School | But I Smile Anyway...

#SoCS May 27/17 – Smell

27 May 2017 29 Comments

by Ritu in Socs, Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, Linda G Hill, Manure, School, Smell, Socs, Stink, Stream Of Consciousness Saturday

Linda’s #SoCS prompt this week.

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “smell.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!

The moment I read the prompt, I knew exactly what I was to write about today!

Smell!

Oh man, what a smell!

This week we have been blessed with beautiful weather, finally!

It has been a pleasure to get the children from my class out into the playground, and not having to battle through getting the correct coats on, woolly hats set on heads, gloves on (Yes, seriously it’s been pretty cold here recently!).

Instead of layers, we have to remember their sun-hats and make sure the correct sunglasses are perched upon the correct noses. (Yes, every three and four-year-olds are fashion conscious that they need their sunnies!)

However… (you must have known there would be a ‘however’!) … some kind neighbour of the school has obviously thought to make the most of the glorious days, to do some gardening, in particular, spreading some kind of manure… proper cow poo styleeee… around their flower beds.

It wouldn’t be so bad, but for the last three days, every once in a while we get a whiff of being down at the farm! And today was even worse as though we had a beautiful breeze blowing, making the heat manageable, it also brought with it waves of dung odour!

Great!

And even better than that, yesterday we were having our class Teddy Bears Picnic! (x 2 as I have a morning class and an afternoon class!) Somehow the kids were oblivious, munching away on their food, but as we served them, the urge to heave was so strong, because of the smell of manure!

Seriously! What were they thinking?!

It stinks! And I can’t see it getting better with this heat! Thank goodness we are on our half term holidays now for a week!!!!!

The Meeting of Staff – 11 Points For Discussion At Teacher Staff Meetings

16 May 2017 27 Comments

by Ritu in Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, Life of A Teacher, School, Staff Meetings, Teacher

Staff Meetings…

The words alone are enough to strike terror into any teacher…

Why?

Because you never know what they’re gonna hold!

They are a necessary evil, of course.

A way to share news that will be affecting the school;

Upcoming events – charity days, or activity days for the kids (Jeez! Do we really have to dress up?!)
Policy updates – every subject has it’s policy alongside all the other aspects of school, like safety, ICT usage, Staff protocol… And there are regular updates!
Staffing changes – Leavers – always one that draws shock amongst at least half of the staff as not everyone is privy to information that someone may be thinking of leaving, prior to the announcement, then there are the less shocking, like the ‘about to pop’ teacher, who we hope to see again the following year (and in between. bringing bubba in to school with them so we can have cuddles!!)
Staffing changes – Movement – another one that can be a little bit of a shock. Staff can get moved around, but that is usually on a yearly basis, depending of others leaving the school. But there can be the movement created from a ‘shock’ leaver too… and again the person involved usually knows but often the rest of the staff is in the dark until said announcement!
Training – that can strike terror into a teacher too… often you are sat for one and a half hours listening to someone that is reiterating a lot you already know. Mentally you are sat there, visualising a new display, or mentally counting how many books you could have marked in that time! But you do get the odd gems that you wish could have gone on for a little longer!
Training Feedback – often individual colleagues go on training courses, and then they feedback what is worthwhile the rest of the staff knowing during the staff meetings. (Saves 30 faces getting bored for a whole day, and the school paying for the pleasure!)
Tellings off – Yes that happens to teacher too! In a staff meeting it would usually be a collective one, not anything pinpointing at an individual, usually Heads aren’t that cruel! These are more likely to be complaints about how the Art or Science resource cupboard is kept, or a ‘pull your socks up’ with regards to certain marking strategies.
‘Those‘ announcements – you know, about imminent inspections, and key visitors!
Performance Discussions – regarding the classes, schools as a whole, upcoming national assessments, and reminding us we need to book in our observations for the assessment of our own performances! (No need to remind you how nervous I was about mine a few weeks back!)
Any Other Business – Or AOB for short. This could be a mishmash of anything, from, parent complaints to a lovely letter someone has sent in. Some of the above may be classed as AOB… so you have to sit tight to find out what the inside info is!
And finally, Fun stuff! – Yes honestly, we do have fun sometimes! My head is great, and for one of our staff meetings, we actually went to the Panic Rooms to have a team building hour, solving riddles in teams in order to get out of the rooms we were locked in! Or we may be arranging an evening out, because all teachers need an outlet!!!!

