ramblings

I am beginning this post without a clear focus which may be a very bad thing, or therapeutic depending on how it all works out. Planning for next year has begun in earnest, with our first session on developing rich tasks and fertile questions on Friday. Unfortunately only four staff members from my team turned up but the ones that did managed to get a lot of great ideas down, for working on at a later stage. I have been working on a brainstorm in inspiration to try and collect my thoughts on organsisation of BYTES next year, curriculum development, resource collection and other ideas. I think it is important to keep assessing, keep thinking, keep planning. I think it is soon time to make a few decisions about the organisation for next year so that we can start getting things done. The fact that we are moving into the new centre next term, and that all of our bad habits will move in with us is not something I have forgotten. Before we can really start dealing with next year, we need to first put in place some structures for this year because the way we are currently doing things will not easily translate into the new centre. The curriculum, despite the original brief, does not really fit the model of rich tasks and fertile questions, albeit close, and so when we move into the open plan centre (all 125 kids and 6 staff members) there will have to be some careful organisation to avoid a disaster. This is the main reason that things have to change for next year. Next year there needs to be structure instead of improvisation, facilitation instead of teaching, and mentoring instead of marking. We are already well on the way to achieving these goals, but there is still a significant journey ahead of us. Sometimes though, like now, I lose all motivation for anything other than sleep. I find myself wasting valuable time blithering about when I should be planning, constructing, creating. Sometimes I find that I just can't be bothered. Is it because I didn't get enough sleep on the weekend, because of the Parent/Teacher interviews that have taken up 2 of the last 4 school nights? Or the short days that before an interview (where the students finish at 2,30) or the short days that follow (where the students start at 10) that are designed to give us a sleep-in but which only rob us of time in class so that we spend our days rushing through things and feeling like we have achieved nothing? Or am I just tired because I am not getting enough sleep or because I struggle to switch my brain from thinking mode to relaxing mode. Now I am rambling... bring on the hols!