The week that was (no. 20)

This week was a quiet teaching week – I taught 10 lessons out of 33. This was due to senior classes being on study leave. While I wasn’t teaching many lessons I was still extremely busy. I attended a meeting about emotion coaching, had two departmental meetings and a link meeting with my line manager. I managed to get some development work done which I had been struggling to find time to do previously.

Here’s what my classes (that I had this week) were doing:

• S2 – review of decimals and fractions
• S3 – review of trigonometry and circle and assessments

The week that was (no. 19)

This week was a little different from usual. The S4-6 pupils were on study leave for their prelims which meant I didn’t have my N5 classes or my Advanced Higher class. It did mean though that I had a large pile of prelims to mark. Marking prelims can often be frustrating as you see pupils making so many mistakes (some careless and others not) and not answering questions you know they can do. It can make you feel like you haven’t taught them anything over the past few months. However, there are always others which make you smile especially when you see a piece of working that you didn’t expect. I also had to take an S1 class this week to cover for a colleague who was on a school trip all week.

The week that was (no. 18)

After a really enjoyable Christmas holiday it was back to work. The first day back after a break is always strange. There’s the dread of the early start, especially with the dark mornings, the knowledge that a piece of technology always fails (this time it was my projector bulb) and the enjoyment of getting back into a routine again.