No rest for the wicked!

Well after weddings and cavorting with Take That this week is a big downer! HMI are back... We thought it would be easy as they said they were happy with teaching and learning and would be spending more time grilling SMT and other managers to make sure that everything was going well. Only year 9 were in today which meant that I only had to plan an enormous HMI lesson plan for one period (phew) and the kids were brilliant. Year 9 are my most challenging bunch of youngsters. It doesn't really matter what I plan because they know that they have the power to destroy my heard work within about 30 seconds. LOL . Today I was very proud of them as they were perfect. The lesson went extremely well and had an inspector been in the room I am certain we would have achieved an outstanding for it. As it was no-one came to see me.

Thinking I had all afternoon to plan and get ready for tomorrow I relaxed period 2 and went off the invigilate an exam period 3. When I returned I was told than an inspector had come up looking for exercise books to scrutinise and had told the department that he had a master key and was planning to look around. OH MY GOD I really don't think that that is fair at all. I mean JESUS talk about harsh. One of my colleagues managed to get him into her room looking at her books whilst the rest of us locked away anything we didn't want him to see in cupboards that HE DOES NOT HAVE THE KEY for. That'll teach him.
Please don’t' think that we don't mark books. We do, every two weeks in fact. It just so happened that my Year 7 books are due for that 2 weekly mark - now most teachers would think "two weeks! big deal! that's up to date" but under this pressure you do crazy things.

Tomorrow they're going to follow SMT on a learning walk around the school and ask pupils randomly what level they are, what their target level is and what they need to do to get there. Thank god that I chose to do a review and target setting lesson yesterday with Year 7 +8. They'll rattle off the date in no time. They're also going to check the books as the pupils work in them. All the books in my classroom are now marked to the very last word. Marked, of course, to departmental policy.

It's all a bit much really isn't it!

Roll on tomorrow!