Teaching: the only profession where you steal from home to bring into work

I do like a bit of Ros Asquith in the morning.

The SENCO course started just before half term.  For those unfamiliar with the EDBIZ and its myriad of abbreviations and acronyms, a SENCO is a Special Educational Needs Co-Ordinator, which is the person who is responsible for getting statements of needs (they're not called that any more, but everyone still calls them "statements"), which is the piece of paper stating that there will be funding to help children who need extra help; it's a fairly oblique process, and requires a lot of thought and writing and justifying where you're spending money, and seems to be allocated on a fairly arbitrary basis.  Anyway.

The course is good, and very interesting, but, as I found today, lacks the practical element.  When a child is running, screaming and crying wordlessly around the Nursery, what do you do?  There's no associated reference paper for that, and in the end, we just called Mum.  We'll muddle on through, as you always do in teaching.

I have to do a 4500 word project too on an aspect of SEN, where you can show how you have swooped in and saved the day.  I have something in mind, to do with fine motor skills and the lack thereof in Year One - as you can see, riveting stuff for the uninitiated.  I'm very upset that the course, which is run by the Institute of Education, is in smelly old Greenford, rather than lovely, lovely Bloomsbury, but I'm sure I'll get over it.  I'm going there on Friday for a 9 o'clock meeting; first time travelling in rush hour for years and years, and that will almost certainly make me grateful for the E1 that goes from outside my front door all the way to the Teachers' Centre.

I am sure you will all be fascinated by my progress.  If you're really lucky, I'll post a link to my essay, so you can have all the fun of academic research, and none of the bother of doing any.