Up a bit this week.

1.5 up, to be accurate! Still, it's been the kid's Easter holidays for
the last two weeks here in the UK, and I haven't had much exercise (no
daily 2 mile walk, just a couple of strenuous house clearing days!).
It'll soon be gone!

Time was I'd have bitten through my worry beads over this, but now I
know that it's sitting on me bum and not walking that has caused a
hesitation, so I shall just get over it, get up and walk, and move on!
--
Kate XXXXXX
Lady Catherine, Wardrobe Mistress of the Chocolate Buttons
http://www.diceyhome.free-online.co.uk
Click on Kate's Pages and explore!

Kate Dicey wrote:
1.5 up, to be accurate! Still, it's been the kid's Easter holidays for
the last two weeks here in the UK, and I haven't had much exercise (no
daily 2 mile walk, just a couple of strenuous house clearing days!).
It'll soon be gone!

Time was I'd have bitten through my worry beads over this, but now I
know that it's sitting on me bum and not walking that has caused a
hesitation, so I shall just get over it, get up and walk, and move on!

It's great that you know the cause!! When you get to move your weight
will move back down, no doubt!!

--

Cheers,

Connie Walsh

241.5/191.5/155
WNM 193.5/191.5/181.5
30 lbs to go 191.5/191.5/185

With your great attitude, and with the kids back in school, I bet you will
be walking more this week and that will reflect on the scales. Good luck!
--
Nathalie from Belgium
134.1/97/minigoal 94.1/ Goal 68 Kg
295.6/213.9/minigoal 207.5/Goal 150 pounds
WNM: 216.3/213.9/203 lbs
98.1/98.1/92 kg
"Kate Dicey" wrote in message
...
1.5 up, to be accurate! Still, it's been the kid's Easter holidays for
the last two weeks here in the UK, and I haven't had much exercise (no
daily 2 mile walk, just a couple of strenuous house clearing days!).
It'll soon be gone!

Time was I'd have bitten through my worry beads over this, but now I
know that it's sitting on me bum and not walking that has caused a
hesitation, so I shall just get over it, get up and walk, and move on!
--
Kate XXXXXX
Lady Catherine, Wardrobe Mistress of the Chocolate Buttons
http://www.diceyhome.free-online.co.uk
Click on Kate's Pages and explore!

Easter is enough to make anyone gain - I did - but it went again And I
don't blame the chocolate - I blame the stress of having the kids at home
for 2 weeks! You'll see - back to normal routine, back to your walking,
and it'll be gone in no time!

--
krys

UK 157/129.2/126
Started March 1st 2001
GOAL August 16th 2001
....hmmmmmmm...

"Kate Dicey" wrote in message
...
1.5 up, to be accurate! Still, it's been the kid's Easter holidays for
the last two weeks here in the UK, and I haven't had much exercise (no
daily 2 mile walk, just a couple of strenuous house clearing days!).
It'll soon be gone!

Time was I'd have bitten through my worry beads over this, but now I
know that it's sitting on me bum and not walking that has caused a
hesitation, so I shall just get over it, get up and walk, and move on!
--
Kate XXXXXX
Lady Catherine, Wardrobe Mistress of the Chocolate Buttons
http://www.diceyhome.free-online.co.uk
Click on Kate's Pages and explore!

You get the kids for 2 weeks during Easter? Wow.

Hang in there Kate. Now that they are back to school you'll be walking and
I expect to see the 1.5 down next week :-)

Julie

"Kate Dicey" wrote in message
...
1.5 up, to be accurate! Still, it's been the kid's Easter holidays for
the last two weeks here in the UK, and I haven't had much exercise (no
daily 2 mile walk, just a couple of strenuous house clearing days!).
It'll soon be gone!

Time was I'd have bitten through my worry beads over this, but now I
know that it's sitting on me bum and not walking that has caused a
hesitation, so I shall just get over it, get up and walk, and move on!
--
Kate XXXXXX
Lady Catherine, Wardrobe Mistress of the Chocolate Buttons
http://www.diceyhome.free-online.co.uk
Click on Kate's Pages and explore!

skiur wrote:

You get the kids for 2 weeks during Easter? Wow.

Hang in there Kate. Now that they are back to school you'll be walking and
I expect to see the 1.5 down next week :-)

We get 2 weeks at Christmas, 2 weeks at Easter, and 5 weeks in the
summer. In addition there is the one week 'half term' break in the
middle of each term... Except that we get it Whitsun week in the summer
term, a month from now! Then there is that Looooong 'half' until the
summer break from the end of July to the beginning of September.

