It's time to begin.....

Kakiste

Manic week- quite a few staff off so lost most of my PPA but decided to take all my year 11 folders home to get all the cross referencing on their assessed units done before they are invigilated next week. 

Spent £16 of my personal £25 'pocket money' allowance on a new hand blender- my other one has been slowly breaking for the past 6 months and I found one in home bargains that also comes with a whisk attachment which will be useful for a bunch of baking stuff. 

Bought the kid a new 6-7 years coat on ebay for £8 but since then have listed her two 4-5 years and 5-6 years coats on Ebay so am hoping that should even out if not make a very small profit. So all her clothes/coats/shoes currently fit her. (Watch her now have a massive growth spurt!) 

Kakiste

Had an argument with a colleague this afternoon. He's one of the teachers who also worked at the terrible previous school and we usually get on fairly well but he's very headstrong and gets grumpy when stuff doesn't go his way. 

In a nutshell we had a conversation over course entries for Year 11s back in November. He agreed to register another course additional to the one we were already doing but completely forgot about it. When it came up again today he claimed that we'd never had the conversation and I had been teaching the wrong course for half this year. I then forwarded him an email I'd sent him in November that completely proved that the conversation had taken place and that he'd agreed to register the course. 

(He is high functioning ASD and cant handle being wrong) 

He sent me several snippy emails and I decided to go and confront him directly over it. He attempted to take the discussion in several new directions and at one point sighed theatrically and ROLLED HIS EYES (!) at me Which I managed to call out in a non-shouting and collected manner. 

Anyhow he's not apologised (been 12 years working together and not seen him apologise yet!) But he did acknowledge that there wasn't actually any problem, I hadn't taught the wrong course and retracted a couple of completely uncalled for comments he'd thrown out. 

Some people!

enthusiasticsaver

Your colleague sounds annoying but well done on calling him out on it.  Well done on the good feedback.  I think you teachers deserve a medal for coping throughout this pandemic.  Tough job. 

Kakiste

Thanks.

I used to get overly irritated by such things when I was in my 20s so decided a few years ago to make a positive change and deal with any issues immediately, in person and in with a mind to attempting to resolve them. I didn't like how worked up I would get over confrontations and I put far too much of my energy into bad mouthing people I'd disagreed with and I didn't really like the person I was changing into. 

I've found I actually now have far fewer stresses at work and with friends because I'm dealing with anything that does come up through a 'conflict resolution' slant and then letting it go and moving on. Colleague is avoiding me today but I've made a point of running into him and being cordial so it's clear I'm not holding any grudges. 

I had one of my best friends (who in retrospect was a huge drama lover) fall out with my dramatically and cut me out of her life at the very end of my 20s and it kind of held up a mirror to how ridiculous I could sometimes be. Our friendship cooled dramatically after I decided I didn't want to take pleasure in bad mouthing people anymore and it became clear that it was one of the things we spent our time together doing. Eventually it came to a head because I wouldn't back her in a disagreement over social media with another friend even though she was in the wrong. I phrased it as politely and tactfully as I could manage but she was completely in the wrong and she then lost her proverbial with me because I should have backed her despite realising this because she was my friend which was...... childish. 

I attempted to resolve everything but it became clear very quickly she didn't want to be friends with any of our social circle anymore as I was the first of dozens of people she fell out with (she had previous form for dramatically reinventing herself every few years and moving on from a group of friends/workplace etc each time.) and so I decided to rise above it. I think one of the things that actually bothered her most was that I refused to engage in any bad mouthing or gossiping about her whilst she was doing plenty about me and it really affected how many people saw her. Whenever I was asked about the fall out (which she tried to make large, dramatic and over social media and I stepped back completely, deleted most social media apps) I just kept saying "She clearly has decided she doesn't want to be friends anymore. I find that sad and I feel hurt by it but it's obviously her decision"  

But overall I feel like I'm a better person than I was 5 years ago.  

