Alice in Jordanhell

On holiday at last!

I spent Wednesday filming for my Media APD. My group decided - for reasons which seemed to make sense at the time - to make a horror version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. What we lacked in a plan, we made up for in enthusiasm and an impressive array of props, including some excellent masks, a story book and a four-year-old child. Having no experience of filming, directing or acting, I'm not sure that my contribution was that great, but I did provide the tea-set, tablecloth and the Queen of Hearts's dress and ended up playing the Mad Hatter. At the end of six arduous hours of filming, we had about 8 minutes of footage, and I was shattered.

All I wanted to do was crawl into bed, but I had to get on with my Unit task, which we finally got rid of yesterday. It's fair to say that we did not work together particularly well...I guess some people are not cut out for team-work. But I have ranted enough about that to anyone who would listen, so I won't repeat it here!

Today we spent all day editing our film; the Queen of Hearts herself was a real star, and displayed an enviable mastery (mistressy???) of the software. It's not quite finished yet, but it's looking very good indeed, and will no doubt make it onto YouTube in the fullness of time.

A good end to a terrible fortnight!

Grumpy old woman

It strikes me that my last few posts have been nothing but moans. I would like to think I am a bit more cheerful in real life, but maybe this is my true side coming out.

My assignment has been submitted, for better or worse, and although I still have many things to do for later this week I think I'll have a night off tonight and worry about them tomorrow.

A glass of wine and William Boyd's Restless beckon...

How rude!

1) Today's lecturer wasn't even finished speaking when some people starting packing up / chatting / generally making noise. I would like to see how they react when their pupils do the same to them!
2) The library is not the place for a social meeting! Two boys (well, grown men, really, but when you get to my age any guy under the age of thirty is a boy) sitting behind me in the library today spent the entire time chatting. I just about managed to drown them out by typing very loudly on my laptop, but they were then joined by a third student who thought it was an excellent opportunity to catch up with all the gossip. I pointedly closed my laptop and harrumphed off to the Chaplaincy, whereupon...
3) The Chaplaincy provides a peaceful, comfortable place for skint students to eat their packed lunches, and for people to leave their manky, unwashed crockery and cutlery in the sink is unforgiveable. People need to realise that their mammy / the washing fairy is not going to follow them around everywhere. It was the same at my old work, and there is no excuse!

(rant over)

I can't hear myself think!

There appears to be some sort of football match about to start just round the corner at Hampden, and my street is crawling with noisy people...do they not know I have an assignment to be doing?! Very annoying.

I was only in Uni on Thursday and Friday this week, and I could have done without it, as I couldn't concentrate for obsessing about my looming assignment that I could have been doing instead. Much time was spent roaming around Jordanhill with a fellow student in search of our Contexts tutor, who we really wanted to ask about our assignment; it would probably have been quite funny to an impartial observer, witnessing the manic way we were darting about, leaving notes for him and so on, but we weren't laughing!

Discovering that the clocks change tonight, depriving me of one more precious hour, really wasn't good. It's been a hard week, for reasons not entirely to do with the course, and I am shattered.

Anyway the football crowds seem to have thinned out so I am about to get on and see if I can edit my 5961 words down to something more manageable...conciseness never was a strength of mine.

Not waving but drowning

Not since I was studying for my O Grades an unbelievable 23 years ago have I had so many things to worry about (not to be melodramatic). But there is so much due round about now that I really don't know how I'm going to get it all done (unplugging my broadband cable might be a good place to start...).

For the first time since the course started I skipped a lecture today. I was considering doing that, and just going in for my APD in the afternoon when I discovered, to my delight, that we didn't have an APD session today. So I spent all day working on my assignment, with my ICT task thrown in for light relief in the middle. I finally finished that and submitted it with 48 hours to spare; somehow I don't think I'll be doing the same with the assignment, which is a bit more challenging.

On the subject of the ICT task...I consider myself to be quite a helpful person, and expect others to be equally helpful. So when I needed a very simple question on the use of Word to be answered, I thought all I had to do was post the question in the Computing forum on the course intranet, and one of the prospective Computing teachers would help me. I may not know much about ICT (until this course started I couldn't even have told you that 'IT' apparently now has a 'C' in it...), but I know enough to be able to see that although no fewer than 22 people have read my query, none of them has responded. I wouldn't mind so much, but one of their number posted a plea for help with his spelling and grammar on the English forum the last time an assignment was due, and I was only too happy to help out. Grrrrr!!!!

