It's on the floor!!!

For the first time in ages, I'm actually sitting at a desk as I type! Nothing unusual about that you say? Well I have been living in a bedroom with nothing but a bed, so now having a desk is a bit novel. However, I do fell slightly bad for abandoning the floor storage system that has served me so well for weeks now. Still a week to go till I get my wardrobe and drawers so I can enjoy the simplicity of floor storage for a little long

Had a great Friday night out with some of the other peoples from school at a awesome little pub and I can confirm that alcoholic ginger beer is almost as dangerous as cider (Cheers Michelle for the memories). Just spent today with my folks around Milton Keynes, shopping and exploring the place a little more. Good to see them and just spend some time with them. Including Dad successfully winding up some Brits in the pub watching the 6 nations (some pubs here do really good food).

Not sure how the next little while will go, an interesting development is unfolding at work. A little unexpected and I need to sort out how it will go and if I can do it without stepping on toes as the new guy. Anyway I'll let you know more as I can and as I make my decision. Interesting times... The actual teaching side of things is going well and I feel a lot more settled now in the school. Starting to get the hang of the systems, although my entire timetable got deleted on Thursday so I hope by the time I am back on Monday I actually have classes to officially teach.

Weather has chilled again today after quite a nice week. there is talk of snow again next week, which will also be the last week of school before mid-term.

God bless, hope you are all well and looking after each other.
Much Love
Paul.
  

You all right???

"You all right?" to start with I thought I must look like I'm not alright, till I realised it just what people say around here instead of "how are you?". To me though it has seems to make the assumption that your not... and you clearly need some help. Maybe it is just me?

Settling in well to the school here. The teaching is better now that i'm past revision lessons for stuff i didn't teach them. Got to use the Van de Graaff yesterday, the MAGS one is better, which clearly means i'll have to come back at some point as I can't live with a sub par Van de Graaff. I did tinker with it though and it did a bit better. Lit bunsen buirners etc... it's like magic for the 11 general science class. Sadly i didn't get observed during that lesson, or the great one today with my 11 physics class. Oh well, I live to be watched another day. I have a bunch of ideas from what they do here that could be used at MAGS, i'll send some stuff soon.

Photos: 1. Wellington Arch in London (just like the statue). 2. The NZ war mamorial in Wellington Park. 3. Mum and Dad with Harrods behind them (was covered in scfolding last time i saw it), 4. The Horse....

Highlights this week... I meet a Horse...  Went to London on Saturday, was ment to be for a course, but that never happened, which was ok cause it meant i got to spend more time with my Family (Mum, Dad, Amanda and her 2 children Matthew and Kathryn), was a great day. I have some video from it, but haven't had a chance to do anything with it yet. Sunday was relaxing, church and general shopping in MKcentral. This weeks teaching has been pretty standard, except the ALD where we took the Y11 for the day and made Horror film trailers. Was a fantastic day, except for the ussual technology issues at the end of the day when editing and saving things.
Go to http://www.waltonhigh.org.uk/ there is a story on the front page and
http://www.waltonhigh.org.uk/images/horror/horror-video.htm to see the winning trailer from the day, it is pretty good for a days work.
Have been out several times with some of the staff here, they are a nice bunch.

Most things seem to be going very well.
God bless you my friends.

Half way to term break... settling in...

Well another few weeks have passed in Milton Keynes, they seem to have flown by, but I fell progress has been made to settle in both at school and the city. Only 3 weeks till mid term break so I'm considering where I should travel to. I have been making an effort to get out and meet people.

School wise most exams are over, snow days seem to be behind us for now. So i’ve been able to start teaching new topics, which is helping to settle my classes and the teaching is easier than motivating students in revision (like my first 2 weeks).  Really looking forward to next Tuesday which is a ALD (Alternative learning day), on this day the science department is running a day where all the Y11’s will be split into groups of about 10 and will spend the day making a horror film trailer.  I hope I’ll be able to upload my groups trailer (with their permission) after the day. We have worked out how to make realistic fake blood and wounds. :D

The city...  I’ve posted a couple of video’s on youtube (& facebook) of the city. Learning my way around the area more and more.

I’ve been out with some of the teachers here. There is a social group who go to the nearby pub on Fridays. Nice to get to know people more outside of work. I have also found a local church (MKCC) and more importantly a small group who get together weekly, they are a great bunch of people (with excellent humour) who are more interested in sharing and enjoying the time together than following any set program or plan. There are also a few teachers in that group from other schools. I’m also discovering how multicultural Milton Keynes is, most of the population has moved here from elsewhere, very few people are “native” Milton Keyneians, one of my flat mates was actually born here though, only person I have met so far who is “native”.

Things i’ve learned...

Seize the moment. Sometimes we have the best intensions to do things but never do them. Actions are far more important that intensions. If something seems like a good idea or you know you should do it, then just do it. Do not get stuck saying “When this happens then i’ll do it” for example “When I have a desk in my room then i’ll do some school work” or “Once things settled down at work then I’ll spend more time with the family”. If you are passionate about something then get into it and do it. And certainly there are more important things than that like friends and family. Life is short, grab hold of the now and do what is good, don’t put it off.

