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Ollie Bray

Sunday 25 June 2006

Friday 23rd June

Friday was a DGS PT away day. All of the PT’s and the SMT were out of school at a conference in Edinburgh. There was also an art trip, AltonTowers trip, Support for Learning Conference and the East Lothian Enterprise awards ceremony. As a result we were quite short staffed and had 10 supply teachers in the school for the morning.

The main focus of the PT away day was next year’s improvement plan and Schools of Ambition. As I have previously mentioned Suzanne went in my place as she will be acting up as PT Geography next year.

I assumed the role of Duty Head at DGS, this is something that I will need to get used to for next session. I spent the first period checking up on the new members of staff, who had not done supply in DGS before – there was some great new members of staff in a hopefully we will see some of them again. During the rest of the morning I was called out to a number of minor incidents, but nothing serious. Period 4 seemed to be a particular hot spot. As I reflect on the morning I am convinced that one of the reasons for this is because, although classes were covered, some students would have had four supply teachers during the morning and as such they would have had there routine upset. This combined with the fact that work left for supply teachers is rarely as engaging as being taught by the teacher themselves led to some immature behaviour towards the end of the day.

I really enjoyed the experience and reading Paul’s weblog indicates that he thought the PT away day in Edinburgh also seemed to go well. It must be very difficult for schools to justify the expense of such events which can easily equate to hundreds of pounds (10 supply teachers + hotel booking + lunch etc..). However as long as what comes out of the day is productive and positive then such an expense maybe worthwhile. I wonder how many other schools have PT away days? and what the format is? I heard of a school that had one over a Friday afternoon and Saturday morning with an overnight stay. Has anyone heard of any other PT away day models?

Went out to celebrate Colin’s birthday in the evening. It was am important birthday milestone for Colin. I’m not allowed to tell you how old he was, but I can tell you he wasn’t 30 or 50.

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