Thursday, April 10, 2008

Shift Happens

We were shown this video as part of a presentation in a Professional Studies lecture this morning on global citizenship. It was preceded by the question, "Why do you want to teach?"



Actually, after watching it I feel that the teaching qualification that I don't yet have is pretty well obsolete.

On the bright side, after scraping the lowest professional level pass that you can get in my first assignment, I found out that I got a B at Masters level in my second. WOO-HOO!!! Suppose I'd better get started on the third now since it is due in on Monday...

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Powerful Stuff. I keep boshing on to my students that the UK isn't the centre of the univers. Heck we threw our pee pee and poo poo out of the window until recently. They excavated a city near the Indus river that had sewers as far back as 6000 years. Heck, until recently we were to busy being barbarians that we didn't even notice the number zero existed.

Anonymous said...

I don't know why it has stopped calling me Robb...

BTW, I would dispute the way some of the statistics were used. Some of them were world wide statistics and some of them were obviously specific to a certain country. Most teenagers don't have a mobile, comp and games console. Most teenagers in the US or UK do.

Sorry for my pedantry :lol:

Holy Famoley said...

Yeah, I share your scepticism on that one. I just don't know how you'd go about finding it out. You could tell anyone anything and they probably wouldn't bother checking up. But hey, how to make you feel like a failure before you've even started! But then I console myself with the fact that for progress to happen it needs people. Most peopl e I come across are a waste of space. I've seldom seen anything come in on time and on budget so I'm willing to bet that most of that stuff in that presentation won't happen quite that exponentially.

Gorgeous pic of your little nephew by the way. Now by the time he's a teenager...

soniamain said...

bit depressing to be shown that on a PGCE- are they trying to scare you off early?!- we only get shown teachers tv clips!- but maybe that's because it is not a pgce just an education degree!

Holy Famoley said...

Hi Sonia. They've done it before. A few weeks back they got this nutty professor type saying that we had to get into all things web 2 otherwise we wouldn't be able to prepare these bright young things to go into the brave new world that is awaiting them. Now I like blogs and social networking as much as the next person, but I do think there are some things more important than reducing everything to geekdom. I don't want to lose sight of the metanarrative, if you catch my drift.(I'm waffling now!)

soniamain said...

But Carole have these lecturers taught children?- in my experience not for years!. the best lecturer we had was a woman who had recently come out of teaching and working with children- far more credible and knowledgeable about the real job!

Holy Famoley said...

You're absolutely right, Sonia. The PGCE is particularly cramped. There is little time and they have a choice between (a) teaching you how to teach and (b) equipping you with enough DFES-ese (DCSF-ese) buzzwords and jargon to enable you to bluff your way through an interview. They choose the latter. Most teachers in the real world are not up to date on the amount of rubbish that the government churn out, so communication can be a problem out there - we do not speak the same language in the initial stages. Learning actually takes place in school, but there isn't much time to discuss it. That said, I have had some tutors that I have bucketloads of respect for.

So is your course full time or part time?

soniamain said...

its very part time!- 1 day a week in Uni and in theory 20 hrs study- ( big joke!) . I did a foundation degree in early years last 2 years, worked in the area for years, until recently there has not been a graduate level for it. This year i am topping up the foundation degree with a 3rd yr which will give me a BA honours in early childhood education. I started it to get the piece of paper to back up what I have done over the years, i do it alongside working and other stuff!. It's been hard, but has re confirmed my passion and interest in offering the best to our youngest children.

AnneDroid said...

Wow. Glad I watched that, but feeling a bit scared now. I think I'll just go off and sing a verse of "He's got the whole world in his hands" and see if I feel better!
Ax