I am now excited about how we are going to teach Holocaust at Knox and I hope that we make a difference to the pupils who are taught.

Well today seen HRH Queen Elizabeth II open the new Queen Margaret University Campus in Musselburgh.

Knox Academy were honoured to be invited to the opening and we took six members of our student council to the State visit. Representing Knox were our Head Boy, Head Girl, Deputy Head Boy, A representive from 4th year, 3rd year and 2nd year and were accompanied by Ms Duff (PT Citizenship) and myself. I think I am correct in saying we were the only school representing East Lothian. The pupils were brilliant and really looked great in their Dress code and made their first public outing as the new student council at Knox. I’m sure the Queen was happy!

In previous posts I have spoken of the great work the final year students of the Drama and Theatre Arts course have done with the Drama pupils at Knox in the Mussel-In project. Today seen their efforts recongised as they performed right in front of HRH Queen Elizabeth (she was sitting in the front row and one wrong kick from dancing chip man in the play could have caused damaged!)

It’s not everyday you get to perform for Royalty and the pupils from Knox Academy shone in their role and the Queen seemed to enjoy it giving them a round of applause after their production.

I would like to thank once again the Students from QM who have worked so hard with our pupils, thank you. I would also like to thank every Knox pupil who represented their school today on stage or off. We may not all be Royalists but at least this is a memory we won’t forget.

(on a different note… very sad to be back as an ex graduate knowing that the school of Drama is no more but also interesting to see that most visual displays were all from the School of Drama! mmm interesting!)

Having made many great friends in my first year at Knox I am saddened that for four of them in my faculty they will be leaving at the end of this session as they were NQTs and there isn’t jobs available for them at our school or region.

It must be concerning for them and many others when they look at TES and see no jobs or very little jobs coming up each week for their subject and knowing that come August thousands of new NQTs will be starting schools over Scotland.

Universities such as Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen are still accepting lots of people for various courses only for no jobs to appear when the pass their NQT year. The Scottish Government has stated that jobs will be available… in a few years! Would you find a new career for a few years and return to teaching? would you?

It is slightly concerning that there is about 50 secondary Drama NQTs starting this year; is there 50 jobs for them? mmmm I don’t think!

Anyway… ‘BBCs Question Time’ is hitting Musselburgh on July 3rd! apply online here to be an audience member and make teacher unemployment an issue! I’m there! oh and don’t get me started on funding for the ARTS in Scotland!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In a recent post I spoke out a collaborative projected between Knox Academy and Queen Margaret University. 10 pupils from S1 worked with final year community theatre students from the BA(Hons) Drama and Theatre Arts course. The final piece told the story of a small town in East Lothian called North Barr.  The pupils worked really hard and seeing the finished product was a joy to watch with some great storytelling and imagery used. A big thank you to the four students from QM who worked really hard on their project to make it a success. It gave our pupils a real chance to shine and show the people of East Lothian the talent we have here at Knox Academy.  The ‘Mussel-In’ project received the Santander Community Award for contribution to their local community with Knox Academy sharing the award. We are over the moon for all those involved and again a big thank you to everyone who supported the project. The four students who created the project should be very proud of their work and I’m sure we will see them nuturing the young talent of Scotland in the coming years.

I have recently read an article printed in TES in 2003 by members of East Lothian council based at Dunbar Grammar School. It made me think…

I graduated from University of Edinburgh in 2005 and was placed in a council that had went down the faculty route and am now at a school that has also went down the faculty route, I haven’t known anything else.

I’m in the expressive arts faculty, before I was in the communication faculty (English, Drama and Modern Languages). I have to say on a personal level that I much prefer being in the Expressive Arts faculty, as creative people we can bounce ideas off each other.

I’m intriqued to know what others think of the system, do people want to talk about it? Is it a taboo subject? Can we openly discuss it? (if not… i’m in the dole que)

There are pro’s and con’s to the faculty system…

Pro’s

• We can discuss national objectives together and create cross curricular links
• CfE works better within the Faculty remitt
• Schools are able to save money and work round budgets
• PT faculty links are managers of people

Cons

• As a single person department I am doing everything really that an old PT used to do; create courses, manage daily running of dept, link for students re SQA etc
• Teacher on normal payscale
• PT Faculty has little subject knowledge of department (is this positive or negative?)

I have found it interesting to see some councils in the West and up North going back to PT subjects and the majority of City of Edinburgh schools staying with dept PT’s.

Will the faculty system survive? Can it?

I really think it depends on the school - in my current school, within my faculty, I think it does work however I did not feel like that when I first came into teaching.

How can we improve the faculty system? I honestly feel each dept should have a link teacher that liases with the PT Faculty that is in charge of running of dept, courses, subject knowledge etc (in theory this link teacher would act as head of department) but then defeats the point of faculties doesn’t it?

hhhhmmmmm…. where to I stand on this?! who knows! I find it interesting though… next discussion… Higher Still!!!!!!!!

Friday’s CAT afternoon was a whole school session on Assessment is for Learning. The AisfL group led the school in three sessions.

Each session focused on techniques that could be used in the classroom to do with the area. A session led by Luke Francis and Steven Wren was really thought provoking. A beautiful video clip of the planet and the wonders it holds followed by the BBC news clip of Ian Huntley, this was chilling. The session asked us questions about what is good, evil, does God exsist etc? given an example of an RMPS class.

