One thing I’m finding difficult is the very different agendas that the teachers have to myself. I tend to see projects like this as all accomplishing (I aim for them to be cross curriculum and involve life both in and outside school), while for the teachers it is just one extra work commitment on top of a load of other, probably more demanding, tasks.
I also find that the teachers tend not to reply to your emails very often and it can seem to be like sending messages out in a bottle, where you hope they have been received and understood.
I investigated Ashburton, which looks quite a prosperous town; quite a few of the shops look new, as if they have come into being in the last few years, not many look of long standing.
Feedback for my first sessions was positive. Two very different styles of teaching. Students are very good, very well behaved.
Looks all positive so far.
Currently negotiating with a school around school looks around proj. very interesting how they can take creative ideas and they slowly become instutionalised into the school bureaucracy. Teachers have got targets to hit; curriculum to teach to and exams to deliver. They, understandably, want to build their objectives into the project, but this can mean that slowly the project changes that initially I’ve thought of as a wide ranging cross-curriculum project, into something that is quite specific to their discipline.
At the moment it is heading towards two different and separate projects. Where the history dept take up one idea and art dept another. I had hoped that it would be one project with each dept working on different aspects of the overarching idea and these would then be pulled together in an after school production team.
I’m not forceful enough to demand that my ideas are taken on board whole heartedly
But I enjoy the process of collaboration and change; and the constraints imposed by other parties. My weakness is that I always want to do too much. Do to many things. I always find this initial stage very engaging. Slowly but surly narrow it down to what we wish to achieve and how we are going to get there.