Best intensions don’t mean a thing unless you act on them. Live in the moment and enjoy what you are doing everyday as life is short.

For all my teaching peeps!!!

Just thought i'd fill you in on what i've figured out with teaching here & what it is like for me.

This is how it goes...
The school works on a 2 week time table (Much like Mt Albert, way back when I was just a young thing, Tehehe), 6 periods a day, although monday and friday have 5 with the fifth being a tutor class for an hour (Form Group) in which they do stuff like health etc... Wednesday 5&6 is an elective short course, anything really from chess playing (For Scoll-dog) to creating a Doctor Who monster, teachers seem to get randomly assigned to these, unless you put your hand up to take something in particular.

I have 10 different classes on my time table to teach. Really i only teach 8, 2 are support (I go support another teacher in their class). So I have 2 x Y13 Phys doing A2 level, 2 x Y12 Phys doing AS level, 2 x Y11 Phys doing GCSE (one doing triple science (more science like doing phys, chem & bio seperate) and on double (doing a more general science course)), 3 x Y10 Science (2 of these are support ones) and 1 Y8 science (School starts at this level i think?). Seems a lot, but My year 13 classes have 6 and 8 students in them, my Y12 have 11 students each i think (haven't seen them all yet because of snow days). Y11 classes are about 25 so a bit more normal.

The Y12's and 13's are in the 16+ unit which runs along side the school, they do courses there a bit like uni work and come across to the normal school to do classes when it fits the teachers time tables.

This is the kind of cool bit, I see most class 2-3 times a week, this isn't all the science they get, they are with other science teachers for another set of periods, each teacher doing their own topics, usually their speciality subject. Even my Y13 physics class has 2 physics teachers, we teach different topics within physics each. Seems an excellent idea to me for general science at least, can't see the point so much for physics only senior course.

Seems we have 5 technicians to a teaching staff of 10 ish as best as i have been able to count so far. Orders must be done a week in advance, but they will come and set things up etc...

Relief is simple, they have a massive independent learning room with about 200 computers in it, you set a research task or something along those lines and they go and do it, so as a teacher you never have to do relief and their are no relievers in the school, just permanent staff in the room. You can also book out some computers for a class if you want. The science department also has a small room with about 15 computers in it.

All staff computers are portals, ie; your "personal desktop" is stored on the server, you can pull that up onto any machine around the school with all your work, email and student management thingy. You can also pull it up at home, haven't tried that yet as i only just got my new laptop.

That's about all i can think of for now, sorry to all my non-teaching peeps, probably wasn't that interesting...

Shopping, Garden centres and Falconry.

The last few days have been pretty relaxed, although we went shopping at the "Bull ring" in Birmingham on boxing day. The picture doesn't quite show the craziness, in the shops it was packed and a little difficult to move. Most of the shops were a bit of a mess too, as people found it difficult returning items to where they found them. All a bit crazy. Didn't end up buying anything, just found things i want to get. Discovered later that more than 200,000 people had been through the mall that day.

Today (27th) we went in search of the original Hobbit's village. Houses in the rock face that inspired the idea for the Hobbit's shire. On the way we found a Garden Centre (Doesn't sound exciting i know) that will forever ruin other garden centres for me. "This way to Garden plants, Fencing, paving and Falconry". I mean clearly, what else do you put with paving and shrubs, but your falconry centre.

Anyway turned out to be an excellent little bird of prey sanctuary. Best of

all because they specialise in helping to return injured birds to the wild. Here are a few pictures for you.

After the invertible distraction of birds of prey we went hunting for the hobbits. We found the place in Kinver's edge. The photo is of Kinver village (sweetness of a little village).

Unfortunately we couldn't get up to the houses because of the ice (middle photo is as close as we got). But i took some pictures of the frozenness anyway.

Loved the tree in the middle of the clearing with a ring of snow/ice around it. I did also discover the perils of ice and gravity though, fortunately my eyebrow broke my fall. I was holding my camera at the time so the picture below is as i fell... Actually looks quite cool...

Christmas

While it didn't actually snow on Christmas day there was plenty of snow left over from the earlier snowfalls. So we got a white Christmas. Even better we had blue sky and sunshine, although the temperature still only got to around 3 degrees. It was great to be with family for Christmas and to see the niece and nephew. I found it a little odd being inside all day compared to a New Zealand Christmas. Still with the blue sky, sunshine and the warmth of central heating it almost felt like home. Attached some photo's of the day.

Also realised today how soon i start teaching (4th Jan). So i have a little over a week to sort

myself out for it. It looks like I wont have a place to stay in Milton Keynes before I start, I can't even start looking till Tuesday as estate agents wont open till then. Hoping i find something quickly, found a few shared rent places, the one apartment i had my eye on seems to have gone in the last week before i got here.