When the cat's away, the mice will have coffee...

 Well, it has a certainly been a good start to the morning for me. Wednesday mornings are PD (Professional Development days) at my school. This means an early start for teachers but the students do not come to school until 10.20am. This gives staff a couple of hours to do the dreaded developing professionally – usually some sort of ICT or literacy (meaning how to teach literacy, most teachers do not actually need help with their own reading skills) course which tends to give me TCOL flashbacks. Sometimes it is interesting but generally not interesting enough to stop my mind from wandering off and bitterly lamenting the fact that I am cold and woefully under-caffeinated, and that I have planning and marking stuff that I would rather being doing.

Last week I actually had to present a seminar to the staff (the price of being a last minute replacement to go to a Habits of Mind conference last term). I flatter myself that it was more interesting than most but it was vaguely terrifying for me. I really don’t enjoy speaking to grown-ups – largely because I don’t consider myself one of them. They are scary.
However, this week’s Wednesday morning fun was scheduled to be Departmental NCEA meetings (joy). Fate, however, is sometimes kind. There was also some big Head of Department conference on today leaving only the young English teachers (2 first year teachers, a second year and a third year teacher) in charge of the meeting.

Naturally, we did the sensible thing and snuck out of school to a nearby café. Unfortunately the HODs had thought ahead enough to hide the department chequebook so we couldn’t go shopping for DVDs for the English departments new DVD player (curses!).