Scrunch me up in a little ball and call me screwed.

I should be doing a million things right now. I should be writing the subject selection handout for the Year 9 program next year. I should be correcting Year 11 Exams. I could be writing reports. Instead I am sitting here because I can't concentrate. I don't want to seem ungrateful I guess, but I found out my allotment for next year a couple of days ago and I am not really happy. It seems that despite what I once thought, I am not immune to being told one thing and assured that that is what will happen and then having something entirely different eventuate. I worked really hard this year. I'm not saying no-one else did, but I often worked 12 hour days to get things done for this program, to build it from the ground up, and to make sure that things worked. And the work is not all done - next year there are many changes that need to be implemented to ensure that the program grows and improves. Despite being told that I would be getting my normal Year 12 and Year 11 English then BYTEs to make up the rest of my allotment, I have been given a Year 9 English class as well, and only 3 periods of my allotment are made up of BYTES classes. This effectively means that I am running a program that I have only minimal involvement in. This year, I was only timetabled into 5 periods of BYTES and was free during all of the other periods which meant that I could go into all 12 periods in a week as necessary without having to be covered. This next year I am timetabled into 3 periods of BYTES and timetabled against at least 2 if not 6 periods of BYTEs which means that I am unable to even visit other periods in my time off.
I feel like my load has been made larger, not smaller and that I am going to be unable to do all the things that I had planned for next year. I feel that the program will suffer because there is not enough investment in it and that my free time will suffer with 12 -hour days again whilst I run the program, learn the new texts at Year 12 for English and learn the entire course for Year 9 English which I have not taught before. But mostly I feel betrayed. I know that timetabling a whole school is not an easy task but when you are told one thing and another happens it would be nice to at least be told. There is an unfairness too to the way these things are done and that annoys me.
Most importantly I am getting insight into why so many young graduates spend so little time in schools before moving into the wider workforce. Graduates are taking the heavy load in schools - teaching VCE classes, taking on extra responsibility, getting involved in the extra curricular programs, working long hours for little monetary reward but placing their faith in the fact that their hard work will be rewarded other ways - through appreciation and consideration. It seems that I was wrong on both counts and I am not the only one who is unhappy. I guess it just takes the shine off things for me and makes me fearful about what next year will involve instead of being excited like I was a week ago. It is much easier to work your arse off when you feel like people are acknowledging the effort you are putting in.
I guess that I just need to get all of this off my chest. I will feel better when I have managed to get through some more of the tasks that are taking my focus right now and started to work on preparing for next year. It seems like at the moment there is this never-ending wall of work in front of me and I can see that I will be plodding through it for a long time to come. I don't want to sound like I am a sooky la la but just express my (hopefully) momentary disillusionment at this point in time. If there is anything that I can say in my own motivation it is that I am resilient and I will get over this and get on with it and make it work and probably be a better person for it but maybe I will also be a little bit broken... a little bit closer to being bitter and twisted like those that I see around me...something that I hoped would not happen to me...

