A Night of Starlight

Half Term

anightofstarlight — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:34:26 +0000

Finally. The kids have gone home and I’m on the bus back. I’m planned up to the end of the first week back and therefore am looking forward to a week of doing nothing work-related. I’ve had a great term and cant wait for the next one, but I really need some sleep, proper food and to make some real headway on the job hunt. One girl on my course got a job, so the hunt’s now really on. I’m just so happy to have the time.

Oops…

anightofstarlight — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:08:04 +0000

I nearly managed to embarrass one of my year 9′s today when I brought up their ‘my documents’ folder on the computor forgetting I’d not turned off the interactive whiteboard linked to the computor.

What’s the problem, you might ask?

Well…

The silly idiot had been writing a valentine’s letter to a girl in his year (completely out of his league…). He’d left it saved on his profile as (wait for it…) ‘F Valentine Letter’

…

Not the brightest thing to do. Thankfully I don’t think anyone saw as I turned it off pretty quickly. However, it was still quite amusing (at least for me!)

525,600 Minutes

anightofstarlight — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:02:23 +0000

How do you measure time? According to Jonathan Larson, that’s one way of measuring a year (not that I’m listening to Rent at the moment…)

I don’t need to measure a year. Just two days.

Less than 48 hours. 7 lessons. Two rehersals. 4 tutor periods. Two Lunchtimes. 4 car journeys.

4 phone calls. 6 episodes of Friends.

2 year 7 classes running puppet shows. Absolute chaos. Two computor lessons which I don’t really like.

Bring on half term.

Sheer Childishness

anightofstarlight — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:08:52 +0000

Today I bought a ‘Flower Fairies’ Calender. Sheer nostalgia, but I think that’s a good enough excuse.

I loved them as a child. I have all the books, plus the magic colouring book (those where you paint with water and the colours ‘magically’ appear. Along with ‘Brambley Hedge’ they sum up my childhood. I loved the poetry, and the pictures are just exquisite. Take this one for example, which I have always loved. Look at the faces and the botanical detail. It’s perfect. Really perfect. You can almost believe that they do exist (well, sort of…)

This one also brings back many memories. I dressed up as this for my 7th birthday party, the first ‘proper’ party I had. My mother made the costume, and I really wish I had a photograph, as it was wonderful.

So maybe it was an extravagance. But it cheers me up everytime I look at it, and that’s worth everything.

Yay For Lazy Students…

anightofstarlight — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:39:32 +0000

(Of the high school persuasion not university students)

I had a really good lesson planned for my year 7 classes, involving puppets, music and Harry Potter. However, due a a class of thirty lazy year 7′s I now have to make all of the puppets myself. Yay, just what I wanted to spend my evenings doing. Not.

I also know that the selfish children will undoubtedly sit there and say, ‘but that’s not what we wanted miss!’, ‘we need this miss’ and all the rest of it. Well, they can do that bit themselves.

This may not work out. But hey, it’s nearly half term and I don’t really care.

Why Does Eight Hours Make a Difference?

anightofstarlight — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:08:18 +0000

I have an appointment after school today that I’m going straight to, and as a result have just packed my bag including the items for this. However, I am so paranoid that I have forgotton something crucial, or that it will mysteriously vanish from the locked room at school…

I wouldn’t be this paranoid if I was coming home afterwards. Why is that?

Hmm…

Chocolate Truffles

anightofstarlight — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:59:10 +0000

This is an amazing recipe. Try it.

Ingredients:

400g chocolate
400g double cream

Melt chocolate. Mix the two together. Leave to cool. How simple is that? You can also add anything you want to flavour them with, orange works particularly well.

I made two plates of these today for M’s mums birthday which is tomorrow, so I have A LOT of these lying around… However something weird happened. I didn’t eat many of them. This is strange…

Hmm…

I Really Want A Willing Boy’s Pop Choir…

anightofstarlight — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:39:34 +0000

… Just so I can make them sing this…

Bon Jovi Medley by Viva Voce (an a capella boyband)

It’s so terrible that it almost verges towards being amazing! It would be so cool to do as well! I may talk to the GCSE group… well, I can dream…

I would also love to do this….

New York, New York (Reel Big Fish)

Unfortunately I also may have had to teach ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ – the Glee version to the Year 11′s (who now all think I’m either uber-cool or uber-sad, I’m not sure which…) and so I keep thinking of them all doing the dancing and I have this lovely image of all the guys in top hats, tails and canes doing the full Frank Sinatra bit…

I think unfortunately that for the moment, even Gareth Malone would struggle. When I get my own job however… watch this space!

My Neighbours Must Hate Me…

anightofstarlight — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:52:37 +0000

… as this evening I’ve sung my way through:

Rent
Tick, Tick… Boom!
Mamma Mia!
Hairspray

and various other songs of a musical-based nature. It must sound rather like the annoying girl from Glee is living here…

A Small Triumph

anightofstarlight — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:32:45 +0000

Yesterday, I didn’t have the greatest end to the day. My last class was a year 9 that I’d taken the week before for the first time. They had been lovely. This time they weren’t.

Really weren’t. You’d have hardly believed they were the same class. They were malicious, noisy, rude and generally obnoxious. One girl in particular was a shock. A lovely girl usually, even the class teacher was at a loss to explain her behaviour.

Its one of those things that reminds you that whatever they say, however well you plan your lesson it really depends on the students. This lesson I don’t think they would have paid much attention to the headteacher. Something must have happened in break, but they had also planned to come in and see how far they could push me. None of the attempts worked but I was inwardly quite shocked by the maliciousness of the behavior.

However, on the plus side, for my worst lesson I acheived all of the aims. Still pretty damn good therefore .

Today I had a different class. Though my lesson plan was theoretically fine yesterday, the circumstances had ensured that it did not work well with the class, so I altered it slightly, ensuring no time for messing around.

I came out to meet the class and found that the students from yesterdays class were out their and obviously hadn’t forgotton. I could see them whispering, looking shiftily at me to see if I noticed, and sniggereing under their breath. I did notice and my heart sank. I was expecting this class to come in and also push things.

It didn’t happen. They were lovely. I love that class.

To be honest I’ll be interested to see what the bad class are like next week, was it just an off week? Time will tell.

However, you know you are doing something right when a class all cheers (non-sarcastically) when you say that yes, you are teaching them this week. It’s really the best feeling and makes it all worthwile