Ready, Steady...GO!

So day 1 of the dreaded degree course and so far so good! I have hopefully managed to get my blog up and running and have found most people starting the course also and attempted to put them into what appears to be called a 'circle'. Let's see if that has worked!
Unfortunately I couldn't attend the induction to an epic school trip the following day (more to follow) but managed to schedule a Skype induction with Paula which was very helpful and managed to calm many of my worries (and believe me there were a lot - it seems to be one of my biggest talents!) I'm just going to take it task at a time and see how I go, I am looking forward be getting into it and being able to enjoy using my experiences and knowledge to help me along the yellow brick road to graduation!

Talking of yellow brick roads, I thought I would share with you my wonderful trip with years 4,5 and 6 of my primary school. As I said in the 'about me' section of this page, I am lucky enough to work in a fabulously artistic school that puts great emphasis on the importance of arts in education. Every year the school puts on a big trip to London, bearing in mind we live in Lancashire and most of the kids haven't spent any time away from their parents other than the be at school, this is a big deal! Following a sleepover in school we got up at 2am in order to get 60 children washed, dressed, fed and on a coach ready to set off at 3.30am! 6 hours and 2 service station stop offs later we arrived in central London ready for our backstage tour of the National Theatre. This was fabulous and the children did me proud, asking brilliant questions about the theatres, and showing great knowledge and interest about all aspects of working in a theatre, After this we had a quick lunch at Planet Hollywood followed by a mad dash the Apollo Victoria theatre to see the matinee performance of Wicked. We have been studying the musical, its story line and themes, its set design and costumes for a while now so it was magical to see the children being sucked into the performance, watching Elphaba and Galinda on their journeys to the yellow brick road of Oz and then being able to discuss all aspects of it with such passion on the way home...that is until they all crashed out and slept until we finally pulled up outside school at 11pm. What a day. It certainly was "one short day in the emerald city!" Despite it being an extremely long and tiring day, it reminded me how much I love my job, how important it is for children to have these experiences and how lucky I am to share it with them!
Boy, I wish I could I have had trips like that when I was at school!