The end in sight...nope, just another mirage

The start of term 4 brings with it the end of a chapter. The year 12's finish on Wednesday and this will leave with me a total of 5 periods of teaching time each week until the year 11s leave (and that is only 2 weeks later). Don't get me wrong - I'm really excited, but the things that I have been putting off as long as I can are starting to come back and bite me on the proverbial. The year 12s will keep visiting me during my frees so as much as they are gone they are really not gone but it is really the BYTES program that has been begging for my attention lately. At this time of the year I start to look forward to next year. Normally you don't really have an idea of what you will be teaching yet, but at least I know that the BYTEs program is still under my wing. This means there is so much to do before the start of next year.
There is timetabling, staffing, curriculum development, deciding on which BYTES to run, organising the orientation sessions for the first week back including lesson plans and activities for staff and students, meetings about what has gone well, what needs improvement, meetings about new technologies that need to be learnt and bought, and numerous other things including meetings about the new building that is being custom built for the program and is already 6 months behind schedule.
The beauty is that I am excited about it. I feel like this is my real focus at the moment and the whole teaching thing is just getting in the way a bit of me doing what i really am interested in. I am really ready to launch myself into all the tasks that I have been putting off for the entire term and a bit of last term too. I'm really ready to get things organised for next year and to make all the changes I have been wanting to make that I know will improve the program and make it even better. The feedback from students and other staff has been really positive and it is nice to be able to see the fruits of your labour. Unlike the classroom where the students would get a mark regardless of how you taught, (not saying that good teaching wont make all the difference to the students) but this program actually wouldn't exist, or certainly not in its current form, without me. It is a nice feeling. But the work is not over and I am not willing to sit back yet. Or ever really. It is not in my nature to sit still. I constantly need a new challenge. Something to occupy myself. Something to push me. Once I've found it and conquered the challenge I have to move the goal posts or I am bored. It is something that I have only really just learnt about myself. Like the fact that I am a visual learner. I don't really remember things that I'm told but if I read something I'll remember it for life.
It is amazing how much I have learnt this year in general actually. This program has been brilliant for my technical knowledge about ICT. I have been forced to make the time to learn about technologies and programs that I have always wanted to learn but never had the time or reason to. It has made me a total technogeek and I'm loving it. It's all about the newest toy for me... and the latest one is a bluetooth slate for the interactive whiteboard. Kinda cool.
I guess I'm just really greatful that I have a job that I love that is different each day, is challenging, is rewarding and is teaching me so much about all the things I am interested in. The possibilities in the BYTES classroom are endless and I'm ready to head off and explore them.

Out of the haze...

Today is the first day that I sort of feel well again. I was kind of getting sick of hearing myself feeling unwell so it is nice to feel okay again. And out of the haze comes the catching up process. I have managed (through going home and sleeping when I wasn't teaching) to miss very few classes. I am not behind, but I am not as far forward as I should be at this point in time. The problem with trying to move so full-steam ahead all the time is that when you are not steaming ahead so quickly you feel like you are going backward.
This last week and a bit has been interesting. Out of the haze of my illness I am finally able to lift my head up and reassess where I am with all of my classes, where I should be and where to from here. I don't enjoy the feeling of dealing with the next thing that hits my plate without too much forward planning, however my life this year (and particularly the way the BYTES program has been running) actually necessitates this approach. No matter how organised I am or how much I forward plan, things are still coming up, and often at the last minute that need to be dealt with and leave me with no choice but to rejig my plans.
There have been some interesting developments with BYTES of late. As always with a new program, particularly when you are developing it as you go without much of a template, there has been a bit of unrest amongst some of the natives.
This round of BYTES modules sees the introduction of the compulsory English eZines module where the students create their own online zine on a topic of their choice. The students, in their publication groups, have meetings at the start of each session in order to set their goals and work out who is responsible for each task each session and are working in a self-paced way to produce lots of different types of articles, interviews, and graphics to populate their eZine.
The unrest is coming from a couple of places. There has been a niggling complaint about the lack of communication about what is actually being taught in the sessions. As always with BYTES, the curriculum planning is falling on my shoulders and due to my illness, the final version of the lesson plans were not available until Friday for the BYTE starting Monday. Most of the staff are used to working this way, and whilst it will be different next year when there is more time and more of the curriculum is already written, this year the BYTES staff are using their initiative and taking the plans, with little prior warning, and running with it. Most of the staff have been brilliant at this. Some are a bit resistent. I happened to walk into my AP's office in the middle of a class the other day to hear one of the staff members sooking about his lack of knowledge about what was happening in the class. I took the opportunity to point out that nobody in that room (and their were 6 staff members teaching that group at the time) had any more prior knowledge than he did, but three of the members came up to me with their lesson plans printed off, rolled up their sleeves, worked out what needed to be done and actually took over the running of the session from me so that I could go home (sick). I pointed out that it was only him and another staff member who wandered around looking like they had no idea of what they were supposed to be doing - everyone else got on with it and made the curriculum their own.
The issue seems to be that some staff members have been working on the small group BYTES on their own, and have not been involved in the large group BYTES that involve team teaching and shared responsibility. What annoys me is not that he is having difficulty adjusting but that he complains without offering constructive ideas for improvement and also that he never complains to me when I am the one that he is complaining about. I guess that for some of the staff the 'fly by the seat of your pants' teaching style that BYTES relies upon is a bit of an adjustment. In general though most of the staff have been fantastic.
The other issue is coming from the Year 9 staff members themselves. Year 9 English gave up a period per week (so from 5 periods down to 4) in order to enable the BYTEs program to go ahead, and in return has it's own 10 week BYTE that all students must complete. In return, the media task that Year 9 students were supposed to complete within English classes has been scrapped. Unfortunately the Year 9 teachers feel that they are struggling to get through the other items they are meant to be teaching in Year 9 English and because of this are starting to get angry. Whilst they realise that it seems that they are not going to be getting back their period any time soon, it is also becoming evident that they want something to give. We have suggested that one of the writing pieces being developed for the eZine could count toward their writing folio, thus giving them one assessment task less to complete in class but they don't seem to be taking that idea on board. I guess I will just have to wait and see what comes of the whole affair. I do know for certain however that they will not be getting that period back - BYTES is here to stay so they will have to find another way to be happy with the arrangement.
In all I am looking forward to this weekend with the hope that I will actually unpack my guilt bag, do the work I bought home with me and go back to school on Monday feeling on top of things. My other resolution is to blog more... okay so I still have work to do on that one!

