A typical day...

Quite recently, several friends outside of teaching have questioned whether I am actually as busy outside of "school working hours" (imagine 9-3:30) as I say I am. I've watched several bloggers do this exercise recently, and in light of the above friends comments, I've decided to log my day for you.

6:15 The first alarm goes off. There's no way I can get out of bed, so I hit snooze.
By 6:45 I have alarms going off on my phone and my radio, so I drag myself out of bed.
7:40 I'm out the door. Running late this morning, I'm normally out by 7:30. This causes me a dilemma; I'm late, so do I take the car? Mentally, I tot up what needs doing this morning. I can afford to walk.
7:55 I arrive at school. A quick chat with our morning cleaners while I boot my laptop up. I need to prepare for the morning, so I send my worksheets to print and collect them while I go and get the resources for maths - Except I can't find what I need! Make a mental note to ask my TA to have a look while I register children.
8:20 A discussion between myself and my manager takes place about the state of our cloakroom. We decide to veto it this morning and reorganize it. She's on morning duty, so she's going to hold the kids outside while my class sort themselves out, and then let hers in.
8:45 We let the children in and sort the cloakroom.

I should just be walking into school now, right? I mean, I work 9-3:30?!

8:50 Registration. I'm fairly easy with my kids, they can have a quiet chat, or read while I take my register.
9:00 Maths. I suddenly remember I haven't sent my TA to find that additional equipment, so I quickly adjust the lesson plan to take that into account. Meanwhile, one of my children points out that the interactive whiteboard has suddenly dimmed. I call our IT Tech, who stands on a table distracting the children from my lesson while he pokes and prods and declares that the bulb is going and he'll order a new one.
9:40 "Miss Ward, the whiteboard's gone off!" . My heart literally sinks. Another visit from our IT tech, who confirms there is nothing he can do. He'll order a new bulb, but I'm potentially looking at a week without it.

Take a breath!

10:00 Literacy. By now I've sourced an A-Frame whiteboard from another classroom, but they're not happy about it - Neither am I! All my resources for this lesson are interactive, but we get through enough. I'm not happy with the lesson, but what else can I do?
11:00 Breaktime. I dash over to our snack bar, who do the most delicious home-made biscuit bars and pull the resources together for my science.
11:15 Science. I only teach half my class for science, the rest join another class, so we get a lot done and I feel they get more out of it. This week we're analysing what goes into soil, and I'm pleased to see that their understanding progresses from "it's brown and squishy" to describing the elements that make up soil. A good lesson.

12:15 Lunchtime. I have some training this lunch to do with Clicker 6, which is a powerful writing support tool that I don't use enough. The training is brief and recaps most of what I already know, but I get some time to sit with the trainer and work out some bugs that I'd been having with the program not behaving the way I expected it to. I eat my lunch while we're training.

1:15 Afternoon registration. Again, I'm fairly laid back here but I do stop a couple of noisy boys from causing too much ruckus at my bookshelf. I'm considering if that bookshelf is really the best idea, it causes a lot of drama in the classroom.
1:30 It's our house assembly, and I take my house group and discuss their attendance and how important it is. I need some sort of reward for attendance, I might look into stickers.
1:45 Friday morning is our sharing assembly and we need to prepare for this - My partner teacher isn't in class tomorrow afternoon and I have my NQT release time on a Thursday afternoon, so this slot is our only chance. We talk to the children about what they need to do, and they sort themselves into groups to share work and plan what they want to say.
3:00 We come back together and recap what we're doing for sharing assembly. Then we need to tidy up to get ready to go home.
3:20 We let the children out. I have a chat with some parents and then prepare for the staff meeting.

Hometime! Oh.. wait.

3:30 Staff meeting. We've finalised the first draft of our new numeracy policy and we spent some time analysing it, then looking at the new writing target policy that needs to come in.
5:00 Staff meeting breaks, and I meet with my partner teacher to go over the lessons for tomorrow. Literacy isn't planned, so that needs doing.
5:20 I leave school, because senior staff want to leave and lock up. I dump the planning onto my stick and walk home. Damn, I forgot to grab my marking.

5:35 I get home. It was a cold walk, I forgot to change my shoes and my feet feel the cold first. Spent the walk catching up with Twitter and texting a few friends. I have some downtime, stick some toast in and check things on my home computer.

6:00 Time to settle to work I put How I Met Your Mother on for background, and thankfully it's an episode I've seen before. I need to concentrate, but I hate working in silence. I spend an hour tinkering with the Literacy plan, moving a lesson and sourcing some resources to fill tomorrow, and then planning a lesson for Thursday. It's my first NQT lesson observation and I want it to go well. I haven't done the interactive whiteboard file for that yet, but most of tomorrow is at least there and still in the back of my mind is that I don't have my IWB, meaning that I'll need to do the whiteboard file for my partner teacher and something else for my own class. What did we do before interactive white boards?

7:00. Planning is finished. I have a huge pile of books to mark; it's Big Write so the marking isn't even easy. I normally do them at the weekend but this weekend I went to visit family and it got put off; I'm paying the price for that now, just like I'll pay the price for not grabbing my marking before I left school. I learned quickly that you really need to stay on top of that stuff, or you drown in it.

