Post Presentation

It's been a heavy week - and it's only Wednesday.
Today we had to give our 15-minute presentations on a subject specialist resource we had designed. It sounded like a reasonably simple assignment, but typically I made my Adult Literacy resource relate to my previous area of expertise, psychology and well-being. James W Pennebaker has long been a hero of mine for proving, in controlled clinical research, that writing about trauma - in a freestyle, but structured way - promote psychological and physical well-being.
The result was I didn't finish writing the presentation and preparing the Powerpoint until late the night before so there was no time to rehearse and I ended up reading from notes - which I'm sure I'll get marked down on. But in a choice between free delivery but losing my place and thread and leaving out important info, and sticking to a script which progressed with clarity and got in all the necessary points, I chose the latter.
This course is making me feel strangely de-skilled in many ways. I've delivered management training, talks, seminars, workshops and creative writing classes for many years; ok, I may not have done so in a technically perfect way, but feedback has always been good and I've always thought that I can get information over to people and relate well to an audience/class. Now I feel like I don't know how to do it right any more at all; that my natural style has been compromised and I may be too old a dog to learn new tricks successfully. When I have presented research reports in the past to an academic audience, there has been no problem with working from notes - in fact it's expected.
I feel the same about writing, after the marking of Module 1 essays - though these are now being re-checked and it has been admitted that they were marked at Level 5 standards instead of Level 4, which this course is.
And yet I'm not impressed with the administration of the course nor the modelling of how to run a satisfactory course for students (not "learners", we've now been told - "students" is college policy). The teaching of our two main tutors has been excellent, but the surrounding admin and support pretty useless.

Week Two: Stressing

It's Tuesday of Week 2 and I'm feeling exhausted again. I should be writing one of the short essays that make up Task 3 (of Module 1). I could pick "Current Legislative Requirements (only 150 - 200 words), but we're having a tutorial on that tomorrow and, I think "Embedding Functional Skills" (300 - 400 words). We got all the info on "Evaluation of Assessment Methods" today, but I can't face 300 - 400 words on that tonight; or, indeed, "Methods of Feedback" - which is only 200 - 300 words. But there is a short (150 - 250 words) one on "Record Keeping" which doesn't seem too demanding.... I'll see how I feel when I finish this entry in my Reflective Journal.
One of the reasons I feel tired is the pressure of the Microteach coming up a week on Friday. It's both exciting me and stressing me out. I keep having ideas - and they wake me up at 5am, buzzing round my head, but not usefully or coherently. I'd decided to do something that will help everyone with essay writing, so punctuation and grammar orientated, and spent yesterday evening creating a little survey to see which areas might be most popular. But then in the car coming into college I heard this man on Radio 4 talking about the need for debating in state schools and thought - A Debate! Structure the Microteach as a mini debate, which would involve reading, writing, speaking and listening, assessing and responding.... 
But I gave out the survey anyway, and all the girls seem to be really excited about me teaching them basic punctuation stuff. Even Jay, the English specialist and novelist, asked for an explanation of when to use "past" and "passed". He knows all the terms - "homophones" in this case - but not, apparently, every last thing about them. So, ok, it's going to be punctuation. Lesson plans, learning outcomes, resources, a video, powerpoint - feels like it's going to take weeks to prepare! And some people (the girls!) seem to have frighteningly high expectations of me.
The other stress/exhaustion factor is that I met my Subject Specialist Mentor today, Laura. She' a very nice and interesting woman, about ten years younger than me, and we had a good discussion. But she thinks I need to do a two-day course on Literacy Core Curriculum Training - which I would have to source myself as they don't do it within the college, and possibly even pay for - though my "provider" (the college) should do. So that's a worry, especially as I can't see many free two day slots before Christmas. The other worry is that Laura doesn't see it as her job to sort out my teaching placement. She only teaches three literacy courses a week for college (one of which is off-campus anyway) - and even if I were to take over all three of them for the next two terms, which she's hardly going to want, it would only just be enough to make up my required 150 hours. So I have to find some other courses taught by someone else to work with. She's given me another name, but I'll have to talk about it in my Professional Practice tutorial tomorrow.
I'm sure it will get sorted out, but it feels like a mess and that the responsibility is on my shoulders. And just as I'd got to grips with the weekly timetable and workload, there's a new and unforseen extra load. It's probably the least impressive part of the organisation of the DiTLLS course. None of our mentors seem to know what they're supposed to be doing and the placements are completely unco-ordinated. I suppose I'm ahead of the game in that I've got and met a mentor - which is more than Sarah has. But still, the uncertainty of it is unhelpful when there's so much else going on simply in terms of course content and assignments.
It's now 9.45pm. I don't think I can bear to start on Record Keeping now, so I might just cut my losses and go to bed.
Over and out....