Anyway, apart from that I have also progressed, slowly, with the assignment, and finally feel I am getting somewhere. Not sure where, but somewhere.

Roll on Easter!

Me? A tutor?!

I have just had the inaugural meeting with my new tutee (well, if it's not a word it should be), who has come to me for help with his Higher. Higher English is not something I know much about - I haven't taught it and the exam bears very little resemblance to the one I sat a hundred years ago - but I think I was of some assistance. He wanted help with close reading, but I feel that me getting the marking scheme off the SQA website and talking through the answers to the passage he had done is a bit cheaty. Not sure how else I can approach it though. Maybe if I can't hack it in the classroom I can stick to tutoring; one-to-one interaction, getting to work in the comfort of my own home, no discipline problems, exorbitant hourly rate...

I spent the day working on my assignment, but I don't appear to have produced very much. I am so easily distracted...curse that blasted internet! Tomorrow evening I need to finish off my section of the team task so I can meet my self-imposed deadline of Thursday. I suppose the Unit task is a useful exercise, but the timing of it sucks...tutors, what were you thinking of?!

What was the point of today? I can't quite Recall...

That's not entirely true; this Recall Day was more useful than the last one, which I remember as being a complete let-down after the excitement of our first placement. At least today we got to share some of the best ideas of our placements, which served to confirm my suspicion that I am really rather a boring teacher compared to everyone else! Plenty of good ideas that I can steal though...

I had been trying for a couple of weeks to persuade people to come for a drink after we'd finished today. Out of 150-odd of us, it was a very select gathering of....five! You would think that English teachers would be a gregarious bunch, eh? Other subjects seem to be far more sociable; maybe that's because there are fewer of them and they all know each other, but I think that's all the more reason to make the effort. Ah well, we had a pleasant and convivial lunch and chat at the Three Craws anyway.

Since I came home I've been working on my Developing a Unit task. I'm kind of co-ordinating my group, and feel I should lead by example so have placed a deadline of next Thursday on everyone. Should I be worried that I haven't heard a peep out of a couple of my colleagues for six weeks? Once that's out the way I can get on with the assignment. As the last one took me about 5 hours a day for two weeks, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to manage it, but I'm sure it'll be fine!

Who is that hideous old crone?

The title refers to the result of my first attendance at the staff art class tonight: a self portrait which makes me look like someone's rather puzzled granny. It's spooky because it kind of looks like me, and yet not. Maybe I will take a photo of it and attempt to stick it on here - it's not as though anyone would be able to identify me from it!

I feel myself winding down in some ways, but I shouldn't really be doing that as there is still work to be done. One of the depute heads popped in unanounced to my S3 class today. He had been threatening to do this for a while - quite reasonably so, as he has to sign the students' reports - but I don't think it was the most charismatic lesson to observe, as we were mostly watching the Julius Caesar DVD.

I haven't even planned tomorrow's lessons yet, but I do have a nugget of information for the S4 class I've been teaching the poem "Wullie" to. I had told them that I thought the poet - Gordon Gibson - was an old tutor of mine, so I emailed him to ask him, and he did indeed write it. Not sure how impressed the class will be with this information, but it puts a different slant on the poem for me.

My brother and sister-in-law set off on a year-long round-the-world trip today. I am slightly envious, but only slightly; I wouldn't mind going on an extended holiday but the idea of having to live out of a rucksack for a year really would be my worst nightmare. Good luck to them!

It's the lowest form of wit, don't you know

Never resort to sarcasm, they tell us. It's not big and it's not clever. And yet today, faced with the plea "Please don't give me a punnie, if I get another punnie I'm going to get suspended", the recommended reply - something along the lines of "You had the choice, and you chose to continue to misbehave, and that is why I have given you a punishment exercise" - eluded me. Instead, I heard myself uttering the mature and professional response: "Oh, boo hoo!". It all sounds so reasonable and easy in theory...

This was the dreaded S2s, with whom I was doing a task which should have taken ten minutes at the most. However, I spent approximately 50 out of the 55 minutes trying to get order / make myself heard, so it was a bit of a washout. I am going to ask if I can observe this class in another subject, partly to see what strategies other teachers use, and partly to reassure myself that it's nothing personal (although maybe it is something personal!). All in all, this was probably the worst period I have had in this school. I don't want to be a shouty teacher, but all that "Wait for silence" stuff really doesn't work with a class like that.

Just soothing my ravaged throat with a nice glass of red!