What an amazing first week back! Absolute tekkers on all fronts!

My new Year 7 form is so cool! Meeting them again properly, all looking so excited to be at high school, made it such an enjoyable first week back. I am so looking forward to seeing them experience their first year, as they will have so many new experiences and more importantly meet some people who I know they will be life long friends with. I know this as 22 years ago I was in exactly the same position as them! I went to St. James' myself and am still friends with so many of the people I met on my first day!

Obviously I also met all my new students for the first time this week, they were all so amazingly respectful and appeared to be happy for me to be their Science teacher, which was nice! I was very happy to see some students who I haven’t taught in a couple of years. It's crazy to see how much they have changed over such a short time. If it wasn't for a new development at St. James’, I would be sad that I am not going to teach my wonderful students from last year, but actually I will be able to, which is very cool!

I can't remember actually sitting down for the last four days as there have been plenty of our new St. James' cohort leaving every single one of their new brightly colored possessions in places they can not even remember being! So much unbelievable potential in every single one of them, knowing St. James' as I do, I am so unbelievably confident that my colleagues and I will do everything we possibly can to ensure they reach it, and more.

Lesson one and I was straight into sowing the seeds of my own personal life long quest to ensure that every single young person I ever meet is filled with a life long passion for learning. I think each of my classes enjoyed my little motivational speech, for which it appears, judging by one of my esteemed colleagues cheeky references at our first year team meeting, I’ve become known for over the years! If they leave St. James’ with that passion, I believe my role as their teacher and mentor has been fulfilled.

I find my profession so easy, it really isn’t like ‘work’ for me at all as I’m positive it is for so many teachers out there in the big educational world! I’ve literally enjoyed every single day I’ve been teaching over the last eight years. I am so looking forward to another year meeting some of the most incredible young people from this wonderful little town of ours and also working alongside some of the most professional, devoted, selfless individuals, my colleagues, who I have ever met in my life. I really do have the best job on the planet! It makes me wonder and think, why do so few of the students that I teach dream and aspire to becoming teachers, lecturers, educators when they are older? Personally, I think it’s time to mix it up a bit…

My new ‘Wall of Skill’ was also finally completed this afternoon. It took a little while longer than I thought, I’ve stayed back for a couple of hours each night after school finished to back each of my students personal name tags with a nicely colored border and give them their little individual space on the Wall of Skill in Room 21! I think it looks really cool, I hope you agree. I’m hoping my vision, which is to enable each of my students to be able to identify the learning skills they have achieved throughout the year, as well as enabling my colleagues or any guests who enter Room 21 to be able to identify them also! I hope it will enable each of my students to make the learning progress they are capable of. I also very much hope they also see how being creative and imaginative assists their learning as well as my teaching. Have a look below at the wondrous Wall of Skillage if you like, I intend to update my blog with future posts to show everyone how many skills my students are learning and achieving throughout the year! I’m excited to see if this 2014-15 classroom mutation turns out to be advantageous or deleterious in the evolution of Room 21.

Room 21's Wall(s) of Skill!
(Need to think of something to do about those breeze blocks!)

It's all about learning & achievement, as you can hopefully see!

I also decided to watch this TED talk by Rita Pierson again, it's so cool and so true and always makes me laugh! If you havn't seen it before you are in for a treat, I hope you have a relaxing weekend.