Getting tired of it all now...

So, it's been ages since I had time to sit down and write anything in here. And indeed, truth be told, perhaps I should have just left it that way! Not much to tell really, just the usual twelve hour days in school trying very hard to keep up with the marking and planning. Plus trying just about as hard to maintain an outside life. Well to be frank it's all going to hell in a handcart lately! There is so much involved with the Curriculum for Excellence in schools these days that the amount of paper it generates is positively staggering! So much for the paper free office and the eco friendly, waste not want not, green stuff!! Can't get teaching the wee dears for all the planning and evaluating needing done!! So it's a bit of 'give 'em stuff to do and then sit and try and catch up on the paperwork!' instead of all singing all dancing active learning. Honestly, the powers that be have no true concept of the amount of guff this system generates. Yet we are expected to serenely sail on, producing leaders of the next generation..... pshaw!
so that's school.
Life?
Well it sucks like a toothless budgie! The Theatre side of my psyche is being sorely tested these days and I feel deep down that my continuing with the local group will not be the case after the children's show. The theatre has been refurbished. It looks, smells and feels totally different to what it used to - that's to be expected. What I didn't expect was the realisation that I am gently being ousted from the post I've held for the past 11 years. All aspects of responsibility are being taken away and given to others without so much as a by your leave, and I have felt severely patronised by newcomers who seem to think they know all about it and can do it so much better than I. Well good for them I say, after this last production in March I will just hand the whole address book to them (or maybe I won't) and let them get on with it! Not sure yet exactly how petty and mean I will decide to be come the revolution, but I am not going to be particularly heplful!! I may take up painting, sewing and writing again! Joy!! Who knows, I may even start doing housework again! (steady!)
Anyhooo, we'll just wait and see what happens over the next wee while. Rant over, normal service has been resumed...
Till next time...

Aahh Me!

Well another school year begins and another job rears it's not so attractive head! Should have been covering a maternity leave in a nursery but another teacher has (finally!) decided to retire and so I'm back into a P6 class and all that brings with it. Unfortunately the teacher concerned, knew she was retiring before the end of last term and opted not to share this information with anyone who ought to have known. Subsequently she did no prep work for the new term and I am now running like a headless chicken trying to pick up where the last class teacher left off! I have a whole class to set up and no time to do it. We had half a day today and have a full day conference tomorrow. Children are back on Wednesday so I'll have to go in after the conference and work till the Jannie throws me out!
I suppose you could say I will thrive on it but I am not so sure. The class is small, only 22 children at the moment but there is a strong possibility of two more before the end of the week and a potential for at least another four before Christmas. Onwards and upwards I think - no point in being grumpy, this is the career I wanted to have, I can't help but wish it were my calss for the whole year and not just until February when the Mat. leave ends. Oh for a class of my own!!
On a more positive note, both girls did really well in their exams. Jen is starting at Stevenson to do her HND in Classical Music, she'll then go to Napier to complete her B.Mus. Victoria is started in fifth year and looks like having another good year - she has subjects she did very well in with her standard grades and her plans seem to be all under control.
Everything else is bog standard normal, except for the fact that Paul has managed to get us all wirelessly linked and now I don't have to take turns on the computer!
Until next time...

Back in the old routine...

Well good news for me!! I have been successful in getting onto the SLC supply list and have work lined up from Easter till Summer!!! Fab fun all round. I'll be working for a Headie that I worked for before during my Classroom Assistant days and so I know I'm going to be completely happy and relaxed about things. Looking forward to getting started on the 19th April. Working between two schools - so plenty of scope.
Just have to get the workshop production finished and get my series of six workshops planned and then I can move on to other things!!!
Life is good at the moment, let's hope it stays that way!
Till next time!

All downhill till Easter...

Well here we are, the weather has decided to pick up a wee bit and there was actual sunshine over the weekend!! Yes! There were people out in open topped cars, riding horses, cycling, walking dogs without wearing coats (that's the walkers, not the dogs...) and all sorts of malarkey! My current contract draws to a close on the 1st of April and I'm living in hope of something coming up for the next term. I've been for the first of my two interviews - made a bit of a fist of a couple of the questions, I now believe there is such a thing as studying too much for something - I think I was concentrating too much on trying to recall my notes instead of just answering the questions!! Point made and taken, thank you! Tomorrow is the second and I'm off now to have a last read over of my notes and then I'm off to do some Workshop admin and poster making and have a wee glass of wine and then off to bed. Will report back later in the week, hopefully with some good tidings....
Till next time!

Once more into the breach....

