teaching Scout

I was in the position yesterday of a pupil –at my induction meeting for the council I’m going to work for next year. There were about 150 brand new teachers fresh out of Uni, sitting in the same room ready to get started in a whole new career. A whole new experience. Working with new people.
Honestly, I can’t wait.

But I realised as I was being ‘inducted’ that what I want to be is inspired by others. But more than this, I want to be inspiring to the pupils in my classes over the next year. I don’t think you can be inspiring without some sort of inbuilt enthusiasm for your subject/teaching. (Which hopefully most of us have, kinda because we chose to do this). But I hope with a bit of thought I can make my classes inspiring, creative places to be. Though who knows what will happen?
Honestly, I can’t wait.

I know it probably matter too much when I go and apply for jobs, but getting a first class honours feels pretty good! I felt I worked a lot over the past year and I’m just really glad that my lecturers recognised it through my work.
But more exciting matters – I have found out the school I’ll be at for the next year which I’m pretty happy with. Though I don’t want to say the name or authority as they might not want me to with all this blogging malarky.
I’ve also got my time table which fills me with a large degree of excitement and a small measure of complete terror!

4th year graphics – Int2 class of about 12 pupils all looking to get A’s and B’s!
3rd year graphics – Int1 class of 17 pupils, it’s a new course and will give me a big contrast to the 4th years, eep
3rd year Practical Craft Skills – Mixture of 13 pupils sitting at Int1/2. Will give me a good chance to improve my craft skills
2nd years – Just one class.
1st years -  Two classes

So I’m pretty happy about it all. Looking forward to doing some creative things with the 1st and 2nd years. Also wanting to get a lot of Inventor into the graphics courses and really making my mark on the department.

As usual I’m a few days behind current events though I’m sure by now everyone has seen the ‘London 2012′ logo. It is screaming out to me to be redesigned by….well, anyone. But when I saw this simple design exercise, it just reinforced the idea of bringing it into the classroom. If I was a teacher just now, I’d love to get a class full of kids putting up their own designs on the website. Colours, proportion, layout…hmmm?

Interestingly enough, earlier this year Chicago’s Olympic Logo for their 2016 bid was rejected on grounds that it basically looked like the olympic torch which acould not “contain the Olympic symbol, the Olympic motto, the Olympic flag, and/or any other Olympic-related imagery, such as flame, torch, medal, etc.” Because it is a bid, this measure is so as to protect and advance the Olympic movement. Considering this really was a fantastic logo, cleverly incorporating elements of the Chicago skyline and other well thought symbolism (see LogoBlog) it seems crazy that we’ve spent an awful lot of money on… well you get the picture.

The ever informative LogoBlogs’ apt description and lack of of opinion regarding the London design was fantastic. I’ve never read such an impartial description, though slipping in the word ‘amaturish’ at the end lets us know what they thought.  Pointing us to the Ugliest Logo Competitionon the same day that the ‘2012′ logo was unveiled was just the icing on the cake. Ideas’ anyone?