Christmas Is Over!

And if I needed anything to remind me of that, it's been this week. Apart from the horrendous weather it's back to uni and all stations go.

Its been an exciting week. Everyone has tales of their experience which is really helping us start reflecting on the things we're doing now. This week has all been about the curriculum and Curriculum for Excellence. Previously this has been brought up at every opportunity but now its really starting to MEAN something!

It's funny for me looking at the panic or cynicism on some peoples faces because, as a Chemistry student pointed out on Monday, most of time we're doing these things anyway - the four capacities, but now they're being labelled. I think that particularly applies to drama in terms of the amount of leeway we have. ACfE isn't any more vague than the descriptors for any level of Drama at the moment and as we don't have such things as textbooks or set resources then a lot of the time teachers are devising their own work which incorporates a lot of the thinking behind ACfE anyway. For instance, in the Unit I made up for placement - which needs a hell of a lot of work(!) - there is literacy (newspaper reports or writing monologues for homework), numeracy (costing sheets for projects), participation and citizenship (working on public meetings and democratically choosing a way to work on things) and other stuff. So much of this has been informed by what I've learned at Jordanhill but so much is also the stuff I've been doing for years in the community anyway.

Plus I started my Area of Professional Development in Pupil Support and Pastoral Care. It looks excellent and I get to do a research project for it too. Although I can't apply to give the kids Valium twice a day to improve behaviour, apparently!

So we're definitely back in at the depp end but my first assignment is in, my ICT task is done and I'm raring to go. Yippee!