End of term!

Yay! It's the end of term.
It's felt like an unusually busy year and it looks like next year will be just as bad, if not worse, but we made it and now we've got a lovely break to look forward to.

We're saying goodbye to 2 members of science staff, but in September we'll be welcoming 3 new faces which is always exciting.

Right now there's nothing else to say except....




Happy summer everyone! :)

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. :)

A plug...

A little off topic, but I just wanted to give a plug for my new blog - What's Cooking?

My intention is to post some of the new recipes I've been trying out recently as well as some tried and tested old favourites.

End of commercial! :)

And now the end is near...

It's almost the end of term. Can you believe it?

In fact, it rather feels like we've finished for the year already because there are no lessons happening this week. Instead there is a school-wide arts festival, with the students doing various arty activities as well as concerts and lectures. This is keeping all the teachers very busy, so I'm having a lovely peaceful time.

Obviously the main job for the week is to get the labs cleared and tidied for the start of next year. My HoD is moving out of his lab and giving it to NQT (who I supposed I will have to stop referring to as nqt now!) so there is a lot of rubbish to be disposed of. I also need to get all the electrical appliances out of their cupboards so the PAT men can test them next week.

Other than that, it's a nice restful wind down of a week. And those are so rare I am determined to enjoy it!

Still here

I realise I rather left the blog hanging after that last post. Sorry!

In the end I decided not to even go to the interview. Everyone I mentioned it to had nothing but bad things to say about the school in question, the money was a bit less than my current salary, but the killer for me was the commute.

I currently drive for 45 minutes to get to work, so I thought that a school around 10 miles closer to home would be a good bet but when I tried out the journey I discovered I was sorely mistaken. It actually took 30 minutes LONGER than my current commute because the roads are terrible and really congested in that area!
No job is worth over an hours drive each way, so I pulled out.

Upcoming interview. Eep!

I applied for another job.
I'm not sure I would actually want it, but it never hurts to take a look.

However, I now have to face an interview - my first in over 5 years and the first time I've interviewed for a Team Leader position. the e-mail I had from the HR manager explained that the process will begin with a tour. Good, I can cope with that. Then there will be a student panel, which sounds mildly terrifying, an 'In Tray' exercise (I have no idea what that means) and finally a formal interview which is to include a 5 minute powerpoint presentation on how I would develop the technical team.

I'm SO far out of my depth here! I haven't the faintest clue how I would develop the technical team. I've never met them, know nothing about their working hours or how the work is divided up. I don't even know how many there are because the school website makes no mention of technicians at all.

I may not desperately want the job, but I don't want to make an idiot of myself. Help!!

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!