Looking Down

Well looking down seemed to suit my mood today! Couldn't shake the gloom even though I kept busy - but looking on the bright side I can look round my clean house and feel pleased if not uplifted, that I have done stuff despite my gloom!
I did have a funny shot of Lucy looking down to the station for Hobbs's WIDWED05. A rather apt photobombing! Plus I rather liked the ones looking down the  railway track as fitting the challenge. However this one is the one that I was drawn to - and there are  a lot of downs to it! Down the steps, down the garden, down the river, down the valley! Perhaps even down the Viaduct?! It is the one that resonates with me for reasons I cannot define, yet I don't think it is the best one to meet the challenge.
 I sometimes have to remind myself that this is my Journal - that when I can't make my mind up on what to blip I should just go for what is meaningful to me - even if it is not the best photograph technically out of those I am considering, or does not show the whole area it was taken in - sometimes I think I get mistaken in thinking I am doing a tour and must put a detail in context!!!  
I'm often reminded of the first Photography Group meeting I ever went to, it  happened to be on a judging night, everyone had entered a photograph or more and were eagerly awaiting the judges verdict. To their shock and to somes horror, the judge refused to rate the photographs 1,2,3. He suggested we looked at them all, critiqued them for what we individually liked or felt could have been done better. He wanted discussion, openness, freedom from thinking anyones effort was not good enough, that there were better photographs, that they had failed, it was an individual critique. I don't know if everyone left the meeting happy, but I felt I had looked more, attended to detail, learnt more from everyones entry than I otherwise would have done. I must admit i only went to a couple more but did start the C&G course the judge taught! However it was not good timing with work and I never completed the course, I didn't have the time to do the various things set to develop oneself and felt it was a waste, better to do it when I had the time to really benefit from it. Now the thought of being in anything remotely like a classroom is anathema to me!!
 At the flower show I looked at the flower arrangements and a photographic exhibition, I read the comments, looked at the awards, agreed with some, disagreed with others, saw the reasons why some had failed to make it to a rating but had got highly commended. The judges in the flower competition had been unstinting in their comments and gave advice and explanation for their awards or opinion on those that failed to get one. Not so in the photography - just the rating! 
Perhaps having gone through several OFSTED's in  schools I am wary of judgements - a rating system that gives "satisfactory" as a bench mark. That looks for evidence of learning in children for whom profound and multiple learning difficulties means this is an aspiration that may take years to achieve - a single lesson is unlikely to elicit it. Evidence of learning opportunities I  don't object to, but how can anyone judge even this in 30 minutes  on a group of children it may have taken me months to come to know and understand? How can they possibly know what such an opportunity would look like to each individual child? My class consistently failed to reach all the termly targets I set them, and brought the Key Stage results down as a result! I would have to justify why they had not achieved what I had set for them - my answer was consistently that they had made the progress towards their targets as I had expected them to given the nonsense of expecting improvement in one term. I set targets for what I wanted next for them, not what would enable me to give it a tick and "achieved" so that the figures looked good on a piece of paper. There would be no 25/50/75 % achieved - the light bulb would either go in in their heads or it would not - but I would always aim for that flick of the switch.  I was pleased with them for maintaining responsiveness , relieved for some that they were still alive. If they engaged with me or stimuli, if they laughed, stilled in response, vocalised, I was overjoyed. Often if they stayed awake despite the shed load of drugs and night seizures they had had, I was happy.  
I have to admit I was pleased to have come out ok in inspections - If only because it must have stuck in the craw of the head who disliked what she saw as my argumentative and obstructive manner in staff meetings and my apparent inability to just do what I was told! If I were a head I doubt I would have liked someone like me either!!! Ironic that a system I disagreed with never failed me, and of course I was pleased and relieved, but how would I have felt and what would I have said if they had criticised me? Can one discount a system and tell oneself it doesn't matter when they mark you down and fail you, yet be pleased when they don't or they praise you? I know many teachers obliterated and unable to come to terms with a poor ofsted, it blighted them and they were never the same after. So how can one like a system that does this to people? Does anyone perform better in a climate of criticism that is not even remotely constructive?
So - after all this soul searching as to why I sometimes take so long to choose a blip, and exactly what my thoughts and reasons are as I do so - I have followed my instinct, next time I will just do so more quickly and save myself the unnecessary thought processes! I love Hobbs's widwed, they make me think more about what I take and to take things I may not have otherwise seen or been receptive to. The baggage I carry with me from work I must learn to unpack, it is not relevant here and I am simply fighting with myself and as usual I am a mass of contradictions!