"You're not here today."

[the_vulture]

 Yesterday was very interesting. Originally, it was supposed to be a fairly relaxed Friday in which my year 10s would spend most of the class watching the first bits of Of Mice and Men whilst most of the other classes worked on storyboards of Jimmy Dean's most famous ballad  "Big Bad John."  

I got into the Friday morning staff meeting a few minutes late (not a biggie) and the assistant head looked quite relieved to see me. After the meeting, mere minutes before morning registeration, he came to me and said, casually, "Michael, you're not here today." 

"I'm not?" I replied with understandable curiousity. 

"You're on a training session today," he said. 

"I'm what?!?" I responded, with a bit of inward panic, as I tried, vainly, to recall what memo, e-mail, announcement, or school calendar event I had forgotten about and/or failed to read. 

The situation rapidly went weird from there. I was informed that I had only a short amount of time to arrange cover before meeting with another teacher and catch a ride with her for a full day training session. Whilst dealing with my registeration group, I was verbally giving my cover work to my head of department whilst setting up AV for the first class.  

More details came to me from a variety of people as I bustled about. Apparently, the other teacher and I were to attend a training session for a new software platform that the school is in the process of implementing. The other teacher apparently found a mere 10 minutes before I did and upper management, really, hadn't been informed that much earlier. Essentially, the head of IT phoned in that information whilst he was on the road. Okayyyy.... Of course, it seems that we were not the only school to have had a similar issue. This was a training session we were supposed to attend in December, but had gotten cancelled for reasons I cannot even recall. Regardless, it was a situation TARFU that I, at least, wasn't in any way responsible for. 

The training day wasn't all that boring, despite the fact that my familiarity with IT made it exceptionally easy to grasp what was going on. The whole idea is to create a "virtual learning environment" where teachers can place resources for pupils in an easily accessible location, give and receive assigments, share resources with others, and give marks and feedback. Really, it simply about using a standardized data storage system that is more user friendly. I pretty much just spent the day getting familiar with a new interface. 

Yes, an easy day with pay away from the kids who just want to play. 

And the lunch catering was actually pretty decent, too! 

The training session ended about a half an hour before the school day would've. The other teacher dropped me off at the train station and then headed on her way home - no point for her to head back into school. And there really wasn't any point for me, either, as it was now afternoon registeration and neither of us were actually expected back. The only nagging thing was that I had arranged some afterschool detentions that should've been seen to, but the other teacher's comments regarding doing so still rung clear in my mind: 

"You're going to go back for THAT?!? Listen, all the kids will know that you're away today; how many of the one you're expecting do you think will actually show up?" 

Fair enough! That sound argument had me about five minutes walk from my flat as the final pips rang for the school. *grin* 

Yep, a very relaxed day indeed. 

And I get another one the week after next!  

KEWL!!!