We have a long weekend this weekend. I think it's to celebrate the end of Ramadan. Gotta love multi-cutural inclusiveness:) The extra day off came at a good time for me. The teaching staff have been at school since the 1st of August. The kids started on the 13th. I had some training over the weekend before that, which was great but tiring - 8:30 - 4:30 for 3 days. So yesterday was the second day off for me in 2 weeks.
The training was for the International Baccalaureate Diploma course for a subject called Environmental Systems & Society. It's a really interesting subject and kind of fits the degree I did. I learned a lot! But I'm sure there was some stuff that went in one ear and out the other:) It was great to meet some other teachers from the international school circuit and talk about how stuff works in the various schools.
Monday was the first day for the kids at school. I'm the Grade 12 Homeroom teacher and I was excited to meet the kids. It was interesting. Quite a few of the 23 in Grade 12 were what I would call "too cool for school". There were 2 groups that had a bit of attitude - some Korean boys and another group of girls.
Each homeroom teacher has a support teacher. Holly and I did a couple of "get to know you" activities and watched quite carefully. We were content to let them go so we could see how interacted with each other, as well as how they responded to both of us. Suffice to say, we weren't that impressed with what we saw. In my mind I was seeing a reasonably tough year with these guys.
We had another homeroom session ion the afternoon. I had been to watch the Grade 12's in a couple of their other sessions and had spoken to some of the other teachers, as well as senior management. Although it was generally positive, there were a few negatives so I decided I was going to give them a bit of a rark up. No shouting or ranting, just a nice calm but firm talking to. Mostly I spoke about being respectful to each other, their teachers and themselves and turning up on time. You know, "the usual school stuff". And they sat still and listened quietly. Some nodded their heads, while others dropped theirs and looked embarrassed. They left very quietly at the end.
Later I spoke to the IB co-ordinator and some of the other Grade 12 teachers. Over the course of the day they had learned that they were quite a way behind where they should be and they all had a massive workload in front of them if they were to catch up and get their diplomas. Basically, they were shitting themselves!
The next day I did a reflection activity with them to see what they had to say about their first day. There were a lot of positive comments, which was great but it made Holly and I feel quite bad for these guys. They said stuff like "the teachers spoke to us like we were people", "the new teachers seemed like they cared about us" and "I'm glad we have new teachers and they've kept the good ones from last year". These kids had obviously not had much support from most of their teachers last year. I asked a couple of kids about it and the comments were along the lines of "the teacher came in, wrote some page numbers on the board, said "there's your work" and then sat at their desks playing on their computers.
Anyway, things have moved along and we're getting a picture of what the students covered (or not!) last year. In the Senior school they do the IB Diploma in Grade 11 & 12 and the IGSCE in Grade 9 & 10. As they're both 2 year courses finding out what was done last year is obviously really important. Our roll is quite small which is not ideal for the school in the long term, but it's good for us as our classes are really small which means we won't so caught up with loads of marking:)
Our apartment is taking shape and now feels much more like a home. We got a second hand lounge suite and a book shelf thingy, which look great but poor Mel had a mission getting them home. The guy she organised to help turned up and said "7th floor? No you said 2nd floor" which is bollocks because she has the text to prove it. The woman we bought it off wasn't sympathetic either. Long story short, Mel got another (more helpful!) guy to help and she had to help carry part it of down 7 floors because it wouldn't fit in the lift. Poor bugger was knackered by the time I got home and has several sizeable bruises on her arms and legs. I felt stink about not being able to help carry the stuff. But I was able to help put it together and move it around.
I've run out stuff to say for the moment so I'll be off and will try to post more this week sometime.
Ciao for now!
TONE
