Under pressure

I love David Bowie, and I love Queen, put together they are amazing.

We have practice exams coming up. And the kindest way I can describe my classes right now is casual. They just don’t seem to care. Meanwhile, I am tearing my hair out trying to come out with ways to motivate them (yelling, begging, bribing, coloured paper, group work, individual work) and really concerned.

I think my main concern is that they are all still focussing on the internals they are doing… why worry about practice exams when the are worth ‘nothing’ and the internal due the week before is worth 5. I feel trapped in a cycle of my students lurching from internal to internal with no real continuity in any subject. And I have no real answer to this.

And I wonder if at a different level it is not a bad thing to learn to prioritise. Take my job, there are times when I just have to do reports. Or write a unit plan (yucky…. I wish I could just do a big mind map and leave it there), or write/mark internals or tests. I always try to keep planning number one, especially for my juniors classes, but other jobs come and go, or get left, depending on their importance. I wonder if my HOD is cursing my lack of work towards something he considers dreadfully important while I work frantically on something else.

So I will do my best to provide enough resources and opportunities to submit work, and try and be positive about the lack of marking.

I do wish they would do some more work for the exams though. Sigh