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! :)

So, I'm a TA now

Just before Christmas senior management gave the go ahead for one technician to start working and training as a TA. We had a technician meeting and neither bio or chem tech wanted the gig, so it fell to me by default.

I've been given a timetable and all my teachers know that during those periods I won't be available to help them out unless it's an emergency. They've also all been asked to be a bit more organised with their requisition sheets so I have plenty of time to plan my week. I'll believe that when I see it!

The school want me to get a qualification, so I'm being enrolled on a competence-based thing called 'supporting teaching and learning'. A lot of the stuff I do as a technician will count, but when the assessor comes to visit she will need to see me supporting in Maths, ICT and English.

Maths and ICT are no problem. Plenty of both to be found in physics. English on the other hand is not so straightforward and I've been told I will need to do 1 lesson of English a week.

So far I'm starting to quite enjoy the physics lessons, but I'm dreading English. It was one of my worst subjects at school and I don't know what possible use I could be in a bottom set year 11 English class. Apparently the English department are delighted so I hope I don't disappoint them too much!

Happy new (school) year!

So, we're a week and a half into the new school year and already it feels as though we've never been away!

As always there have been lots of changes to the timetable, and which student is in which set, but I think it's just about sorted now. The only problem we're having in physics is the teachers who haven't checked their timetable to see which room they are supposed to be teaching in.

We have more classes, and teachers, than ever in science this year and still only the same 9 labs which isn't enough when up to 14 lessons can be happening all at once, so we have what is rapidly becoming the usual scenario of science lessons being sent to the far flung corners of the school. Sadly though teachers don't always check their timetable and assume that they will be in their usual lab. Several times already I have had to remind them that practical lessons are not a viable option when they are in a maths or business studies room.

Maybe by half term we'll all know where we are, but somehow I doubt it. :)

Preparations for this year's CERN trip are coming along nicely. We are going a bit earlier than usual this time and amazingly the process of booking flights was remarkably painless. HoD was a lot firmer about setting deadlines for the students to get their permission and passport info in and it really seemed to pay off. 35 students and 4 staff this time - our largest CERN trip ever. It's unfortunate that the school chaplain is coming again. I'd hoped last year was a one off, but with any luck the trip will be enough fun that he won't put too much of a damper on things.

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. :)

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?

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?