Jude Smith

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator. What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

Some of you will be aware that I have had a wee cardboard cut out of none other than our fair chancellor in the boot of my car for about 3 years now! Well today he has his day. Unplanned and stuck for something to do I'm going to look at the Great Depression head on! Gordon will take the lead!!! Could be an unmitigated disaster- could be legendary.. watch this space!!!

Wow. I feel like a proper teacher now. I've had two lesson observations and performance management review in the last 25 hours. And its not even an OfSted. Its such a funny one as I;m just not used to being looked at this closely- but its good for me. We just set targets about me being a little firmer in my application of the school rules and some bits and pieces around literacy! I'll get feedback on the observations in due course but early signs are good. Two people accosted me to say that the building learning power guy was waxing lyrical about my lesson yesterday.. happy days. (And more importantly apparently all the kids like me!!) Sometimes I feel like I could do this all the time.. I'm sure it will pass...

What type of person do you attract? Your Result: You attract geeks! Your stunning intellect and love of sci-fi and video games allures the geeks like nothing else. Maybe it is the sparkle in your eye that makes them want to text you, who knows. Geeks make good partners, but tend to be arguementative. If you are a TRUE geek magnet, you will know if that was spelled correctly, and actually care. If it is a bad-boy/bad-girl you are seeking, you are barking up the wrong tree, unless they are just 'bad' behind a PS2 console. You attract Yuppies! You attract models! You attract artsy people! You attract rednecks! You attract unstable people! What type of person do you attract? Quizzes for MySpace I have to stop with the internet quizzes!!!!!

You know the Bible 100%! Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic! Ultimate Bible Quiz Create MySpace Quizzes

I discovered this great new programme t'other day.. its called "Books", and is a very cute little freeware database for books (does exactly what it says.. blah). Its really cool cos it downloads the details very much like Gracenote does for itunes.. and there's a section where you can write who you have loaned books to. I'm sure it would work for DVD too. Not sure it works on Windows but! oooh yes, find it via www.FreeMacWare.com

Sleepy!!!

I heard a couple of really disheartening things for education and schools this week. The obvious one is that the government would like to make its stats look better by incarcerating all students in schools or training to aged 18. 'tis a veritable joke idiot policy makers who all probably loved school! Its mean, its restrictive and it will drive more educators out! Have they not spoken to sixth form teachers who already are struggling with unmotivated year 12's and 13's... something which never happened 20 years ago. The other was just a comment I heard on the radio. Some schools (all primaries in Cirencester in fact) have banned ball games in the playground for health and saftey reasons. Part of growing up is getting whacked in the face with one of those pimply footballs! Its character building! Its rubbish stupid paranoia like this which means we will continue to get our sporting arses whopped by a country with 8 million people! Its a b****y disgrace!

So, the USA is sending more troops to Iraq. The argument is that more troops will be able to quell the rising tide of violence in the Baghdad region. Forty years ago similar arguments were being made about Vietnam. Just a little more and we'll get this under control. Similar rhetoric was used about axes of evil. Similarly allies were dropping back (Margaret Beckett has said the UK will not send more troops). Similarly the US body count is rising- a mere shadow of the civilian body count that grows daily in Iraq. Again the US is trying to make this about clashing ideology with themselves as the holders of all things democratic. Like Vietnam the people just want the US out of their country. Maybe the only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history. It makes me sad. It should also make Bush nervous. In his second term he has nothing to lose personally but his legacy to the world is getting darker by the day. If the Vietnam pattern continues The US w...

So I'm meeting the DDO again tomorrow, where we will look criteria G: faith. One of the questions is; 'what is your gospel?'. Its a really interesting question; one that I have probably answered in many ways through the last 16 years. Today I think it is.. 'God made humanity to live in relationship with him, we chose to wander away from that and so the world has ended up essentially still good but just a shadow of what its meant to be. Thats true both of us individually and humanity in general. God has made a way for us to restore our relationship with him, and to become agents in restoring how things were always supposed to be. That way: is Jesus. As part of God, he lived on earth modelling the way that God chooses to change things. He kicked out demons, healed the sick, dignified the poor, and chose to subject himself to a world that hated him. He invites us to live like him- and gives us hope of doing just that through the Holy Spirit. The Bible uses the im...

I have to get an academic referee for vicar school! Which is harder than it may seem. I left university over ten years ago. I qualified as a teacher 9.5 years ago. I did my post grad funding thing 5 years ago. Now I know not a person who might say, yes her, she can study! Rach just came up with this "Dear Professor Theology Jude-ith is great at studying. She has lots of books and she writes lots. She is also about as mad as most of the other academics I have met but she has more social skills and better handwriting. Rach" But I;m not sure they'll take it!! Help!

I've just emerged from a day under the duvet, so at 1050pm I'm surprisingly coming to life- and looking to publically establish my new year aims.. These are not really them- but they are an interesting little experiment. Having been watching duff telly all day I'm aware that everyone has gone dietastic this new year. Its tempting to join in (as I write I am drinking smoothie and am wrapped in cling film, apart from my face, which is covered in mud!): but I'm wondering what will it be like if I just do the government's basic minimums? That means 3 lots of 30 minutes CV (cardio vsacular as opposed to "I was pontifex maximus of the oldest (and maybe oddest) universoty society"), and it means 5 fruit/ veg a day. Will keep you all posted. Also let me know if there are others that I'm missing! Bless you all

Alas I have succumbed to some kind of coldy thing. It means that I've been awake most of the night trying to breathe (only in a snuffly nose kind of way!). So although I'm now absolutely wastedly tired I did get to hear the cricket for a while... well all night really. Which obviously is going to make me feel just so much better! A whitewash looks almost inevitable.. Looks like Warne won't have to bat again (still witout the elusive century), also looks like another early finish.. No analysis yet.. just a feeling of sad!

Hi happy new year! I decided to give myself a very chilled start to the new year, and take advnantage of the fact I was near a big Cineworld. So you join me between happy feet and flags of our fathers. I have to say that Happy Feet disturbed me slightly.. plot spoiler on its way.. The whoel premise of the film rests on the fact that this type of penguin are supposed to have a heart song that is their very own. Mumble, the main character, doesn’t have that (arguably cos his dad dropped him when he was an egg). To cut a long story short his lack of heart song (he dances instead) means that he saves the tribe from extinction.. That’s great. But he never finds his heart song. And that, even as I type, I find heartbreaking. I believe in a God who wants us all to find our heart song.. not to fit in, not to find a perfect life long mate, but because that what we were created to have. I know that God will use our brokenness to help us pioneer, save, develop, do amazing things. But ulti...