All about Ofsted
posted by bin1 on Fri 8th Feb, 08 at 08:31:37
Ofsted. Load of pants. Honestly.
As you may have already read, I'm not a qualified teacher. I'm someone who gets by on a wing and a prayer based on my other qualifications.
We had Ofsted visit this week. New format means you get about 3 weeks notice. The panic is amazing. Paper, photocopying, morons asking you to put posters up, and stress.
Me?
Nothing.
Same as always but with an "official lesson plan". Of course, being slightly sarcastic, this amounted to 4 pages at my best.
There has been much to amuse me over the past few weeks. The posters with typos were good. I forgot to mention that the poster was over A1 in size. Inspring excellence.
Posters in general have been highlighted as fundamental to our college's success. Apparently, if a student sees a poster with some American, white teethed low-20-something, they'll be inspired. Our college's approach? Put as many posters as you can up! I've nothing against the majority of Americans... all the real one's I've met have been excellent... but it doesn't take a genius to realise how detached the reference is for a market town chav. Hardly 'inspring', more often something for them to ridicule to reinforce their own conceptions of rectitude.
Another element has been the lessons themselves. I know one lecturer that repeated a previous lecture before Ofsted arrived to rehearse it with the students.... That's right; she gave the same lecture again (a third time) when she was observed! Its all about ticking boxes, apparently.
Finally, management. Amusingly, for the past 2 weeks (but not the entire 3 weeks of warning) they've been in work before me and tend to be there when I leave. I'm a bit of a night owl - so see that as 9pm. What have they been doing? Lay man's speak: cooking the books. Figures have to be created. Easy. But then they have to tie into the day to day statistics. We don't have anything that robust... so the day to day statistics have to be created...
I know another college that was Ofsted'd the other month... they're preparing for their next one, which could be up to 4 years away. Our college (my fingers feel dirty...) rather, "the college I work at" will ignore the panic they've just been subject to and simply wait until the next 3 weeks warning.... to start the panic all over again.
I'm not saying I'm great... honestly... but if it were me, I'd start thinking about putting accurate systems in place now... so the panic can be avoided, enabling the college to achieve "excellence" rather than satisfactory!
For anyone reading between the lines... yes. I am available for alternative employment. Inspring
Regards.
I know someone who's got content for a blog
posted by bin1 on Wed 16th Jan, 08 at 23:01:46
Bread!
Anything change in the last few hours? Work-wise perhaps.
Are you free to wander the world making money. No more "Yes, sir" and "No sir".
How's it feel?
For christmas...
posted by bin1 on Mon 24th Dec, 07 at 11:17:15
If you're bored around christmas, why not check out:
Frets on Fire (free opensource game)
Downloaded available for all flavours at:
http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net/
Other than the possibility of downloading hundreds of rock greats(!) from the forum you do get to hold your keyboard upside down.... letting years of crumbs to fall out.
Forfeit blog entry
posted by bin1 on Wed 19th Dec, 07 at 18:34:34
A long, long time ago Bunnery worked at a small library in a barely bigger market town.
The town's politicians, and well-do-gooders, were under the impression that it was the perfect representation of a traditional market town. Everyone else thought it was a mecca for charity shops and would-be pound shops. The small town did have a cobbled market square; with cement patching large holes and parking lines painted hap-hazardly around its edge. The town even had a large phallic monolith to commemorate fallen war heroes, but perhaps the monolith became the source for the town's depressed image. A popular pastime for local residents under 15 year is to congregate there, drink cheap cider or alcopops while practicing their swearing and spitting; the well practiced can do both at the same time. The town's older population can be split into a small finite number of groups. The majority try and avoid the spitting youth, the next majority are graduates from the spitting practice and continue to evolve their studies to include unnecessary, drink fuelled violence and a mindless worship of all debase practices; including [deleted for the sake of the easily offended].
Worse still for Bunnery, the library she worked in was part of a shabby college with dreams of grandure far beyond its size, dynamism and management. It also provided most of the town's spitting youth.
