Absentee Blogger

Hello.  I've been a bit of an absentee blogger just lately haven't I?

It all got a bit exciting with two teaching job interviews on two consecutive days, and not having been in front of a class since 2008 - eek!!!  As you can imagine I buckled down and did some homework, catching up on the curriculum changes and reminding myself what I actually used to do.  I didn't get the first job, which was a Full time, year-long post teaching Year 1/2 at my own children's school.  It would have meant teaching C's class.  I didn't get the job, but I was confident that I'd done my best.  The feedback was positive too, which helped a lot!  Basically my exemplar lesson (maths problem solving) let me down, and I agreed with everything the Head said afterwards.  Being a little out of the loop, I had made the mistake of pitching Year 1 at C's level.  Turns out he's pretty bright, so there were some children in there who just couldn't access what I was doing.  Also I could have brought things back together with a better plenary.  The next day I had the second interview, this time for a term-long part-time contract teaching Key Stage 2.  My lesson this time was teaching figurative language writing to Year 5/6.  I got the job!!!!

So the last few weeks were filled with baking for school and pre-school bake sales and PTA stalls, visiting the school I'll be working at, school productions and then the preparations for C's 6th birthday which was on Saturday.

Now we're on holiday.  I'm having a major clear-out of my belongings to get the place tidy and clear my mind of detritus ready for September.  Have you heard of "The Magic Art of Tidying" by Marie Kondo, or the Konmari tidying method?  The book has sold millions and having read it, I can see why, and I'm giving it a try.  We've also been for a bike ride, been swimming, been to the library, been to the skate-board park, and done some cooking and some science experiments.  As well as the very exciting school planning I'm doing ready for September (is it really sad that I'm so very thrilled to be going back to work?), and tidying, I've also had 14 articles commissioned in the last couple of weeks, mostly on various aspects of learning to drive and on various aspects of American Summer Camp.

I'm going to be returning a bit more regularly to update the blog, but possibly with shorter, picture based posts about some of the things we are up to and making - as long as I remember to take the camera out with me each time!  Post about robots should be following in the next couple of days.