True art casts its net towards the future, celebrates and mourns. It invents prayers and weapons. It does not whimper or cower or throw up its hands and bat its lashes … it strikes like lightning (John Gardner).

Monday, January 18. WFH: DAY 7. 7.30 am:

7.45 am: A communion. 8.15 am: This would be a punishing week on all fronts. The diary would would be operating on a two (paired)-day basis, as a consequence. I endeavoured to clear those weekend emails that required an immediate response before settling to my REF duties, and the completion of the first PowerPoint.

I made a push to try and complete the first draft of the PowerPoint by the close of late evening. Betwixt, I headed-off emails at the pass, swooned at the influx of requests, and dealt with postgraduate admissions. However, I did achieve my goal.

Tuesday, January 19. WFH: DAY 8. At the abrupt close of my final dream last night, I was at my desk looking at a website entitled ‘The Museum of the Read Mind’. If only, in the next dream, you could take up where you’d left off. 7.30 am:

8.00 am: A communion. 8.30 am: Another ‘power-day’, in which I’d endeavour to fit a quart into a pint pot. Outside, Storm Christoph had begun to swirl around my studio windows. 9.00 am: I returned to assessing, and attended to the MA Vocational Practice one-to-one teaching practice submissions. They’re always a joy to assess. (Truly!) I get to see glimpses of teachers in embryo — the next generation of art educators. There were so many examples of these teacher-students providing empathetic support, as well as sound practical advice to their charge. For those who’ll become teachers one day, this project has, in the past, provided the confirming awareness of their gift and calling.

11.00 am: Teatime on a desultory morning. The rain had come:

I completed marking by 3.30 pm. Some principles and observations derived from my feedback:

• Your approach to the student was abundantly sane and encouraging.
• You’ve obviously possess a knack for getting along side and developing trusting relationships with folk. That’s crucial if you want to be a teacher.
• The tutorials were focussed and well-defined, and, therefore, the outcomes were evident and measurable.
• You began and ended with the student and their work. That’s professional.
• The most difficult students to teach are those who are the most unable and those who are the most able.
• Your own experience of being taught, and having gone through the same process as your charge, helped immensely.
• I suspect that you may be prone to underestimating your competence to meet the challenges of a new experience. However, in action, you demonstrate that you do have the ‘right stuff’, abundantly.
• You demonstrated a capacity to hear well, focus upon the needs of the student, and provide empathetic support and practical advice.
• Your advice was sufficiently flexible for the student to make choices and remain in command of their own trajectory.

I made preparations for tomorrow’s full day of Vocational Practice presentations. Something that I, again, always look forward to.

7.30 pm: The evening shift:

After sending out email dispatching consoling the discomforted and directing the lost, I spent my hours irately completing a Module Evaluation Questionnaire for my provision this last year. (Who in their right mind wants to navel stare or ponder criticism right now?) Thus, I wrote in my Action Plan (and with a fair degree of restraint):

It’s inappropriate to make judgements based on a mode of delivery that was responsive to the pandemic and its limitations, as opposed to the intrinsic nature of the module as it would’ve been expressed under normal circumstances … We hope NEVER to teach these module under such circumstances EVER again. Staff and students were grateful that we got to the end of the module intact, and with some sense that a meaningful and supportive exchange of ideas, teaching, and learning had taken place.