A quick post today. My site’s been down for a couple of weeks while I sorted out a few gremlins, and since I’ve got it back up I’ve been meaning to write a wee update on how things are going. Time at the moment, however, is short, so I’m just doing a wee quickie to share the resources I’ve been slavishly battering away at for the last week.
The school I’m working in celebrates the life of Robert Burns every year with a Burns supper, at which P7s regale staff and parents with renditions of some of Burns’ songs. Shock! Horror! Panic! the CD with the backing tracks on it has gone AWOL. As the music guy in school, I took it upon myself to record a few backing tracks using my trusty guitar and Garageband—I’m quite pleased with the results, so I’m making them available as freebies for anyone that wants them.
Scots Wha Hae
Rantin’ Robin
Green Grow the Rashes
auld lang syne
a man’s a man
Education, music
burns, mp3s, school
I’ve spent a portion of tonight collaborating with some colleagues across the country to drum up support and attendees for TeachMeet Student Edition 2009. I’m not going to go into great detail about what TeachMeets are, because this is widely covered in many other places, most notably the TeachMeet website (http://teachmeet.pbworks.com). What I can do is vouch for TeachMeets as being the most relevant, satisfying and worthwhile CPD I’ve been involved in, eschewing as it does the ‘I-will-now-read-this-powerpoint-to-you’ type of presentation by keeping it short (you get 7 minutes to set up and speak) and maintaining a friendly and informal atmosphere.
Tonight’s collaboration focussed on contacting Probationer Leaders in all 32 local authorities to promote the event to their charges. Stuart Meldrum set up this Google Spreadsheet to coordinate contacting each authority – the idea being, it’s better to get someone who the Probationer leader knows (or at least, has heard of) to contact them rather than a blanket email from one unknown email address. So far 18 out of 32 authorities (nine sixteenths of the total, level D maths fans!) have been contacted, but that leaves 14 still to be contacted.
If you are able to help with this task, by contacting someone in an authority you know, then please add your details to this spreadsheet!
Contact details for the leaders are available on the GTCS Probationers website.
It was amazing to watch this all happen tonight, and an affirmation of the value of building a network of colleagues – TeachMeets and Twitter have been invaluable in this.
edit: I should say that Iain Hallahan (twitter) has been instrumental in making all of this happen tonight. Cheers Iain!
Education
#tmse09, planning, probationers, teachmeet, twitter
The last few months have been a bit fraught with uncertainty – the life of a supply teacher is filled with it, and there have been times when I haven’t known from one week to the next if I was going to be working or not. I’m really glad to say though, that there haven’t been many times that I’ve been out of work since August – not counting the first week of term, and this week and holidays, I’ve only had 7 days without work since the start of term – and for this I owe a great deal of thanks to the schools who have welcomed me in, and thankfully, asked me back! 
Working as a supply teacher has been a great challenge in many ways. Walking into a school and trying to make your presence felt can be difficult, especially when faced with 30 or so learners who aren’t sure about you, and who want to find out how far they can take you – much the same can go for the teaching staff
In that respect, I’ve learned a lot since the start of August – about setting clear groundrules, and following through on them; about quickly assessing where needs lie in a class of strangers. Who needs that extra bit of time looking over their sums? Who finds reading instructions difficult? Who’s going to seek to try and wind me up?
Another thing that’s been a real treat is seeing how other teachers manage their classes. You can tell a well managed class when the children can tell you clearly how things work as soon as you ask them. There’s not much worse than seeing a sea of blank faces when you ask a probing question like “Where do you keep your maths jotters?” I’ve also spotted some excellent ideas that I will certainly be ‘communising’ when I finally get a class to myself.
From January on, I will be covering 0.6 in a local school. I’m really pleased about this, as it offers me some regularity and consistency; and also the opportunity to plan my own learning activities instead of going in and picking up other people’s. I’m especially pleased to see that a fair amount of the time is covering ICT time to allow teachers their McCrone time. This’ll be a good chance for me to finally try out some of the excellent ideas that I’ve picked up on the blogs and on Twitter.
Please feel free to leave your best wishes as a comment below – and add me to your twitter!
Education
ict, jobs, organisation, supply, work