On being weighed and measured

Since I last wrote, my dad's radiotherapy for prostate cancer has come to an end. The good folks at Addenbrookes hospital are pleased with how he's doing, so he's on hormone treatment for the next three years, with regular check-ups along the way. Thankfully, he didn't suffer from too many side-effects - tiredness was the main one, although he's now pretty much back to normal. During his treatment, he was asked if he wanted to take part in a medical trial which is trying to make radiotherapy more accurate. Apparently, they control everything by computer and can target areas that are a couple of pixels across. A far cry from the prostate cancer treatment my grandfather got, where they had to lay lead plates across his stomach to stop his internal organs getting fried. I know I've said it before but, guys, please go and get your PSI levels checked. There were 30 year olds on my dad's ward with advanced cancer. It's only a blood test - go and get it done. 

Other stuff: The Daughter and her boyfriend are currently in Iceland (am I jealous? You bet.), and will be taking an extended break in October, spending six months travelling around Thailand, Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand and various other amazing places. What a way to miss our British winter...

Son Number One's job with the Forestry Commission is going well. He's planted several thousand trees, got on nodding terms with strange people who live in the forest, and has warned me which forest tracks to avoid unless I'm after dodgy requests. 

Son Number Two has been doing a tour of UK universities. So far, Hull is topping the list for its music department, but he has a trip to Leeds this coming week before he makes his final pick. 

My OU course is going pretty well. My tutor, possibly having skipped his medication, gave me 98% for my assignment on animism. It was a score that I didn't believe when I saw it on my phone, so I had to check it on my computer in case of strange glitches. The feedback said that most people chose the option on the Scopes Trial, but I found animism far more interesting. The assignment was about how two anthropologists defined the term, but the subject itself made a lot of sense in my head. I mean, who wouldn't talk to a hedgehog that wanders through the garden, for example? Really? Oh well, at least I now know which indigenous communities I need to go and live with...

School-wise, it's been a week of hard-thinking and kicking things (not children, I promise). Reasons that teachers are leaving in droves are now, it seems, being brought into teaching assistant jobs. I know that self-evaluation and professional development are important, but it seems we now have to judge things like our planning and assessment skills. So many teachers on forums complain that 'unqualified' TAs should not be allowed to plan or assess lessons; that we're there purely to support teaching and learning. There's a new set of official standards especially for teaching assistants, which comes out later this term, but we can't self-asses using those; we have to shoe-horn ourselves into teaching standards. The majority of our TAs don't do any planning, and some have been told, 'Is there anything kind of like planning, that you do, so you can tick that box?' Seriously? And many important things that TAs actually do are not taken into account. There's nothing on application of Special Educational Needs skills, for example. A TA that works one-to-one with a challenging pupil is going to be 'inadequate' at just about everything in those standards, even though she may go home with bite-marks up her arms and bruises up her shins. Pupil well-being is a huge part of what we do, but because a child has spent the lesson crying all over you and discussing their parents' arguments, they won't have achieved that lesson's learning objective, and so will have made no progress. They may be happier, but you can't record that in the mark book. 

Ms Fab and I are meant to be using these standards as 'self improvement tools'; that was one of our Personal Development targets from The Boss Lady, but we were told to concentrate on particular sections that were relevant and that all made sense. But now all TAs are having to assess ourselves on things that rarely form part of our job. It's supposed to help us move forward, I know. So how do I move forward from my score as a third-rate teacher to that of a first-rate teaching assistant? Or do I move on to Waterstones? It's looking increasingly attractive. 

Which reminds me, I've not watched this for years...

Rant over, as they say. I'm off to watch A Knight's Tale.