It's been another busy few days.
Nutkin came back from the vet's last Friday night without a bandage on his foot but still confined to barracks for a further week - this despite the fact that earlier in the day he had managed to get passed three locked doors in order to escape out the back door and over the wall. He was last seen jumping his motorcycle over several barbed-wire fences.
Still, the end is in sight. Depending on how he is by the end of the week, we will either ask for another x-ray or simply release him to the wild again.
The news today pointed out that this year hillwalkers are basking in glorious late autumnal sunshine whilst last year they were freezing under a blanket of snow.
On Saturday night, Ross and I went to see Philip Glass's Satyagrha. After enjoying John Adam's Doctor Atomic and his Nixon in China, I was well prepared to give this a go but sadly, for me, it did not pass muster. The craft on sage and in the pit was indisputable but the music just left me cold.
Comments about making the interior meditations of a profoundly spiritual man visible on stage made sense as did the fact that the music was supposed to replicate a meditative state.
However, There was so little variation in the sound world - arpeggios in the violins, fluttering flutes, stabbing rhythms. Bruckner is also meditative but there is more variation in the sound world and there are four contrasting movements and the whole work is over in the space of an hour or so rather than taking up a whole evening.
You could say that this was an oratorio. But Ross and I have seen a lot more drama in Samson and Saul at the Buxton Festival. Sorry but I can't give this a lot of praise.
![[Two and a Half Stars - Reasonable]](2_5star.jpg){kind=small}
Apparently, he had received the results of a series of scans that took place a few weeks back which confirmed that he has a series of aneurisms in his abdomen. The doctors have taken the decision not to operate. If the anaesthetic didn't kill him then the three months enforced convalescence would. So, we are now even more aware that he is a walking time bomb that could go off at any time.
His end will be swift and merciful when it comes but it will be sudden and unexpected. It could be next week, next month, in six months, there is simply no telling.
My father, of course, will not remember the diagnosis at all but that, in its way, is a blessing.
I have let tutors at University know. I hope that this will not impinge on my progress through the coming year but who knows. I shall not be telling any of the other students or my placement school but I felt I needed Hope to know so that they will put the appropriate procedures in place if needs be. I now feel confident of receiving appropriate and compassionate support.
That was just a bit of background to a rollercoaster week at school.
One of my fellow students on placement quit the programme for personal reasons. The other student and myself had offered support but she was becoming increasingly unhappy with all sorts of things and her presence was beginning to drain the two of us. I feel guilty but, in one respect, I am relieved she has gone. However, her departure has also had its negative effect on the two of us as well. It's made me aware of what pressure can do to people.
I would have to admit that I have struggled in the classroom again this week. I am teaching and my lessons are improving. I do have reasonably good engagement (the pupils are mostly on task) but I'm not reaching all the children and I'm struggling with the behaviour management. So, my lessons are not really that good and I've been feeling that I've hit a brick wall. I'll come back to this later.
At the end of the week, I was observed by a tutor from Hope. She gave me all sorts of praise about the way that I had engaged the children and said that it was the best poetry lesson that she had seen from a student teacher. I pretty nearly burst into tears after the week I'd had. It's her subject and she doesn't suffer fools gladly and she wouldn't say such a thing if she didn't mean it.
My tutor also made a lot of observations about the classroom about layout, about practices, about the blend of children in the room. Her considered opinion was that the Headteacher should never have placed a student teacher in there and that a seasoned veteran would have faced enormous challenges.
The school has taken just one student from JMU. I suspect that they were expecting just one student from Hope and were taken aback when one group of three students turned up. They made the accommodation by putting us into different classes with good teachers but not necessarily helpful environments.
My tutor then asked me if my self-confidence had taken a knock. I sort of fudged it but the real answer is yes. That's why I'm finding it difficult to hold onto the positive praise and see what I have actually achieved. It's also part of the answer as to why I have hit a brick wall.
I've just had my first piece of written feedback from the school. That's after two weeks. OK I've had verbal feedback but that's been on the hoof and without time for reflection. I wish I'd had this earlier. I'm sitting here thinking back and saying to myself - yes, of course I should have kept that simpler, yes, of course, I've been giving the children too many things to remember, yes, of course, I should have written those words on the whiteboard or had some word cards to hand out, yes, of course, I've been forgetting my visual learners. My lessons might have been just a little bit better this week if I had had all of that in front of me to reflect on as I planned. I think that that is another reason why I have hit a brick wall.
And that has made me angry. What with the classroom circumstances, the behaviour management, the unstructured feedback, the lack of forward planning for me to tap into, I've been lucky to survive at all let alone prosper. I know that it's all experience that I can draw on but I'm going to allow myself the moment of anger too.
I've got a new challenge next week. I'm going to be working in Key Stage 1 in the morning and teaching in Key Stage 2 in the afternoon. I'll take that as a new beginning and new hope. But it does feel just like I am going to be starting all over again which make me tired just thinking about it.