Tuesday 27 May 2008

Worries and fun

A week away from school and you'll never guess what I'm thinking about at past one in the morning... School! I am in a total panic and no matter how much I try to avoid thinking about it, a school worry keeps popping back into my mind.

To cut a long story short, last week my pupils had their Spanish GCSE exams and I entered a small number of them for the Higher Reading exam because they are my better pupils and have been doing really well in reading this year. I could have entered them for Foundation, but I wanted them to go for the higher grades and this is only possible with the Higher paper. They did Higher Speaking and did well and they have good coursework grades. I put them all in for Foundation Listening because this is traditionally the most tricky linguistic skill and they have struggled with this. I felt confident for them the day of the exam, but when the Higher candidates left the exam hall they were all in a panic and I was too after seeing the paper. It was really difficult and some of the questions were very ambiguous. I went through the answers with a couple and they had scored some marks, but my fear is that it won't be enough for them to secure the grades they deserve. I keep doing the maths in my head, but I'm just so worried that I have cost them a decent grade in the subject. Maybe I should have settled for the C grades and entered them for the Foundation tier. I've been to my friend's house for tea tonight and she is a fellow languages teacher. She says her pupils didn't struggle so much, so I fear I have overestimated the kids' abilities. I just hope that other pupils across the country have struggled so the boundaries come down.

I know there is absolutely nothing I can do now but wait until the results come out in August. One of the pupils bought me a lovely bottle of wine this week and the nicest card I have ever received from anyone ever. I feel really awful and I hope that her good thoughts of me don't change come results' day.

In the meantime, I have been enjoying the first days of my holidays. Ezzie, Shona and I have been camping again this weekend and we only got back this afternoon. Bank Holidays really are great things and we were fortunate that the rain held off. It has been very windy, and at times the tent felt very precarious, but it all added to the fun. We went to our favourite place in Lathkilldale again. There is a large campsite there and it's very chilled out. I've been watching the 'Child of our time' programme on the BBC and the kids on there are a year older than Shona, but the clips we see are of last year when they were Shona's age now. (Does that make sense?) Recently they were discussing and analysing play and saying that children might not be getting enough spontaneous, unstructured, adult-free play these days. Well, Shona has done nothing but play this weekend because there are loads of kids on the campsite and there is loads of space for them to play, but they also have some space from adults. There was actually a boy we'd met last time, so Shona already had a friend when she got there.

On Sunday we did a four mile hike, which was lovely. We went to Monyash, which is quaint and has a nice café and a great pub with a fantastic play area. Shona was very impressed with the facilities and spent many a moment on an Indiana Jones-esque aerial runway. Today we've done some more walking around Monsel Head. Our friend Esther was supposed to be coming with us, but unfortunately she hurt her back and couldn't come with us. This was a shame because she would have enjoyed herself. But, there are always other times and we hope to go camping again in a few weeks.

This evening we were invited for tea at Carol's and Kin came as well. Apart from not calming my fears about the kids and their Spanish GCSE, we did have a great time at Carol's. We had fajitas and Shona really enjoyed these, which amazed me because she is a fussy eater. This was followed by Ben and Jerry's ice cream. This was a great meal and we finished the evening watching Shrek 2 and I continued knitting a sock for Ezzie. Life doesn't get any better than than.

1 comment:

maramcp said...

You are fab because you worry about your pupils, I don't know many teachers who really do that. I am surer they will have done their best and won't disapoint.

The camping sounds like you have a really wonderful time (and I don't do camping, I am the reason there are B&B's and hotels) and I really hope you get to enjoy the rest of your break from school.