Here we go… just a few days left, then Summer Holiday.

It was our NQT (Newly Qualified Teacher - or “Fresh Meat”, if you will) celebration this afternoon. Yes, one of those silly social affairs where all the NQTs, their mentors and some token people from higher up in the school make light conversation, nibble random food and - because it was only 3pm - look at the wine and think “why?”.

I got a certificate and a plate full of food, then after sticking around for some photos, escaped and went home

Then, at half seven, after a catastrophic failure in journey timing, met up with our Curry Club - a once monthly meeting of a select group of staff (getting into the Masons would be simpler) who’s objective is to consume curry. I have some left over, I will eat it tomorrow

I used to have a very boring job working in a shop. On the busy days I got to run around dealing with the great unwashed, and hours would fly by. On slow days (so… any day that wasn’t Saturday) I would waste hours just standing still.

Really… once I stood totally still for two hours without moving.

I’d gone through the phase of wandering the shop floor learning where the stock was, then progressed through the phase of “let’s unpack a delivery and take three hours”, off into the “let’s see how quickly I can unpack a delivery” and right on past “clean every square inch of the shop”. I seriously had nothing to do but look after my (deserted) section of the shop.

It gave me quite a while to reflect on things (mostly “why is the clock going backwards?”) and decide that on the whole, being paid £5 an hour to stand still wasn’t really worth it.

Now, since it’s a week and a half before we break up for summer at school (different job, much more interesting) I’ve suddenly found lots of free time. And I’m getting a tad bored again. So bored that I’m planning what I will be doing next September. I have a cunning plan to work out all my lessons for the coming school year so that I don’t have to do much during next school year except zoo keep and teach If I had a list of kids, I could even write my reports

So far I’ve made a nice little Gantt-style chart that’s neatly (and colourfully) organised all the units of work. From this I’ve started to list the lessons and brief ideas for them. There’s even the required 5 weeks ‘fudge’ time for when things kick my plans in the balls.

Hopefully I can get my planning done so that the holidays are mine and I don’t have to work after school planning stuff either. Next year looks more straight forward, I’ve taught all the stuff before so will scrape the bits together and make them better.

It was the Year 10 parents evening today. I spent most of the seven hours sitting around waiting for people to talk to. I think it was productive for some of the people I saw, but it was quite boring waiting for them to turn up.

Mind you, I didn’t start until 1pm so managed to have a nice leisurely morning.

This week’s strange. Through an amusing coincidence I am going to be teaching Monday, Tuesday and then that’s it. Wednesday is an NQT conference, Thursday is the year 10 parents evening and on Friday it’s an INSET day.

Well, I’ve just finished madly sorting out my Year 10 reports and they’re now in the library being bound, ready for posting. The year 10s start two weeks of work experience after next week, but due to various things happening next week I’ve just finished my final year 10 classes of this school year.

In fact, next week I only have Monday as a proper, normal day. On Tuesday the first two periods are being used for careers talks. On Wednesday I am at an NQT conference all day, Thursday is the year 10 parents day and Friday is an INSET day.

This is very good

It was the leaving do for one of the people at work. Conveniently the leaving party was held in town, meaning I could just drive down the road and not get lost. After finding one carpark that wanted me to pay £2.70 for an hour I went across the road to another carpark that was totally free!

As an added convenience I happened to meet someone else from work who was going to the party, and after visiting the cash machine we met another person… then three more. It was like some covert operation with people all randomly meeting up together

The food was excellent, and because we were in before half six it was half price. Combined with a £5 deposit already paid, our bill - for 14 of us - came to a mere £46! Yep, £3 each for some excellent food So excellent that, not having any change (I’d brought 30 quid, expecting to pay £15-£20 or so) I had my meal paid for by one of the people I work with.

Free food wins every time

We left them £40 in tips too…

I have spent a rather chilled out day completing most of my form’s reports. It’s suitably tedious and I managed to put it off until about 2pm. My house is now very clean and tidy as a result and I have created a fantastic Excel spreadsheet and Word template so I can mail-merge the comments easily.

Guess I’d best get on with writing the comments then.

I’ve just spent a wonderful day with a group of year 9 students doing an “ICT Booster Day”. No, really, it was wonderful. No sarcasm there for once. Why was it wonderful?

Well when you’re training to be a teacher you have this mental image of what teaching is, and then a dim memory of being at school and what it was really like. You imagine it to be a bit like the adverts, with bright, intelligent interested children asking you why the sky is blue, where baby whales come from and why water doesn’t run off the bottom of the Earth. Your own experiences at school probably contain a few memories of teachers you liked, and quite a few memories of teachers you hated and were a little bastard for.

Then, as a trainee teacher you get put in a classroom and discover what’s in your head doesn’t match what’s in your classroom.

Well not today. The kids were making a website, editing video and making a leaflet. With the exception of three students, everyone was really interested and keen and in addition to learning stuff, they actually had fun.

Now to work out how to apply this to normal every day teaching.

When at Uni training to be a teacher we were introduced to the concept known as “work life balance”. The idea being you leave your work at work, and don’t bring it home, the intention being to stop us going crazy.

Yeah, work life balance meet the real world.

What they should be teaching new teachers is not how to manage their work and life, but how to adlib on the spot and make stuff up as they go along. Little coping mechanisms for when It All Goes Wrong, or when someone springs a surprise.

Like tomorrow. I have an all day ICT Booster day where me and another teacher are taking 15 year 9 students and doing a full day of ICT with them. Fine, should be OK if the kids don’t turn into idiots. Only I forgot to set some cover work for the lesson I should normally be teaching on Thursday morning.

If this was my training year I’d now be sat up till 10pm planning a lesson, making resources and generally having a bit of a controlled panic. Instead I’m writing this. Tomorrow I will go into work and pick out a random cover lesson from our pile, print off the worksheets (after modiftying them a bit) and leave them in the classroom. Job done.

They can make me a poster about Internet Safety. That’ll do. The non IT trained cover teacher can then just wander about trying to persuade the kids to keep off the Internet.

Oh, supposedly I have to write some year 12 reports for kids I taught six months ago. Right… OK… well I’ll do that in between my year 10 reports, planning next week’s lessons and preparing for my NQT final interview on Friday. Or I won’t. If they want reports they can ask for them.

Managing workload is easy - do the important stuff and leave the rest until someone asks for it. If it’s not important they’ll not ask again. And do the ten minute quick stuff immediately. Think of it as the Getting Things Done philosophy combined with the Dilbert mentality.

Monthly curry meeting tomorrow