Ups and Downs

I've been a teacher for more than five years now, and the first thing anybody says when I tell them what I do is 'I couldn't do that', or 'I bet that is SUCH hard work' or 'The kids must drive you mad!' And while it IS hard work sometimes, the majority of the time I really enjoy my job. You have to be pretty patient and definitely thick-skinned, but working with kids can be one of the most rewarding things you could ever do. And contrary to popular belief, most kids are not evil or uncontrollable. There are some who are very difficult to teach, and some who are downright rude, but fortunately they are in the minority.

This makes it all the more disappointing when you have a bad lesson. The kind that makes you leave the class wondering why you put yourself through it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about kids running around, throwing things and generally causing chaos. I'm talking about a kid you thought you knew and had built up a relationship and understanding with suddenly deciding to disrupt at every possible opportunity. It is VERY wearing, and leaves you feeling exhausted and a bit of a failure. So yesterday, when I had a lesson like this, I came home feeling disinclined to do anything creative. I moped around for a bit, until my hubby reminded me that these lessons are few and far between and that most of the time my lessons are well-received (or at least not actively sabotaged!).

So I set about sorting the problem out. I planned a decent lesson, I talked to their pastoral manager and I set a few detentions. And today I went once more into the breach and faced them again...

And they were a different class. We had a successful lesson. They all learnt what I wanted them to. I left work feeling a whole lot better and feeling like I WAS a decent teacher after all. I had learned from the experience. So today I set about recording it in these two pages. First up, the page for yesterday, with the words of wisdom(!) that Ed used to cheer me up:

Second, the page for today, which reminds me to pick myself up after a fall and find a way around the obstacle, rather than sulking like one of my pupils about the problem!

So, lesson learned. All's well that ends well. And I have managed to catch up with my journal again...

Taking Stock

Just a quick post today - I want to get off to bed, but I didn't want to break the run of scrapping and blogging or I'd never start again. It was very tempting - as of 10pm, I had just finished watching Who Do You Think You Are and hadn't started to scrap my lesson of the day! I doubt I'll be this determined later on in the week.

Anyway, my lesson of the day is a simple one, and one we all too often forget. I'm not a negative person as such, but I can tend to dwell on the potential difficulties of life. I have been fretting over whether we should be selling our house and moving up the property ladder, or staying put for a few years where we are happy that we can afford the bills whatever happens. Ed and I realised after a lot of discussion and investigations into mortgages and property websites that while moving up is always the 'advisable' thing to do, there is a lot to be said for being content and comfortable with what you have - there is no 'right thing to do', as long as you are happy.

So my lesson for today was to take time to appreciate what you have and how happy you are, and to avoid the pressure of what you think you should be doing. Gorgeous Sassafrass paper for this page, same format as before. Now I'm off to get some shut-eye!

Please don't vomit!

Anybody who knows me will tell you that I am NOT a hopeless romantic. I don't go all gooey at romantic films. I don't cry at weddings. I don't get upset if we don't do anything for Valentine's day. It's just not me. So I can only apologise for the unashamedly loved-up nature of this lesson - please blame the fact that I am recently married and have spent the best part of the last four weeks more or less solely in each other's company.

Ed is in a marching band and has been away in France for the weekend, blowing his trumpet and marching around French villages (as you do). So I've spent a weekend without him. I'm not normally too bad in my own company. I've spent weekends without him before, and have happily filled my time slobbing round the house, going shopping and watching DVDs that he would hate. But this time, I have seriously missed him. I actually cannot wait for him to get back this evening. So my lesson of the day had to reflect this. And to make it all the more romantic (and vomit-inducing), I phrased the lesson using the words of a Labi Siffre song, which was one of the ones we had playing at our wedding ceremony. All together now: bleeeurgh!

I thought that while I was blogging, I may as well start sharing some of the layouts that I haven't documented on here. There are quite a few, and the majority haven't had their photos taken yet. But there are a couple from the Papermaze blog that I can share here too. Today I'm sharing this one, The Ruin of the West Pier. This layout is really simple, but I actually adore it. I'm very sentimental about this pier. I've spent a lot of time in Brighton during my life. Ed calls it London by the sea, and to be fair there are an awful lot of cockney accents apparent as you walk along the seafront, mainly due to its easy accessibility to much of South London. So I have slowly watched the degradation of this pier until it has become not much more than a few struts of rotting wood emerging from the sea. I think it's really sad, but that's the history teacher in me.

