When Creativity isn't courteous...

The other day I was sitting in McDonald's studying. Don't ask why McDonald's: the fact is it's the place I study best and I'm not going to question that, so why should you?
   Anyway, I was studying away, reading up on Rousseau and Plato and all the exciting philosophers when I noticed that at the table in front of me there was a man with a camera taking a picture of his friend. This was all innocent but I couldn't shake the feeling that he was looking at me... through the lens!
   I carried on studying, though remaining wary, when I was sure the man had just taken a photo of me. Em... What do I do now? I couldn't be sure for a start, and I didn't want to say anything so I carried on my work. I looked out of the window and there! I definitely saw the camera getting raised in my direction and I heard the tell-tale shutter.
   Creepy!
   It felt like being in China again, when I was a spectacle to all the citizens who saw a tall, pale, blonde girl and thought they had every right to take her photo. They didn't. And this guy doesn't either.
   I could hear him telling his friends about photography and photos that are famous and I even caught a compliment about the light in my eyes. Doesn't make the situation any less uncomfortable for me though.

   When the man got up to leave, he came and asked about my studies and nonchalantly told me about the photo he'd taken of me as if it was socially acceptable. Which it isn't. He started telling me about photography and the different photos that express things and though he seemed nice enough, and he's a regular at the McDonald's, I still felt a bit sick.

So after discussing creativity, and what it is at university, I feel it's safe to say that creativity isn't always courteous. It doesn't always take into account other people. The man saw a photo moment that he liked so he took the opportunity to capture it. I'm sure he can go away and feel pleased about his photo, admiring the light or the focus or other camera stuff, but I'm stuck feeling hard done by because I wasn't asked and that makes all the difference.
Unless the photo is a work of art and it launches a modelling career that brings me millions. But I highly doubt that will happen.

When awkward moments start a day...

The other day I had a rather awkward moment at the train station on my way to university. I was alone on the platform because everyone had just boarded the express train. There was a man in a luminous top who didn't get on the train but instead left the platform. I was reading through my course stuff to try to get a grasp on one of the assignments and I dropped my jotter in a puddle. I looked about to see if there was anything to clean my jotter up and there was a newspaper next to me. People leave newspapers lying about all the time but since it was the Guardian I didn't want to tear into it so I removed one of the inner papers, the puzzle section, and wiped my jotter down. So there was the four seats: the Guardian in one, the dirty loose part of another seat, my jotter and me.

And then the man in the luminous top came back. It was his newspaper.

We both knew what I did but neither of us said anything. I was so embarrassed and it was so awkward, and quite funny too. He seemed pretty unimpressed and glared at me when I got on the train but in my defence, he left it! He left the platform for a good 5 minutes and I didn't know he was coming back to reclaim his newspaper. The only good news is that I didn't tear anything out of it. That would've been worse..

When Friends Step in...

So after a stressful week of feeling like university is a massive weight on my shoulder that is going to crush me (always the optimist) I managed to adhere to my favourite saying and "Man up."

This has greatly been helped by the fact that I have such good friends and family who support me when things go wrong and who don't judge me for my mistakes but build me up so I'm strong enough to not make them again.
I'm now feeling much calmer about things and also excited about my school placement which will be after that abyss that is my exams. Thank goodness I've still got friends and family who can keep me sane in the upcoming weeks.

And on an unrelated note, I'm getting promoted at work! This always helps brighten up a bad week.

When things go wrong...

So finding out this week that I have to resit my nursery placement induced a number of responses in me:
I am a bad teacher
I am going to fail the whole course
But I don't want to be a nursery teacher
Why? My school report was amazing and I received chocolate from a parent
I feel sick
Do I have to do another placement?

And so on so forth

But the point I'm reaching now is more positive: I made a mistake; I'll learn from my mistake; I get to fix my mistake.

It just shows that in life, things will always knock you down and go completely differently to how you planned but you need to find the bright side and pick yourself up and just get on with it. I've had my 24 hours of feeling pants and now I'll just man up and roll with the punches.
Such is the ways of the trainee teacher.

What happens when in nursery.

