So, to make a long story short, we had a sub in the class today that kind of made me feel like crap about myself as a teacher by budding in when I was working with groups, making everything I just did with the group invalid. It was too bad.... and kind of hurt. But we talked about it and cleared the air and we've moved on, which is reassuring.
On the brighter side of things, I've been hanging out with the girls volleyball team a lot during their practices and I've been working with a few girls during morning recess to improve their skills. It's a blast! I love that I can share my love for the sport (even if I may not be especially good at it myself). I'm hoping that the coach will give me more of a role and I can run drills and things. And I know that next week, I'm going to be running the drills.
Today at school we had a staff meeting all about fitness. Since the school teachers here teach all subjects (including art, music, and PE), we have to learn how to incorporate all of it. It was really interesting listening to the teacher's thoughts on things and the way they run their classrooms. My teacher is having two of the kids in our class plan fitness from now on, which is so great to see. They planned the first session today and set up four stations. One of them was called the ring road (it's the circle of pavement that goes around the buildings in the school) and it takes the average person maybe like, 1:45/2 minutes to run in. I ran it twice in a row at one of the stations. The way they set it up is that one of the kids that planned it gave us a 20 second head start and then tried to catch as many of us as possible. HOW CUTE! Definitely didn't catch me. In fact, I came in first one of the times! Finally getting my ass in gear!
Hahaha... funny thing.. the little 10 year olds say "hell" and "dammit" all the time and it's acceptable. Nice.
So the past week has been an incredible whirlwind of activity. Last Friday night was really fun for me... we went to the only bar in my town and actually ran into a bunch of the teachers at my school, which was so fun! Then I went to bed, as I was getting up super duper early to go running and talk to my PDS cohort via Skype. I got to talk to them, which was sooooo special and meant a lot to me, and then I went and ran 6 miles down where I'm going to actually be running it in June. That's what I've decided to run every Saturday (that I'm here) now, so that I can see exactly what they real course will be like. It'll be nice!
After running and coming home to take a nap, Laura, Chelsea, and I went to the Lower Hutt (a town that has a really bad rap, for reasons we can't really understand) to go shopping. We spent the whole day there in the mall and I finally got some more clothes (I left way too much behind...) Then we went into town and caught a movie with some friends of Laura and Chelsea's. I slept through some of it (cinemanarcolepcy, whatcha gunna do?)
The girls ended up coming back to my place and we had a sleepover in my room and then got up BEFORE the buttcrack of dawn to go to the ANZAC day memorial service. It's pretty much the equivalent of our Memorial Day, but theirs especially commemorates the day that the ANZACs landed at Gallipoli in 1915 (I learned a lot!)
Then I came back home and slept until 1:30.. NNIIICCEEE! The rest of the day was pretty chill.. I just hung around the house and got ready for school!
This week has been incredible. I've learned so much and when I look around the room at all of the programming that my teacher has going out, and find out that SHE designed it, I honestly feel like I'm working with someone who could make millions if she published her material. I've observed a few other teachers in the school as well, which has been incredibly interesting. Some of the teachers have befriended me and taken me under their wing to teach me what they're doing, which I love.
Tuesday we had a team meeting and I learned a lot about different models of literacy programs, what works for the kids, what skills they're working towards and everything.... and they were all so friendly! And they even let me throw some thoughts out there.
Tuesday I also got to teach for the first time. I taught morning meeting and then took a maths (yeah... math is plural here, haha) group. I LOVED it! The kids are so incredibly respectful. Some of them were kind of talking under me about some different things, but I've just learned to adjust to that and I honestly really don't mind it since I feel like in my experience, that's kind of been the least of my problems. My teacher told me afterwards that that kind of behavior (or behaviour, if you will) is not acceptable at their school. She then showed me their "bad behavior" book. "Mucking around on the carpet" was the most popular entry. It just made me giggle. I then proceeded to have a nightmare about saying to kids, "I wouldn't expect that type of behavior from you. You know better. Excuse me. You're being rude. Run the ring road." The kids all hated me by the end of my dream, haha. BUT, I tried some of the strategies out today and they really do respond to it. Especially the ring road run... mwahahaha.
Yesterday was Enrichment Day, so I went to Production Dance and Chorus. They were both super adorable. In the afternoon, the kids had winter sport, so I decided to go to rugby so I could learn how and play. However, when I got out there I discovered that it was almost ALL kids that are planning on teams... and it was all guys. So I decided to observe instead. After 10 minutes of the wind whipping in my ear (I think I went deaf for a few moments) I decided that table tennis (they don't call it ping pong) was more to my liking. The kids that thought they were the worst still kicked my butt. That was a shame!!! I did morning meeting with them before we went to our morning assembly (which was absolutely adorable because they sang their school song which was in Maori, the native language, and it was BEAUTIFUL... I think I might have cried a little bit) and we were playing a game where we had to toss small balls around. A lot of people were dropping them, so I walked myself right into one by saying, "Careful! Balls are slippery!" ALL the boys started giggling. Give me a break! haha. They're super cute, though!
This weekend I think we're considering a wine country tour, which should be fun and relaxing. We're trying to break up the traveling so we don't get too exhausted, but we've been here almost 3 weeks now, so it's about time we did another mini adventure. I've been slacking on my long runs here because 1. I can't run every day (which is what my training wants me to do) and 2. There are too many dang hills. It kills me... every time. It's like running up Observatory by College Library for 10 minutes straight.... or Congress St. hill in Ripon for 10 minutes. It's gross! Down by the harbour, it's nice and flat and I swear that after my 25 min. run the other day, I felt more exhausted (because of the hills) than I did in my 60 min. run last weekend!!
Alright... I'm going to try to be better at this :) No whole week updates anymore.. it takes too long! If you're reading this, I miss you :) And the wonderful Wisconsin spring...
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