Just a quickie post and I’m intending on posting a “proper” post this evening but it’s been a truly mental couple of days.
Friday was an early start as I travelled to Manchester as part of my day job as a teacher for a “getting ready to teach the new GCSE” training event **waves to any of you that were there**. It was a brilliant event and the feedback has been great. To be honest I thought it went well until I almost lost it, giggling about an idea of Seager’s (that he “magpied” from somewhere else but hasn’t yet done anything about it!). We were discussing ideas that had been collected from around the country about engaging lower attainers – to be honest most of them are useful for engaging any student – we were discussing having “lead learners” and “help desks” etc and I mentioned Seager wanting to set up a “Post Office” style area of the room where students posted queries to another student. When he explained the idea to me I just pictured some kid stuck in a post BOX for hours having been forgotten that he’d gone in and I got those silly hysterical giggles you get and ever since then I can’t explain the idea without breaking out into laughter. I really should learn never to mention it. NEVER EVER AGAIN WILL IT BE MENTIONED!
If any of you that were at that event, or any of them that we’ve done, and you want to come and visit us in situ email me as we’re more than happy to host you for a few hours – lots have taken us up on this idea and we always learn loads from other teachers. Its great to get the opportunity to share ideas. On that note Seager is in Birmingham on Tuesday and I’m then doing Birmingham again next Saturday followed by a trip to Durham the following week. Given the events I’m about to regale on my journey from York it is this trip North that worries me most …
The drive home from Manchester was … ummm .. long (about 4 hours!!!). Roadworks all the way down and I needed a pee for about 60 miles. (I know! Too much information!) but ended up going to a pub and had to make a sharp exit as I had no money to buy a drink (I used to hate people coming into our pub to just use the loo!). I felt a little bit rebellious as I stood in the lavs waiting for the staff to be busy.
Saturday was another early start as I needed to get to York (I’ll tell you about it tonight too!) and as it’s a real trek I asked my man “Parker” (my hubbies not really called that, but some tweachers seem to have this impression that I have a chauffeur and don’t want to shatter the illusion!) to come with me. We had a great time on the journey up as we tried to figure out where the North “actually” started and the weather really was grim!. I did my “thing” during the day and when we got around to coming home it was my turn to drive … and we actually lost the M1. The below shows the journey we should have done and what we actually did (I think!! I do know it was longer than 4 hours!!) … it really wasn’t until we were about 30 miles from Peterborough that we thought maybe we were heading in the wrong direction!
At one point we ended up on a “single track road” … and yes I know that wasn’t the M1. The weather was atrocious with speeds reduced to about 15 mph because we couldn’t see where we were going but amazingly it was a blast all the way! .. no we didn’t knock the sign down! It was like that when we got there!
My defence is that I wasn’t navigating!
Busy morning planned .. big phone call at 9am!! I’ll tell you all about the latest this evening!
