The Lovely Laura

Back blip and for the record.

What a day this was!

It started with the alarm going off at 6.30 and then my hair drier breaking, when I was already challenged by drying my hair with my sore hand/wrist. I sent Bb across the landing to borrow our neighbour's. I knew she'd be up and about as she has two wee kiddies!

Our assessor was with us today: Laura, pictured here, from Istanbul. She knows us, our course and the centre, which helps. It was a tad messy though as she was going to be in with me observing my first of two 40 min lessons, then moving into my co-trainer's class to observe the next two 40 min classes. My last 40 min slot was 'unassessed', meaning a little breather for me - time to finish writing up the lesson feedback. Still with me? A personal crisis then appeared, meaning that I offered to observe my co-trainer's last 40 class. So no breather. Then I couldn't give verbal feedback on that lesson as I was with my own trainees for that. Aaagh! Then when the assessor was with me for feedback, one of the trainees got rather defensive about her lesson and so that had to be dealt with and done clearly enough for the other trainees to see it as a learning experience. Phew!

We're now at 6.15pm and time for the official feedback on the course and the grading meeting of the 11 trainees. This is when we talk through each one's progress, our suggested provisional grades and agree about what they need to show in their final lessons. We also get verbal FB on the course in general: assignments, inout sessions, our support, feedback, organization of the course etc. All good there. This FB comes from the assessor going through the trainees' portfolios of lesson plans and our feedback on each class, written assignments and our marking of them, and a meeting with the group while we aren't in the room. This report goes to Cambridge and is mainly ticky boxy but about 50 pages in length, but with some comments.

We're now at 7pm and time for dinner with the assessor. One co-trainer's away in Bahrain for a couple of days, my other co-trainer's got a very real crisis to deal with, so it's just me and Laura. Thank goodness we know each other a bit! Lovely dinner in Sequoia in the Nile and I didn't start yawning till 9.30!

10.45pm I arrive home in a taxi, after dropping her off at her hotel, to drop into bed and read in BB's blip that he'd been stuck in a lift in Cairo airport - the thing of nightmares for me!! Too tired for nightmares though and collapse into bed and sleep.