Edinburgh and the volcano

Good morning from Oxford!

(As it seems I am spending most of my weekends here now and I love the town very much (mostly for the people who live in it but nevertheless), I am not allowed to comment too much on the boat race and the University Challenge victory three weeks ago. Hihi...)

Travelling in my holidays was very eventful. Going back to Germany turned out to be much more relaxing than I thought and even with lots of Cam*Era work and my dissertation (An analysis of an email exchange with a native speaker class) to write, I still had a few days to spend time with my family and friends. It's funny how much you can get done in a place where it is 1) quiet and 2) clean and 3) you don't wish you were somewhere else all of the time. I think I might go back in August for a few weeks to get the ISFA going properly. It's going to be launched at Cam*Era but will require at least a month of getting in touch with people and hopefully finding some sponsors!

I only came back to Cambridge for one day, just to head off to the Democratic Schooling seminar at the University of Edinburgh early the next morning. Edinburgh and the weather were beautiful and thanks to my amazing friend Holly, with whom I had also been to the AERO conference last year, it was a fantastic three days. The seminar itself on Friday morning was really interesting, but long not radical enough for me. I had the feeling that neither of the speakers were actually advocating democracy in schools but that it was rather about education in a democratic society without the input of people under 18- what a crazy but common idea. Although the topic of 'student voice' came up once or twice, it almost seemed to scare them to think about giving students real power. Commenting on it, I turned out to be the most 'radical' person in the room and people came up to me later, congratulating me on my revolutionary ideas. Very entertaining :-)

Unfortunately we were in Scotland just as the volcano erupted, so Holly and I were both forced to travel back to England by coach- but at least in comparison to a lot of my friends I did not need to get a range of public transport and a few days to get back home! I got to Southampton just in time to film the Student Robotics Competition my friends put on every year and was actually quite excited to get back into the editing room this week. Editing is ultimate organisation and I really like that you can immediately see progress as soon as you spend a little bit of time with your film. Although some of my friends were stuck abroad, it was still lovely to see a lot of the competition people from last year again and the event itself went really well.

Back in Cambridge, it turned out that seven teachers from our school were not able to get back and I had to cover a couple of lessons as well as a parents evening. While the former was quite annoying (and I was still lucky to cover my favourite German classes), the parents evening was great. Of course I had been to a couple before, but actually being the only one sitting behind the table turned out to be hugely satisfying. In the UK parents come to the evening together with their kids and its really nice to be able to praise children who deserve it in front of people who are pleased by it as well. The annoying kids normally don't come, so I approach it more or less as two hours of making people happy. Of course I also have to criticise sometimes, but it's long not as bad as you would think. And it shows- the students are always nicer the next days :-)

Now it's only 24 more teaching days until the end of my PGCE and 54 days until Cam*Era!

Let the sunshine in

Hello to a very long overdue blogpost!

Once more I am on the train to London, not quite feeling productive enough to get on with some Cam*Era work and definitely not depressed enough to get on with some lesson planning, so here we go: An update on the travelling and education that is happening in my life at the moment. :-)

But first for some film! As you might remember from January, the National Student Film Association now has a new committee and my journey this morning will lead me to the National Theatre and our first (and possibly only) committee meeting for this year. New committee members are coming from as far as Scotland to discuss what we can do for film students in the UK and I really hope to make their journey worth as much as possible. Of course the past has shown that even with lots of talking, very little can get done, but I keep my fingers crossed! Screentest was, after all, a great success and there is definitely great potential to make the NSFA something outstanding. I have the feeling that one of the most discussed points today is going to be money and the question where we are going to get it from, what it will pay for if we get it and if the NSFA should ever be considered as an organization which pays its committee. Not that I am desperate to get money for what I love doing anyway, but again experience has shown that money definitely increases people’s commitment. Discuss.

Cam*Era preparation are also going fairly well. Although we have so far only received a disappointing number of films, the weekend itself is shaping up to be amazing with great speakers, Corpus Christi and the Picture House cinema as venues and alumni returning to the uni as judges for our awards. Lots of website changes are just under way and we are launching a major advertising campaign this week to get more people to submit. So, if you are reading this and have not yet joined our facebook group, waste another minute of your precious sunny Saturday by going on facebook and inviting all your friends. Please. Done? Thank you!

But on to something less fun but maybe just as exciting. Elections. What, I hear you shout? Exciting? Rather annoying. Yes and no. This is the first year that I am actually aware of the all the general election circus that is going on in the UK and of course my major points of concern are Education: Primary, Secondary, FE and HE. The former is the only one I am not involved in directly at the moment but as the Sats boycotts are on the brick of being on the way (or not?!), it still feeds into the everyday discussion in the staff room and beyond (be thankful if I have not tried to engage you into an outraged dialogue yet!). For anybody who does not live in the UK: SATs are generalized standard tests and all UK children have to take in Year 6, the end of their primary school time. If you have read my blog in the last year you will know that I dont like tests but that, of course, the matter is not as simple as that. The interesting bit at the moment is that of course every party has different policies on it (The Tories want to move it to Year 7, The LibDems want to get rid of it and Labour is not sure).

The thing that really gets me annoyed is that it is actually only the Democrats who are proposing a free school, or rather as it is called in the UK a 'Academy system': more independence for school leaders, teachers and communities and financial support from the government. Although the TES has recently taken to condemning it (and who could blame them, being the Labour paper that they are), which got me quite upset last week, I am still very much in favour of communities being able to administer their own schools and not having to 'teach to the test'. Have a look at the online discussion and I will give you my 2 cent when I have carefully consider whether I would actually dare to think about voting for the conservatives. Shudder.

Kings Cross! More news on the meeting for Democratic schooling in Edinburgh and teaching in Volcano Ash times in a bit :-)