there's a lot of space junk out there

[feuille]

There's this greasy spoon/cafe about ten minutes away from where miss_haitch and I live. We went there for brunch, and I totally got three sausages instead of two with my MONSTER chips (fries). Zomg tasty start to a weekend.

I think I just broke my record for lesson planning speed - 3 different 1-hour lessons planned in about an hour and a half. It doesn't sound quick, but it's an improvement for me!

I've been thinking a lot recently about teaching - it's hard to avoid. I've actually reached the stage that, despite freaking out because my photocopying isn't done and there's five minutes to go before the end of breaktime, despite my not knowing what I'm doing half the time, I'm:

a) actually enjoying myself;
b) not sucking at the job;
b) doing pretty damn well at the teaching side of things.

The people at school and university whose opinions count are always at me with the things I do well. So it's pretty annoying when I can't even admit that to myself. So:



I have a hella rapport with my students. I've currently got three classes I've been taking for a while. My very bright year 7 group (ages 11-12) cheered when I said I'd be teaching them until June. My challenged year 9 (ages 13-14) group, all 15 of them, have no issues with me. A third of the class was described by the original class teacher as my fanclub and moaned non-stop when I was off sick last week. My challeneged year 10 group are incredibly resistant to change and have freaked out at supply teachers; though I've had behaviour problems from them not once did they ever resist when I took over. They've completely accepted me in two weeks of teaching.

I have hilarious and engaging resources, one thing that was described as 'better than the fieldwork' (Disclaimer to fieldwork enthusiasts: I love fieldwork, but quadrats in March don't work that well in the school field and that year 10 group would've probably ran for the hills as soon as they got outside). I make up colourful, strange species for ecology, I have a Polar Bear of Science I throw at students when I want them to answer questions, I have brown and white cuddly stoat-toys to demonstrate natural selection and predation. I tie balloons together around the classroom to demonstrate gravitational forces. I bring in woolly pillows, silly putty, wooden carvings, flowerpots to spice up an otherwise deathly dull lesson on making new materials in industry.

My students trust me and they feel safe in my lessons. I stay calm even when a student outright refuses to do what I've asked, and I win when they try to start something with me. I've taught subjects I never thought I could feel comfortable enough to do so (most of physics), I've taught GCSE - national qualifications; Christ, these children's future careers are in my hands, and I haven't screwed up in any way I haven't salvaged.



Which is why I've been freaking out and feeling bad that I don't think I want to go into teaching straightaway in September. There are plenty of other things I could do with myself in the meantime, and teaching will still be there even if I put it off for a few months. I'm just not ready right now.

To relax, I have been writing and satisfying a pretty peculiar urge: I really like to answer the question "Who would play X in a movie/TV show?" by casting all of the characters in my current writing... and yeah, all of my gaming characters too.

Since I started gaming in 2006 (I'm such a young gamer) I've had thirty-odd characters, almost exclusively D&D and new WoD. One day I was very bored and very tired of work, so I went and cast all of them.









That's totally what I do in my free time. I love all of them, though, even the made-on-the-fly-for-oneshots characters that I spent way more time on than necessary. Backstories galore!

And as a random aside: