If I never see another staple it'll be too soon

Today's been good so far. It's only just gone three, there is still room for it to get better. Firstly I just want to say, if you didn't see the video I posted about on Wednesday, you really should. And so I will link it again here because it is seriously funny (well, I think so anyway, and it's all about me don't ya know).

Anyway, I got to school just before nine today, only to discover that the training session (on how to use Adobe Contribute to edit the school website. Joy!) didn't start til ten. Only the head hadn't thought to tell everyone yesterday!

So I spent a good half hour or so pulling staples out of the wall. Fun fun fun. Then we had the training session which actually lasted only an hour, so that was good. My teacher is not very technically minded so I said she could call me anytime to help her out with her class' page.

Afterwards she had to write my report so I pulled more staples out of the wall (OMG the mind-numbing boringness of pulling staples out of the wall. It is boring let me tell you!) until she was done. Then four of us went out for lunch. I left school clutching my final report, a packet of pink wafers and half a box of chocolate chip cake bars - the latter two scrounged from the leftovers of the kids' Christmas parties yesterday - and followed the other two cars down the road. Unfortunately there was a lot of traffic and I lost sight of them not long after we left. I had a vague idea where we were going and it wasn't far. Thankfully I ended up at the right place.

They are a really nice bunch of girls, all about my age, and we had a right laugh. My teacher said I'm welcome to come back and see the kids any time I want, which is great. We ate well and chatted for quite a while and I got home just before three. Now, apart from having to sort out the washing that has been sitting in my washing machine for more days than I'd care to mention, I can sit back, relax and maybe even crack open a bottle of wine.... Life is pretty good.

(Just don't mention the C word. You have been warned!)

School's out!

So, it was the last day of school today. The kids had their Christmas party and were absolutely climbing the walls with excitement all morning. I had them making photo frames with the obligatory heavy sprinkling of glitter and we took their pictures and printed them out to put inside (ahh, the wonders of the digital age). They looked so cute.

The party went well. The kids danced, played games and ate food, much of which ended up ground into the carpet along with several tons of glitter. I read Charlier and the Chocolate Factory to them for the last time (we left off about 2 chapters from the end, how frustrating is that?) and then gave them the cards and gifts I'd bought for them. They had made me a huge card and each of them had drawn a little self portrait on coloured card which had been cut out and stuck inside. It was really cute. They also gave me a bunch of flowers. In addition to this some of them gave me Christmas presents. I am going to be so fat by Christmas I swear! They gave me two boxes of Maltesers, a box of Belgian chocolate truffles and a box of rum truffles. I also got a massive Belgian chocolate shell from my 'secret santa' at the staff lunch yesterday. One child gave me something I eyed suspiciously, as it appeared to be a rather tacky looking wallet, but it turned out to be a manicure set, which is not totally useless. Anyway, it's the thought that counts, isn't it. One of the boxes of Maltesers came with a women's weekly mag and a couple of tea bags. Hehe. I guess the underlying message was that I could relax now the placement's over, but it made me chuckle a little.

Some of the kids hugged me and said they'd miss me. A couple said I was "the best teacher ever" (kids are so fickle, they will say this to ANYBODY!). It was sweet and I will really miss them. It didn't really occur to me until quite late in the day that I won't see them again and it does make me feel a little sad. They are lovely kids.

I have to go in tomorrow from 9 til 12 for an INSET day. (Don't ask me what it stands for, I'm sure it stands for something as it's always capitalised, but I do not have a clue.) Afterwards, my class teacher and I (and any other teachers who want to tag along) are going to go for lunch, which will be a really nice way to round off the placement.

I did love it, I loved the kids, but I am SO GLAD it's over now. I can actually, like, sleep, and do housework and.....relax!

Blah blah tired blah

I know. I'm totally slacking. But do you have any idea how tired I am? Man, I feel like I could sleep for a week! I slept really badly Saturday night and was just too exhausted to get any work done on Sunday, so I ended up going to bed at 6:30PM!! I set my alarm for 4:30 so I could get up early and get my work done then - which I did. But even getting up at 4:30 gave me, like, 10 hours sleep. And I am still exhausted and drifted off in front of The Simpsons tonight. What is wrong with me?

I don't have much interesting to say. Only two more days of school and then it's the holidays. I will be SO relieved and may just sleep for a week. Except for that pesky task of Christmas shopping that really has to be done at some point.

The kid's Christmas play went well. They looked really cute. Tomorrow we are decorating Christmas tree shaped boxes and making finger puppets. Aww. There's no real teaching to be done from this point on, so it should be a laugh. And we have our staff Christmas lunch tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to.

Hopefully I'll have something more interesting to say then...

Decisively undecided...

Dinner last night was cool. Ali and I went to an Italian place and ate far too much. We arrived there to discover that there was live opera!! We sat and chatted and were interrupted by random arias. It was an interesting evening.

The cinema trip today was excellent. There wasn't enough room on the coach for all the adults, so on the way to Bluewater I got to go in a car with some of the other staff. We got there wayyyyyyy before the coaches as they somehow got stuck in horrendous traffic, so we sat in Krispy Kreme and had donuts. It was so good!

Then the kids turned up and we walked them through to the cinema, making sure they all went to the toilet. We had a whole screen booked out for the school, which was great and felt really special. Flushed Away is really funny although my viewing was slightly interrupted by the frequent trips to the toilet. Despite the fact that they all had the option to go before the film started, and were offered the chance again every time I took one of them to the loo, I still had to leave the screen about 4 times for various different children who couldn't apparently sit through an hour and a half of movie without their bladders exploding. Maybe it was all the watery, sewer scenes that did it.

We got back to school and had about 45 minutes for lunch and then I took a DT lesson whilst the few of them that had to finished off their letters to Jamie Oliver. The rest of them made pop up Christmas cards with me. I found myself the only adult in the room, which was a little overwhelming for such a practical lesson.

Tomorrow I am being observed during geography. The kids are colouring in and labelling countries on a world map and going out in groups to do a treasure hunt. I need to get some bags of chocolate coins this evening to use as the treasure.

If I can just get through tomorrow I know I can relax a little bit, although my class teacher is doing her final observation of me in numeracy on Thursday. Tomorrow I get a free lunch as it's school Christmas dinner, but I'm worrying I won't even have time to eat it as I'll be careering round the school like a headless chicken trying to ensure everything is set up for geography. My link tutor this year seems much harder to please than the one I had last year and I feel a bit like nothing is ever good enough, which is frustrating when I have worked so much harder at my placement this year, despite personal circumstances that are different but still as stressful as what I was going through during placement last year. I haven't missed one day of school this year and I am proud of that. I missed quite a few days of my last placement due to combinations of a battered immune system (that I constantly seem to have) and stress (that I also constantly seem to have!).

I have to make sure my folder is up to scratch for tomorrow, although the link tutor won't completely sign me off until the placement has finished and I have my final report from my class teacher, but I'm still going out tonight. I think if I were to stay home I'd get the work done fairly quickly and then have the rest of the evening to stress myself out or procrastinate for hours and get it done around 11:30, having stressed myself out for the entire evening up to that point because I hadn't got it done. If I go out, I have to get it done beforehand and then can spend a couple of hours chilling with some friends (in the house I've been invited to move into! YIKES!).

Yeah, I'm still freaking out about that because I HAVE ENOUGH TO THINK ABOUT ALREADY. SERIOUSLY!

Ali invited me to spend Christmas with her and her family, which sounds like quite a good plan. Part of me would still rather ignore Christmas altogether, but I know I can't really do that and probably would end up feeling totally miserable. Which is not embracing the Christmas spirit.

I guess I still have a few decisions to make... Watch this space.

I don't know where my brain is either, Emmett

This morning Johnny came in late. He sat down during the register and the teacher said, "Don't you have something to say to me, Johnny?"

"Packed lunch, please Miss L," Johnny replied.

The teacher looked at him with raised eyebrows.

"Sorry I'm late," I hiss at him.

"Oh. Sorry I'm late, Miss L," said Johnny.

"Don't think your brain's quite in gear yet this morning, is it Johnny?" Asked the teacher.

Johnny looked sheepish.

Emmett piped up. "My brain's gone somewhere."

It's not been a bad day. While the kids rehearsed their Christmas play, I finished off my display on 'What's in the news'.

I was very proud. The gaps at the top are annoying me, so I'm going to put in photos of the kids doing the treasure hunt I'm planning for them on Wednesday.

The kids had a literacy assessment to do today, which involved writing a letter to Jamie Oliver about how great his healthy school dinners are. Some kids really threw themselves into it and got the rough draft and the final copy done quite quickly. Others....not so much.

Emmett only had about two lines written while most kids were finishing off their rough drafts. I went over to try and encourage him to write more. He wasn't having it. He told me he had a headache. I told him to get a drink of water and then try again. Then he told me he couldn't write any more because the pencil was making his thumb thinner!!

