Timetables

Thursday 4th: I am almost two weeks at timetables and still not quite finished. There are six teachers and they do their own timetables-that's good! But they all get two and a half hours release time (for preparation)per week-that's bad! But you can employ other teachers to cover this release time-that's good! But you have to pay these teachers-that's bad! But you can employ specialist teachers to do the release-that's good! But the principal does it too-that's bad! You can also use the LOTE teacher-that's good! But sometimes he releases a class teacher in order that she releases another class teacher so if you go looking for this teacher she is in another teacher's room-that's bad! You can timetable the P.E. teacher for the hall-that's good! But the P.A. teacher also wants the hall-that's bad! You have specialist teachers for reading recovery, literacy support and numeracy support-that's good! But they don't work every day nor not always the same day and you can go looking for them all over the place to find out that they are not in today-that's bad! You get lovely long breaks of 30 mins and 60 mins-that's good! But that means eight different blocks of yard duty have to be timetabled each day-that's bad! You do a lovely yard duty roster ensuring that everybody does the same duty-that's good! But you have sixteen different people some of whom work one day, some two, some three, some four and some five except that out of the forty blocks there is one who was not pro-rata the same-that bad! You somehow solve the problem without using the log book-that's good! Then the heavens open and it rains and rains and rains...