My first lesson, the Nuffield Review and lots of love :-)

I have been quite lazy with my blogging in the last weeks and really need to make myself sit down and write an update on what is going on! When I started this, I promised myself I would not become like the other bloggers who write posts every few weeks or months- there is too much interesting stuff going on in my life to not share it :-P Unfortunately, talking about the excitement, that of course also means that a lot of my time is spend actually doing stuff rather than reporting on it and when I get home (late on most days) I am happy just to have a hot chocolate in bed rather than get my evaluation hat on and make an effort :-)

So, by now I am into PGCE week 5- unbelievable! There is just another week and a half until half term and soon it's going to be Christmas (or so the shops want us to believe :-). Tomorrow, I am finally teaching my first proper session at my school and it is quite exciting, if also tedious, to plan 60 minutes in detail. I am not really used to this kind of lesson planning and really need to discipline myself to go beyond a few notes on a piece of paper! Tomorrow will also be extra strange, because I have not taught at all at the school yet and will be thrown into the deep end; my mentor is at a conference and basically left me with her Year 10 German class. I am really looking forward to the challenge, and explicitly asked for it, and hope I can live up to the expectations!

Otherwise, the PGCE is going well. We had to hand in our first assignment on Friday which consisted of a 1000 word essay on the use of target language in the classroom. Our second one, 2000 words on inductive grammar teaching , is due in the week after half term and today we already had a preparation lecture for the third one which is the same all across the different PGCE disciplines. I find the work load very doable, but then should probably make more of an effort to file things correctly and plan a little bit better.

The most interesting thing this week was the reading of the Nuffield Review which recommends a more holistic education for the 14 to 19 year olds all across the British comprehensive schools. You can find the paper here. It is always great to see how alternative education ideas are implemented into the National Curriculum or Scheme of Work, however, I am very aware that it is not just the paper work that needs to change but the way learning is accessed. As long as schools work towards exams, the best ideas will not be implemented and democratic education is impossible!

In two weeks time I am off to Oslo and will hopefully also have the chance to drop in at the democratic school. I have never seen one and it would be great to have a look around and experience democratic education in action. The only problem is really going to be the language barrier as I don't know any Norwegian. Let's hope that Oslo lives up to its great language reputation! :-)

On a finishing note, my friend Steve and I were visited this weekend by our Student Robotics friends from Southampton and we went punting on the Cam, to the cinema and a nice Italian restaurant in Cambridge, called 'Clowns'. Overall, I also cooked for 12 different people over the course of the weekend and had a fantastic time. The two and a half days really showed me again how happy it make me to have friends around and I am now tempted more than ever to chose my place of work for next year in a place where my friends are living. All you need is love :-D