Catch Me Up

I won't go into horrendous detail about school so far, but basically the first term has been great. There have, of course, been ups and downs but on the whole I'm having a wonderful time in my probationary year.

Everyone at school is very supportive and my department is great. I have some amazing classes and no downright horrible ones. The school has many problems, but I firmly believe that the first step towards solving anything is a pleasant working atmosphere, something that is definately in evidence.

I'm enjoying myself and I've had the opportunity to try some ideas of my own - some of which have even worked! I seem to be getting into my stride with the whole 'teaching' thing and even though I have bad (baaaaad) lessons, I think now is the time to be pushing the envelope and challenging myself to use more of my own and others' ideas to improve the quality of the learning in my classroom. Oh, and I received a 'satisfactory' for the first term on my GTCS profile, so I'm well on the way to registration.

I don't want to make a huge retrospective about term 1 (even though this blog is meant to be about reflection) because I reckon it'd be much more useful to look forward. For now, then, I'll stop the teaching chat and fill you in on the rest of what's happening in the land of Wick.

Mostly, I've been good and actually kept to some of my promises. Unfortunately the airport no longer does flying lessons, so that hasn't happened (yet!) but I have signed up for an Open University course, carried on with my driving lessons, applied for my Master's, am trying to do a weekly piano practice and have dived headlong into a couple of sports things. I haven't managed to get back into painting exactly, but a notice in school about a writing competition spurred me back to the pan so I've now got a notebook that's gradually filling as something to fulfil my creative urges.

I have started studying for the OU Course, even though it's not meant to start until the beginning of February. I figure that being ahead of the curve can't hurt. So far it's looking really interesting. From the overview it seems to have a bit of everything - physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy - which is perfect for me. The course is mainly just for my own interest, but I think I should be able to use some of the things I'm going to be learning to at least make the Space topic in Standard Grade more interesting, or possibly hang more of the entire course on some interesting contexts (teaching buoyancy by volcanic processes, anyone?).

Anyway, I think that's enough of a catch up. From now on I'll hopefully be doing some decent bitesize posts, with a mixture of personal and professional ideas! Let's see how long it lasts!