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.

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!