Sick Days?... Pigs might fly...

Why are we teachers generally a bunch of martyrs? Or maybe it's not that we are martyrs, we just have an overdeveloped sense of our own importance and the value we add to our school and our students. I decided it was time for a long-overdue update on my life at school. In the past 6 weeks (so, yeah, most of this term actually) I have had tonsilitis 3 times. This third time (diagnosed on Thursday morning) is by far the worst. Razor blade swallowing would be less painful I am sure and the sweaty, half delirious nights brought on by my raised temperature are severely over-rated. The question is - did I take time off school to recover? Answer- No. Well not any full days anyway. I did what most other insane teachers do and prioritised my health below my Year 11 English student's preparation for their Point of View essay on Nuclear Energy. So Thursday morning I managed to work period one and two and then went home, slept for 4 hours and did two hours of curriculum writing for the new BYTES modules starting on Monday. Friday I rang in sick but told them I would be in at lunchtime, again to teach my Year 11's so that I dont have to postpone their assessment task.
It is interesting that we have this stupid notion as teachers that we can never afford to have time off. This time of the year is particularly bad for teachers with senior classes as the Year 12s (and I have two of them) only have 5 weeks left of school and the Year 11s not much longer. Add to that my BYTES load and I really can't afford to miss school - I get way too behind. So you would think that that would make me be smarter about my health and look after myself so that I dont get sick. Right? Wrong. The reason I am getting sick is because I am so run down. I had this theory that I would find a balance this year and work 12 hour days during the week if needs be (I generally only need to work 10 or 11 hour days so that's not too bad) if it means that I can go out both nights of the weekend and do no schoolwork during the weekend. It has been working fine except that I am going back to school on Monday tired from the weekend and worn out and it is finally catching up with me. The annoying part is that I had made the decision to start taking it a bit easier and to stop going out on the weekends for a bit starting next weekend, but illness beat me to the punch. And boy am I suffering. I feel the worst that I have since I got glandular fever in 1998 and I am only spending marginally less time in bed. If this is what it takes for me to learn my lesson though then I can handle that. Everything in moderation I guess. I havent really had anyone to tell me that for the past year. So in the meantime I am spending this weekend in bed watching episodes of Scrubs on my video i-pod that a student downloaded off the internet for me. Hopefully by tomorrow the razor-blades will have become a little more blunt and the golf balls that are my glands will have gone down a little. Hopefully I will be able to get some more of the work done that needs to be done for Monday. Maybe one day I will actually be able to relax and put my health first... Keep wishing for that one... Pigs might fly too...