The layout is using Girls Paperie, I really liked working with this range, it was new to me when I got sent it but I will keep an eye out for their stuff in the future. The little paper flags were really fun and easy to make, and just perfect for the theme of the page.

I have no idea whether I'll have time to make my page tomorrow, but I will certainly make every effort as I'm really enjoying putting this little book of life lessons together. Even though there are no photos, it'll be good to look back at a month of my life and remember what I was up to each day. And I really need to start scrapping some of my wedding and honeymoon photos too, so here's hoping my mojo really has been kickstarted by this.

A cat-based calamity

As people who have followed this blog over the last few years will know, I am a bit of a cat lover. I have three cats - Bert, Ernie and Elmo - who are now, unbelievably, four years old. Time really flies doesn't it? Anybody who owns cats will know they have their own little foibles and fancies, and behave in totally different ways. One of my cats is very motivated by his stomach, and will come into the living room to announce to the world and his wife very loudly that he is hungry and needs feeding, right now! He is nothing if not persistent. Another one likes to perch himself on the shoulder of my hubby like a rather heavy parrot, if only Ed's back could take it.

But Elmo, the baby, is a total housecat. She only ever wanders as far as the garden, and is often to be found on the kitchen windowsill catching some rays. Which is why it was very odd when she disappeared last night. Odder still, when I got up this morning, she still wasn't around. By midday, I was getting very suspicious. I took a wander down the garden, she wasn't anywhere to be seen, so I thought I'd get the washing out of the tumble dryer which is in our garage at the end of the garden. I opened the door to be met with plaintive cries, and Elmo appeared, absolutely covered in cobwebs and thoroughly traumatised by her night of accidental imprisonment!

After phoning hubby to berate him for not checking the garage before he locked it last night, I set about spoiling her all day to make up for her ordeal, but not before picking all the cobwebs out of her fur. Here she is enjoying a bit of a fuss on the sofa. I think she has just about gotten over it all now.

So my lesson for the day was an obvious one: Don't lock the cat in the garage! I also got to make use of some of my gorgeous cat stamps, which are from a set by Inkadinkadoo - I bet they would make lovely images for cards too.

I've had a pretty lazy day today, though I did manage to fit in cleaning the bathroom. Sometimes you need a total chill out day. Tomorrow I'll have to make up for it though by doing all my lesson planning for the week - great fun. I'll make sure I fit in a page for this book though - four days and still going strong!

An Awareness Day

Today was the day that every teacher dreads - the day the kids come back to school after the six week break. I'm not sure why we dread it exactly, the kids are probably at their best behaved at this time of year, with many promising that THIS will be the year they turn over a new leaf and do some work. Their resolve holds out for a couple of weeks at most, but is fun while it lasts.

Today, the powers that be decided that we would have a 'College Awareness Day.' The school has changed from year groups into mixed age colleges, and many of the kids would need to get used to this. I meanwhile was experiencing some changes too. I have always been a Key Stage Four tutor - Years 10 and 11 - and I'm used to the monosyllabic grunts and almost overwhelming lack of enthusiasm when asked to do anything, including raising a smile. However, as part of my job coordinating the Year Seven curriculum, I have now become a tutor in the Year Seven college.

I have been apprehensive about this ever since I found out my fate. I had visions of wiping tears (and noses!), dealing with a whining rendition on the theme of 'he stole my pencilcase', and being repeatedly asked if they need to underline practically everything they write. I thought I would be drained of the will to live by the end of a whole day in their company. But it turns out my new Year Seven form aren't irritating at all. Considering it was their first day at a very big new school, they all took it very much in their stride. They were fun, enthusiastic, well-behaved, and not one of them asked the dreaded underlining question! Whilst I did finish the day exhausted, I was also pleasantly surprised at what a great day I'd had, and it was over before I realised too.

So I suppose I learnt my lesson today. Don't take any preconceptions into the classroom. Not all Year Sevens are the same. Things never turn out as badly as you fear they might!



As you can see, the format of the page stays, with the common elements of a scallop circle of book paper and some punched butterflies. The paper was one I would probably never have chosen myself, and I admit it is a bit dark for the stamping to show up (there are some wise owls on there believe it or not!), but I actually really like the rose design so sometimes it's good to work from a kit and force yourself to try things outside your comfort zone. It's not my favourite page so far, and took far longer to create than the others, but it didn't turn out too badly in the end.

