precipitous learning curve!

I am feeling a lot like Alice down the rabbit hole, having stumbled upon MoE by chance.

Attending a Leadership Network day, rather by mistake, finding myself the only non-Head /Deputy in the room I was glad to be joined by two teachers doing a presentation on mantle. They seemed to be feeling as 'out of things' as I was.

Watching their video and feeling their enthusiasm, something clicked. A week later my class and I reached the culmination of our first Mantle project, excrucuatingly captured on video.

I feel as though I am groping my way in the dark: too busy to plan this properly, (In the large junior school I work in, the 5 class yeargroup teams plan together. Therefore I am full of subterfuge, planning away in discrete subject areas, knowing that Mantle is like a drug in my veins and that I will not be able to separate my 2 week literacy cycle from my PSHE and science because I've seen a link and hatched a plot already!)

My guilt at indulging myself without yet sharing this amazing revelation was lifted today. One of my year group colleagues bounded in to see at me at lunchtime: "I've done your thing, I hope you don't mind, I've stolen your idea, the kids love it!"
I assure her that it wasn't my idea and that I am hugely relieved that she was so positive about the ideas I'd briefly shown her. My next task, once I've worked out what on earth I'm doing with this thing that's so much bigger than I am, is to disseminate it to my yeargroup, and eventually to all 20 teachers at my school.

No, I don't feel like Alice; I feel like a guinea pig; in fact, a laboratory rat. The company in my classroom right now is 'Bio Research Labs' and we are testing consumer foods for toxic chemical traces. I feel empathy with those lab rats!