New look

New design, what do you think? Think I prefer black. If I change the design I might write some more on my blog.

Teaching

I've been teaching now for a few years and this time of year is really stressful. I been trying to think why it's been so hard and I have come to the following conclusions.

1. For some teachers all their years work is wrapped up in the performance of young people at this time of year. In my case, I have very little control over what they do or how they perform I just know that next years course will be coloured by how they do.
2. Everyone is in the same position. All teachers are trying their best to get learners past qualifications.
3. Some learners do not share our urgency.
4. We have so many mundane and (what seem) worthless paper work and tasks to do.
5. Deadlines are final and cannot be crossed
6. I have come across a few people who think they know what it is to work with 16 - 18 year old young people at level 1 (foundation level, G - D GCSE) and they obviously don't.
7. Oh and we are trying to buy a new house, that does help

Bob Parr

My car went into repair yesterday and so I have a courtesy car for a week or so. I went to Enterprise Car Hire with some trepidation because I'm not a small bloke and struggle in small cars generally. I came out with a Ford Ka.

It's been a while

My blog has been on my mind for a while. I haven't contributed for a year now. There was a few reasons, facebook among them. I did tend to think about things in terms of how I would write this up as a blog entry. So I have given it a bit of a rest. But its time to post some more words and pictures. See how it goes.

Day off

I handed in my last assignment for my teaching qualification yesterday and today Matthew and I had a day out. We first went out to Ormskirk to get his hair cut. Here are some pictures from my new phone.


Matthew playing in the park


This is the view to Orsmkirk church which has a spire and a tower (weird)


It's the cup final tomorrow, but I saw Joe Royle go into a local craft shop. (He is now the manager at Oldham FC) Sadly no picture.

Technology

I think its really cool that pensioners are embracing the age of technology. Heather reviews articles that her dad writes for the church news letter. And so:

He wrote the original article in Microsoft Word on his PC at home.
He printed it out
He was unable to save the document on his PC
So he scanned the document back into the computer and saved it onto his USB drive
He gave the USB drive to Heather
Heather copied the file onto her USB drive and took it home
When Heather got the file home it was saved as a Jpeg picture
And drove to Southport to retype the document out from the picture supplied

Can anyone do better?

Dullest blog

Heather found this blog. Well worth a read.

http://www.dullestblog.com/

Bargains

It seems that Heather and I have a new pass time. We trawl the charity shops in Ormskirk for bargains. We have many charity shops to go to, at least 10. I look at the books whilst Heather does coats and dresses, I bought enough books to replenish their stocks. Heather has saved a fortune on nearly new clothes.

Of course Matthew follows us round complaining all the way.