7:40 Two Big Write books marked and I stop to make dinner; If I don't stop now, I'll have to cook during Great British Bake Off, and it's one of the few shows on TV I genuinely make time to watch. So at this point, I'm calling it a night on the work.

I left the house exactly 12 hours ago. It's been a long day with large amounts of ICT-related drama in it. But this is a normal day for me. Hope it's been enlightening.

I'm exhausted!

Teaching, learning and assessing

So, here we are again.

Term has started. Children are settled in, and have begun testing their boundaries. Books are dog-eared, and already my favourite marking pen has run out of ink. Yes, we are back into term-time.

As part of my preparations for the new term, I've been setting up my APP, promising myself that this year, I'll be more on top of it and won't spend the night before moderation pulling portfolios together again. I've even started evidence-gathering, at least for Maths where it comes more easily than writing or reading.

Flicking through some of my children's work already this term, I've identified several pieces that don't securely fit any APP target. And this got me thinking; Does that mean that the work hasn't been worthwhile? Assessing Pupil Progress is one of the hardest things I've been asked to do. Nothing in university prepared me for it and I had no idea what it entailed and even now, having work that doesn't neatly fit into one (or more) of the APP targets fills me with a little dread.

I'm sure our Great and Glorious Leader would adore for every piece of work my children do to be able to be analysed and scrutinised and made to fit these targets. After all, without them, are my children really making progress? Can I prove that? Can I quantify it?

In my opinion, it comes down to this: Are my children learning? This is what is truly important to me. If my children are learning something, they are acquiring knowledge. As long as they are acquiring knowledge, they can build on that knowledge. And because they are building on that knowledge, eventually that building will reach the dizzying heights of an APP target (and beyond, one hopes!)

So, I've learnt, in the course of my afternoon assessing, not to hold on so tightly to the security of APP targets. To take a deep breath and move away from them, knowing we will come back eventually. And as long as I can prove that return will take place, I'll be happy to defend my decisions to the bitter end.

To hell with APP if that's what it takes. Let's go back to just plain learning. It never did anyone else any harm.

The Jobless Majority

There are several things they don't tell you in University. That's a whole other blog post, spread over a variety of topics. This is just for one.

Things that they don't tell you in University #63; Teaching is exceptionally difficult to get into. As the jobs market has become tougher for everyone, it feels even more difficult again for those of us who entered our three- and four- year degrees with the idea, and the promise, that we would walk into a job. When I entered training, golden handshakes were still commonplace. Then, the world crashed around us, and the recession begun. Now, less than half of all NQTs secure jobs in their first year (cite).

I found it particularly difficult. I trained in London, but I had grown restless of the city. The things that drew me to London were no longer appealing, and I moved back to be closer to my parents in Peterborough.

I applied for 73 jobs. I was interviewed for 12. I got no offers. Over and over again, I was told that my experience let me down. I know that for at least 3 of those interviews, it was a ruse. That I had made a mistake, or that they were looking for a certain candidate with qualities that I did not possess (in one instance, it was simply that I was not a man!)

I was forced to do supply work, and did so for two solid terms. It was really difficult to get into, I had to badger almost constantly for work until I got a few places, and once I did reports coming back from schools were good. That held me through and kept the money coming in. It also built up a strong reputation for my ability to teach.

Eventually, I got a call from my agent. She had a full time teaching post. It was one term only and I would still work for the agency, but I would have my own class. It was almost perfect. And that has led me to be where I am now, teaching in March and loving my work. But, I knew it was simply a temporary contract, and that in July, it would come to an end.

No more; As of yesterday, I was invited to become part of the teaching team at the school, employed by the school and as a full time member of staff. My NQT year will be completed and I am no longer part of the jobless majority.

It feels so good. But I will never underestimate again just how incredibly difficult it was to get here. My sympathise are with everyone still going through it, including several friends.

Why teach?

I'm often asked, particularly while still jobhunting, why I want to be a teacher.

I could tell you one side of the truth. I could feed off the cliché about how I always wanted to a be a teacher. And, apart from a small stint which led to a desire to be a vet (what can I say? I was the animal hospital generation), it's true. I have always wanted to teach. I was the child who lined her stuffed toys up and took registers. I controlled groups of children during free choice at school. I can't recall ever wanting to be anything else, at least without the influence of Rolf Harris.

However, I can pin my true desire to teach, that lightbulb moment, to one single incident on a school experience. In the middle of a maths lesson, one child in my focus group looked directly at me and asked one simple question;

"What does the number 5 taste like?"

Children are naturally divergent thinkers. They don't just think outside the box, they haven't even developed a box yet. Society does that to them, it builds their box. It's strangely tragic. It's that divergent thinking that I love in children. If I could invite the public to come and sit in my classroom, to talk to my class about what they think about the world and where they think society is heading, I would. Recently, I've discussed the logistics of keeping bear cubs as pets, why dogs don't eat pizza and what would happen if people could literally steal the things you drew. If we all listened to children more, perhaps the world would be a more peaceful, harmonious place.

I think a big part of what is needed in the world is the bravery to ask what a number tastes like. And that is why I'm a teacher.

Oh, and five tastes like strawberries and meringue. Much like eton mess.