When I was teaching full time it was mad... We had a 'long half' from
September to the end of October, then the lead up to Christmas was
packed! Then the term from Christmas to Easter FELT like a short one
(it is when Easter is early). After Easter we had barely 4 weeks (as
there are 3 bank holidays close together: Easter, May Day, and Whitsun)
until half term, and then we were in the full flood of exams. The last
month after all the exams were finished with was sooooooo long and
dreary for those left, and they NEVER wanted to work! The GOOD thing
was that the 5th form (aged 16 or so) and the Upper VI (18+) no longer
attended school once the exams started, so you had more free time to
plan for the others, catch up on marking, and whatever. It's all a bit
different now as the exams are more spread out.

It sounds like you get 12 weeks holiday a year as a teacher, but it
never works out like that. You spend half of it in school doing admin
stuff, planning lessons and preparing classes, and more of it at home
reading all the new crap sent out from the government about what you
should be doing that's different and how changes in the law affect you
in the classroom, how the exam syllabus has changed yet again, and all
the new grade criteria THAT involves (and that's before you have to read
all the books and prepare your teaching notes!), and then during term
time you regularly do an 80 hour week just to keep abreast of the
marking and grading and record keeping. And people ask why I don't do
it any more... NOBODY pays well enough to get me back on that spiral of
insanity!
--
Kate XXXXXX
Lady Catherine, Wardrobe Mistress of the Chocolate Buttons
http://www.diceyhome.free-online.co.uk
Click on Kate's Pages and explore!

Kate,

How long is the teaching day in the classroom with the students? I know
here the day is from 8:30 am to 3:00 pm for the elementary school age
children (ages 6-13) and for high school ages (14-18) is from 7:12 am to
2:05 pm. They have lots of time off time depending on the schedule they are
on. The modified schedule is:

8 weeks instruction
2 week break
8 weeks instruction
2 week break (Christmas holidays)
8 weeks instruction
2 week break (sometimes it coincides with Easter and sometimes it does not)
8 weeks instruction
8 week Summer Break

Then there is the year round schedule which is:

16 weeks instruction
8 week break
16 weeks instruction
8 week break

The year round schedule is what my kids dealt with for all of their
elementary years. The two month breaks rotated depending on what "Track"
you were on. So they could utilize the facilities year round but only have
2/3 of the students on campus at a given time. My kids had the months of
March/April and September/October off. I liked going on vacations off
season and was able to see lots of things that you can not see during the
regular summer breaks (autumn colors in the Rocky Mountains).

My daughter who is in high school now (she is 15), Starts mid August and
does not get a break until the Christmas holidays when she is off for 3
weeks, then she has a week off for Easter in the spring and then school lets
out at the end of May. But she typically takes summer classes at the
college to get ahead. So she has school all but two weeks of her summer
break too.

My oldest daughter is currently attending university in order to become a
school teacher. I think great teachers put in the hours you talk about that
you did, but I think there are a lot of very poor and mediocre teachers that
should not be teaching and take advantage of the shorter work day and all
the time off during the year. Just my two cents (pence) worth.

Debbie

"Kate Dicey" wrote in message
...


skiur wrote:

You get the kids for 2 weeks during Easter? Wow.

Hang in there Kate. Now that they are back to school you'll be walking
and
I expect to see the 1.5 down next week :-)

We get 2 weeks at Christmas, 2 weeks at Easter, and 5 weeks in the
summer. In addition there is the one week 'half term' break in the
middle of each term... Except that we get it Whitsun week in the summer
term, a month from now! Then there is that Looooong 'half' until the
summer break from the end of July to the beginning of September.

When I was teaching full time it was mad... We had a 'long half' from
September to the end of October, then the lead up to Christmas was
packed! Then the term from Christmas to Easter FELT like a short one
(it is when Easter is early). After Easter we had barely 4 weeks (as
there are 3 bank holidays close together: Easter, May Day, and Whitsun)
until half term, and then we were in the full flood of exams. The last
month after all the exams were finished with was sooooooo long and
dreary for those left, and they NEVER wanted to work! The GOOD thing
was that the 5th form (aged 16 or so) and the Upper VI (18+) no longer
attended school once the exams started, so you had more free time to
plan for the others, catch up on marking, and whatever. It's all a bit
different now as the exams are more spread out.

