Thursday’s are generally one of my favourite days of the week – particularly now that my PPA (Planning, Preparation and Assessment) time has been moved to that afternoon.
However, this afternoon was spent at a Maths meeting discussing children‘s work – clearly children I’ve never met. It was a reasonably useful time. I don’t quite understand that need for teachers to be there who aren’t either maths subject leader though, or even people who don’t actually teach a class at the moment.
My local area is still going through a transitional phase of introducing years 5 & 6 children (ages 9-11) into their schools after previously being part of a three tier system involving middle schools. I joined my current post from a Primary school and the majority of my teaching career has been spent within those year groups. Part of my appeal, apparently, was my experience working in upper key stage 2. However, you’d never have known it from the comments that I endured this afternoon.
Clearly, being just a general normal teacher, and not part of senior management or a school leader, it means that whatever I say can be simply ignored. My colleagues today were rude and ignorant and frankly made me embarrassed to be associated with the profession. A large chunk of the session was spent looking at the Maths APP sheets – an assessment tool widely used a couple of years ago, but in less favour now – and they seemed amazed that I could navigate my way around it without thinking. I had already explained that I’d made a version of the sheets – in fact, they were discussed at the relevant meeting last year as being a good thing.
I know that guiding children through SATs for the first time is a bewildering experience for many, but they aren’t going away any time soon.
Anyway, alongside this was a wonderful evening at band. Some brilliant playing – as an ensemble, we are beginning to sound very good. Ravel‘s Pavane in particular was excellent.
A good end to an annoying day.