Although this was a fun CAT I did feel that I hadn’t actually learned anything that we hadn’t already covered. AisfL is covered in great depth at University and then there was a huge push in Dumfries and Galloway in the area so I kind of feel zoned out about whole thing… a bit like eating too much of something you really like… in the end you avoid it for a while.

Drama IS assessment is for learning! that is all we do in our lessons - all we have done for many years- so this isn’t a great new learning experience for us.

In one lesson we do the following:

High Quality Interactions - Classroom assessment involves high quality interactions, based on thoughtful questions, careful listening and reflective responses. Drama asks the students to explore the world in which they live in, work with everyone in the classroom, listen to people’s point of view and respond to the stimulus they have given.

Involving pupils in their learning - Pupils and staff are fully involved in deciding next steps in their learning and identifying who can help. Students in Drama are asking to respond to various stimuli in a creative way, thinking outside the box and coming up with their own ideas and answers, asking for help when needed. They are given skills at the start and by the end the students fully lead the unit of work they are taking part in.

Feedback: Pupils and staff are given timely feedback about the quality of their work and how to make it better. In Drama students are now used to peer assessment, where they use 2 stars and a wish to give full feedback with justification on the work they have just seen. Through the Junior courses students are asked to look at their peers and their own work and look at areas of improvement and how they can help each other to achieve the best possible production they can. I find that students are fully honest in their feedback, not only to each other but also to me, the teacher. I asked for feedback at the end of each lesson.

Sharing Criteria - Pupils, staff and parents are clear about what is to be learned and what success would be like. Students are given the learning intentions and criteria for success for each unit and lesson and we look back to see if we have met them or not and feedback on the reasons behind it.

Drama has been using these techniques for years and sometimes it is hard when asked ‘how do you use AisfL in your lesson?’ to actually say well blah blah blah, you tend to find it comes naturally, like driving a car, you do it every lesson, every day you find it hard to explain unless you really think about it.

I’m now rambling BUT i did enjoy the CAT session on friday HOWEVER we do a lot of this in Drama.

BBC news have just stated that the GTCS are to create a new code of conduct for teachers. This code of conduct would have to be signed by teaching staff before they enter a classroom.

One of the codes to be looked at is the information of staff on social networking sites such as facebook and bebo.

The bbc link states ‘One new recommendation is that teachers should be wary of posting information and photos of their personal lives on social networking websites.’. Surely this goes against our personal freedom and freedoom of speech?

Am I the only person having issues being told what I can and can not do in my private life?

I have tried to keep my blog purely educational BUT I have been worrying now for over a week regarding someone who is an extremely passionate musician and someone I know.

Kyle went missing in Dundee on Sunday 28th Oct 2007.

He’s a passionate singer and guitarist, although studying history,  music was always his destiny. He was a regular at open mic nights.

I hope you’re safe and please come home.

below are two links giving details about Kyle and what his family are doing for his return.

Kyle STV

Kyle BBC

I know people from around the world are reading my blog due to comments and messages I have. I hope I haven’t offended anyone by posting this and I hope by doing this someone will know something. No one can vanish without someone knowing something. Please contact the Tayside Police on 01382 223200 if you know anything.

Well although this week was meant to be a time of relaxing and catching up with people I found some time to do some CPD and what a time I had. East Lothian council is an amazing region to work in however there is no CPD for drama at all and we aren’t allowed at present, although I am working on this, to have a subject support group due to lack of numbers so all our subject CPD is out with the region.During my time at Drama school I loved the module in Stage Combat and have used the skills ever since so it made sense to ‘brush’ up. A lot of students, mainly boys, want to include fighting into their scenes and I teach a unit on this in S2.  Stage Combat is very hard work and takes a lot of work but it is so much fun! So the course took the whole day and covered the following areas…Unarmed

I was just planning my lesson for my S1 challenge class tomorrow and a blog came to mind.

I’m first and foremost a Drama teacher however I also tell my students to think outside the box when creating work. I always tend to use music in my productions and my SG class last year created an amazing piece of verbatim theatre based on 9/11 and 7/7. The piece used multi-media, music. mask work and dance to communicate meaning and I was very proud of them.

I am very passionate about media (film and TV) and think media is a very interesting form to create meaning from. Most students these days are well connected with film, TV and the internet. When discussing Media with my classes it is amazing to see what students are into and what they engage with.

I was honored to be involved in a film contest last year called KWN. KWN enabled students to work as news teams to create a news item about social responsibility. My students worked very hard to create this piece and to our shock and surprise we became Award Winners! Lockerbie told the story of some of the people in the town who helped the night of crash and was filmed and edited by S2 and S3 students, with help from me. This was a huge learning curve for all students involved.

Being at Knox now for just over a month and a half I don’t think a week has went passed that a student has not had a DV Camera in their hand and creating some sort of film. From Zombie brides to Cannibal eating students, from a documentary about school dress code to a documentary about social groups… does Knox have the next Steven Spielberg? I think I need a break!

I’m very excited about our filiming tomorrow and thinking… mmmm curriculum for excellence anyone?