Kakiste

Managed to carve myself a lovely afternoon on what had the potential to be a terrible one. We have Friday afternoons off timetable where we do enrichment activities (that the kids earn a range of different activities by being good and working well in lessons for the rest of the week) 

So myself and the PE teacher who is hard work were meant to be in film with 5 kids. He decided (as he is in charge of organising the activities and allocating staff) that he would take one of the 5 (a lad who happens to be a bit of a PE prodigy and one of his favourites) off to do....something (unspecified) and leave me with the other 4.
Now they had to be classroom based as they hadn't earned any of the better avtivities and quite frankly they are all hard work. Whats more they were such a massive range of personalities that there was no way they'd ever mutually agree a film and I didn't want a situation where half of them were bored by the film and absconded off and I had to chose between leaving kids unsupervised in class or leaving kids absconding on site (they tend to try and get on the school roof if given half a chance) 

So I brainstormed and did a round trip of the residential houses at lunchtime with 2 of them to collect their consoles and we hooked up a console game across two huge interactive whiteboards. 2 of the kids playing Fortnite split screen on one console and myself and 2 other lads playing winner stays on splitscreen Battlefront on the other console. 
Everyone was happy and had a nice afternoon. Cost me 4 cans of diet coke and a tube of pringles from my school paid for stash. 

Plus I got 48 kills on Battlefront.

Kakiste

Got a present today. We've just finished the 1923 German hyperinflation crisis and I mentioned that you can buy 100 million mark banknotes on Ebay for a few quid. One of my year 11s has bought one and brought it in. Came over to my room at break and told me "Don't even know why I've got this. Keep it if you like" and threw it on the desk. He's socially inept but that's very sweet for him and it's a lovely thought. 

Speaking of ebay i'm swinging past the post office on my way home- sold 4 things at the weekend. Made about £6.50 which will probably be £5 once fees are taken but it's for old clothes of mine and the second one of my daughter's old coats. 

Kakiste

Finally on Easter holiday! Spent Friday/Sat/Sun and today helping bubble friend move house. I did 23,000 steps last Friday and hauled wardrobes, beds and sofas all day!  

We're on the last day of helping with the old flat today. Just done a tip run and I'm sat in the car waiting for friend and my husband to come back from picking up paint sample pots and filler. 

Had a day off moving yesterday and my mum came up. She offered to pay for my timer belt replacement which will be lovely if that actually happens. (She has form for making incredible offers but then either 'forgetting' or retracting them when it comes time for it to happen. I'm going to get a quote from the garage today and forward it to her and see what happens. 

Broke through the next thousand barrier in both directions on the 1st so feeling happy with that. 

Kakiste

Phonecall from financial ombudsmen employee today. I spent a couple of hours last autumn escalating complaints to them on the basis that the worst case scenario is that nothing changes but in the best case scenario any payments or interest refunds could speed up my DFD. (When one credit card company upheld my complaint last spring they wiped out the remaining £1,300 debt on my account and gave me a refund of all interest I paid which I used to repay my uncle. 

The bloke yesterday is investigating my complaint against my former bank (Out of the £16,917 I still owe I owe them specifically £10k+) and said he'll get back to me in the next week or two and let me know the decision. I'm still trying to assume that i'm getting nothing back so that any other decision will be a positive change rather than a disappointment. 

rugbymadfamily

Thats super sweet of your student! Hope you're managing a bit of rest over Easter!

Good luck with Ombudsman, I've used them twice before and found them to be very helpful. Once was in my favour and other was not, but both times they explained their decision and hw it was reached which at least made me feel better!

Kakiste

Had an productive second week of the holiday. 

Due to the overlap my daughter went back to school on Monday so ive got to drop her off and pick her up from the school playground and not wraparound care like usual. Absolutely love doing that. Teaching holidays are the best but I love being there at 3pm to see her run out of school

During the day ive cleaned out the garage, sorted out a bunch of the garden jobs and gone for a bunch of walks. Took a packed lunch to the nearby deer park on Tuesday and sat watching a bunch of deer whilst eating lunch. 

Today i went into town and spent a £10 book voucher i got for christmas. Which is good because I'm down to my last 3 new unread books! Spent £6 on lunch for me and my husband sitting in the sun in the city centre. He's been OK this holiday- much better than usual holidays tbh but he's hard work, goes off in sulks or overreacts to comments I make or things I say lightheartedly. Managed to stop anything blowing up into a major issue but it takes a lot of careful navigating.