just another morning here

Some people at school didn’t know that it is Star Wars Day today Apparently it was a terrible joke, but I felt as though I needed a bit of the Force today.

Sometime, back along, whenever I wrote about Anna’s birth, I declared the end of my official teaching career. However, it looks as though it will be starting again – better late than never. This morning I had an interview for a temporary (1 year) teaching post at my school, and I got the job. I hated the interview, they asked *really* hard questions – and then afterwards told me off for not selling myself well enough. To be honest, I hadn’t dressed up or anything like that – I felt as though that would be stupid as they already know what I’m like so it would be false to try to give any other impression! So I wasn’t really trying to sell myself – perhaps that was wrong?

Just so you can all have a laugh, here is the ‘scenario’ I was given just minutes before the interview:

It is 9.30am. You are a member of staff down in class, leaving you with 2 teaching assistants and 9 pupils. One pupil has just arrived in class having been very sick on the bus. There is a social worker on the phone who wants to speak to you urgently. One pupil has come into class very distressed and is gradually wrecking the classroom. This starts another pupil screaming. The headteacher is coming in at 10am for a lesson observation. The intranet is down and you haven’t been able to access the resources you were banking on.
Talk us through what you are going to do.

Cue hysterical laughter. Actually most of this is fairly normal on any morning in our school, so it wasn’t very difficult to talk about! Easy answers: I would never leave resources till the last minute as the intranet at school is unreliable at the best of times. I would *certainly* never leave them till the last minute if I knew the head was coming in for an observation! Get rid of the social worker (perhaps find out what the urgent matter is) and arrange to call her back later – pupils are always my first priority. Get one TA to take the distressed child out of the class before they do any more damage/hurt someone then hopefully the screaming one might calm down (unlikely in real life, but hey ho). Of course I did have to confess that I’d be getting one of the TAs to clear up the vomit While all that is going on I’d be holding the fort with the other 7 children/phoning the nurse about the ill child etc. etc. As I said, all in a day’s work!

My presentation (on Further Developing Personalisation in KS4) was fairly boring but it must have been ok otherwise surely they wouldn’t have given me the job. I mean, I know I’m cheap as an NQT but that’s not a good enough reason on its own, is it?!

I am pleased, I suppose, although I can’t seem to get excited about it yet; firstly it doesn’t start until September, and secondly I can’t quite get used to the fact that it’s in Key Stage 4, which is way out of my comfort zone – I confess I prefer smaller children. Not only that, I must stop calling them children and start calling them students!

Anyway it’s felt like a bit of a strange day being offered congratulations and yet not really feeling particularly celebratory. We had chinese for tea though

Now getting through the slog of remaining music practices, homework, and bedtimes. Watching Anna on Linguascope – looks good for language practice though I don’t know if it’s a subscription thing (probably) – might be a good resource for anyone doing languages. Hmm, I just looked at it more closely. Only £200 for a site licence! Discrimination against HEors strikes again. Though perhaps if families clubbed together it might be worth it – or it might be worth contacting them for a HE friendly rate.

So we’ve enjoyed a visit from a couple of French girls over the past few days They were part of the Orchestre des Jeunes de Haute-Bretagne, which is the youth orchestra of our twin town.

On Wednesday they arrived; we met them very late at the motorway services. It was quite chaotic with over 50 of them and almost as many English families there to collect them (and of course, no sensible system in place for matching people up!) but by wading into the crowd, looking for girls who could be about 12 and calling their names I managed to extract our girls from the melee and be pretty much the first to leave!

My French managed to re-surface; it was probably awful with wrong grammar all over the place (thank goodness they couldn’t see which accents were missing) but good enough to feel as though I was taking good care of them. Anna got a bit frustrated that she couldn’t communicate very well though – only one way to solve that! We did spend some time each day on conversational French, so that was educational I think I would seriously consider doing a long term exchange like the Not Sheep family sometime in the future.

Thursday saw them in town at a Civic Reception with the Mayor etc., lunch laid on, a tour of the cathedral, and then some free time in the city centre. I had given them maps of the city centre which they promptly forgot to take!

The day ended with a long rehearsal, for our orchestra, theirs, and then both together. We got home relatively late, had dinner (probably normal time for the French, late for us!), and then hunted through our DVDs until we found a few with French language/subtitles – surprisingly few of them!

On Friday their organised excursion was to Dartmoor, rather them than us – it was cold! Don’t think they had any clue of how cold it would be, when I told them where they were going. We picked them up mid-afternoon and came home for an early tea before going out to the concert venue for the evening.

