(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!
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