Hello all. I should just explain that the title is a play on 'The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe', as our Year 4s have had an Opera company in all week, producing an operatic Narnia. And it was fantastic. Congratulations and Welld Done to classes 4IS and 4HS of Chesswood Middle School - you were all awesome!
Welcome to another award loosing post from CATCOUK.
So this week started off with some exceptional stresses. The school that I work in, and indeed the school that I really love to work in (yes that's right, I really enjoy my job) had it's Ofsted inspection. Now, I'm only a Teaching Asst. (and probably not a very good one at that either), so there was nothing I really had to do, other than turn up, and do my job well. But I also felt the need to support the teachers (and my friends) to best of my abilities.
Despite the fact that I had no direct stresses on me for the inspection, it's suprising just how easily I pick up on my friends stress. Two friends, Ian and Jez, are senior management members, and they had piles and piles of paperwork to do. I just felt so stressed for the ammount of workload those two had to put in.
Having said that, I did take it upon myself to make sure that some of the school's classroom displays were good. Ian wanted a 'Helping Hand' board, and I started helping with that. Once the design work was done on that, Ian's TA Nicky finished the job off. Whilst she was doing that, I was in year 7, putting up two displays. A quick reminder to myself, and anyone else that is ever going to have to make a display - don't use clouds! They take friggin' forever to cut up!
On the day of the inspection itself, I had to miss one lesson. Due to other TAs moving around, if I had attended my lesson as usual, there would have been too many TAs in the class. As lesson observations were going on, I decided the best place for me to hide out was the staffroom. I very much doubted the inspector would look in there (and she didn't).
But, throughout the whole day, I wasn't observed once, and niether were any of the classes where I had put up a display. So I didn't really contribute at all to the result. And how did we do? Unfortunatly I can't say until the official report is published. All I can say is this. The grin on Dennis' face (our deputy head teacher) went from ear to ear...
After Ofsted, I was knackered. I think Siobhan text me, and I was due to go to Sturdy's band. I think I just fell into bed. I then got back out of bed, and carried on doing what I've been doing all week. With my recent promotion to the NTC's Adventure Activities Director, I have been trawling through the Corps' safety paperwork, and trying to get rid of some, simplify others, and just give a general look of uniformity.
I'm in two minds as to my success. On the one hand, I know that on a day to day operational level, I have reduced the ammount of paperwork that we have to do. On the other hand, I have created loads of forms, but these are just to standardise existing ones. And to be fair, there are some new ones for best practice and legislative reasons. Will every other volunteer adult in the Corps hate me after the National Council (like the NTCs government) aprove the changes? Well most people dislike me anyway, so what's the difference... lol
Once again, the local church youth group was running a charity car wash. I've no idea what they were fundraising for, but the cheap child labour costs, and the chance of getting Ernie cleaned were all I needed to hear. And they did a pretty good job too. Unfortunatly, Ernie let me down a little. It took two attempts to start after being washed. And when he was finally running, a huge cloud of oily smoke came out the back, for all onlookers (mainly from the church) to breath in. Who said anything about emmisions testing...?
Talking of classic cars, I could not write a post this week, and not spend a paragraph raving about the 'Ashes to Ashes', the spin off series of the amazing 'Life On Mars'. Gene Hunt is back, and back with a vengance. A flame red Audi Quattro ('Let's fire up the Quattro!'), the 1980s, a very attractive lady, and a speed boat. I have no words to describe what a great program it was. It comes highly recommended from me. And if you want a quote, try this - 'Unecessarily cool!' If you were such a muppet that you didn't know it was back on, or you just didn't see it, don't worry. It's on BBC iPlayer.
Lastly, I spent some time this weekend actually doing that other NTC job that I have. That's right, I actually did some paperwork for good old TS Intrepid NTC. Although I still haven't publicised the charity auction next week enough. If you would like to come and support us on Saturday night, for an evening on fun, come along next Saturday (16th February) to our HQ. Entrance is free, just donate something for us to sell. It's a brilliant evening, especially if we can get my mate Kevin along. He'll normally buy all the rubbish no-one else wants.
If you thought this was a short post, why not leave a comment to read and make it longer.
If you thought this post was just right, why not leave a comment telling me so.
Quote of the Week: 'If you place your bets correctly [in roulette], you nearly always win!' said my less than intelligent sibling, Ian, after a fake gambling night, as if he had just found the key to winning bets. Well actually, if you place your bets right, you should win all the time. But then isn't that the point of gambling? Thicko.
Which brings me to my joke of the week: 'I lost my girlfriend through gambling. Do you know how I can win her back?' (Somewhen on the Chris Moyles show this week)
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