Ah nursery. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I don't like tea and I like nursery so I'm not sure what it's my cup of.
Hot blackcurrent juice maybe, or coke... though coke should be drunk from the can cause it tastes better.
Anyway! Nursery

What a laugh. I know I'm supposed to be learning hard hitting child development thingies and appreciate how the  Curriculum for Excellence fits in and what the role of the adult is and all that jazz but good grief, what I've learned most is how funny children are. And I don't mean intentionally haha funny (though that is the case sometimes) I mean just how their minds work and how they react to things.

This is the goldmine that made me want to become a teacher in the first place.

The dialogue when the teacher asked what a doctor might have in his bag went as follows:
Child 1 "..."
Child 2 "....doctor things."
Child 3 "Doctor things!"
Child 4 "Tetoscope"
Teacher "Yes, a doctor would have a stethoscope which is a big long word. Lets try to say it ST-ETH-O-SCOPE."
Children "..variations of stethoscope.."
Teacher "Now moving on.."
Child 5 "I didn't get a shot!"
Teacher "OK, what do you think the doctor has in his bag."
Child 5 "A puppy!"

And so on. It's comedy gold!
Don't get me wrong. I'm not mocking the children or anything but anyone who works with the early years can appreciate how funny some of the things they come out with can be.
Saying that I had a P6 last year who was reading a news report she'd written about a volcanic eruption and said "And aa [type of lava] lava was running down the side of he volcano destroying houses, burning children and worrying everyone." I encouraged her to use stronger language than worry.

Anyway, this post is simply sharing my joy at working with such young children.
But what's really exciting about working with children is working them grow.

Creativity

Wahey! Something related to my course.

I am to write a blog about what creativity means. Well, I don't do anything simple so I'll tell you what I find frustrating when described as creative.

For one, arty farty types who create pieces of art that look like cat sick that is apparently a representation of how the British tax payer is being crushed by the government and blah blah blah.
I went to a play in London that involved the audience moving around a large metal box thing and then watch a man dressed as a Jew move about (on what I'm going to call skates cause I can't think of what they're actually called) through a bath house while a creepy psycho child moved about the rafters. It was absolutely appalling but, I'm sure, represented some form of creativity.

Of course, that just means that my concept of creativity differs from the people who wrote the torture but there you go. Creativity, like beauty, is subjective.
One of my favourite bands, Relient K, wrote a song called "Wit's all been done before." about how "there's nothing new under the sun." My favourite lines being:
Cause creating something new is just recycling,
Wait wit's all been done before,
Yeah we do something to death,
Then we dig it up just to do it some more.


However, such a cynical viewpoint might not be well received in schools so it's safer to accept all sorts of creativity because we teach all sorts of children.
I've created a presentation about creativity that could possibly be rubbish, or you're just note being open-minded to my creative thinking and need to remember that it's subjective.
http://prezi.com/ig3mh99kjmcy/creativity/

When cousins come to cook

I have still yet to enter anything related to the course I am studying and the whole purpose of this blog so I'll shortly mention this mornings tutorial involving my context board and then move on to the theatre that happened in my kitchen tonight. 

I learnt that it helps to attend lectures about context boards to understand that quality tutors are looking for. I now feel the desperate urge for a laminator and constant visitation of the sparklebox website to be a successful teacher with a pretty context board. I'm still thoroughly attached to my hand painted volcano and trees crafted out of paper and pipe cleaner. Any one can print and laminate from google images...

But anyway, cooking. My cousin promised he'd make dinner for my family one day and came tonight to do us the honours. He made us beautiful balmoral chicken stuffed with haggis and wrapped with bacon and it was delicious. What was really funny was the comments coming from the kitchen. He managed to forget the benefits of oven gloves frequently and somehow managed to throw a roast potato at a cupboard. What I found most amusing was the story about his career as an opera singer in which is played King Duncan in Macbeth. This was not any old MacBeth, for all the characters were not humans but Baboons. 

This short and hilarious story has encouraged me to continue this blog in the knowledge that whatever I write will always be better than a Shakespearan opera involving baboons.