Last weekend I attended the launch of the Chartered teacher programme. It was a very uplifting day which started with Alison Peacock greeting me with a handshake at the door (it wasn't just me of course, she greeted everyone that way!). She launched the programme with a short talk about her own career and the work of the Chartered College to date. This was swiftly followed by Laura McInerney talking about the Beests and the Birds. I enjoyed her approach to sharing current and future developments in education and am going to try a similar style with my own department tomorrow. The next three sessions told us a lot more about the programme itself with a focus up effective personal development from Ben Ward and evidence based education from Stuart Kime. I especially enjoyed meeting my mentor in the afternoon. I was attracted to the programme partly because of getting a mentor. During the last week I've been putting together some initial thoughts for my personal development plan and enjoyed working with the resources made available to us through the toolkit. It's good for us all to be encouraged to reflect on what we are actually doing rather than what we mean to do. In common with most teachers I get very caught up in the operational side of the job and devote large amounts of time and energy to my lessons. I'm looking forward to finalising the plan in the coming week and getting started on the rest of the phase one assignments.