interesting times

CERN

We have a very tired department this morning as we arrived back from CERN at midnight last night.

It was worth the tiredness though. On Wednesday we arrived in Switzerland, booked into our hotel and then headed to Geneva for a tour of the United Nations building. We'd not done that before and it was a bit of a last minute thought but I think we'll probably do it again as it was a really interesting tour and the students all said they enjoyed it.

After a night on the town in Geneva we were up bright and early for our day at CERN. First we had a talk about the history of CERN and what they do there, then we were driven to the far side of the ring to visit the CMS cavern. This was a first for us and very impressive! If only we'd been there 2 days earlier - they had the detector open then for maintenance, but now it's closed again as they are getting ready to fire everything back up early next year. After CMS we had a visit to the magnet testing facility then time to relax in the CERN canteen before we headed back to the airport for the flight home.

All in all it was a pretty successful trip. we had the occasional misplaced passport and some slow moving students, but no one got lost or injured and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Next up - Rome again. Or maybe not as the school are still deciding whether we are allowed two physics trips in one term. I won't be heartbroken if I don't have to book another set of flights!

Friday Funny

Apologies for the language, but it really made me laugh and I just had to share!

A rod for my own back

When I took on the TA thing (which is going pretty well and is mostly good fun), my department agreed that in order for me to manage my increased work load I should drop a lot of the admin stuff I do for them. This term I have had very few photocopying or data entry requests which is great!


The annual trip to CERN is upon us again and of course my HoD has dealt with all the paperwork and admin himself. Wait, no sorry - I got confused for a second there. What I meant to say was that I have done all the paperwork and admin yet again. This morning I did the final job, which was getting the bus timetables for the various journeys we'll be making in Switzerland. Maybe I should have insisted that HoD deal with it himself for once. On the other hand I know that if I don't do it then it won't get done or at least not properly, and then once we are there HoD will utter his usual plaintive cry of 'Labtech666, Help!' and I'll end up sorting it out anyway.


I grumbled about this exact same issue a year ago and of course nothing has changed. By being generally pretty efficient and helpful (unless you catch me on a bad day) I have made it very easy for the teachers to get lazy.


Still I get a free trip to Geneva out of it, so it's not all bad!

How to... check a multimeter fuse

After almost 14 years as a physics technician, I can't believe I only just figured this out!


The multimeters we use have a 250mA fuses, which often gets blown if the students have set the meter up on the wrong setting and the current is too high. For 14 years I've been dismantling meters to check whether a blown fuse is responsible for an experiment not working properly, but now I have the solution!

• take 2 multimeters - one set to ohms and the other, which you want to test, set to mA
• Connect the ohm meter across the mA meter
• If the ohm meter reads 1, then the fuse is blown and you still have to dismantle the meter to change it
• If the ohm meter reads 0 (or thereabouts) then the fuse is fine.

The meter on the left is set to ohms and is testing the one on the right. This multimeter is fine.

Recruiting

There's still time to apply for the chem tech job but we've had a few applicants already.


Earlier this week my HoD said that he'd like me to be involved in the selection process. I guess normally the chemistry HoD would be in charge of this, but he's leaving us at Christmas so it's mostly fallen to my HoD, since he's overall head of science as well as physics. It certainly makes sense for both me and bio tech to at least meet the candidates, since although we don't work very closely we do need to coordinate resources etc at times, but I did point out that generally helping to draw up the shortlist and even maybe being in the interviews is really more of a senior technician thing, 'and I'm not senior technician'. 'Ah, but you will be' was the answer to that one, so he obviously hasn't forgotten the carrot HR dangled under my nose last term when I was thinking of leaving.


This morning he passed me a bunch of application forms to look at. One out of the five is already working as a technician, but all of them have strong science backgrounds. I kind of have a favourite, but that's only on paper. Looking forward to meeting them in the flesh once we set an interview date.

Chemistry vacancy

The rumours turned out to be true, and chem tech is definitely leaving us. The advert for his job has gone live on the school website today along with the job description so fingers crossed we get lots of lovely applicants.


I know I grumble a lot about work, but this is a good place to be most of the time, so don't let me put you off applying!

Back to School

Well, here we are again. I still haven't written about the Gambia Trip for which I apologise. I will make sure I do it in the next week.




Yesterday was my first day back in school, and the first chance to get a look at the new headmaster during the morning's staff briefing. First impressions are good so I look forward to seeing what he will bring to the role. He said that no activity should take priority over any other, so maybe we won't lose as many lessons to sport this year as we have in the past. Here's hoping!


The lab refurbishments happened while we were gone. they're still putting the finishing touches to the new chemistry set up in lab 2 which looks great. Just a pity we don't get to use it in physics. The computer room refurb on the other hand looks like a total cop out. They've put done new flooring and ripped out the old teachers desk... and that's it! No storage, no new teachers desk or even a table to put the teacher's computer on. Nothing. Action man is going to be based in there and I think he has plans to scrounge bits of furniture from elsewhere in the school.


I heard a rumour yesterday that chem tech may have handed in his notice. Will let you know if that turns out to be true and post a link to the job advert when one appears.


I'm still waiting for confirmation of my TA timetable for the year. Hopefully it will materialise before lessons begin on Tuesday.


Here we go again! :)

Off we go!

Today's the day. It's the last day of term and this afternoon I head off to The Gambia with 4 teachers and 24 students for a fortnight of science teaching in 4 Gambian schools. I'm nervous and excited and being pulled about as far out of my comfort zone as it's possible to go.


