Sweatshops, Minibuses and Surf

Met with Colin Borthwick first thing to go over his lesson for the next two days. Colin is away with the Army and the Enhanced Curriculum until the end of the week.

P1 and P2 I carried out the final lesson on Fairtrade with my two Monday S2 classes. They seem to have really enjoyed the work and this is something that we will repeat next year. The final lesson starts by running through what it would be like to work in a sweatshop in the Philippians. We used a case study adapted from the Geog 3 textbook (a great resource for Geography teachers if you haven’t seen it?).

Then we looked at how some campaigners have adapted ‘brand name’ posters and logos to try and get people to boycott companies that use sweatshops. The final task was to develop a poster that could be used to assist in a campaign. The classes came up with some excellent ideas and I was pleased with the creativity of many of the pupils.

After break I broke the news to my Advanced Higher class that the final deadline for the Advanced Higher projects wasn’t until after Easter and not last Friday as I had told them. I then spent some time with each student providing some detailed feedback for the Geographical Issues (this will be the last feedback that they get before the official hand in date) we will spend class time during the rest of the week looking at Geographical Studies.

Looked at Industry Mapwork with my Higher class, making use of the presentation from Fridays conference.

P6 Iain Robertson and I went to retrieve the school minibus from the garage. It has been in for repairs to the dashboard. When we got there we were told it was actually the Musselburgh bus that was ready! So we returned to Dunbar empty handed. By the time we got back Gavin Clark had managed to gather some staff together to transport a group of students to the final of the Scottish Schools Debating Cup (we are in the final against the High School of Dundee). Good luck guys!

I took part in my second surf lesson with Coast to Coast Adventure after school. I managed to stand up this week (for at least 2 seconds!). I am still being outshone by the pupils who have really taken to the activity. Simon May (PT PE) also managed to stand up this week – although he will need to remember that the zip is the back of the wetsuit!

I was chatting to Sam (the owner of Coast to Coast) at the end of the session and he was telling me that a number of other schools are interested in taking up lessons as part of their programme. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have an inter-school surfing championship next year?