(no subject)
I had a pretty nice day today.
It was sunny, which always helps. Fridays are nice at work.
In a lot of ways, I wish I could go back and do my career in the other order. For the uninitiated, I trained in science, failed at a PhD (mental health *shakes fist*), re-trained as a teacher, didn't like it, work as a TA. I think if I'd done my years as a TA before I'd trained as a teacher, I'd have stuck with the profession more. There are a lot of things I do and do well now that I couldn't do when I finished my PGCE. Maybe I just take longer to aquire skills. That's okay. We grow at our own paces.
Anyway, I now actually do more teaching work than TA work which, well, it is what it is. Technically I'm a higher level teaching assistant (most of the time) so I don't get a teacher salary but my pay is higher than a TA pay. And on Friday I get year 5 to myself all day.
So we do some RE, some PSHE, some ICT, and chill. It's pretty cool. My classroom control is so much better than it was when I graduated. I enjoy it.
So, it was a chill day. We've been doing this happiness challenge and this week it involved singing Yellow Submarine. So I learnt it last night on the Ukulele and took it in. I played it on my Uke and they sang and played some other instriuments. It was really nice. Then when they had golden time and I'd marked their books, I chilled out with my ukulele and practiced. The only thing is I need a really cheap low quality ukulele they can pass around now because they all want a go but I don't want them to trash mine.
Also, at dinner we had a discussion about diversity. It was a bit of a minefield because middle aged middle class while ladies. Who aren't all bad and sometimes surprise me but are generally pretty conservative as a bunch. I didn't managed to talk them around to 'we should adress homosexuality BEFORE they start calling each other gayboy and not after' but I did at least manage 'we should have some lgbt books in the school library'. So, yay! And I managed to sucessfully make the point that because we don't (that we know of) have any queer parents actually means we have more of an onus to provide queer role models through fiction because otherwise the only talk these kids might get about the queer community is negative.
So, if anyone has any books they can think of suitable for kids of 11 or lower dealing with LGBT issues, hit me up. I'm gonna see if I can get a cheap copy of 'and tango makes three' at least for them before I leave.
In less good news, my Grandma continues to be crazy. Long story short, she's controlling and emotionally manipulative. As long as I can remember she's faked emergencies to stop us having family holidays and make up visit her at times when we're busy with other things. Her relationship with my mum (this is my maternal grandma) is very disfunctional and after my Grandad died last year, my mum was literally on the edge of a nervous breakdown. My Grandma continues to be selfish and manipulative. She sends letters because we won't answer the phone because she's just abusive. My mum actually had a go at engaging with her through the letters and it took three of them to turn into 'you have to come down here two hours a night every night or I'll know you never even loved me' levels of emotional abuse so we stopped that.
Anyway, this week she'd taken up writing to work instead, which is new levels of not good. And has apparently involved social services as we got a letter asking if we'd like to entre recolciliation. Which, if she was a reasonable person, we might. But she's literally driven my Great Aunt to the point where she's had a stroke and had to cut off contact too and everyone we can think of has talked to her about her behaviour and she just carries on so I don't think there's anything to gain. If she hasn't changed already she won't now.
So that was less good.
But Ukulele and some good stuff on diversity. I'm going to feel more confident talking about diversity now anyway knowing the rest of the staff are behind me, at least on paper.
It was sunny, which always helps. Fridays are nice at work.
In a lot of ways, I wish I could go back and do my career in the other order. For the uninitiated, I trained in science, failed at a PhD (mental health *shakes fist*), re-trained as a teacher, didn't like it, work as a TA. I think if I'd done my years as a TA before I'd trained as a teacher, I'd have stuck with the profession more. There are a lot of things I do and do well now that I couldn't do when I finished my PGCE. Maybe I just take longer to aquire skills. That's okay. We grow at our own paces.
Anyway, I now actually do more teaching work than TA work which, well, it is what it is. Technically I'm a higher level teaching assistant (most of the time) so I don't get a teacher salary but my pay is higher than a TA pay. And on Friday I get year 5 to myself all day.
So we do some RE, some PSHE, some ICT, and chill. It's pretty cool. My classroom control is so much better than it was when I graduated. I enjoy it.
So, it was a chill day. We've been doing this happiness challenge and this week it involved singing Yellow Submarine. So I learnt it last night on the Ukulele and took it in. I played it on my Uke and they sang and played some other instriuments. It was really nice. Then when they had golden time and I'd marked their books, I chilled out with my ukulele and practiced. The only thing is I need a really cheap low quality ukulele they can pass around now because they all want a go but I don't want them to trash mine.
Also, at dinner we had a discussion about diversity. It was a bit of a minefield because middle aged middle class while ladies. Who aren't all bad and sometimes surprise me but are generally pretty conservative as a bunch. I didn't managed to talk them around to 'we should adress homosexuality BEFORE they start calling each other gayboy and not after' but I did at least manage 'we should have some lgbt books in the school library'. So, yay! And I managed to sucessfully make the point that because we don't (that we know of) have any queer parents actually means we have more of an onus to provide queer role models through fiction because otherwise the only talk these kids might get about the queer community is negative.
So, if anyone has any books they can think of suitable for kids of 11 or lower dealing with LGBT issues, hit me up. I'm gonna see if I can get a cheap copy of 'and tango makes three' at least for them before I leave.
In less good news, my Grandma continues to be crazy. Long story short, she's controlling and emotionally manipulative. As long as I can remember she's faked emergencies to stop us having family holidays and make up visit her at times when we're busy with other things. Her relationship with my mum (this is my maternal grandma) is very disfunctional and after my Grandad died last year, my mum was literally on the edge of a nervous breakdown. My Grandma continues to be selfish and manipulative. She sends letters because we won't answer the phone because she's just abusive. My mum actually had a go at engaging with her through the letters and it took three of them to turn into 'you have to come down here two hours a night every night or I'll know you never even loved me' levels of emotional abuse so we stopped that.
Anyway, this week she'd taken up writing to work instead, which is new levels of not good. And has apparently involved social services as we got a letter asking if we'd like to entre recolciliation. Which, if she was a reasonable person, we might. But she's literally driven my Great Aunt to the point where she's had a stroke and had to cut off contact too and everyone we can think of has talked to her about her behaviour and she just carries on so I don't think there's anything to gain. If she hasn't changed already she won't now.
So that was less good.
But Ukulele and some good stuff on diversity. I'm going to feel more confident talking about diversity now anyway knowing the rest of the staff are behind me, at least on paper.