Wish List

Today one of the staff who is working closely with me on the BYTES program asked me what it is that I want to do with the funding and CRT days that I have received for Digital Portfolios and for TPL. She got me thinking about exactly what it is that I would like to spend more time doing. It is easy when everything is so busy to forget to reflect and I think that I am at risk of that happening. I would like to have more time to work with the students on their Digital Portfolios one on one - if we are going to make this a worthwhile program and give them a product at the end that reflects their learning journey and their work in BYTES then it is important that they are given feedback and individual help and guidance on their portfolios in order to encourage that higher order thinking and reflection. In terms of making the project sustainable and looking at producing the best reflection over the long term, it is important that I am able to talk to the students to gauge where their strengths and weaknesses are with the project. I need to get their feedback on what they are enjoying/finding difficult/learning/not learning in order to make the necessary changes for next year.
In my typical style I am starting big - the whole of Year 9 is involved in our Digital Portfolio trial and this is one of the major issues for me in terms of managing the project. How do I get to all the students, keep them all on task, give them the sort of prompts that encourage reflection and learning in all students, when they all learn differently? My first challenge was to introduce the program. In those early stages my focus was on how to introduce the concept to the students, how to structure their work and how to get them all to the same level in terms of their ICT ability.
In this next phase, now that most students have started their portfolio and seem to be working quite well on it, is to refocus my energies on getting the focus for them back onto the content of the portfolio, rather on the set-up. I want to encourage evidence and reflection rather than just surface information. Whilst some students are doing this quite well, I think others need to have that one on one feedback to help them on their way.
Moving on from Digital Portfolios, but still related, I think that I need more time out of scheduled BYTES classes in order to go around to students and talk to them about the program and what they are doing in particular classes. I think that it is important to gather data from students about the program when they are actually working in it. At the moment I am teaching during half of the periods and so I am not free to do this. Perhaps I can use some of the TPL stuff to give me more time to pursue that avenue.
I think that it is important if we want the DP project, and BYTES on the whole to survive and thrive, this, being the trial year, is the year that we need to gather the most data about how to improve the program, what the students are enjoying or not and what the staff think needs to be done to really engage the students. Obviously this year we have had the issue of space - because our custom-designed MERC is not built yet and that is impacting on staffing and spaces and how we do things. The new building will make a big difference in terms of student and staff attitudes, teaching methods and facilities, and will see us truly team teaching for the first time.
Therefore I really want to work on further developing the curriculum, building in further choice and engagement for students and building in new opportunities for staff to relate to students on a different level.
I want to visit other schools and find out what it is that they are doing with their new spaces and their new curriculum - work out what is working and what is not - learn from their mistakes and their successes to enhance our own program. So I need to work out where I want to go and make that happen.
I want to spend more time doing this - writing and reflecting on exactly what it is that we are doing and what we are trying to achieve with DP's and BYTES. I want to spend more time reading and working out where to from here.
So now that I have worked out what it is that I think that I want the next challenge is how to see that it happens. To my trusty AP...

Professional Conduct?

I found out recently that one of my Year 12 English students is going to another Year 12 English teacher's classes in her free periods. Humph. This raises a variety of issues I guess. Is this really professional conduct? What message is it sending to the students (mine and his) and what are the implications of a student being taught the same topic by two different teachers?

Is it unprofessional to allow a colleague's student into your class? I know that some people would not see it as an issue as long as the student attends the class they are supposed to be attending but I fear that it is not as simple as that. Personally I don't know how to feel. In a way it is totally undermining for me to have a student choose to attend another teacher's class as well as mine. I know that it is probably only because the student is listening to the hype that the other teacher surrounds themselves in, but nonetheless it hurts my pride to think that my teaching may not be good enough in her opinion. Perhaps I need to get a thicker skin, but the fact remains that as teachers, we can console ourselves with the fact that our classroom is our domain to a large extent and no student can really compare us to anyone else because they are not in the other class. In this case the student is being taught the same thing by the two of us and is able to compare how we are teaching and what we are saying. It doesn't sit well with me either because I know that the other class are further into the play than we are so she has already learnt the content and so she sits in my class disinterested.
I guess some of my issue comes down to my own insecurity. I don't like the thought that the student may have decided that she thinks the other teacher is better than me or knows more or teaches better. What message does this send to my students? That they will not do well in my class because I am not a good enough teacher? That they will only succeed if they have this one particular English teacher? What does it say to his class? That I am so crap that one of my students chooses to attend 5 extra classes a week so that they actually learn something? Despite the fact that none of this may be true, that is the perception that the students may have based on the fact that she is in both classes.

