WOW! Time flies.

Looking back I didn’t realise it has been over 3 years since the last post on here, and yet, so much has changed in that time.
In July 2017, I took the decision to leave the school where I was working. I didn’t really want to because when things were going good, I loved the job, but, they were making it very difficult for me to do it, with a disability. I won’t bore you with the specifics, however, I think I could have made a good case for constructive dismissal.
The year before I had been going to Universities with my daughter, attending interviews and open days. Looking round all the art facilities made me want to do this for myself. When I was 16 I had been working part-time at Tesco’s whilst I did my ‘O’ levels at college and when college finished they offered me a full-time position. My dad said I should take it, even though I wanted to go on to an Art foundation. In the late 1970’s I wouldn’t have dared to stand up to my dad so I found myself at Tesco’s and from there, I went from job to job, only ever happy when there was a challenge, then I would move onto the next job. The school was my longest ever employment and I was there for 11 years.
Leaving the school was a huge relief, not just in respect of the disability but also because of the behaviour of the students and that they wanted to make teaching assistants accountable for grades as well as the teachers. Considering that in the academic year of 2015/16 I had over 60 SEN children on my timetable split over 25 hour long lessons per week, how was that ever to be achieved? Most of the kids I saw was just for one hour every week. It’s just not possible to make a difference to a child’s education when you only see them for one hour a week. Behaviour was horrendous! Disrupted classes, departments manned by supply who couldn’t control/motivate. Kids came to school with the sole intention of disrupting classes because they didn’t want to do the work. So, they’d misbehave and get sent to the behaviour suite where, they got what they wanted. Seriously....... they should bring in the American model. If a student doesn’t reach an acceptable standard in that year, then they are held back and must repeat the year. One of the saddest thing I saw was a young lad who was so addicted to Xbox gaming, he didn’t go to sleep till 3/4am in the morning and then would have to be up for school by around 7am. He drank energy drinks to stay awake, but would be bouncing off the walls being disruptive for most of the day, then he’d go home and repeat the cycle. This was a lad who could have succeeded in class if not for this.
Anyway... back to the story. In 2016/17 I had a lovely little class of at max 15 students, all SEN but not a bad group on the whole. It was a nice way to end my employment there.
My daughter had been at Uni for a year by then and my two boys lived with their father, so it seemed like a good time to look into returning to higher education. I made the application at the beginning of the summer holidays. I had an interview two weeks later and was given an unconditional offer and the rest of the time was just waiting for student finance to go through.
So.... I have been at Bradford College of Art for a year and a half now and I’m absolutely loving every minute. I’m getting good grades (2.1) so I’m mega chuffed with myself. We have a group of 5 of us , which is really good.  We have learnt so much. It’s fantastic. I just wish I could have done it when education was free.
I did stop doing my card making classes because I wanted to concentrate totally on my art without distractions, and that is why I haven’t posted for so long. I also started up a new blog on WIx, but, I’m not sure whether it’s live, as I can’t find it through an internet search, so I’m going to update this one instead.