It’s the night before the biggest day of my career in a long, long while. I’m being assessed tomorrow and to be frank, I’m woefully ill-prepared. He’s going to watch me teach synthetic phonics to a bunch of 5-year olds who I met for the first time today. I thought I’d have the help of a TA to keep the peace but she’s not in tomorrow. They’re supposed to be learning a block of tricky words including he, she and said. You may think that these words are incredibly simple but in phonics they are tricky because the vowel sound of the “e” doesn’t conform to the sound you normally make with an “e”. Likewise said isn’t pronounced how you’d expect. So, the trouble is I barely know why these are tricky words so making children understand the nuances of this complex language in front of a man who’ll decide if I’m good enough to go on into the next stage of the training process is daunting to say the least.

Still, you’ll be glad to know that I called it a day at 12 hours’ work today – DM is worrying about the pressure I’m under and for the sake of self-preservation I decided enough was enough, for today at least. If I make it through tomorrow I may be reinvigorated but for now, that’s it…finite…all done…no more. This is, therefore, the cop-out, easy-peasy shot with that healthy dose of self-preservation in mind.