Today was like any typical Monday in the life of a teacher. I was busy planning for the week, reviewing what I was supposed to be teaching for the day, revising any schedule issues, etc... However, unlike any other Monday, today was the day that the students began swimming. At the school that I am teaching at, the students are offered the opportunity to pay for swimming lessons that are done during school hours. It is a great deal for several students, because living on the ocean almost requires every child to know how to swim, and considering their family lives, I doubt they would get lessons any other time. Unfortunately, this swimming endeavor takes out half-of-a-day's worth of teaching. School usually commences at 9:00am and releases at 3:00pm. Swimming (including changing the students into their suits, loading the bus, the bus ride to the pool, the lesson, riding back, and changing into dry clothes) takes from 10am-12:30ish. This only allows for us to teach from 9-10 in the morning, 12:30-1 in the afternoon, and 2-3 before they leave. 2 and a half hours of teaching doesn't leave much time to accomplish all that I need to accomplish! Oh.. and that doesn't include the 2 hours of specials we need to fit in a week too! AH!

Regardless, I am now teaching the entire day, all 2 1/2 hours of it. Behavior was a bit out of the ordinary today because the students were extremely hyped up for swimming beforehand, and completely exhausted and crabby afterward. My spelling and handwriting lesson went went, as did the beginning of maths. The last thing I had planned to do was to do some group work on telling time. (It is unbelieveable the number of 3rd graders who can't tell time!!) Unfortunately for some of the better behaved students, the majority of the class was rude, rowdy and in my eyes incapable of working in groups after I had arranged them into them. Because of this, I was the mean teacher (believe it or not, I can be quite mean when the moment calls), and told the entire class to go back to their seats. We were going to do rote work at their seats instead of the time game I had planned. I also made the entire class stay 1 minute after school for wasting one minute of my time. The class didn't think this was a good idea, but hopefully it will prove as a success tomorrow when we try and work in groups again.

After school, Tina asked if I would cook afternoon tea. I agreed and we all enjoyed a pan of tater-tot hotdish. Here in Australia, tater-tots are called potato gems or potato jewels. Trevor is quite excited because there were some leftovers that he can take to work as lunch in a couple of days! My host family is so good to me... Tina even checked out a country music video DVD from the library that I enjoyed watching/listening to while typing my lessons. I was introduced to several Australian country groups that I believe are more appealing than some in the US! One of the groups actually grew up just down the road from where I am living! Crazy!

Another "up" in my life is that I am currently only blowing my nose ONCE a day! A big improvement from the once every half hour that I was doing last week!

I hope everyone's Labor Day was a wonderful one... And that the kids have a smooth transition into school! :)

written by  cowane1 on September 6, 2010 from Morayfield, Australia
from the travel blog: Australian Adventures!
Send a Compliment

---

hoping jello and pudding make it over to you so they can try that too, good to hear you doing better, and what a great weekend on moreton island "lucky you", I had a great weekend with mom at Lifelight too this weekend !!!

written by  James Cowan on September 6, 2010

comment on this...