The nightmare of half term is shattered by the nightmare of an e-mail from Sasha, reminding us that as the school inspectors are due for a visit, our lessons must be not only flawless in the execution but pristine in the planning, too.
As somebody whose notes for the term so far read, "Amass fortune. Escape," I can't help feeling that I may have a little work to do. Oh, all right. A great deal of work, given that lesson plans should be so hedged about with jargon, goals, success criteria and enthusiasm that it's quite hard to see what it is you're teaching, let alone what the children are actually supposed to get out of it.
I start with reception who, this term, will be embarking on 'Five fat sausages.' In just ten minutes, aided by a smallish but essential quantity of hallucinogenic drugs and a Thesaurus, I've turned a flimsily constructed little nursery rhyme into a mansion of ideals, so lofty that with retrospective planning permission it could probably make a nice home for a Russian billionaire or, with just a little more work, be whipped up into a doctoral thesis entitled, "Towards a fairer economy: the pork and seasonings dynamic," and submitted to the London School of Economics.
The school, in what I suspect will prove to be a masterpiece of misjudged lulling and false security efforts, has so far presented the inspectors as lovely people who want only to offer kindly advice and make our lives the kitten and rainbow paradises that they deserve to be, rather in the manner of those books that portray hospitals to children as earthly manifestations of fairyland.
And, as I give the Year 2 music lessons a slick makeover (before: Sing songs, go back classroom. After: Explore dynamics, pitch, rhythm, write and perform ostinatos, develop listening skills, thinking skills, speaking skills - all in just half an hour!! No brains were harmed in the making of these lesson plans) I can't help wondering just when the truth is going to dawn.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
17 comments:
Hope your cunning plans pay off!!
casdok: I already know they won't - but never mind.....that's life.
Are you sure you shouldn't have been in advertising, given your ability to turn sows ears into silk purses at such short notice?
Give us this day our daily program, deliver us from year 7's,forgive us our educational jargon as we forgive those who inflicted it upon us, for thus is the lesson plan, aim and objective, forever and ever.Amen.Love your writing. You make me laugh as I rub my twitching eye, and the first term here is only halfway through. .
Potty Mummy: Somewhere in a parallel universe I am quite sure I am having a life complete with glittering prizes, happy, smiley children, husband ditto. And you?
Anon: How lovely to see you. Twitching my eye, too, in teacher to teacher recognition.
lesson plans should be so hedged about with jargon, goals, success criteria and enthusiasm that it's quite hard to see what it is you're teaching, let alone what the children are actually supposed to get out of it
OMG! Omega Mum, you've extracted the absolute barest,excretent marrow out of these farcical educational attempts of ours!!
Note to self: must join circus; will be synonomous -- i.e.,not much of a cognative leap!
mollyg: I do like to contribute to the educational debate (but if you want a real lesson, go over to 'To Miss with Love' - it's an eye opener.
Good luck.
Aaaaargh. What have we done to education? I daren't even start on this one, because I would still be typing in a few hours time.
I wonder, though, if they've banned "The Emperor's New Clothes" from schools and preschools. It strikes me as a very very obvious tale about the education system, and as such, is rather more subversive than "Jenny lives with Eric and Martin" and look at all the trouble that caused.
Don't get me started. Just don't.
I think the LSE would welcome a doctoral thesis on the 'pork and seasoning dynamic' - as would Bad Lindy, probably. Much hooting of laughter chez moi. Great post!
Mya x
I had to read this out in an annoying way to my husband, insisting that he abandoned his ebay addiction for a minute. Why are you teaching when you clearly should be writing?
dumdad: Thank you.
Iota: I like to think that I'm making my own small yet significant contribution to dumbing down. Every time I teach the recorder I'm convinced you could watch IQ levels plummet, though that may only be mine.
Mya: ....with a soupcon of Dairylea, of course. When are you planning to ban all our soft cheese asides, incidentally?
elizabethm: How lovely of you. I suppose the only problem is that if I did stop teaching, what on earth would I have to write about?
I admire you from afar! Such courage! I once did my training, and whilst I loved it, I was wise enough never to embark on the career and to choose to remain in the original one. Nursing - or maybe not.
Anyway. I know where I went wrong now and what I was lacking. It was the hallucinogenic drugs. If I'd only known...
Do you think it might help with the nursing?
In leaving this comment, I will add no sarcasm, because you have added enough of it yourself. I can only laugh at Sasha's earnest plans to fool the school inspectors and shudder at the thought that these underhanded tactics actually take place in real life, which I am sure they do.
I feel for you having somehow to be part of this, as if making a living as a music teacher for ungrateful children isn't hard enough, and I do not mean that sarcastically. Kids don't realize how good they have it and what a joy there is in singing in a large group at all.
It's a shame that this tendency to coat everything in "better speak" language exists, as if the "better" language makes for better taught children. I just creates a lot of bureaucracy and dimwits with so called "important" jobs.
You hang in there, Omega Mum, may the force be with you.
This was so hilarious and you just have ot be a teacher to truely appreciate it! As I found out when reading it out loud to Chopper as I luauhed hysterically while he just looked vaugely amused...or confused.
Thanks for yours to me - but as always, no luck with signing-in or getting blogger to co-operate! No news to speak of either - just the slow hard slog of the empty screen, and the words which come at the rate of about two/three an hour... Am sorely missing the comfort of having Bea as spokes-person, besides.
That Sasha of yours though. What is her precise role at your school - and more to the point, what is to be done with her?
And please - what is an ostinato? I know oratorio and castrato and most things in between, but ostinato defeats me.
crazycath: Sadly no need for admiration. It's just a part time job and I don't teach classes, but that doesn't stop me.....
Sweet I: You are so lovely to me - I feel like it's all false pretences, because I do quite enjoy it and I only do music...
DJ: Thank you though must obviously not just do teacher only stuff and v boring for everyone else. Oh, dear
IB: Glad things are progressing, though slowly - surely that's always the way with final rewrites, though, because this time you want to get it absolutely right. Ostinatos, though probably should have an 'i' at the end, God knows, I think are repeated motifs that act as an accompaniment to a main tune, though will look it up.
Post a Comment