Day 6 MFL inset

It crept up from nowhere that first day back at school. The good news, or as I thought, was that it would be a gentle ease back in with an inset day. I assumed, wrongly that we would have a mornings worth of MFL followed by the afternoon in our classes. How wrong can you be? Now don't get me wrong the inset delivered by our own German specialist along with an MFL trainer from the local university was good. Or should I say Wunderbar! I learned some German and was well informed on the use of the scheme we have in school along with a selection of useful websites.

Perhaps the two most important things I got out of today were:

• Catching up with my friends from work and hearing about their Christmas break. Which reminded me what a good bunch of people I work with. 

• How hard it actually is to learn. Now I say learn and not be lectured at because that's what we did. The training we had was active, varied, interesting and challenging. Yet I was, by lunchtime suffering from a headache and by 2.30 was that fatigued I could have nodded off. This placed me in my pupils shoes. No matter how varied, interesting and challenging we make the teaching and learning it is still hard work. Perhaps we need to remember that. It's hard sustaining concentration no matter how active and interesting we make it. So we need to remember that feeling be realistic and literally give our pupils a break!

So was the inset valuable? I would have to say yes. Every day is an opportunity to learn.