Timetables

The new timetables for next year have gone live, so you know what that means...

Yup, it's time to play with highlighters!

Actually there is a very good reason why I go crazy with the highlighters whenever the new timetable appears. I allocate a different colour to each teacher (HoD is yellow, astroboy is pink etc) and then when the timetables are stuck up on the wall it's really easy to see at a glance when each teacher is teaching and which lab they are in.

I'm glad I did decide to go through the timetables now, because I found a couple of anomolies where rooms had been double booked, or a teacher was timetabled to be in some far flung corner of the campus when actually there was a free lab they could go to. We let the timetabling guy know and it's all been sorted out without any fuss or panic which would definitely have ensued if we hadn't found out until the end of august!

Just over 24 hours until the end of term. :)

Saying goodbye

Over the past couple of years it feels as though we have said goodbye to colleagues far too frequently. Today it was the turn of our Head of Science who is leaving not just the school, but also the country and starting a new life in Australia.

I was thinking about it and, excluding my HoD who started on the same day as me, we only have 3 teachers left in the whole of science who were here when I arrived just over 5 years ago. That's a lot of turnover in a relatively short time!

I wonder if it was something I said!

All change (again!)

It's getting on for that time of year - teachers who want to be in a different school next academic year are busy filling in applications and going to interviews.

We already knew we were losing the Head of Biology who is heading off to Australia at Easter, but this week already 2 more teachers have announced that they have found new jobs. Yesterday it was a chemist who is moving on to become a HoD at another nearby school and today one of the biology teachers revealed that he is also becoming a HoD and relocating to be nearer to his partner.

It's fab news for both of them, obviously, but as always they will be sorely missed. Since I started here just over 5 years ago all but 2 of the science teachers have changed.

I guess change is necessary. New people bring new ideas and enthusiasm to the department. After all, without astroboy we probably wouldn't have got the observatory up and running and our NQT is proving invaluable in pushing the solar car project forwards. Change scares me, but I will endeavour to embrace it, and at least this year the physics dept should be staying the same. (Fingers crossed!)

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?

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!

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*

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.

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.

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!

Here we go again!

Not sure what happened to the past 8 weeks, but here we are - back at school. The kids don't start back until next week, but we've got lots of lovely (not!) staff meetings.

Also of course I have to try to get my department organised. The building work is all done and the new staff work room looks lovely. It'll be better once it has some computers and chairs, but they've done an amazing job so far. I have a shiny new door on my prep room, which has a glass panel in it so I'm less likely to get knocked over by teachers barging in now, and it's on the same key as the rest of the department so I have fewer keys in my pocket. All the interactive whiteboards are in too, but they moved a lot of stuff around and ripped out some cupboards in the process of installing them so my job tomorrow is to tidy the labs.

For today, I'm unpacking my stationery order (which is like christmas - I love it!) and sorting out timetables. I'm a geek so I like to print out the department timetable and highlight all my teachers in different colours so I can so who's where when. Isn't it pretty? :) (I know - small things please small minds!)

HoD doesn't exactly have an office yet. They've put a desk in the old lab/store room and we spent some time this morning getting him semi-organised. Still waiting for the computer and phione to be connected though.

The new Bio Tech has started. Chem Tech is shepherding her around the place at the moment. I'm leaving him to it! He does love to give himself jobs so he feels important, and who am I to stop him?

Is the ship sinking?

So, it's the summer holidays. Been off work almost 2 weeks and I thought I should check my e-mails. After all, the support staff with year-round contracts (rather than term time only, like me) are still working, so there might be stuff going on that I should know about.

It turns out that today the Head of Grounds resigned and the Head Steward accepted redundancy. The support staff team already lost the Head Cleaner, Biology Technician, a matron and the DT Technician this year. That's a lot of key people gone!

So what I'm wondering with these latest changes, is what exactly is going on? Stuck in the science block I don't tend to hear all the news and I don't have a manager from within the support staff team so don't get any feed back on meetings etc. I know the new-ish Bursar has pissed off a lot of people and don't even get me started on the HR people!

Is it time to start looking for a new job before I find myself forced to?

One thing's for sure, the school is turning into a very different place from the one I joined nearly 4 years ago and that saddens me.

Timetable

Just been going through the current draft of the Physics timetable for September and oh boy am I going to be busy! This year I have had a couple of days (notably thursdays) with not much going on which has enabled me to catch up on things like equipment repairs. No such luck next year though. Every day is busy, with anywhere from 11 to 17(!) lessons to prep. Obviously some of that will be theory, but it's still way more than this year.

As mentioned before, we have 3 non-specialists teaching Physics next year, and their lessons are all over the place. I've got stuff happening on all 3 floors of the science block at times! Thankfully they're usually pretty good about room swaps so I shouldn't have to carry too much large/heavy kit up all those stairs. My arm is still not recovered from when I dislocated my elbow, and heavy lifting is no fun! At least all my lessons are going to be in the science block - I haven't seen the Chemistry room allocations, but Biology have a few lessons in far-flung corners of the school.

On the subject of Biology, we interviewed 3 potential new technicians last week. I gave them a bit of a guided tour of science and filled them in on the stuff that HR didn't tell them. Haven't heard yet whether we've appointed or not. It'd be nice to know before the end of term (not long to go now!).

Nothing ever changes

In the course of our big clear up, I have found a report from 1947 on the provision of laboratory assistance in schools:

The really depressing thing is that it's saying almost exactly the same as much more recent reports from CLEAPSS, in terms of how there need to be more technicians in schools with better training, pay and conditions. I can't believe we're still in the same position over 60 years later!

This report is itself an update on one from 1938, although I guess the war kind of got in the way! One thing I'm glad we don't have any more is 'laboratory monitors'. It suggests paying pupils of the school do do lab tech work in their free time. Eep!

At least there has been one major improvement since 1947. The pay scales in this report suggest that women should be paid 80% of the salary that their male counterparts get. Thank goodness we've moved on from those days!

Job Vacancy

My colleague in biology is retiring at the end of term, so we're now looking for a replacement.

The ad went in the paper the other day, and all the info is on the college website HERE. If you're an experienced biology tech we'd love to hear from you.

Staffing and other issues

Looks like all change for next academic year.

I mentioned before that we're losing a physicist, well the decision has definitely been made not to replace him. Apparently science is overstaffed. Not quite sure how it's our fault that management keep hiring biologists and chemists, but there we go. As a result we're having 2 chemists and a biologist teaching physics next year. Should be interesting...

Our biology technician is retiring at the end of term too. They haven't started looking for a replacement yet. I just hope they find someone experienced because there's no way that either me or the chemistry technician will have time to train them, and actually chemistry technician has never done bio in his life so it'd end up being me! Advert is meant to be going in the paper this week so I will definitely be posting it on all the technicain sites I can think of.

In other news, it looks like I'm going to lose half my prep room. Not definite yet so more news on that when I have it.

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*