Into the Festive Season
18 December

So, I have survived my first term as a PGCE student.

What have I learnt?

I certainly have an increased respect for the guts, enthusiasm, determination, energy and organisational skill of teachers in general. However difficult anyone out there thinks it is, think again. But it is also exhilaratingly fabulous.

Well, it is a world that is very different from that of adult education - my time on Connect2IT really hasn't prepared me in any way shape or form for the exigencies of the classroom. I maybe have a sense of how to prepare my evidential portfolio for college from my work with NVQs but that is about as much lead as I have in this arena.

There are so many things I am simply having to learn from scratch. Like how to make my instructions as clear, simple and proof from misinterpretation as possible. Like how to work within the class's basic knowledge and world experience (which feels to me to be incredibly low) and yet not to underestimate their capacity for understanding. Like how to see behind the behaviour into to person.

And there are many things that I am having to completely unlearn. Like my handwriting. The way that I form my letters is a combination of how I was taught as a young person (viz my Ps and Zs), the French elements that I have adopted (like my 7s and my Zs) and the simply slovenly practices I have lapsed into (like my Ds). Adults can decipher handwriting. 7 year olds cannot.

And I'm having to unlearn my sense of humour.

And how when I'm told to model, it means that I have to do everything for the children. Unless, it doesn't.

Oh, I'm expected to do all these things like use ICT, have a plenary, make my learning intentions clear, etc, etc, etc, when most of the teachers I see do not do these things.

So, have I learnt stuff? Well, Ross and I did a Gifted and Talented Workshop in Knowsley on artwork inspired by Japanese art and I have to say that my introduction was more focussed and my plenary was much better than it was a few months ago. I think that my ability to engage with the children has improved and I ask questions which get them to think.

But. And this is the big but. These children all want to learn. So, it's manifestly easier. And I simply don't know if I am being too hard on myself by saying that I can work better with biddable children at this stage in my career.

I helped out at the Christmas play in my school and I helped out on the Christmas Fair. I ended up having taught some fifteen lessons by then end of the four weeks and some of them were even passable. I am moving to Key Stage One in the New Year. My Hope tutor thought that my class was much too great a challenge for a lone novice student to cope with and so I shall be with the 6 year olds - which is where I really want to be.

I had my profiling session at College. I got the results of my first assignment which were reasonable to good. So far, I am surviving but not thriving. I just feel it could be so much better and yet I am such a novice as well.

We had a recruitment fayre at the beginning of the month and the sad fact was that there were very few employers there and that most of the stalls were agencies. I don't know how this compared with previous years but, to me, it told a significant story as to how the world is changing quietly in the wings. I've let the agencies know that I am prepared to be flexible and that I have experience in adult education. I may well yet end up back where I was but with a better understanding of how people get there.

I also took some time out to go to the Phil for the final concert in the Mahler cycle - the ninth symphony. Last year's performance of Mahler 3 was my concert of the year. Mahler 7 back in May of this year was good although I gave the event three and a half stars for the effort put in. This I felt was good. I suppose I now have such high expectations of any concert that Vasily Petrenko conducts that anything short of sensational feels like a let down. In this case, it is a work that has been with me for many years and which I have heard conducted by the likes of Haitink, Guilini and Janowski. So, the competition was stiff and good is as high as I want to place the experience despite the audience rising to its feet around me.

Ross and I have also been to a couple of transmissions at FACT. We took in just the first act of Handel's Rodelinda starring Renée Fleming from the New York Met. We left not because it wasn't any good but because we were both tired and suffering with colds. In fact, it was a tribute to the piece that we made the effort to go there at all. It looked good but I would have to say that, whatever the Met's representatives may care to think, Handel sung in that barn of a place just does not sound right.

Then we went to Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty relayed live from the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden. The choreography was by Marius Petipa and the production was mounted Monica Mason using designs by Oliver Messel from Ninette de Valois' signature post-War production. I have great memories of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker both performed by English National Ballet. I can't say that I warm to Sleeping Beauty as there seems to me to be just too much pantomime in among some rather good dance. Still Lauren Cuthbertson was rather good as Princess Aurora apart from a bit of a wobble in the Rose Adagio and Sergei Polunin was also good as Prince Florimund. They were very good and I could watch the two of them again but just not in this work.

What else to say?

Well, I have joined the ranks of the 21st Century by getting my first mobile phone - mainly, I think, at the moment for texts but we shall see.

I'm trying to get ahead with my college work over the Christmas break and failing.

Ross and I have now nearly finished decorating the kitchen having begun the project in the autumn.

Nutkin is now roaming free but with a slight limp.

I'm trying to work out whether or not I am depressed. Might be, might not.

We've had some cold weather and some rain (and half an hour of slushy snow) at last. However, our latest fuel bill says that we are saving money hand over fist compared to this time last year. We've only just started having the central heating on during the day.

And I do think that, if the weather is cold enough to wear longjohns, then it is cold enough for youngmen to have the waistband of their jeans up around their waist rather than tucked under their buttocks.

It's coming round to the end of a hectic year one way and another.