We have ours tonight… aside from the training that is planned.. that ominous AOB is at the bottom of the agenda… (Any Other Business) That is the one that can hold the gems/nightmare announcements!)

Have a great day Peeps!

That Monday Feeling!

08 May 2017 77 Comments

by Ritu in Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, Family, kids, No Sleep, School, tired

I know where I’d rather be right now!

After another night with barely 4 hours sleep, I definitely don’t feel ready to face the day!

And I wasn’t stressing over anything, honestly…or rather I was worrying about Lil Man.

Poor guy is suffering from a migraine since yesterday, and a high temperature.

He wanted to sleep near me so we agreed that once he fell asleep, I would take him to his bed.

Of course the drama queen in our house (not me, cheeky! I know you were thinking that!), Lil Princess decided that it wasn’t fair, him being with me. She went to bed then until 11pm kept coming into my room to say she was unable to sleep.

Finally when Lil Man was asleep soundly, I carried him into his bed. Li Princess appeared to be asleep. Hubby Dearest was still watching TV downstairs, unaware of any Musical Beds being played so far!

But come half an hour later, he came back, “I can’t sleep mummy, it hurts too much!” So the duvet got pulled to one side, and he climbed in.

We all fell asleep… until at 1 am the pitter patter of smallish feet woke me. “Mummy, I can’t sleep, honestly!” Lil Princess had arrived!

Now this should have been the time I marched her back to bed, but in all honesty, I didn’t have the energy! The duvet was pulled up and here I was, sandwiched between two little people!

Then Hubby Dearest showed up.

I instructed him to go take the girl, and sleep with her on the pull out bed in her room! At least this way she wasn’t feeling ‘excluded from this sickness pyjama party!

So off they went. All I could hear was giggling, so had to go and remind him that his daughter had to be up in around 5 hours! then after 20 minutes, more noise as the pull out bed went back.. because Sonu Singh, who had been peacefully sleeping on my bed, thought he would join their party, and went under Lil Princess’s bed, and had started scratching the wood there, disturbing all!

So, after she was settled, Hubby Dearest took the couch, and all was well… until around 2.30 am, when Lil Princess appeared again, at my door.

Too tired, I beckoned her over, and spent the next three and a half hours tossing and turning between these two, getting hotter and hotter!

The alarm went off to soon!

And I had two kids and the cat wedged around me!

Oh Jeez! How am I going to manage today?

Lil Man still hasn’t shaken the temperature or headache so he will be at home with his Daddy. I don’t know quite how I am going to wake my Lil Drama Queen Princess up now…

Wish me luck!

And have a good day Peeps! I hope your night was better than mine!

I Should Know Better!

03 May 2017 43 Comments

by Ritu in Children, Humour, Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Bad Habits, Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, Children, common sense, Family, Humour, parents evening, School, tired

I am a pretty good person, always looking out for others, smiling through life’s problems, that sort of thing.

But I don t half have some bad habits that are hard to break!

Now there’s organised, and then there’s organised!

I believe it’s the Virgo in me that likes to have lists of things to do, that needs me to know what is happening when, that asks a question and needs an answer NOW!

And these are all okay habits, but I can have a tendency to get myself a bit obsessed with them too! And often to my detriment!

Take last night for instance.

There have been lots of changes in our family life since Lil Man started Secondary school. The biggest being that now he is at another school, other than the one I teach at, I have little control or knowledge about things happening there (oh, I find that so hard… but breathe, Ritu… let go…!)

We have to go for his parent meeting soon. Now in primary school, it’s a pretty painless process/ Your child has one teacher, you book a ten minute slot. You arrive, maybe wait if there are any delays, but, unless you have more than one child, thus needing more ten minute slots, you are in and out relatively fast.

Not at secondary school!

Now we have a lotta subjects, so a lotta teachers and a lotta kids whose parents need to be seen!

There is the old fashioned way of booking your slots, which is to fill in a piece of paper, using a pen (remember those?!) requesting the teachers to book you in with a slot. We tried that last time, and I think one teacher managed to actually book a time.