In the end we sent him over to the round table to sit with the classroom assistant while he worked. He had still hardly written anything by the end of the day and Miss L shouted at him. About 5 minutes later I wandered back over and he'd written quite a bit. However, this is what it said:

"I don't like healthy food. I hate it. It's not nice. It's stupid. I don't want vegetables. I hate fruit. It stinks. I don't want healthy food."

The classroom assistant said, "Emmett, were you actually listening during the talk on the carpet?"

He scowled. "He knows exactly what he's supposed to write," I said. "He's just written this because he's having a strop."

He's not booked in on the cinema trip tomorrow to see Flushed Away so he'll have to do it then. Poor kid - double whammy!

I'm off out tonight to see my friend Ali. Yay! Maybe I will come back with another photo of a bowl of rejected olives.....who knows!

The things kids say

Heard yesterday, but then forgotten about until just now, when it made me chuckle again:

Chef (visiting the school to teach kids about healthy eating): Now, who can tell me what this is? (Holding up a melon)

Taylor: A tango!

I am thankful for (semi) long weekends. And Emmett.

It's not been a bad day. The kids were okay. I had to teach them the 12 Days of Christmas song as the deputy head just realised the only day he will be able to record the tracks for the school Christmas CD is Monday! Yikes! It went okay though. All my lessons went pretty well today.

One little girl told me today about her trainers. How she'd got them because a lorry broke down and they fell off the back. Yes, she really believes that they fell off the back of a lorry. Interesting. And quite an insight into the kind of school I am in.

I went over to a friend's house tonight and had a good girly chat and watched a DVD. It was fun. Then her husband got back and we had a crazy random chat (the best kind, in my opinion) about various weird urban legends, like the fact that KFC is called KFC instead of Kentucky Fried Chicken because they now use genetically modified birds that are so far from being chickens they don't even have beaks. It was pretty fun.

I also had another cool bonding session with my class teacher after school. She came in once her course was finished so we could plan next week's numeracy and literacy lessons together. Once we finished we had a loooooong chat, about men mostly.

I have uni tomorrow. And then the afternoon off. Woohoo! I am meeting a friend for lunch. Should be cool. Although I am gonna have to do a lot of work on Saturday. Still, I feel a bit like the weekend's come early, which is always nice.

Written on Emmett's homework (by Emmett): This is hard. Too hard for Emmett.

Kid CRACKS me up!

"Emmett: Mishaps and Musings" will be out in hardback in the spring

Okay, I'm lying about the book. But it is a great idea. It would totally sell. Well, I'd buy it, haha.

It's been another long and exhausting day. My class teacher is on a course again tomorrow, which in a way feels quite a relief because she won't be there to watch me and I'm not feeling 100% inspired right now. I just want to get through the day. The Friday I have a university-based day, going over classroom layout and timetabling (woohoo! I know, can't you just feel the excitement bubbling up!) which still means leaving the house at the same time in the morning, but I finish at TWELVE, people. That gives me a whole afternoon to myself. Yay!

I am nearing the end of week four of my placement. I am now just over halfway through. You cannot believe the relief I am feeling thinking that. I know I want to be a teacher, and teachers generally are in school 5 days a week, however many weeks a year (39?) but it's all the ridiculously detailed planning and evaluating that is wearing me out so much, and that's not a prerequisite for teaching, only for learning to teach.

On the plus side, there is a school trip to the cinema in a couple of weeks and I get to go. So that should be fun. We're going to see Flushed Away, which does look quite amusing.

And I'll just leave you with the picture of Emmett, painstakingly copying out his joined up handwriting practice and failing to join up ANY of the letters. Not a single one!

From the mundane to the ridiculous

I got home at six today, same as yesterday. I think this is going to be the regular pattern now up til Christmas. Only 3 days til the weekend.

My observation went okay. The DVD didn't really work as for some reason the picture was really blue. Apparently this is because it was a region 1 DVD and the projector didn't like it, even though the DVD player it was being played on was multi-region. Hmm. Anyway, it was okay and now it's over. We have a final observation booked for 5th December - geography - should be all right, I hope.

And a quick update from the latest escapades of Emmett:
In RE today, lower ability had multiple choice questions based on scriptures. The learning objective was to think about what it means to be friends of God. One particular scripture they had was Jesus' commandment to love one another as he has loved us. The question was "What does John say about being friends with God?"
a) It doesn't make any difference to our lives.
b) We should love each other like He loves us.
c) We should love God but not be too bothered about other people.