It sounds like you get 12 weeks holiday a year as a teacher, but it
never works out like that. You spend half of it in school doing admin
stuff, planning lessons and preparing classes, and more of it at home
reading all the new crap sent out from the government about what you
should be doing that's different and how changes in the law affect you
in the classroom, how the exam syllabus has changed yet again, and all
the new grade criteria THAT involves (and that's before you have to read
all the books and prepare your teaching notes!), and then during term
time you regularly do an 80 hour week just to keep abreast of the
marking and grading and record keeping. And people ask why I don't do
it any more... NOBODY pays well enough to get me back on that spiral of
insanity!
--
Kate XXXXXX
Lady Catherine, Wardrobe Mistress of the Chocolate Buttons
http://www.diceyhome.free-online.co.uk
Click on Kate's Pages and explore!

That's some food for though....pun unintended.

I was considering being a teacher, but it sounds like the pay to commitment
isn't worth it and the benefit (time off) isn't as much as advertised.

Julie


"Kate Dicey" wrote in message
...


skiur wrote:

You get the kids for 2 weeks during Easter? Wow.

Hang in there Kate. Now that they are back to school you'll be walking
and
I expect to see the 1.5 down next week :-)

We get 2 weeks at Christmas, 2 weeks at Easter, and 5 weeks in the
summer. In addition there is the one week 'half term' break in the
middle of each term... Except that we get it Whitsun week in the summer
term, a month from now! Then there is that Looooong 'half' until the
summer break from the end of July to the beginning of September.

When I was teaching full time it was mad... We had a 'long half' from
September to the end of October, then the lead up to Christmas was
packed! Then the term from Christmas to Easter FELT like a short one
(it is when Easter is early). After Easter we had barely 4 weeks (as
there are 3 bank holidays close together: Easter, May Day, and Whitsun)
until half term, and then we were in the full flood of exams. The last
month after all the exams were finished with was sooooooo long and
dreary for those left, and they NEVER wanted to work! The GOOD thing
was that the 5th form (aged 16 or so) and the Upper VI (18+) no longer
attended school once the exams started, so you had more free time to
plan for the others, catch up on marking, and whatever. It's all a bit
different now as the exams are more spread out.

It sounds like you get 12 weeks holiday a year as a teacher, but it
never works out like that. You spend half of it in school doing admin
stuff, planning lessons and preparing classes, and more of it at home
reading all the new crap sent out from the government about what you
should be doing that's different and how changes in the law affect you
in the classroom, how the exam syllabus has changed yet again, and all
the new grade criteria THAT involves (and that's before you have to read
all the books and prepare your teaching notes!), and then during term
time you regularly do an 80 hour week just to keep abreast of the
marking and grading and record keeping. And people ask why I don't do
it any more... NOBODY pays well enough to get me back on that spiral of
insanity!
--
Kate XXXXXX
Lady Catherine, Wardrobe Mistress of the Chocolate Buttons
http://www.diceyhome.free-online.co.uk
Click on Kate's Pages and explore!

Deb in Northern California wrote:

Kate,

How long is the teaching day in the classroom with the students?

Depends a bit on the type of school... Here James is at the local
primary and they start at 9 and finish at 3:25 or so. I taught
secondary level (11-18), and they usually start about 8:30 and finish at
about 3:45 pm. I used to get in at 8 am and leave at about 7 pm, and do
another 2-3 hours marking and prep after dinner.

Because the out of school and 'holiday' time was infinitely flexible,
and some idle wotzitz did very little while other eager beavers did way
too much, they brought in what they called 'directed time', which was
supposed to cover both teaching and non-contact time spend on the job in
meetings and in service training. It's something like 12068 hours a
year, which works out as a 31 hour week during term time only. Prep and
marking was on top of this... The year they brought this in they also
introduced the National Curriculum AND changed the exam system for 16+
radically, requiring a lot of meetings, in service training on the new
exam systems, and whatever. The department I worked in (a very
efficiently run English dept in a boy's school) had used up all this
directed time by a week before the Easter break! Our head of department
said that as we were not being paid for any more hours that year, we
would not be in school, but we WOULD do all our preparation and marking
at home... It brought home to the head just how much we were doing! I
remember one particularly awful week when they changed the paperwork
requirements a week before the coursework deadline, and I spent 25 man
hours over the weekend sorting it out, then worked right through the
night and went back into school to teach TWICE before Friday. Others in
the department were doing the same, and none of us marked anything that
wasn't both urgent and essential in the way of exercise books that week.

