Today was spent considering a meeting that I am running at school later in the week. I am updating the policy for mathematics and refreshing expectations of the teaching of the subject. To me, it’s a big thing to be doing. I am not great at speaking in front of colleagues no matter that I have worked with them for over a year now. So, having a clear structure and thinking carefully about what I want to say is key really.
I have preparing documents and advice for this meeting all through the Christmas holidays – whoever thinks teachers don’t work through the holidays is a fool – and that side of it is almost ready.
Nothing can prepare me though for the conversational side of this meeting. I can present my ideas as much as I like, but I also need to convince them that these ideas are the right thing for our school too.
Anyway, that was the majority of my day.
In other news, we collected a geocache where we were the first to find – the 16th such occasion we have done this. In doing so we totally neglected to remember that we had a shopping delivery due and nearly encountered the wrath of the man with the shopping. However, a quick phone call to us and we were back to experience his mild annoyance.
After that I needed to mark some writing. That always takes a while, but more so when the TV‘s on and a film is there in the background that you keep getting drawn into.
This brings me to the title of this post. As a wind down before bed – apart from writing this – we watched a Fraggle Rock from back in the day. In this episode, Mokey wanted to convince the Fraggles to stop eating Doozer constructions.
Convincing John can convince anyone of anything. He bears more than a passing resemblance to the flashier kind of evangelical priest. His technique for persuasion involves a catchy song (assisted by his backing singers, the Fragglettes) outlining a spuriously awful fate that will befall his listeners if they fail to heed his advice. According to the Fragglettes, the more verses his song has, the more convincing it will be. [Source]
She later realized this was a mistake, and called on him again to persuade them to resume eating Doozer sticks.
