Lazy bloggers are the worst kind

It has been a long time so an update is well overdue.

University has really been in full swing for the last few weeks and I have fully engaged in learning and associated activities! By this, of course, I mean drinking and I do feel that I have had a micro-firstyear over the last couple of weeks rolling in late and feeling rubbish most of some days.

Still the real work is just around the corner. We have all spent 2 days in our first schools and have two more this week. Two more lectures and then it's off to the schools until the end of January to really get stuck in with the work of teaching.

Many late nights of planning will hopefully be accompanied by more blogging! So consider this a little filler for the time being and I will definitely refocus soon!

Littler voice and bigger sneezes

Just a quick post to say that my loss of voice mutated into full blown fresher's flu, which has made attending lectures and generally doing anything pretty unpleasant.

I have sneezed and coughed my way through about 7 hours of classroom tecnique, child protection and law leactures today and consequently I am thoroughly pooped. I'm off to figure out what is my favourite poem that I could teach to a year 8 class - heavens!

So hopefully subsequent posts will be a little more jocund but for now, you'll have to put up with my brief crabbiness like everybody else has.

Little Voice

Well, I guess it happens to all teachers but not before they have even gone into a classroom - I have lost my voice. I have been in seminars all week though and unfortunately dealing with students in halls of residence does require using the vocal chords quite a bit. My throat isn't too sore though and I hope to be abck to my singing best as soon as possible.

I ought to take a moment here just to say that any of you who think it is a good thing I am having to talk less - well you're probably right.

On other fronts I have just found out where I am heading to for my first placement of my course. Unfortunately for any meanies who wanted me thrown in with the Lions I am actually headed off to a 14 - 18 school in the county which has a fairly good reputation and apparently a very strong department. The challenging part is that all of the kids are studying for exams including their A-levels and that means I have to be really good at what I do I guess!

Just as life is full of swings and roundabouts I will most likely be in a very different school for my second placement, still that's some months away so no need to get too concerened about it just yet. I was happy to see that some of my peers are positively thrilled about their placements to the feared inner-city schools and something tells me they might just have the right idea..

I will just take a last minute to tell you about an exciting adventure I had yesterday. Some of my coursemates and I had to produce aCD cover. We only had 45 minutes to take the pictures we would need and so in truly industrious style we headed off to the fire station and to all of our surprises we were let in! So dressed in smoky-smelling gen-u-ine firefighting gear we messed about on the pole and no doubt got the most interesting pictures of the day.

Heading back to class like giddy schoolkids we decided we wouldn't say what we had done until the whole class was there and we could gazump their telephone-box-hijinks with our fire-and-rescue-trumpcards. The teacher, being a teacher, didn't ask the class and so we remained alone in our pride and smugness, perhaps a lesson learned.

Pheewwww!

Well I must apologise for my lack of blog entries over the last weeks, it has been the most outrageously busy time but I feel bad about my lack of commitment to the bloggage.

The primary placement ended very well, I thoroughly enjoyed teaching the little rascals and really got a lot of valuable insight into what good teaching is all about. Of course this placement was interspersed with sub warden training and moving house as already discussed!

So now the new hall is all open and full of fresh faced little students, the block are ringing out with the sounds of music I don't understand and an adolescent meta-language to which I have no access. I'm sure this is all good preparation for the rigours of classroom life and I have certainly been practising my teacherly delivery on a few of this year's freshers. I will say, though, that it is good to be back at university during fresher's week as the buzz is really something special; it feels like a friendship is being made every minute as glimmers of recognition and understand flash accross the faces in the bar.

Of course moving in 600 students to a site about the size of a commuter-town tesco's on one day in torrential rain was not without its issues but we got there in the end. Like any new house we have paint to dry out, showers to tease out of their temprementality and unco-operative kitchen equipment. The vibe here is great, though, and so I'm sure that once we are through these teething weeks it will be a great replacement for its former occupant.

As for me, well I guess I'm a bit new now too. I'm starting to really get into the idea of being a teacher and although I'm not without my nerves about the upcoming placements I am genuinely looking forward to getting in front of the class. The course so far has been pretty intense with lectures every day and oodles of reading to be getting on with most nights. I guess it's understandable that we have a lot of skills and compentencies to master as we are educating the next generation but in paper work format it looks even more scary.

The people on my course are really nice, lots of eager young educators. I'm pleased to say that we all seem to have exactly the same anxieties and fears and I guess we'll help each other through. Of course this means that I am genuinely getting the first year experience as we all swap tales about our former lives board switching to the chalk face.

Anyway it is my duty night and I've got to go and look for some sewerage....