I'm going to be doing a bit of work for Papermaze over the weekend, but will hopefully manage to fit in the next couple of pages of this book as well, so keep an eye out for my posts. Happy weekend!

The problem with doors...

So I spent a little while this evening when I got in from work wondering what my lesson of the day would be. There were a couple of work related lessons taken from the always scintillating INSET training today, but let's face it, that's a bit dull to scrap about. And then the lesson arrived at my door, so to speak. We went to take our plates out to the dishwasher after dinner, only to find the kitchen door was jammed shut. Totally stuck, no amount of handle wobbling would do it. I am fortunate enough to have a handy hubby who keeps screwdrivers in his car and he eventually managed to remove the entire handle, allowing us to finally regain access to the kitchen and put the kettle on. It could have been a lot more disastrous - all the rest of his tools had been locked in the kitchen!

So I decided to scrap about our little adventure - though my first instinct might be to bemoan my house and all its fixtures and fittings when these little irritants occur, the house is not about to fall down around our ears and most problems can be easily solved, provided you have a screwdriver to hand...

I kept pretty much the same format as before - purple cardstock today, which was interesting to scrap with as I'm sure, like me, you will have noticed that purple is not the most popular colour in most scrapbook ranges. I have scrapped with it occasionally before though, and I think it works great teamed with this light aqua colour. The stamps were from an old Back Porch Memories kit subscription - I thought the little line of houses was quite cute. The little 'stay open' sticker made me laugh - it was one of the only stickers I had left from a 7Gypsies 'Inspire' sticker set - while I think the sentiment is meant to refer to your outlook on life, it works pretty well as a plea to my kitchen door too!

Learn Something New...

Yes, this really is a blog post. I know, on MY blog, the one that has been so cruelly abandoned for many months now (cue tumbleweed drifting past and the howl of a solitary wolf). I have no excuses really. Life got very hectic in the last year, my new job was a lot harder work than I had originally anticipated, and of course I went and got married and went on honeymoon in the middle of it all! Yes, I'm not even Chloe Harp anymore: it's Chloe Watson now - and I can't quite get my head around that myself yet, I admit.

So a pretty action packed year all round really. But seeing as I spent a lot of it feeling a bit sorry for myself or hugely stressed in pretty much equal measure, I didn't really want to come on here and share my work worries with the whole world. For one thing, it would have been a bit monotonous to read!

But that doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything creative all year, far from it. While I haven't perhaps been as productive as I might have in former times, I have scrapped a few pages, and have done quite a bit of knitting too, which is much easier to pick up and put down in short intervals without creating a big mess, perfect when you only have fifteen minutes or so to spare. I managed to put together a thirtieth birthday album for my hubby earlier in the year too, none of which has yet graced the pages of my blog. So I may even see fit to do a bit of backdated sharing, if I can wedge a hefty bit of crafting back onto my schedule.

In the meantime, I decided to throw caution to the wind and try to commit myself to finishing an online class. Yes, I know you've heard it all before. And this may well go the way of so many other classes when the reality of term time hits again in the next few days. But I can at least try. And I think I've made a pretty good start by completing both the front page of my book AND the first lesson.

I decided to maximise my chances of completing this little project by keeping things as simple as possible. In the past, I have intricately stamped and cut out whole alphabets, layered up patterned papers, experimented with a variety of page layouts. All of this has fallen by the wayside. I am using a class kit from a former year of Learn Something New which I didn't even START to complete - Shimelle helpfully provided card and papers, colour-coordinated and cut to size. I have added a few choice sheets of my own, a couple of sheets of old book paper and then whatever random bits and bobs are left on my desk. I've decided to go with stamping as the main embellishment, because I think it provides maximum impact with minimum effort, but it is straight onto the page - no painstaking cutting out to be seen!

I will probably stick with pretty much the same page layout for most of the pages, and if I manage to take photos then I will easily be able to slot those in with this format too. I'm even using my iPhone to take the photos because I'm more likely to blog them if I don't have to go and find the camera!

So, hopefully the perfect project for someone who suffers from time poverty. I very much doubt I will get around to blogging every day, but a couple of days a week will be an achievement for me at the moment, and who knows, I might even manage to finish. Keep your fingers crossed for me! x