Started my first day at school today!
Apparently the school where I'm at had stopped taking students and it was only because someone on our course did some pre-course observational stuff there that they realised they were missing out. Thank God for the clever people!
I think I'm going to be really lucky because my mentor seems completely tuned in to what a trainee is supposed to be doing whilst giving you the flexibility to suggest things you'd like to try. She's also a really nice person and she makes me want to buy biscuits for the small history staff room. That's an incredibly difficult skill to learn.
Other than general observation of some history lessons I'm going to see RE, Drama, Geography, PE (Yeah!), Food Technology (!) and Maths (Boo!). Within that I'm following a student for the whole day and also following my mentor for the whole day. I'm also going to try and trick the pupil I’m following around into letting me have a school dinner with him - its hard to eat an apple when you can smell school chips but they have a cashless dinner system and I think I need to use his card so I’ll have to be nice to him!
I've been quite fortunate as well because next week they're having an election and on Wednesday they're doing the nominee speeches for the school council so it'll be a good opportunity to have a look at how these things work in practice. Also, the drama department here is amazing. I have to admit although someone distracted me and made me choose drama as an option when I was a kid, I'm not really one for putting tights on and pretending to be an elephant but the stuff they do at my school is incredibly linked to both history and citizenship.
They've done stuff about the titanic, about some guy 'William Jobling?' who was falsely hung and tarred, a piece on immigrants into America, abandoning children and this brilliant session centred around Picassos' 'Guernica'. The kids have to imagine that they work in the UN art department and that happens to be where Guernica is hung. Colin Powell is to come and give a speech in the aftermath of the Iraq war and wants the picture to be covered up before he makes the speech. The children discuss his role in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and what the issues are as a result of either action. How are they remembering the victims of the war? How are they representing the principles of the UN? They then have to act out the situation when they refuse or accede to his demands!
In terms of the format of how I'm getting something down on paper, well I've not really decided yet. I took a lot of notes based on general things I noticed which I thought were important - dealing with disruptive pupils, equipment in the classroom, class room layout, what sort of activities they're doing etc... I've also been trying to ask plenty of questions about loads of different things such as school trips, the discipline system, little things around the school, best/worst experiences, how they paid for computer equipment etc... Quite how I'm going to present this is a bit beyond me. I think I'm going to have a good look at the Professional Values booklets and the PGCE Handbook because this week I really want to go through everything so far and collate it in the way we're supposed to i.e. cross referencing how we are providing evidence of meeting the standards. Its going to take a while but the longer I leave it the harder its going to be to catch up.
Since I've written more for this post than I have for my first assignment (due in at the end of the month) I think I'd better leave it for now but let us know how you're getting on.
This post has been edited by Dave Tems: 22 October 2003 - 12:38 PM
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was as a result of alcohol, I would be happy. 
myself! 
