The Big One-O!

This week was almost as hard as the last.  The timetable seems to be shifting under our feet even as we're teaching according to it.  On Friday for example, the principal asked Amanda where I was as I was supposed to be teaching a class in 2A.  This was news to me and any timetable that we'd been given.  As far as we were aware this class had appeared out of nowhere.  The same thing happened to Amanda later that day, she had prepared for a three hour slog in homework club with the grade 3's and 4's only to have a teacher turn up and ask her why she was there.  Now this may seem like a good thing, but these lessons take aaages to prepare, Amanda had everything ready, she had the computer all hooked up to the new smart boards and was raring to go so she felt a bit frustrated and foolish when everyone was looking at her like she wasn't even supposed to be there.  Reeeally bloody frustrating.  Especially since we have yet another change to the timetable starting Monday and we are expecting yet another one in the works.  It just doesn't make any sense to keep changing it, or at least from our own, admittedly narrow, point of view.

The kids are slowly coming around to our way of thinking.  The Grade 1s are still terrors but the older ones are settling back in to English after 3 months of not having said a word.  I was in Grade 3 the other day and was trying to settle the kids down after snack break.  So I was using my calm but authoritative voice to tell everyone to put their multitude of sandwiches, biscuits, drinks and lollies away and to get out their English books.  Detti, one of our better students up the front, was a bit more reluctant to let go of her snack so I waggled my finger and told her more forcefully at which point the biscuits disappeared into her lap but not into her bag.  I was about to repeat my instruction when she said "Daniel, Look!" and pointed at the board.  I turned around to see what she was pointing to only to see her quickly pop another biscuit into her mouth and put the rest in her bag.  I was duped by an 8 year old using the oldest trick in the book.  Crap-knuckle.

Amanda had a good story this week too.  While I was going the strict route, she was trying positive reinforcement and offering stickers to those who finished their work quietly and well.  It has worked relatively well, and at least while the sticker supply flows, the kids productivity stays constant.  Anyway, it was due to this regime that she was having a good day on Tuesday with the grade 1s but it was a little depressing because all afternoon they were yelling "Matrica, matrica!" which basically means "Mathematics! Mathematics!".  Here she is playing games, singing songs, letting them play outside and all that they wanted to do was go inside and do maths!  It was only later that we found out that mathematics is actually matematika and that matrica actually just means stickers.  Oh well, that was a relief anyway.

The other major event this week was that it was Iago's tenth birthday!  That's right, on Thursday 15th of September our old doggus broke into the double figures.  He spent his birthday gracefully accepting his senior years as any old man would: by enjoying his birthday present.

- Daniel.