foolfillment: the blog

I had the great opportunity to observe an SQA markers’ meeting in Glasgow today.

It’s all very hush-hush, and I can’t say what was covered, but it was a really worthwhile thing to go to. There are of course lots of underlying issues about whether these assessment methods are appropriate, but for me as a teacher who is just about to start teaching courses that do get assessed like this, then being able to see how different questions get marked was incredibly useful.

I believe it was a very private process until quite recently which seems pretty funny, I don’t know what the reasons for it were but I think it is much better to make it open and accessible. One thing I wonder though is if being open about how different types of questions are marked might lead to teaching more to the exam than actually teaching the subject.

Another point that came up was that most Graphic Communication classes spend, perhaps, about 70% of their time on drawing boards, when only about one third of the marks comes from it, and more importantly after school the chances of the pupils seeing or using a board again are very slim. This is something I’ll come back to in another post. The spin-off from this point is the relevance and worth of the Graphic Communication courses in the first place.

I’ve been a student now for a few years and I’m quite used to being busier during my summers than my term time - going away to other countries, working to pay for those trips, and generally not having time to do nothing like I used to when I was at school.

This year will be a bit different, I’ve got no plans to go away anywhere abroad unfortunately, and I don’t have any long spells with nothing happening - that’s mainly to do with this being my last year as a student and starting a new job in August.

But I do wonder what other teachers, who are used to working 5 days a week in school and all the other hours outside, do to fill their days.

Personally I have to finish my dissertation, write another essay, then fit in an exam, an oral exam and presentation, a graduation, a graduation ball, a wedding, a caving trip (hopefully), a week or so up north walking, a week in Perthshire, a trip to Mull for the Regatta, and all the other things that will no doubt come up.

On top of that I might have to find a place to live, maybe buy things to furnish the new place, maybe buy a new car, and work out all the things that I should have prepared for my first year of teaching.

And in all of that I want to try and get a bit fitter, and learn a bit of French and improve my German somehow.

So with all of that I don’t think I’ll have much time left.