Well that's the second application form this week! Yes peeps! It's that time of year again. Every NQT, supply teacher and part-timer will be on their mettle for the next few weeks! This is almost as regular as the lambing season; every February/March cometh the 'Bulk Interviews' (West Lothian) or the 'Round Robin' (South Lanarkshire) where the teaching sorority goes into a frenzy of form filling, trying to write something spectacular. Attention grabbing headlines on a boring On-line form are not easy to manufacture but still we try, in the desperate hope that this year, maybe this year we'll be one of the successful ones, one of the ones who actually get given a job that isn't a temporary contract or Maternity cover. Doing a Mat cover in the school I'm in at the mo' is not a bad thing as the Headie is one of the application form considerers, she's helping sort the wheat from the chaff and if I don't get an interview it won't be for lack of trying!!! The Depute checked over my form, as did my ex- Headie from my previous school and both declared it a good form, coupled with the rather super (if I say so myself!) Headteacher's Report that the Headie gave me should hopefully get me a chance to sparkle in person and hypnotise them into giving me a permanent post contract in a smashing school with no behavioural difficulties and a pupil base of angels who want nothing more than to hang on my every word as if they were pearls of wisdom, while they work hard at being the best class in the Universe.... well I can dream can't I? Have also completed one for my Local Authority who have at last lifted the Recruitment Freeze and are looking for Supply staff. Mind you, I'm not daft, if I were to be offered a post in my current Authority then I would definitely take it - in this jobs climate one can't be too choosy!! However, getting onto the Supply list makes me eligible to apply for any permanent posts that come up in the future, so here's hoping!
Speaking of climate; it's not been as snowy as I'd expected. The forecast keeps saying it's gong to be a white out but although the frost is doing it's stuff every morning and nice and crisp it is too, the snow has not really made much of an appearance this past week. Note well my friends, now that I have said there is no snow you can practically guarantee the blasted stuff will be all over the place by morning.... Perhaps the Spring will soon come around and we'll have daffies nodding their pretty yellow heads all over the verges.
Funny how much I find I miss typing stuff. I would love to be able to write a book but that would require a plot and a beginning, middle and end. The creative writing course I did with the O.U. was great fun and fairly got the creative juices flowing but as happens, life takes over and the reality of why I was working for a degree jumped on it and squashed it flat. I have three or four notebooks with ideas, phrases, titles, characters and setting jotted down in them. Not in any particular order, they're not the bones of an epic tale or anything remotely organised like that. I love pomes. I use that word as I don't think my doggerel can really expect to be called poetry. Some of them I am quite chuffed with, others probably need a years' work just to be readable. Never a great fan of the Haiku with it's seventeen syllables I had a bash at some. Wrote a couple of contrived poems from given titles then, creatively and independently, I did one I was quite proud of with a rhyme sequence on the third lines, the name of this format escapes me for the moment, I recall having it described by a tutor and realising that I had written one without really knowing that it was a specific poetic form!! Was I chuffed? You bet your little pink bootees I was! Maybe one day I'll go and dig out my verse and publish it all here. That'll sort out the men from the boys, we'll soon see who can stick it out and who says "The hell with it, I'm off...." I would like to think that one day I will sit down and have a crack at a wee novello or maybe a few short stories. Along with the painting that I've put on the back burner since taking up teaching and the Cross-stitch I never got back to, perhaps when I eventually retire I will myself trying to fit in so many hobbies that I will give up and just spend my life Twittering, Blogging and watching re-runs of Dr. Who and True Blood. (the sublime to the ridiculous) on the telly. Joking apart, I've always promised myself that I'd re-write the scripts I created for the Junior Workshop as children's books and possibly self illustrate them too; who knows, maybe one day. In the meantime I'll keep buying the Euro Millions Lottery tickets when it's a Rollover week and give my mind a wee treat imagining what I'd do if my numbers came up.......
I suppose I should go and get myself off to bed now, it has been a long day and I am somewhat knackered. Early start and hair to wash in the morning so it makes sense not to sit here any longer. So, better shift it then....
Till next time,

And that's one month gone....

