Van who?

Stardate15 December
I was more than a little tardy with this week’s reflections. My main thoughts this week refer back to a discussion with my group regarding the assessment. We were trying to word the curriculum proposal and I came up against something new to me, new and unexpected. Teachers playing dumb. Back at school this was common, but this I didn’t expect in a teacher training course. I’ll explain a little more the two areas that caused me grief firstly we were talking about in one of the tasks about changing the look and feel of a given space, I wanted to use the word aesthetics as it is the word for what we were talking about. I was told no one will understand that Dan you’re trying to use clever words again, bangs head on table. Then we couldn’t use the obscure and niche artist Van Gogh as the learners and the validating panel wouldn’t have heard of him and Dan is being to arts fartsy. Is it me deep sigh. I never had an education, I went to Art College, this whole experience just emphasised the need for continual professional development, if the teachers are going to attempt to maintain this giggle I don’t know attitude to knowledge and learning how are we going to broaden our learner’s knowledge?

Let it snow let it snow let it snow...

Stardate 5 December 08
Few logistical dilemmas reared their heads this week which I may as well talk about as they tie into my favourite of all educational serendipities SNOWDAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. Yes it snowed and plunged the country into chaos, let me explain. Tuesday I was to attend an end of tem department meeting and later a tutorial. We only have one car due to financial and parking space reasons but we tend to manage fine with this to attend this meeting id arranged to have the car and take my partner to work 20miles in the opposite direction so I’d have the car back for late afternoon. I opened the windows to a winter wonder land ugh I thought ‘Bull Hill’ I don’t know if your familiar with Bolton but this high and exposed part of the a666 carries a running total death toll and last year in similar conditions I passed 9 crashed cars on the same journey. I checked if the journey was essential “is it essential? Well ill get sacked if I don’t go...” So like Scott of the arctic out I ventured, I may be some time. I should explain this journey is on a clear day thirty minutes today it took three and a half hours. I arrived home to find the meeting I needed the car for had been cancelled. Why am I telling you this? Because my tutorial was also cancelled, no because it’s thrown the assignment schedule into chaos no. Because in my opinion the u.k educational system needs to agree that some days like in America you need to announce it as a snow day. The phrase only travel if the journey is essential is meaningless. Everyone fighting to get to an event that was cancelled needlessly clogs the road for essential journeys. If the road is white outside at 8 am it’s a snow day stay home. Maybe the council would feel obliged to grit the roads, who knows? The following day my classes were both half full again due to weather conditions and it’s always the older learners who risk it. I thought well if I cancel it I don’t get paid I have to contact all the learners to they don’t come, then I have to do the session at the end, which delays the next course a week. So selfishly I braved the weather and did the session and ‘tough’ to anyone that missed it.