That Directed time thing was a joke: it barely covered us for teaching
time, never mind essential meetings! And when you think that every hour
long lesson you teach takes another hour at lest in prep and marking,
you can see why teachers got a bit sour when told they were well paid
for working a 5 hour day and a 40 week year! Now things are different.
You need two bodies just to keep up with the recording and marking! I
worked out with another teacher recently that if teachers had the UK
standard 25 days (or 5 weeks, as weekends are not counted as working
days)) holiday per year, they would still need to work a 68 hour working
week to get the job done!

The modified schedule is:

8 weeks instruction
2 week break
8 weeks instruction
2 week break (Christmas holidays)
8 weeks instruction
2 week break (sometimes it coincides with Easter and sometimes it does not)
8 weeks instruction
8 week Summer Break

Then there is the year round schedule which is:

16 weeks instruction
8 week break
16 weeks instruction
8 week break

This works out as a working year of 32 weeks, which is shorter than the
UK standard of 40. I KNEW we worked our kids too hard!

The year round schedule is what my kids dealt with for all of their
elementary years. The two month breaks rotated depending on what "Track"
you were on. So they could utilize the facilities year round but only have
2/3 of the students on campus at a given time. My kids had the months of
March/April and September/October off. I liked going on vacations off
season and was able to see lots of things that you can not see during the
regular summer breaks (autumn colors in the Rocky Mountains).

My daughter who is in high school now (she is 15), Starts mid August and
does not get a break until the Christmas holidays when she is off for 3
weeks, then she has a week off for Easter in the spring and then school lets
out at the end of May. But she typically takes summer classes at the
college to get ahead. So she has school all but two weeks of her summer
break too.

Here if you teach summer schools, you get paid extra for them. A lot of
regular classroom teachers cannot spare the time, as they spend the 5
week summer break preparing for the next year.

My oldest daughter is currently attending university in order to become a
school teacher. I think great teachers put in the hours you talk about that
you did, but I think there are a lot of very poor and mediocre teachers that
should not be teaching and take advantage of the shorter work day and all
the time off during the year. Just my two cents (pence) worth.

That's getting less common here in the UK, with all the requirements one
has to fill just to get the job done, and the introduction of annual
assessments for teachers! Lots of teachers really complained about that
when it was brought in, but I never had a problem with it. They come
and observe you teach, to make sure you do it right, and they look at
the records and paperwork to make sure you are on track. If there are
problems, you SHOULD get help and advice to fix it, but you can also be
asked to help a colleague with difficulties! Happened to me one time!
I had a 'problem class' (very rowdy!) and needed help sorting out my
dealings with them, while teaching another how I planned lessons,
because she found that incredibly hard! I've never bothered about being
watched teaching: after all, the kids watch you and asses you all the
time, and they know who the good teachers are, and which ones are idle
buggers!


--
Kate XXXXXX
Lady Catherine, Wardrobe Mistress of the Chocolate Buttons
http://www.diceyhome.free-online.co.uk
Click on Kate's Pages and explore!

skiur wrote:

That's some food for though....pun unintended.

I was considering being a teacher, but it sounds like the pay to commitment
isn't worth it and the benefit (time off) isn't as much as advertised.

Julie

My last 18 months in full time teaching we had 32 government inspired
initiatives... All new stuff we had to do, and nobody ever said we
could drop some of the other stuff! I went to one staff meeting and the
head had a 4 ft high pile of paper beside him: it was all stuff that had
arrived in the two week period he had taken off in the middle of the
summer to spend some time with his wife (another teacher) and his kids!
It ALL had to be read, assimilated, put into practice and staff trained
for it by 1st September! By the time he GOT to some of it, it was
superseded by a new initiative...

Then if you dare to take kids out on trips you get vilified and sued if
something goes wrong when they do exactly what you told them NOT to do
and get hurt! Or it causes a national newspaper scandal when a 17 YO
gets drunk in Germany (where he's legally old enough to drink!) and
chokes to death on his own vomit, after his condition is concealed by
his friends because they are all trying to avoid being made to look
stupid by being told off!
--
Kate XXXXXX
Lady Catherine, Wardrobe Mistress of the Chocolate Buttons
http://www.diceyhome.free-online.co.uk
Click on Kate's Pages and explore!