Junior Cycle Inservice

mirrorwall14

Can I ask has anyone had a useful inservice on this yet? I've had three days off school and classroom time or even policy development for our school would have been way more useful. If I have to listen once more to AFL or Inclusion I am honestly going to scream. They seem to be just firing money at it with multiple presenters who don't interact.

Whats the point in clustering teachers who don't have specifications? What is the point in giving maths teachers for example multiple days of inservice when the specification isn't even published. The Principles of Learning day literally felt like they made stuff up to entertain us while the other subject teachers got on with figuring out how the hell to unpack the learning outcomes in the specifications. You could have bullet pointed the whole day in about half an hour. The first inservice was an AFL one which I honestly could have given at this stage we have had so many of them.

There are no answers. They avoid all questions by talking. And by and large the presenters have been incredibly patronising about legitimate concerns.

#incrediblyfrustratedteacher
:mad::(

Jamfa

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

Can I ask has anyone had a useful inservice on this yet? I've had three days off school and classroom time or even policy development for our school would have been way more useful. If I have to listen once more to AFL or Inclusion I am honestly going to scream. They seem to be just firing money at it with multiple presenters who don't interact.

Whats the point in clustering teachers who don't have specifications? What is the point in giving maths teachers for example multiple days of inservice when the specification isn't even published. The Principles of Learning day literally felt like they made stuff up to entertain us while the other subject teachers got on with figuring out how the hell to unpack the learning outcomes in the specifications. You could have bullet pointed the whole day in about half an hour. The first inservice was an AFL one which I honestly could have given at this stage we have had so many of them.

There are no answers. They avoid all questions by talking. And by and large the presenters have been incredibly patronising about legitimate concerns.

#incrediblyfrustratedteacher
:mad::(

The clustering of schools is because management couldn't cope with teachers in multiple subjects constantly being absent attending CPD in Ed Centres. The result is maths teachers etc who don't have new specifications just have endure the waffle you mentioned & everyone is supposed to play along & tick the box.

deiseindublin

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

They seem to be just firing money at it with multiple presenters who don't interact.

We wondered about all the presenters too, some of them just sat there and had lunch, then left.

I'm thinking it's so they can spin all the money they've put into new JC. Few big shots on 100K+ must be on a good hourly rate, pro rata.

TheDriver

You'll find presenters are usually seconded or only associates. Best you get is your reg salary but no promotional allowance. The director etc will obviously be a different salary scale

2xj3hplqgsbkym

So many were employed to do the job , but now they have run out if schools to visit because if ASTI industrial action so they have nothing left to do!

2xj3hplqgsbkym

TheDriver wrote: »

You'll find presenters are usually seconded or only associates. Best you get is your reg salary but no promotional allowance. The director etc will obviously be a different salary scale

For secondment it is around €10,000 on top of your teaching salary.

TheDriver

True but crap expenses compared to old days.

r93kaey5p2izun

If they're short on work due to ASTI non-cooperation then they could always take the time to sit down and unpack their vague learning outcomes instead of asking every teacher in the country to reinvent the wheel.

Mountainsandh

And/or produce a big body of active learning resources to download from the site, that's so time consuming.

The_Valeyard

Sure they cant answer questions as they dont know themselves. Whole thing is a joke.

m*pp*t

Does anyone know if the resources they show in the workshops are actually available online? (I'm talking Science in particular here). There seem to be tons of different websites on the go (jct.ie, juniorcycle.ie etc) and I can't find concrete examples of stuff that was used with us at inservice. I'm possibly just an idiot though, so if anyone has found that stuff and could direct me to it I'd appreciate it!

Edit: Turns out I'm an idiot (as hypothesised above). If anyone else is in the same boat the link is http://www.jct.ie/science/cpd_supports_core_workshops.php

maynooth_rules

Its an utter joke but worrying is that its a joke that is continuing strong and there seems to be no end in sight for it. There is barely a positive point to put forward about this shambles of a new JC but the belief seems to be if we as educators are thrown into a room to do pointless time killing group work tasks and have our concerns ignored things will just sort themselves out.

ethical

The whole JC thing is laughable!
From the fiasco of covering for "another union" when your colleague is gone to jc npd eventhough you are breaking the Union directive (the ASTI say you must not cooperate ,yet you are compelled to cover classes(with no pay)!!!.....(ASTI says so!!!).............and then......

You are asked "what short course will you teach????" The effin Teachin Council will not recognise the subjects you are teaching for 20 odd years in some cases(because you have not got the said subject in your degree) so how are they going to OK you teaching something like Horticulture or Mandarin that you have as a hobby in your own time ....but NO qualifications in it!!!!!!

The_Valeyard

The solution is simple and depressing.

Stop caring what you teach

Stop caring about your students

Give medals to everyone

Millem

Ethical those short courses are a joke. We were asked to discuss which option will we do next year ie how many subjects and how many short courses.
In afternoon we were told oh you can only do the ones that are already made up! Eg coding, Chinese etc which we have no one to teach them!!!
Apparently it takes 18 months+++ to get a short course approved. More like at least 2 years!

Mirror wall I have done one where 3 people come to the school. Waste of time. The usual one hasn't taught in the classroom in at least 16 years, one is retired and one teaches in a centre with a handful of kids where they may only stay a few weeks. Give me a break!!!!
I am delighted that all going well I will be on mat leave next year so will miss yet more waste of time Inservice.

I object to the whole thing.....dumbing down my subject, common level, losing 40 mins per week contact time, correcting an assignment, special needs coming in and out my class randomly. Nonsense.

mirrorwall14

At least I'm not alone. What worries me most is actually the 'unpacking' of the specification.