Still no word from the interview I had last week, so it looks like I'll be staying put for the foreseeable future and I guess next year will bring a whole new set of challenges and surprises. Looking forward to a break first though. :)

Almost there

Today feels very much like the end of term. It's not, as we still have another week to go, but today is the last day of teaching this academic year. Next week all the students will be attending various activities as part of our second annual ArtsFest and all the teachers are involved too but thankfully none of the fun and games will be happening in my area!


My main job over the next few days is to empty lab 2. Over the summer the computer room next to my prep room is being converted into a physics lab and lab 2 is being refurbished and handed over to chemistry so I have to get everything useful out of there and into temporary homes. It's a big job, but strangely satisfying (so far). Of course once we return at the end of august I'll be moving a lot of stuff again as I get my new lab 1 kitted out and ready for action.


No word yet from the interview I had earlier in the week. :(

Interview

Well, in the end I wasn't the only job applicant and yesterday, along with 3 others, I went along for an interview.


It's always interesting to have a look around another school and mostly I really liked what I saw. Sadly the bit I wasn't so keen on was the science department. I think it has potential but some serious money needs to be spent on the labs. It's a much smaller school than I have ever worked in before - about 330 pupils, 6 science teachers, 4 labs. In a way I think that could be very nice as you'd get to know everyone quite quickly and it was emphasised that everyone is expected to get involved in school life beyond their own department. That could be a good thing, I don't know.


The interview process itself consisted of 3 separate interviews with the Head of Science, the Principal and the Vice-Principal. This was the first time I've ever been interviewed by a Principal! All 3 clearly had different aspects that they wanted to find out about. The Head of Science was obviously interested in my credentials as a technician and my skills, the Vice-Principal mainly asked about ways in which I could benefit the school as a whole and my skills and experience outside of science, and the Principal seemed to want to find out who I am as a person, I suppose to decide whether I would fit in.


I felt as though I made a good impression but the one thing no one could tell me was what the hours or salary are likely to be! Those are fairly major considerations and it does seem odd that they couldn't even hint at a ballpark figure. It sounds as though there's a bit of a restructuring of the staff going on at the moment which I guess is fair enough, but if they did offer me the job there's no way I could accept if they can't give me those sort of details.


Last night after I got home I had a call from my best mate (Head of Biology at the school concerned) who told me off the record that I'm definitely the Principal's preferred candidate but that everyone is going to sleep on it and I may hear something by the end of today.


However...  I have now been offered a big juicy carrot by my current school. I knew that going for an interview would shock them into action and they have proved me right. It's a carrot that I won't get until this time next year but it's a good carrot. Can't really say too much because it's all a bit unofficial at the moment.


So now we wait.

Job Application

I applied for a job last week. I've no idea if I actually want it or not, but at the moment I seem to be at a bit of a career crossroads. If I stay where I am then the only way to get any sort of career progression (and hence more money!) is to head down the teaching route - initially as a TA alongside my technician job and then ultimately perhaps going for QTS and moving into teaching full time or working as some weird teacher/technician hybrid. I'm still very unsure as to whether teaching is the right path for me, so my only other option is to look elsewhere for a Senior Technician post.


The job I applied for is one I normally would have ignored. The advert is for a general technician, said 'full or part time' and there was no indication of salary or working hours given which generally suggests to me that it probably wouldn't be worth my while. However, I happen to have a bit of background information on this one.


You see, my best friend is the Head of Biology at this particular school and is very keen for me to apply. At the moment they have a full time technician and a part time assistant. The full timer is now retiring and it looks as though they are waiting to see what sort of applicants they get before deciding whether the part timer gets more hours or whether they appoint a new full time technician. I also happen to know that as of 24 hours before the job closed, they had no applicants at all (mine was a bit late!).


In theory this could put me in a strong position. I've got lots of experience and I know that physics specialists tend to be a bit of a rarity. If I get an interview, and like what I see, I could try to push for a better salary and see what happens. Even if I decide I don't fancy it, or they aren't offering a good enough deal, the fact that I've applied for something else might give my HoD the kick up the backside he needs to get on to HR and sort out my contract and start the process of deciding what my TA salary should be. Could be onto a win-win here!

Group 4 headaches

As part of the science part of their IB (International Baccalaureate) diploma, our lower 6th students have to complete something called a Group 4 Project.
We take the whole group off timetable for a couple of days, and they have to work together in small teams to carry out an experiment and then report their findings to the rest of the group. They are marked on their teamwork and presentations rather than the quality of the experiment.


In the past we have always given them around half a day to plan their experiment and draw up their requisition list and then we as technicians have a week to get the equipment together before the experimental session. This year, however, my HoD decided to let them start the experimental work on day 1. I can see some benefit as they are getting to try out and develop their ideas, but from a technician point of view it is turning out to be a nightmare!


Roughly every 90 seconds I'm getting a knock at the prep room door and usually find a queue of 3 or more students all wanting stuff. They're only asking for little things each time but it's adding up to one big headache especially as many of them are not physicists and don't really know quite what they want. I had one very sweet lad come down from biology who said 'I need something, I think it's called a power pack'. You should have seen the look of terror on his face when I asked what voltage he needed and whether he would like stepped or continuously variable. Then I had to show him how a croc clip works.


They've gone to lunch now, but will be back in about an hour. I'm tempted to lock myself in a cupboard and refuse to come out!