Failure is not an option

January 21, 2008 at 12:23 am · Filed under Blogroll, city life, downsizing, dropping out, IT, PGCE, Student Teachers, teacher training, teaching

Run over by a truck. That’s how I feel, like I’ve been run over by a truck. Not a car, or a van, or even a lorry, but one of those monster trucks they use for defacing the world in Australia. I’m guessing it doesn’t make that much difference exactly how big the truck is that hits you, but for the split second before impact, you’re feeling of dread and impending doom is going to be that little bit more profound.

It’s the end of my second week of school experience, and I haven’t been to bed anywhere near midnight in that time. Its not just the not getting to bed thing, there is the crying baby to throw into the mix as well. As I type, I can hear her screaming for England, and can feel the pain of the MOMC (Mother of My Children), as she is lying there with her. So even when I do get to bed, I don’t get to experience that mythical state I have heard people talk of – sleep.

So now I feel like a walk on extra in the night of the living dead, and look like it as well. This I know because people keep telling me. To be honest, I don’t find that particularly helpful. Especially from people who look like they have just had 8 hours beauty sleep followed with a 2 hour facial and massage. Can’t they all form some kind of fresh-faced, relaxed and toned club and leave the rest of us zombies alone?

Lots of people told me how hard the course was going to be, and, to my shame, you can track in my blog how disdainful I was of these harbingers of doom. In my previous life in the Eastern Edge of Reason Bank (EERB) I’ve worked stupid hours, for months on end I have been working 14+ hours a day, and had nights when I didn’t get home.

But this is different, its not like, if I need to take 10 minutes out, I can tell the children to go away and think of a solution themselves, and come back in 2 hours and we can discuss it. When you’ve got 30 of them sitting in front of you, bent on undermining your very inventive but as it turns out totally inappropriate maths lesson, disappearing into an office for 10 minutes to make a very important call I’m guessing just doesn’t work. I say I’m guessing, I don’t actually know because I haven’t tried it, but I’ve got a feeling it’s a strategy that I’ll be looking to road-test in the near future.

For anyone who hasn’t done this, which is the 99% of the population of there with a still functioning brain cell, this is due to the need to write lesson plans. Not just any old lesson plan, but lesson plans that meet the colleges sadistic (I would say satanic, but it’s a very Catholic college and that really might upset them) specifications. Personally, I would have thought it would be much better if we used the same template as the teacher we are aligned to (i.e. none at all) but, no. When it takes you an average of 2.5 hours to write one lesson plan, including getting the resources together, differentiation, blah blah blah, and you’re teaching 2 a day, you can see he problem.

Thing is, on our next assignment, we have to teach 4 lessons a day. Houston, we have a problem.

I have taken some steps to try and manage the situation. Firstly, I’ve decided not to go out for the duration of the placement – another 4 weeks. This may sound like some sort of grand gesture but is really quite tokenistic, I haven’t gone out in the last 2 weeks and there is no prospect it of it happening while I’m still at school. But it makes me feel like I’m little more in charge of the situation, small things small minds.

Second, my assignments. There still there and they still need to be done, and I don’t do them I will fail the course. However, the date for these is the end of Feb, so I reckon I can worry about failing for that reason in a few weeks time. I’m going to tackle the failure points in chronological order, and the next official one is me being observed teaching the day after tomorrow.

There is another one, tomorrow morning. Inability to get out of bed and drag my sorry ass to school I’m pretty sure is grounds for failure. So, excuse this rambling post but I have got a 15 month old that needs an ear to scream in to.

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