I have just finished my first week of official full time work and I am knackered! Unfortunately I have also had the extra phonics lessons and will have for the next 2 weeks.
Phonics (teaching the sound the letters make) has to be the most boring thing I have ever come across, and that includes Charlie’s Shakespeare lectures! I have two and a half hours to teach 5 kids 3 sounds, and we do this 3 times a week. Its starts at 0930 and finishes at 12 so we are having several early mornings as well as our late night lessons. Friday I was in the office or teaching all day 0800-10pm! then had a full day of lessons on Saturday and Sunday. Sunday night we went to the bar and all of the 22 teachers were tucked up in bed by 11pm, (party animals or what.)
My phonics class is only 5 kids, youngest 7 oldest about 10. they are not bad kids and really get into the games so we can have some fun in these classes, not much but some.
Otherwise I am fairly impressed with my classes, I have 8 really nice ones that are going to be great to teach and 2 that are going to kill me! And I mean that literally, one of them bites, one kicks and one hits so all together I think they are Charlie’s Angels?
My classes are mainly the older kids in the school and I love teaching them, I had one class playing Ring of Fire (obviously without the booze) and talking about King Arthur and St George. One of the boys in that class is called Sparrow and is obsessed with Pirates of the Caribbean, when asked what he wanted to do in the future I was presented with “in the future I shall be a fearsome commodore”- top marks on language too. I am getting a new kid in there too who love Michael Jackson, no prizes for guessing which name he chose for himself this week. My TA’s are pretty awesome too; as the bigger kids don’t really need anything translating they join in with the classes. I am training Shirley on her speech for the competition and Ryan wanted to learn about the Royal Family, alll in all I am knackered but very happy in this job.
So 2 weeks ago was our activity week, I mentioned the egg paining in the last edition. On the Saturday we went to a park near the school for a day of Sports Day style things, my little band of hyperactive crazies were great fun, right up until half left at lunch due to the rain. A little rain didnt stop us having a good day, we just had to keep running for the cover. Karina and I somehow ended up jammed into a 2 man tent with 2 TA's and 2 kids. We were cramped and very uncomfortable and possibly getting wetter than if we had been sitting in the rain (the tent leaked). The pictures are of my group before the rain and of the parents dring the rain.