The question that I ask myself is this... how should I feel about this situation? I am annoyed that a) One of my students saw fit to ask another teacher if they could sit in on their class because that hurts my ego and that b) that teacher said yes and allowed her on numerous occasions to be in that class. I know that b) has nothing to do with me and is all about that other teacher's ego but it still makes me uncomfortable.
It also makes me question myself which isn't fair. I prepare fully for my senior classes, and although it is the first year that I have taught Year 12 English I think that I am doing a pretty good job. This just takes the shine off things a little bit.
Regardless, I will continue to do my thing and try to remain unaffected by the whole affair. It is out of my hands now anyway because other people know about it and are dealing with it. I will continue to refuse to give extra help to or answer questions from other people's student's because that is undermining and unfair and hopefully some time soon others will begin to do the same...

Blah Blah Blah

At the moment our school is trialling online roll marking. Eventually, both the rolls and a lot of our teaching content will be available to us online - including other teacher's resources and ideas - a great way to teach and learn and collaborate. Being the technobrat that I am, I think the idea is great - the online roll marking (which is the only bit that is really up at the moment) is an easy program to use, takes the same amount of time as manually marking the roll in your chronicle and has the added benefit of making the roll monitors that used to travel from class to class checking attendence defunct. This means that your classes are no longer interrupted by a student who requires you to stop teaching and tell them who is absent. In all a great idea that actually saves us time already.
Unfortunately there are some (the vocal minority) who are unable to look past the fact that they have to take their laptop to class and that they have to log into the program which requires them entering their password three times and that the wireless network lets us down in some classrooms. I am constantly hearing people whingeing and complaining about such minor things. The general state of negativity to anything new in this school both depresses and aggravates me. I know that this school is no different from any other in terms of attitudes - in fact it is probably more progressive than many with a large cohort of graduate teachers who are embracing the changes as making their jobs more simple. However I still cannot escape the negativity that started with the mere suggestion of these changes last year and has continued throughout the training and particularly this week. Why do people get scared by the idea of change? Is it because they do not understand the process behind the system? Is it because they are stuck in their ways and fail to see the benefits of the new way of doing things? Is it because they have nothing better in their lives to focus their attention to? Nothing better to talk about and so they are using it as a conversation starter? It annoys me that technology is always the first thing to get a bashing from the uneducated and unconverted. It's the old adage of knocking what you don't understand I guess.
Needless to say - I haven't had any problems with the new system. It does not bother me that I have to type my password in three times to get into the system because I can type fast and it takes me about 8 seconds. I do not complain about having to take my laptop to class because I take it will me everywhere anyway (you never know when google or dictionary.com may com in handy in the English and History classroom). I do not feel the need to use this new system as a starting point for conversation because I have a life and plenty of other things to talk about that are far more important and worthy of my time (was that a bit harsh)?
So what am I doing about this? I am helping those who may have problems or concerns by showing them how to use the program effectively and by talking them through and explaining the technical difficulties that they may be having. The two staff members supporting the new system are doing a brilliant job - and working a lot harder than they should have to to ensure that there are minimal issues and that staff have the support they need. There is a new computer tech to join the other two in helping to sort out any of those issues and allow students. Largely though people are not actually having difficulties - over 90% of the rolls were marked for the very first day of the trial without an issue which I think is a brilliant achievement. Largely people just want to complain - any excuse will do. My technobrat solution - to put my new 60Gb Photo/Video I-pod in my ears on full volume and ignore them. It's the only way a girl can get any work done these days...