Guess which Emmett picked? C!

He does make me laugh.

Emmett, you little genius!

So, I had this day of non-contact time today. Alongside the reams of lessons I had to plan and assessment records I had to fill out, I also had a hefty pile of marking of all the work the kids have done this week. Their geography topic this term is 'What's in the news' and on Tuesday I had them writing news reports in pairs, based on watching Monday's episode of News Round, the BBC's children's news programme.

So we watched the show, took notes and then I put them into pairs so that the lower ability children would be working with higher ability children. There was an odd number of children in the class that day as one little boy was off sick, so Emmett and Conrad (the boy with the mullet) were also working with Nick. Nick and Conrad are both quite able and Emmett (as I mentioned before) is not so able.

Emmett was having a bit of an off day (although clearly not as off as Wednesday, when he got the ball stuck on his finger). I'm sure it was six of one and half a dozen of the other, but the three of them would not co-operate and no matter how many times I told Emmett to work with the other two, he flatly refused and continued to work on his own. I got frustrated but ultimately left him to it.

I hadn't looked at the finished products until today. They were required to write the news report like a script, so they could perform it, with the best one being performed in their class assembly in a week and a half. This is how Emmett's went:

Emmett: Hello and welcome to News Round. A penguin was trapped in the ice in Antarctic.
Nick: Some film directors saved the penguin.
Conrad: Also, in Portugal there is a chocolate festival.
Emmett: Now we will be back after the break (NB, News Round is a BBC programme - there are no advert breaks on the BBC!)
Nick: Welcome back.
Emmett: There was a 'bird factor' (play on words used in News Round). Birds were singing in Colombia.
Conrad: I've got a small brain.

I laughed out loud to myself in the staff room when I read that. It actually said "I've got a smal bran" but I got the gist of it.

I was just so impressed that he had done something so funny. Of course, I didn't quite know how to mark it. Up to that point I'd been ticking each news item he mentioned, but then that....I was slightly speechless. It seems sometimes, despite appearances, the kid is very much on the planet!

I managed to get through the whole pile of marking and plan about 7 lessons, although I still have so much to do. Wah! I really hoped I'd get more done today and have the weekend to myself. Next week I'm going to stay later after school each day and get marking done as it happens.

But still. Weekend! Woooooohoooooo!

I am NOT talking about Christmas

So there Beka ;P
Let us speak of it no more...

Not that I have much of anything else to say. I am just so tired. Only one more day til the weekend. Woo!

My class defied the laws of physics in science today. Yes, a bunch of seven and eight year olds outwitted Einstein (or whoever it was that invented magnets, c'mon, I'm going to be a Primary school teacher, I don't need to know advanced stuff). They were testing the strength of different sized and shaped magnets by measuring at what distance they would attract a paperclip. They were circulating from table to table in their groups, testing different magnets at each station.

Halfway through the experiment some of the highest ability kids approached me with a pair of magnets. They were the red and blue plastic coated ones that we use for most magnet experiments. They are good because one end is red and one is blue, so they are excellent for demonstrating the principles of north and south poles. Or at least, they were.

"Look, Miss," one of the girls said, holding up the two magnets.

She then proceeded to press the two blue ends of the magnets together and let go. The magnets stuck. I took them off her and pulled them apart. Then I put them together again. I could feel the magnetic pull. I reversed them and pressed the red ends towards each other. I could feel the identical polarities pushing away from each other as they should. I tried the red end to the blue end. They attracted as they should. I put the blue end to the blue end again. They pulled towards each other.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Nothing!" They protested, then acquiesced, "Well, actually it came apart so Erica* put it back together but she must have put it back the wrong way round."

I then informed them that they had, in fact, defied the laws of physics because I had (and have) NO CLUE how they managed to reverse the polarity of one end of a magnet. It's all kinds of wrong. Talk about messing with the natural order of things!

*NB. From this point on, when I mention a kid by name, just assume it is not their real name. It will save me typing a little "not real name etc etc" every time :)

How many scary Google hits will I get for a post containing the words 'finger' and 'balls'?

I am exhausted and a little bit miserable. The horrible cold, grey weather doesn't help. Nor does the fact that I am in school for pretty much all the daylight hours at the moment. I left at 5 today. It was totally dark.

