Monday, June 22, 2009

GDLT Signing ... on ?

2 days.

A glorious 2 days to really get back to what I was missing in life. Games, beach walks, playing with Cameron and Rachael... I really thought I'd made the right decision to drop out of the GDLT.

When I got back to work on Tuesday, I phoned in to the uni to let them know of my desicion, but the more people I told the more resistance I felt coming back at me. " It's only another 6 months!", "It'll open up lots of doors!", etc. I'd considered all that, but the real clincher was information regarding the only real avenue for teaching I was looking forward to.

2 days...

I rung up Ricki and laid out the issues again, and he granted me more extension time for the 2 outstanding assignments than I was expecting. It all seemed achievable again. Now, after 2 weeks have passed and both assignments are in I can relax. Well, for 4 days I can until reso school starts again.

Ended up pretty happy with the Supportive learning assignment once I decided to ignore what the Uni would think of a well constructed classroom management plan and really just outline what I believe to be a fair reflection of my views on behaviour management and supportive learning environments in general. The management plan is presented as a classroom covenant between the students and the teacher where each sides promise to do an action to gain the action from the other party (EG: The teacher promises to create the safest environment they can, and in return the students promise to not intentionally put themselves or others in harms way). These reciprocal arrangements demonstrate practical examples of how to deliver the rights, responsibilities and respect needed for a properly functioning classroom.

On the flip side the Literacy and Numeracy report became more and more a hard slog. I was pretty ropable that the previous assignment word limit of 2000 words was more like double that in the examples, and I got pinged for brevity when the whole assignment was over 3000 words :(. This one was expected to be 3000 words, whereas some examples are pushing 70 pages! Every time I think about it makes me mad. In the end I just made the decision that whatever state it's in when I needed to drop it off is what I'm going to submit. Bits were missing but frankly I don't care. Nearly 5000 words and I know I'm going to get pinged for brevity again :/.

4 days ... 4 days to enjoy being me before it all starts again. I need another pep talk ...