Bunnery is a positive, optimistic person. She's always ready to smile, joke and see the positives in people. The more observant ones could tell that this wasn't how she really felt. The library was too small, too inadequate to match her talents. Of course she re-indexed the library's entire catalogue, ordered new resources, even installed a sand drawer as a stress remover. If it wasn't for Bread, I doubt she'd have stayed as long as she did.
At the time, Bread was a full-time IT Technician, later to become a part-time Network Manager come entrepreneur. But more about him later... Maybe.
Eventually the Bunnery could bare it no longer, and saw working anywhere else as more challenging, more rewarding perhaps less emotionally demanding than the college students.
So where do I come into this? I barely saw Bunnery from week to week. I'm one of those quiet people, the kind that people are immediately suspicious about. Not that they should be; I'm one of the nicest people you'll meet - my favourite saying. But I had troubles of my own, I didn't have time to waste and only talked to those I worked with - with the one exception of Bunnery. I too felt the weight of the town's crumbling societal state, it bites deep, sapping your energy and you become stayed, de-motivated and even a little lost. But this is what I needed at the time, a slow life so I could deal with my own life.
Bunnery was the antidote to the depression that anyone could so easily slip into.
I teach IT (lecturer used to be in my job title), boring stuff like databases, which are my favourite. I'm not qualified to teach; I've no intention to become qualified - but I'm working through a loop hole where my qualifications allow me to stand in front of a group of people and tell them what “what” is. What my qualifications lack is knowing how best to teach - but don't worry, I've got people through who can barely mist up a mirror (not my phrase but a colleague's).
The reason I started at the college, newly qualified was that I wanted a broad range of experience fast. 1 year, if that I thought. I even had to convince the college principle that I was serious about the job; obviously I lied and claimed I wanted to make teaching a career. I met Bread on the day of the interview and he showed me around the vast college complex (three small buildings). He made an impression on me; relaxed and slightly sarcastic about what he showed me.
That was 5 years ago. Since then I've half played being a career person, as in I've thought about it. I now have a beautiful daughter of 5, a separation, inherited debt from the estranged wife, a divorce (more money!) and I'm now living in sin with my partner of two and a bit years.
But am I happy? I feel immense pride and love because of my daughter. My partner is 90% of the time fantastic, the other 10% keeps me on my toes - the perfect mix almost, 85-15 might be better. Work is the same as always, like stabbing a blunt fish knife in my ear.
Forfeit blog entry
posted by bin1 on Tue 18th Dec, 07 at 20:30:23
So, Bunnery. What have I been up to since last we met?
Well to begin, I'll have to explain where we were when we last met. Although I can't be sure, I think it was in the Swan beer garden playing mastermind(c) with Bread. This was my introduction to codex (as we know it now).
Since then, I'm guessing a couple of summers ago, I've had little change in my life. To summarise:
....!
Note to self
posted by bin1 on Thu 7th Jun, 07 at 11:43:27
Website project when I'm not so busy.
McDonalds online.
.... complete with popups
"do you want fries with that?"
"do you want to make that a meal?"
Where am I?
posted by bin1 on Thu 7th Jun, 07 at 10:14:37
Sitting in a room, the buzz of computers and the whine of air conditioning. No windows, only visible sky through skylights.
Bored? Yes.
Writing my blog.... hardly.
Are you going to implement image uploads for blog posts, Bread?
Back to codex to break this boredom.
What's in a name?
posted by bin1 on Tue 13th Feb, 07 at 22:27:26
Why goosefat? Well its my favourite variable name... not that I'm a programmer.
Its a joy to type, goosefat or rllrllll - you'll notice most words are left hand biased, oh for a dvorak keyboard.
req is lll. bread is lllll. Am I on to something? No. breadmower is lllllrrlll.
Enough rubbish, I'm just enjoying the blog priviledge at the mo'
Regards.
Last edited: Tue 13th Feb, 07 at 22:35:07
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