No one can convince me that a syllabus, sorry, specification for Music that doesn't even list reading the treble/bass clef for example is appropriate. It's ludicrous. We're all going to end up teaching different stuff and it will be MY fault if I chose the 'wrong' things to teach

Millem

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

At least I'm not alone. What worries me most is actually the 'unpacking' of the specification.

No one can convince me that a syllabus, sorry, specification for Music that doesn't even list reading the treble/bass clef for example is appropriate. It's ludicrous. We're all going to end up teaching different stuff and it will be MY fault if I chose the 'wrong' things to teach

Mirror wall it is a joke! Do you mean you will teach different things because of short courses? Or if you teach it as an exam subject?

mirrorwall14

Millem wrote: »

Mirror wall it is a joke! Do you mean you will teach different things because of short courses? Or if you teach it as an exam subject?

No I mean I teach it as a full supject. The spec is beyond vague. Don't get me wrong, I reckon I'll have fun teaching it but I'm never going to know if what I 'chose' to unpack it as is correct. And it will be very likely that my interpretation will lead to my school becoming known for one thing and another schools interpretation will be to something else.

The spec says 'read interpret and play from a symbolic representation of sounds'. That literally could mean anything. Clefs, plainchant, graphic scores? Who knows

Millem

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

No I mean I teach it as a full supject. The spec is beyond vague. Don't get me wrong, I reckon I'll have fun teaching it but I'm never going to know if what I 'chose' to unpack it as is correct. And it will be very likely that my interpretation will lead to my school becoming known for one thing and another schools interpretation will be to something else.

The spec says 'read interpret and play from a symbolic representation of sounds'. That literally could mean anything. Clefs, plainchant, graphic scores? Who knows

Oh I see! Listen it's all a big joke! They told us that we mark child's assignment, then meet to discuss grades??? Surely we should meet first, agree what is "above expectations" (or whatever language they are using), see samples provided by SEC then mark? Basically like see would do now for SEC. My fear is a very small percentage of teachers currently mark for SEC so don't really know the standards tbh. I would of put myself in that category before I started marking.

I would say it will be a big disaster

implausible

Millem wrote: »

They told us that we mark child's assignment, then meet to discuss grades??? Surely we should meet first, agree what is "above expectations" (or whatever language they are using), see samples provided by SEC then mark?

At inservice for English, we spent a large portion of the day doing exactly that - going through samples. Because the spec was changed from the original 60/40 split, the SEC now has nothing to do with the Classroom Based Assessments. English teachers also have access to online resources where there were numerous examples of assessed student work. I'd imagine that it will be the same for your subject.

The_Valeyard

Just give everyone an A grade. It's what they wanted along, to artificially inflate results on international league tables and such.

Gold medals for all, everyone is a winner.

Jamfa

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Just give everyone an A grade. It's what they wanted along, to artificially inflate results on international league tables and such.

Gold medals for all, everyone is a winner.

If they are the DES & NCCA then why have they gotten rid of A grades and replaced them with Distinction etc?

Millem

Jamfa wrote: »

If they are the DES & NCCA then why have they gotten rid of A grades and replaced them with Distinction etc?

The words we were told are "above expectations", "meeting expectations" etc

Jamfa

Millem wrote: »

The words we were told are "above expectations", "meeting expectations" etc

Yeah that's for the CBAs but the SEC assessments are Distinction, Higher Merit etc.

Millem

Jamfa wrote: »

Yeah that's for the CBAs but the SEC assessments are Distinction, Higher Merit etc.

Oh sorry I thought when the poster said give them all As they were referring to the assignments we have to mark

r93kaey5p2izun

Have the subjects being rolled out in Sept 2017 had subject inservice yet? Is it still Art, Languages and Irish definitely?

I had heard that there were issues with the Irish specification so it was being postponed - but I was reading yesterday about the new set up with separate courses for Gaelcholaiste and Gaeltacht schools and didn't see any delay mentioned. Has anyone heard?

fall

I did the modern foreign language one today and the Irish one was also on. Found it grand. The one thing I am not into is the actual junior certificate they will get. It will have three results per subject, one for the final exam and two continuous assessment results. I will be interested to see what that looks like. Sounds like a lot on one cert

r93kaey5p2izun

fall wrote: »

I did the modern foreign language one today and the Irish one was also on. Found it grand. The one thing I am not into is the actual junior certificate they will get. It will have three results per subject, one for the final exam and two continuous assessment results. I will be interested to see what that looks like. Sounds like a lot on one cert

That's the first Irish one I've heard about. We had our cluster day a while ago and there was specific CPD for English, Science, Business, MFL and Art - but nothing for Irish.

fall

It was the first one as far as I am aware. And it was actually only because the specification was only just published.

beveragelady

I was wondering if other teachers have similar concerns to mine.
I tech English and my biggest worry is as follows: The course is so very vague and "scattergun" that we're trying to cover a lot of material with little time to go in-depth. The questions on the sample papers, meanwhile, are very focused and specific.
I could easily see a situation arising where a technical term might be used in the question which we only touched on or maybe we didn't do at all because it's not particularly relevant to out choice of texts.
I wish there was a list of terms that I knew I had to cover. Instead we keep being told that the learning must be child-led, we should embrace technology, have them compose tweets instead of paragraphs. All very fluffy and unhelpful stuff.

The_Valeyard

Jamfa wrote: »

If they are the DES & NCCA then why have they gotten rid of A grades and replaced them with Distinction etc?

same thing, just changing a phrase.