Not supposed to be here

I'm supposed to be in Thailand. I'm not.

Last week was a crazy end of term. Last you heard I had exam papers to mark, then it was Sports Day, then Parents' Meetings, then training days, then Thailand.

Exam Papers
Well I got them marked in time for Parents' Meetings but they were crap so I had to go back over them and give everyone some more marks. Don't worry I maintained the integrity of the mark scheme, I only gave them extra marks if they'd written on lined paper and put their name.

Sports Days
Singapore is not renown for its athetic prowess and neither is our school. But it was fun in a school spirit kind of day. I was timing races, lane 6 was my lane so there was plenty of action. Then there was the blue ribbon event of the day, the Teachers' Race. It took the form of an 8, yes 8 leg relay so I decided I could run 50 metres ok. I was the fourth leg on our team and when I got the baton we were in the lead and when I passed the baton we were still in the lead. What happened afterwards was nothing to do with me. The guy on the 5th fell over because he was running round a bend. Well you know that can be tricky, especially at the high speeds he must have been running. And he does have a Jon Regis kind of build about him and not that Brendan Foster ever thought he might fall over, but the 'tight inside lane' was always a concern. So anyway, he picked himself up and carry on like the pro he is. I think we might still have been able to win, we had the PE teacher on the last leg and she was in her spikes so she was bound to be fast. She was. However the dropped baton on her changeover was not so we lost. But just to reiterate, it was not my fault.

Parents Day
I saw around 60 parents in one day. This was over my preferred ratio of none, but it was ok. My trick of having marks on my laptop was clever. Only one interview was less than good but I kept smiling and even said 'thank you' at the end. There was one really nice one that I had to do with a boy who was terrible at the beginning, in terms of behaviour, effort, work, everything. But by the end he was one of the best in the class, he totally turned it around. I got to tell his mum that and best of all she brought him so I got to see his face as I said it.

Training Day
I picked the ADHD training, the woman taking it was brilliant. Then in the afternoon I did Video Editing. Maybe I should do video blogs now? I really wanted to do it to see what was involved so when I set projects I know if students do them on video I know what's involved (which would be not a lot!) but it was kind of fun actually, but very fidily.

Thailand
So with all that last week I hardly had time to get ready for Thailand so I spent Saturday getting stuff, marking those papers again then we heard that night that Thailand maybe isn't the best place to go right now, so safety first, we're not. Sunday was spent, not packing, but calling students, writing emails and I worked on an alternate plan for the 10 days I have before I go home. I will let you know in due course no doubt but if it all comes together, it'll be good!