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This is it, the famous TM4T Admin Lesson exercise.

You are going to tackle a variety of tasks, similar to those you might encounter in a typical secondary school. There will be some differences of course: there will be an absence of subject-specific tasks, but otherwise, we've tried to make things as realistic as possible.


The Scenario

You are in your NQT year, working in a city comprehensive school. Each lesson lasts 55 minutes. You are a Y9 form tutor and a Union member. There are only two teachers in your department, yourself and your Head of Department, a woman called Rula Patel. You respect and admire Rula and owe her a favour – you are therefore keen to help her. There is also an Administrative/Teaching Assistant in your department called Jenny, who went on her honeymoon last week, but is back soon.

It is shortly after autumn half-term; it is Thursday. Earlier in the week, Rula told you that she will be off school today (Thursday), tomorrow (Friday), and Monday of next week. She is going on a training course. This is unlucky timing, because she – and you – are really busy. She has asked you to clear out her pigeon-hole in the staffroom today and tomorrow, and to handle as many items as you can during your PPA lesson. You have agreed to do this as a personal favour to Rula. In addition, you need to deal with any items which are in your own pigeon-hole.

You will be on your own in the department (Rula is on her course, and Jenny isn't back till Monday); you must use your judgement to decide what to do yourself, what to ask Jenny to do on Monday, and what to leave for Rula's return on Tuesday. Fortunately, Rula's lessons are being re-timetabled to another subject – you don't need to worry about these.


How this Exercise Works

You need to record your actions on the Worksheet called 'Summary' - the one following this one. You will basically need two kinds of actions for each item: writing and/or filing, and there are columns in the Teacher-Summary spreadsheet for each. In the In the Write-What column, you should record exactly what you would write. For example, don't put... “Get Jenny to do the photocopying”; instead put “ Hi Jenny, 35 copies of this please”. In the Write-Where column, put 'e-mail' or 'planner', or wherever you would do your writing in real life. In the Filing columns, you should just mark what you would do with the piece of paper (or e-mail), for example: file it, dump it, put it in Jenny's In-tray, etc...

Note that this spreadsheet contains YOUR class-lists (but not Rula's); and also examples of the Work Requests which the admin team use.... Good luck.
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