… than you can shake a stick at!
So another #mathsconf5 has been and gone and my twitter line is full of people buzzing from the weekend. As I brushed my teeth on Friday afternoon before leaving to catch my train I had a vision of a Star Trek convention and it felt all a little bit geeky – how much my life has changed since becoming a teacher!
The Friday night dinner/meet-up is turning into a bit of a tradition – for me the biggest thing about these things is meeting up with friends; putting faces to names of new friends and meeting lots of new people too. Twitter really is amazing for developing both professional and personal relationships – you interact with some people on Twitter so often that when you meet them at an event it just feels so “normal” … I love you guys! So many more people I would have liked to have said hello to … never enough time!
What isn’t normal though (and I won’t be repeating it anytime soon) is getting to bed at 4am. To those of you that were part of the crazy gang, remember the phrase (I also can’t let it go Billy Adamson without a reference to “the” game yesterday) … “what goes on tour … stays on tour!” … no telling tales …. EVER! (and if you do … I won’t introduce you to my second favourite drink after “baby Guinness!)
As to the actual conference – to be honest I find these things quite intimating and Grant (ryhmes with aren’t not ant) will attest to me saying “put your game face on”. I know some of you that went will think I’m confident but I genuinely find it all a little “too much” – that’s not to say I don’t enjoy myself because I do. I am just reminded of a twitter argument I once had which was followed by a ranting email to me about the responsibility of having a twitter following (don’t ask! But let’s just say I was given a royal ticking off by some numpty!) My response to this was that if I worried about how people interpret every tweet or blog post I wouldn’t write anything and the whole twitter following thing isn’t something I ever consider … I’m not shallow just very mystified, embarrassed but most of all flattered by it all.
Mr Barton talking sense
In terms of the workshops I went to part of Danielle Bartram’s session but left halfway through to drop into the last half of Craig Barton’s session. I just couldn’t resist … I love listening to Craig – apart from the fact that I love his accent and could listen to him for hours … he talks sense .. and lots of it! The second session by the guys from Penistone Grammar school was interesting (I even spotted part of my periodic table of elements on the wall in the corridor!) This team of three teachers (I only got to note down 2 of the names so I apologise) were full of energy and obviously gel as a team – it was evident that Hannah Thornton, Tom Gray plus 1 all love their jobs and seeing this in action is highly motivating.
“Shanghai is not a dirty word” run by Craig Jeavons, Matt Fox and Bruno Reddy was interesting and obviously had a massive impact on them and I’ll be following the progress very closely over the next couple of months. My final session was with Emma L Bell (@El_Timbre) and she even included a list to follow on Twitter – not as contentious as it sounds and THE stand out tip for me as an avid tweeter was to follow @big_ben_clock which effectively splits my timeline into hourly slots with its hourly “bong” tweets. I love, love, love this!!
There was one more session in there somewhere too .. but I’d gone off to discuss with CGP the origins of the grades that they have put in their revision guides. The lady on the stall started to tell me that they had used the current descriptions and mapped them over to new levels based on the fact that a C is mapped to a level 4 – at which point I “may” have gone off on one. Imagine somone trying to explain how the new GCSE is going to be awarded to me … hmmmm … I’ll leave you to picture that one. Let’s just say I’ll be writing an open letter to them this week, asking them to put a disclaimer that any reference to grades 9-1 is “their professional” opinion and nothing more than that. There is nothing official that refers to Venn diagrams or any other topic being a specific grade in the new maths landscape. Come the revolution brother! (I “may” have blogged about this topic before -> HERE )
I arrived home late last night, thankful that I packed light as the journey home was a bit mad given that I was now laden with lots of froggie goodies from the dream team of “mad ladies”. A certain crowd of people think they are highly amusing … I basically now have froggie “everything” including a froggie cake (mmmm lovely breakfast!) from Andrew Paget. They are playing on my fear of the toads/frogs that are living in my garden. Really not helpful.. but very funny trying to get on and off trains with 2 extra bags than I started the day with and a cake box. Thanks all. MADE MY DAY!! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
A great day overall and as I’ve already said the biggest part is meeting people – it’s still weird meeting people who read the blog and I find I get a bit uncomfortable. The funniest point of the weekend was when someone at a table I sat at said they loved reading the blog and the woman sat next to me asked who I was and I just said “umm no-one … just a normal teacher” and if you were sat at the table when it happened you will have seen how uncomfortable I was with the question. I genuinely didn’t know what to say. I am no one special … just someone who writes like no one is reading.
Never considered attending a maths conference of any sort before because it’s a little bit nerdy? Well I say to you … get your geek on! You will love it!
My Twitter BFF with her non contentious list (BTW … I am also @MathsEcho!)