Crivvens, where did January go? there was I, feeling all smug about not letting the year race away and when I turned round it was February!! It's already on the slippery slide and gaining momentum by the minute. Haven't booked any holidays yet as have yet to decide where we might like to go, we've also to consider what it's likely to cost as the prices seem to be a bit steeper this year, or is that just my imagination?
I've more or less decided not to make any special plans for the next wee while, there is so much of life in a state of flux at the minute it's practically impossible to make any! I know what I'd like to achieve - mainly in the house - but as I am working at the mo' it's unlikely to happen. So I'll just plod on doing a wee bittie here and there and maybe it'll all come out right in the end.
The new school is pretty good, although I'm finding the sheer size of it a bit daunting. Double classes makes for a lot of children and a lot of staff; who are very nice by the way, that's the staff mostly, the kids are a variable feast.... some horrors, some wee sweethearts, and the usual motley collection of swots, middle of the roaders and refusers. The class I have are, on the whole, a good enough bunch, just a few who could make you want to rip their throats out.... The previous incumbent in his infinite wisdom (translate that as sheer bloody laziness) did not, however leave a forward plan. Apparently it was 'my responsibility to write one with the stage partners'. Neither did he leave his daily diary pages so I could see what the class had covered and at what pace. So perhaps that's the reason I'm feeling somewhat stressed just now and why the month has hurtled by, I'm trying to do the job, discover what has been done in the past and plan for the rest of the term! No pressure!
The applications for the next lot of jobs are out now and need to be submitted by the 28th Feb. Unfortunately it has to be accessed from a school PC and to date I have been unable to get on - some glich in the server won't let me on to the council intranet. Further to this we have been told that the 'norm' (this will be my third year in the bulk interviews) is not happening this year. Instead of all who apply, Probationer teachers, those on supply who want permanent, those who want a transfer, getting an interview regardless of the application form, the forms are to be graded and matched with Headteachers comments and reports. Ones and Twos will get interviews, threes and fours won't. In past years everyone was seen, allowing for personality to overcome a poor form - not everyone writes a good form after all, but now we are all going to have to sparkle on paper like a ballroom dancer's bodystocking. Ho hum, I'm going to have to get on the case as soon as I figure out how to get the blasted form opened.

Here I go again, I keep telling myself I won't rabbit on about teaching and jobs and the like, yet there I am doing just that!
What else am I doing? The workshop is moving along rehearsals are going fairly well, we just need to pick up the pace a wee bit. I have three Wednesdays that I have courses or Parents Nights to attend so we have to be up to speed with it all before that happens. Going this weekend to see the Hall we will be performing in in April. The Young Farmers will have the scaffolding up and the stage extension up so that will be good to see. We're working in a measured area so, hopefully, we'll be able to hang a backdrop a metre off the back wall and get access to both sides of the stage without having to go offstage - there are steps up to the stage from the back area and if we can have the cast on the stage ready to come on without having to come up the steps to do so, so much the better. Costumes are well under way and Jenny is gathering props already. David is looking at how we will set the scenes; we've been dicussing a simple but effective method of ringing the changes using a stone cloth as a static back with various embellishments to create the different scenes. As always, we all pool our knowledge and experience and I fully expect we will come up with something fairly innovative again. The team are truly brilliant and I am so lucky to have so many talented and dedicated people pulling together. We're all working on the kids show and we'll be working together on the Panto along with a few more talented people - I fully expect it to be a blast and although we are not certain of getting the Theatre back in time for putting it on I have booked the Hall as a stand by. Just hoping for a biggish cast to pull it off!
But there I am again, rabbiting on about the end of the year and we're barely started. Maybe I will just toddle off and watch/listen to Terry Pratchett's lecture instead of rambling here. Yes, I will do just that. Night night.
Till next time.

Happy New Year!

Yes, I know it's the 10th already and most of you have forgotten about the new year and are well on the way to planning for Easter and your summer holidays but I'm determined to let the year happen slowly instead of it's usual breakneck slalom down to the 31st Dec!
Starting a three month supply job in a school in Livingston tomorrow, it's a maternity cover for a P6 class and I'm looking forward to it immensely. Well in some ways anyway, in others I'm quaking in my boots. From what I can discover this school has some different ways of working than others of my ken. they use different materials and schemes of work, which is okay, but I'm nervous about not getting up to speed when there are children who need to be getting tested on their next levels! I have been informed that it is not possible to do any photocopying or find any resources by oneself. There are two staff members who do nothing but, and all requests have to be in a wee blue book and submitted well before the event, so that means I could have a few difficulties until I get organised. As the school is open plan I'm not sure whether or not I'll be able to use music they way I usually do for settling down and doing creative work or for finishing and tidying up. No doubt I'll find out fairly quickly! I understand I have a couple of stage partners who job share the other half of the P6 class and I'm looking forward to meeting them. I've never team taught before so this is all new and will be very interesting and useful for future job applications. Yes, I'll still be looking for jobs even though I have this one. I need to be on the ball and get my fingers into any possible pie as quickly as I can as the probationers from this year will be on the lists soon too! So that'll be me competing with all the unemployed from my year and last year as well as this year! No pressure then!
The workshop is well under way and the rehearsals are going well. We will not be able to use our theatre as it will still be closed but instead will use another hall in the next village. This will be a huge learning curve for all of the production team - we'll be somewhat out of our comfort zone and have to really think about our staging and scenery. The cast are showing great promise and I think this could well be one of our best shows, it certainly has a lot of good catchy songs and that's always a bonus!
Getting asked to vacate the PC now as there is, apparently a need for someone else to use it! As there are no emails in their inbox and the IT skills are limited I suspect there may be a very basic recreational use on the cards.....
Till next time!