Today has been interesting. On Monday I have a job interview for the position of Head of Computer Science and IT at my current school, which obviously is something I really want, and I think I have a decent chance. Part of the interview process is teaching a 20 minute lesson on a topic of the school’s choice. No problem. They sent me the topic. It’s all good. I’ve got a great lesson plan. All I need to do is create some resources.

So what did I do today? Well first of all I did the washing, of course. Then I tidied up. Then I played guitar for a while. Sure I SHOULD have been getting this stuff ready for my interview, but I kept finding any excuse to not do that. Still, once everything was tidied, I figured I should just crack on and do it.

So I went for a 40km bike ride.

It was an awesome day today, beautiful azure skies with wispy clouds high up. I cycled along the canal from my house to Draycote Water. I cycled around the reservoir and then took a different route home, through many small villages in Warwickshire and Northamptonshire. The warm bath I had when I got home was wonderful. So of course, now I’m feeling productive. It’s time.

So I mowed and reseeded the lawn.

For fuck’s sake Karl, why do you keep procrastinating? You HAVE to do this, your future career depends on it, why don’t you just SIT DOWN and DO SOME WORK?

Well, at about 5pm I did. My lesson resources are the dankest you ever saw. This lesson’s gonna rock.

Of course at this point I was on a roll, so I decided to mark some coursework. I queued up some epic music, courtesy of Two Steps From Hell, and got to it. Now, one of the great things about this was that I like introducing new tech to my classes. We use google classroom and the google docs suite, which the students love because they never have to worry about losing their work, or leaving it at home. But I also set up a Slack group for the class.

For those of you that aren’t aware, Slack is a productivity/chat/info sharing system which is used in many tech companies to allow employees to easily communicate with each other. I set it up so that I could get in touch with the students rapidly and they could talk to each other and share ideas, and it’s working really well.

So of course, I mention in Slack that I’m marking, and my students instantly get alerts on their phones letting them know. They can see the comments I’m leaving for them as I leave them, and I can see the corrections they make as they make them. Made the marking feel way more worthwhile.

Anyway, before I realised, it was 11pm. I’m nowhere near done on this marking, but at least I have my lesson sorted for Monday’s interview. I just hope the rest of the interview goes well. I’ll be fairly disgruntled if I don’t get the job.

On the plus side, Wolverhampton University have invited me back to teach as a visiting lecturer again in the summer, so at least I know someone values me.

 

 

I still hate myself though. What’s up with that?