Then I resorted to the new-fangled way, which is an online system! Oh so easy! You see the teachers names that you child has, you book your five minute slots, and leave five minutes in between, to give yourself time to move around!

Great!

If you get in early enough. But if you are one of the last ones to book, you end up with 7 appointments interspersed within a three hour window! But we were relatively quick so only had a couple of waits.

So when I realised his end of year meetings were coming up, I was hot off the mark!

I have been checking the website for the last couple of weeks and knew that the system opened up for booking yesterday.

But what time exactly?

In the morning it informed me that the system would be open 17 from them. I worked it out and made it to be an 11 pm open time.

Being me, Mrs Virgo, I wanted to get appointments booked and out of the way, so I knew what we were doing on that day!

I was tired too.

But I kept myself awake, and had checked throughout the evening to make sure that I know when it was definitely going live! Last time it was live at some silly time like 4 am, so I had to wake up to get the bookings done!

Just before 11 pm I dragged myself to the PC and logged in. The counter that had said one hour to go for the last hour should have said Open at 11 pm, but no.. it told me there were 59 minutes to go!

Dang!

I had to wait until midnight!

Now here was where common sense should have prevailed and told me “Ritu, go to sleep. Get up at your usual time, don’t snooze your alarm, and you can book the appointments them.”

And quite possibly, it did try to tell me that, but stubborn, organised Ritu had her voice on loud speaker! “Ritu, watch another mind numbing programme to keep yourself awake then book, and you can sleep in peace!”

And so I awoke from a snooze just before midnight (luckily with no alarm, otherwise I would have been gutted!) and drowsily headed off to the PC again to book.

Surprise surprise I was probably the first one there, and all appointments needed were duly booked. I could rest easy for the next two weeks!

Except, you know when you wake from a deep sleep, you just can’t go back to bed.

So I was back in bed by 12.07 am and tossed and turned for an hour! And when my alarm did go off, I cursed my inability to listen to common sense!

But I was secretly happy that I got my preferred time slots!

So now I know I shall spend today in a stupor of tiredness – self-inflicted tiredness, at that!!

I should know better!

Any habits that you have that you really should change, but you just can’t quite make yourself to do?

On Being Observed… 11 ‘What Ifs’ Running Through My Mind.

26 Apr 2017 82 Comments

by Ritu in Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, Lesson Observations, nervous, School, Thoughts

I haven’t been sleeping well, you guys know that.

The reason is because I have a lesson observation on Thursday. I am pretty used to being observed by my manager, but this time it is her along with the Head Teacher, coming to see me in action.

But there are so many things running through my brain all the time, regarding said observation!

Oh My God!

What if…

…I am doing EVERYTHING wrong!
…I goof up?
…the kids don’t listen?
…I can’t speak?
…I don’t live up to the expectations of the management?
…my lesson just ‘doesn’t work’?
…I can’t control the kids?
…my staff don’t react in the way I’d like them to?
…the children look bored?
…things don’t go to plan?
…the kids don’t learn?

I’ve spent nights thinking about specific activities that show the children being ‘stretched’ through play, and whether the activity makes sense/is fun/is beneficial/ticks the relevant boxes with regards to the learning intention I hope to achieve.

I worry about whether my behaviour management techniques with the children will be deemed to ‘work’. The children I am being observed with are lovely, but there are a couple of children with additional needs, and the obligatory behavioural issues, not to mention English as an Additional Language for most of the class!

Everything needs to be simple, they are three or four years old. But not too simple that it doesn’t challenge the children that are more able.

I have the additional pressure of the fact that when my colleague was observed, there were a lot of ‘issues’ pointed out, and I know that management want to see me addressing these issues, which I will.

I am confident in myself… until someone comes along to judge me.

Then I go to pot.

I’m the same with exams. I know what is needed, but put me under that exam pressure, and I crumble!

But I am worried that I’ll stutter, or I’ll waffle, to overcompensate and over explain things to the kids, waffling away, as is the case with me normally, so imagine what ‘over-waffling’ could be like?!

Oh dear God, see! I am waffling on here again already… you are reading my nerves!!!!