The concert was really good; a diverse range of music which was excellent. The French group had a classical guitar ensemble with them and I must admit that their pieces were among my favourites, particularly when they played the Schindler’s List theme by John Williams, with a single violin solo.

Our French girls finally started behaving normally after the concert when they were high as kites (as were our girls!) and regaling Anna and Abbie (with a bit of translation help from me) with a tale of somebody’s bassoon being blocked up and what happened to the blockage (don’t ask!) when it was finally blown out! Anyway it was nice, as I was wondering how long they could be on their best behaviour for! We had late night tea and toast and packed them all off to bed!

Saturday was a very early start; I took them to the services for 8am so that they could have a trip to Bath. Again rather them than me, it was pouring with rain all day long. Still, I think they enjoyed themselves. The Ceilidh that we put on in the evening was a roaring success; we served Cornish pasties and various local cheeses, then ice cream in cornets, and the dancing was enjoyed by all.

On Sunday we had a lazy morning. The children all bonded over Wii Sports, while I cooked a full english breakfast, made all the more exciting by flame grilled tomatoes (I grilled them in the same pan as the bacon, and managed to set fire to the fat, to the extent that Steve had to chuck a wet teatowel over the top! Front door wide open to let out the smoke, fire alarm going off, neighbours all watching in amusement!).

We got ready at a very leisurely pace and then went down to the Quay for the grand finale of the weekend, an open air concert. The sun shone for most of it, but as they played the last piece, the rain started in earnest, if you watch the video clip you can see it at the end!

That was followed by a traditional Devon Cream tea (cream or jam first?) in the pouring rain – which ended up being one of those times where you just have to laugh because it is such a typically British experience – everyone huddled together under a very small canopy but it was really good fun.

Took them back to the coach and waved them off. A simply fantastic extended weekend (and I’ve only blogged about the bits related to the orchestra, there was plenty more!). Tired now, and it’s back to work tomorrow … so doing the only sensible thing and staying up late drinking wine, eating leftover cheese, and watching a film

Well, they got home safely on the dot of 9pm, as Steve had predicted. It was absolutely hacking down with rain, so the drive back can’t have been easy, but it was lovely to see them again – bearing gifts of an alcoholic nature (Steve) and BN biscuits (Anna)!

Here are a few photos from their trip – there weren’t many to choose from but this gives a bit of a picture …

I think they had a great time, although they’re both quite tired. Steve says that Anna really enjoyed the music festival and saw lots of different styles of music there, she especially liked the reggae band, apparently! And of course she enjoyed eating out at a Creperie that night too – he reports that she was generally really good with all the food that was served up so I was chuffed about that. She was counting up her leftover euros before going to bed, and has brought home little presents for the other two, so that was sweet.

Anyway, must get to bed because I’m knackered too and we have a busy few days ahead of us before camp.

Or that’s how it feels, today, at least. It seemed to take all morning for the children to get ready, although we were out late last night at the Arts Festival Showcase evening. We did a few chores around the house, but that was it. Watched Cheaper by the Dozen over lunchtime, Steve came home to eat with us, then we went to the library, and Abbie’s gym lesson. So the afternoon was better, we read lots of stories together which was nice.

I also borrowed some Letts KS1 SATS books from the library – Anna looked at them in disgust but I think I will use them to refer to now and again. Having had a quick look at them I’m fairly happy that our maths and science are well up to standard, and reading/comprehension would be fine, but I know Anna’s writing is behind her schooled contemporaries. I’m not worried about it at all, really, as one of the good things about home educating is that you can approach things when the children are ready, rather than when ‘the system’ says you should, but it might be something to bear in mind.

Anna has packed her bags for going to France with Steve tomorrow – he and a group of friends from church are going to Troyes (Champagne region) to play in the Festival de Musique which is held every year on June 21st, and I think they’ve been for the past 5 or 6 years now – the only year Steve didn’t go was when we were at Bible College. Steve’s not actually playing this year, he’s driving/roadie-ing for them instead – so I decided that it would be a good opportunity for a field trip! We looked at our First 100 Words in French this morning and I’ve written a few other important phrases in the back of the book for her (and Steve!!). They’re leaving early tomorrow and getting back late on Tuesday.

And it’s Friday, so that means there’s an update from Stuart and Liz, and it’s eviction night on BB. Steve’s going to be home soon so I’d better go and get tea ready …