Hecticity abounds...
Spent much of the day wrestling with the IAVMT MYSql dbase. That was fun. Not finished yet, but at least I've done the data-entry. It would be good to have it usable by next week.
Made the quickest of all possible chilli con carne, which we all ate with tortillas, then Kai and I bombed out to John Cabot for parents' evening. Which went extremely well. We first tried to find his form tutor, who wasn't where she said she'd be, so I asked Kai to ask one of the other teachers. As it happened his Geography teacher was handy... Nearly crushed my hand!
Big guy, towered over me, and boomed out into a hall crowded with teachers, kids and parents that Kai was an absolute delight to teach, bright, knowledgeable, enthusiastic and very well-behaved. But no, sorry, he didn't know where the form tutor was...
That kind of set the tone for the whole event. No-one had a bad word to say about the sprog except his Product Design teacher, and that was only that when he sits with a certain other sprog he gets sucked into talking rather than working. Kai himself said he's aware of it and tries not to sit with said sprog, but it's difficult - whereupon said teacher said she would move the whole class around a little so he could sit with someone else (and she'd break up a table of other sprogs who also all sit together and chat rather than focus, so it wouldn't look too obvious). Result!
His music teacher says he's the only one in his year to play keyboard with both hands, and is already well above the standard they're expected to reach by the beginning of year 9. She really wants him to continue on to BTEC/GCSE, and Kai is perfectly happy to comply - he loves his music. So we're now on the hunt for a better keyboard for him - and a very cheap/freecycled guitar, as he wants to try different instruments. And Ken said we'll see about a bassoon too, so he can sellotape it to his forehead and make like a jazz dalek...
And I could not believe his artwork. Makes mine look like scribbles.
The problem, I think, is going to be deciding which subjects he wants to concentrate on most, since at the moment he seems to be good at everything!
Except PE. I saw the PE teacher that gives him grief, from a distance. Think Nappa. This guy could be his live action double.
However, Kai's form tutor tells us that as of next year, the sprogs are going to be sorted into ability bands in PE, so he'll be with kids of his own level and hopefully tastes. And there's talk of offering mountain-biking as one of the options. Fingers crossed.
Anyway... He thinks, for next year, he's going to opt for Product Design for the tech GCSE, and for the other GCSE either Media Studies (with Astronomy as his reserve), or Astronomy (with Media Studies as his reserve. Astronomy... [sigh] Why didn't they offer astronomy when I was at school?) - the object being that the kids will all have two GCSEs before they even start studying seriously for their others -
and they'll have had the experience of researching their subject, turning in graded coursework, and sitting real exams, before all the real pressure starts.
So we're proud, so proud of him! All that hard work is proving well worth it.
Labels: John Cabot, Kai
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Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 10:21 pm
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