We had our first science lesson today, we even got to play with frozen water balloons, brilliant! Unfortunately we also got to hear about the 9 science “audits” we need to do. I don’t know why they don’t call them tests or exams, that’s what they are, fail them and you’re out. I guess it’s because people can get scared by the whole exam thing. Call it something else, and the fear goes away.
I wonder if this can be extended to other areas. The mother of my children (MOMyC) was quite scary when I suggest going on a boys weekend to New York. I wonder if she would be less scary if I started calling her something else, maybe Angelina. I doubt it. And, used at one of those particularly sensitive times, it may have the opposite of the desired effect. I just can’t see “I’m sorry I called out Angelina, but it’s a recognised technique for improving psychological well-being” cutting it.
These audits are very much science audits, you fail if you misspell the sciance words, but it’s explicit that no one cares if you get the other spellings wrong. Considering that the lecturers are meant to be modelling good practice, and that we’re meant to be all “cross-curricular” (as far as I can figure out, this is the educational equivalent of cross-dressing), this surprises me a little. However, it’s also a bit liberating, it gives me as much justification as I need (not very much at all) to sit in a class extolling the merits of healthy eating whilst eating a bag of ready-salted.
Definitely a good thing about them is that they force you to learn stuff. I was reading about breathing and respiration (yes, they’re different, if you’re interested let me know and I can now provide a full explanation), and it’s amazing what you find out. For example, did you know that worms breathe through their skins? Or that frogs have lungs and can breathe through these, but can also breathe through their skin? I was so impressed that I immediately told everyone.
However, I’m a bit nervous about telling a class this when I’m a teacher. You’re bound to get the obvious questions like “How does a snail breathe”? (It’s a good question, you ever seen a snail with nose?) To which I wouldn’t know the answer, but would be tempted to say something stupid like “Why don’t we look that up on the computer”. This I would proceed to do, inevitably be the last in the class to find the answer, and not be able to understand the answer when I find it (I did look it up, after 30 minutes I found “Snails breathe by taking air into a visceral cavity that is richly supplied with blood vessels” – you understand that?) – a good way of simultaneously demonstrating my ineptitude in science, IT and English. As a trainee teacher, you’re acutely aware of the level of your own incompetence, you just hope it takes the children a little longer to figure it out.
