Interview and portfolio

Yes!
Having returned from teaching in Asia to living in Devon, I have an interview date.
Thoughts bubble rapidly to my consciousness...thoughts of portfolios, interview questions, my choice of 20 minute teaching activity, my knowledge of current issues in teaching.

Here is Edge Hill's very helpful guide to interview questions: http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/careers/DownloadZone/materials_pdfs/CC_11.pdf

This is a good discussion of the pros and cons of portfolios, hosted by TES: http://community.tes.co.uk/forums/t/1083.aspx?PageIndex=1 (N.B. I think you need to be a member of TES to see this discussion...easy to do and it allows you to access lots of great resources)

Total teaching, gives advice for teachers seeking positions, including a detailed breakdown of the ideal contents of a portfolio. http://www.total-teaching.co.uk/promotioninteaching.shtml

It is interesting that it is still not current practice to use a blog as a portfolio of work. Maybe there is too much to usefully sift through within the time constraints of an interview. Maybe there is still a place for paper in the context of interview portfolios.

Prospects.ac gives a number of sites which provide relevant and up to date educational issues. Again, it is not rocket science but it was good to find these sources all in the same place.
http://www.prospects.ac.uk/teacher_training_hot_topics.htm

Doing too much?

I was sent this article by a friend today and it made me think more about the pace of life we live, breakdown of the nuclear family and all of that kind of stuff.

Formal after school activities are partly the response of society to greater demands on the time of parents who are working hard for long hours, and don't live near the children's grandparents.  Someone needs to look  after the children before they get home from work.  Maybe this is a really middle class view.  Maybe most families don't have both parents working.  Many families are simgle parent families anyway.  I digress.

After school activities could also be seen as a reaction to the idea that we as parents are not doing enough if they leave our children to their own devices after their highly structured school day.  Even when parents are at home, some feel that their time would be better spend doing something which is educational and which involves the intervention of an adult.  Enter the idler.

The Idler suggests that:

We put far too much effort into parenting. If we leave our kids alone, they will become more self-reliant and we’ll be able to lie in bed for longer.

The word idler has many negative connotations today, where the work ethic is often strong and where it is politically correct to stay active, but I think the value of calm unstructured time is well undervalued.

How might it look in 5 years time?
Maybe there will be more play based learning in the classroom...Year 6 children might be working on projects which they have chosen...there might be a cap on the number of hours of after school activities which you are allowed to do...

Food for thought.