My class teacher observed me during literacy today. It went well. She wrote nice things. All in all, today was a lot better. The class responded much better and after taking on board the feedback from my class teacher, they responded even better than that. (Very useful piece of information: if the class is talking on the carpet when you are trying to talk, get them to discuss the point in question with the person next to them for a minute or so - totally gets it out of their system and then they shut up again)

I'm all planned for tomorrow. I will be very glad when tomorrow is over and I can spend all day Friday in the staff room (schweeeeeeet) planning for next week. I have realised the best way to deal with this is one day at a time. That way it's not too overwhelming. It's working.

I saw one of the kids laughing at my picture on the visual timetable today. Grrrr. He's gonna get it! (Joke!!) But still, not helpful to my battered self esteem.

There is this boy in my class, Emmett (not real name, you know the drill blah-de-blah-de-blah) who is the funniest little character. Poor thing gets bullied quite a lot, but unfortunately it is easy to see why. The minute someone does anything to him, no matter how tiny, he is telling on them VERY LOUDLY. Sorry, Emmett, but that is not how to win friends and influence people. The class teacher has a real soft spot for him, and so do I. He's a cutie. One of those kids that somehow manages to look more like a little man than a boy. He gets het up about anything and will actually shake his fists when he's angry. It's the cutest thing, although he probably wouldn't appreciate that we think that way. My class teacher is very good friends with his mum, so we have a bit of a giggle with her in the playground after school.

He's not the brightest button in the box and sometimes you feel like he's not quite on this planet. Today though..... I am supposed to be meeting these professional standards set by the government, and laughing at a child is probably not one of them, but I swear, it was the funniest thing. The class teacher laughed too. The whole class laughed, bless him. But he was quite good humoured about it.

It was during PE. I was teaching, but because of insurance students HAVE to have a qualified teacher with them, which isn't the case with other lessons (hence me being all alone with the class yesterday). I had them practising ball skills - batting and bowling - with plastic racquets and airtex balls - you know, the hollow plastic ones with holes in so the air whizzes through them. Holes that are almost the perfect size to accommodate a child's finger. I say 'almost' because, as we learned today, they are big enough to let in said child's finger, but not quite big enough to let it out again.

The kids had been practising bowling to each other and I called them back to the front of the hall to talk them through the next activity. Suddenly, there's a commotion and in the centre of it is Emmett, finger held out like ET, white airtex ball firmly wedged onto it. And I laughed. I couldn't help it. It was hilarious! The poor little thing eventually had to have the caretaker come and cut it off with a pair of wire cutters. That image will stay with me for a long time.

So it's not all bad! The kids are sweet and funny and I love every one of them.

Talkin' 'bout procrastination

That whole efficiency thing I had going for a while? Yeah, that was just a phase. Regular service has been resumed. I am hopelessly inefficient.

I started my 7 week block placement today and realised I hadn't yet made contact with my Link Tutor - the guy who has to come in and observe me teaching 3 times over the next 7 weeks. We were told to make contact with our tutors over a week ago. Oops!

Also I was supposed to have read through the school's policies and medium-term plans. Yeah, didn't do that either. Also I need to purcahse some kind of sandwich filling this evening, otherwise my sandwiches are going to be pretty, well, empty and tasteless tomorrow. I feel so disorganised that I don't think I will ever get organised. It frustrates me so much.

But school was fun. One of the kids has this weird patch shaved out of the side of his head. The teacher and I were debating whether or not he'd had a lobotomy over the holidays, but it turns out his dad accidentally left the cover off the clippers and instead of giving the kid a number 2 all over, gave him a 0 in this one single stripe, but then the kid's mum wouldn't let the dad do 0 all over, so the rest was done as usual with the clippers on a number 2. But the poor kid has this practically bald patch. It does look funny.

I got to leave pretty early as my teacher had netball club after school so there wasn't much for me to stay for. Instead I got to deal with the crazy people who drive down the country lanes I have to take to get to school. It's insane. Most of the lanes have a 40mph limit, which personally I think is crazy as they are rarely wide enough for two cars to comfortably fit down side by side and are full of blind corners that are so sharp you have to take them in 3rd gear. And yet some maniacs still whizz down there at 40, practically taking my wing mirror with them. Not to mention the idiots who seemed to conveniently forget that when a car is parked on their side of the road I have right of way, but just continue bombing it down the road, swinging out around the parked car and nearly plowing into my front bumper. Get off the road, morons!

Well I'm going to sit down and have a cup of tea and then try and get something productive done (we'll see!) before I have to go out again. I've been going to a new church for a couple of months and one of the girls there invited me out for dinner. I'll check back in later if I have anything interesting to say.