It's been a long day. For a teacher, every day is a long one. From the moment you cross the threshold to the second you leave - and often beyond that! - the job consumes you. With my new position of responsibility comes even more demands on my time. "Can you just look at this...?" "Could you just speak to...?" "Would you just...?" Sigh. However, in the middle of the day I tried something new. I put a small notice up in the library that I would be holding a reading club to anyone who wanted to JUST come and read. Five nervous girls arrived at 12. I smiled, jotted their names down in my special register and they settled with a book and read. Just read. They didn't talk. Didn't fidget. Just read. And so did I. Bliss! They vanished with smiles at half past to eat their lunch and I got called to "Just..." some more! Then they arrived back after they'd eaten. "Can we read again?" Are there sweeter words? "Of course." And the numbers swelled. This could catch on. I may even get a boy to read if I just advertise it. You know, I might just do that. My question: you have an hour in the middle of a busy week to just read - to model to pupils that adults read, sometimes just for fun; what would you read? (Today I read a book about "accidental teaching".)
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It is not often that we have the opportunity to take the whole class to compete in sporting activities that are considered competitive. When they do come along, many of us jump at them. Today, Chichester District Council are hosting the first of two days of "Mini Olympics" for local schools' Year 5 classes. Our school has been learning about the team they represent, have had training in the sports they will be doing, and are wearing kit that they designed - and their hardworking teacher made over Easter. We are Ghana. Today, we will be facing China and Brazil - two classes from the same nearby school. We were disappointed to learn that all the other schools competing would be coming Thursday - but we are here to win today! In fact, the motto our class chose was "in ea vincere!" which, according to Google translate, is Latin for "in it to win it!" With storm clouds gathering, we are relieved to be indoors. The children will be doing rugby, football and basketball this morning, trying new-age kurling (auto-corrected to "lurking"!) and Tri-golf at lunchtime and then athletics this afternoon. My question is: if it's meant to be competitive, why are they only playing each other as opposed to playing the other school? On Saturday afternoon I arrived at school for 15:30 to wait for my team of 4 girls who had made it to the Regional heats / finals for the Primary Swimming Gala. We (they!) had won the County Finals' Freestyle Relay earlier in April and were pumped by the result. (More so because the boys hadn't won their relays!) They duly arrived for 16:00 and a minibus picked us up and drove us from Chichester to Guildford. We arrived in good time for the 18:00 start - which lapsed a lot as many other schools were tardy. This happens. After the boys had all had some warm up time, our girls swam some lengths to warm themselves up. They were nervous as they were swimming with the fastest girls; they qualified 9 seconds quicker than us. In fact, of the 16 schools present in our event, we were only quicker than the team who were second in our county. We cheered on another school - usually our rivals when swimming but they were here as a "small school" and we weren't competing directly against them. The girls (and I and their parents and brothers who were in attendance) sat through 13 races and presentations for the top "Medley" races before their heat. They swam well. By my stopwatch they took a second off their qualifying time, but were still 8th in their heat. Out of 8. 1min 11.3 seconds. Except we were then DQ'd for a reason we didn't choose to investigate, which seems doubly cruel. We cheered on our rivals in their last heats and finals before changing and heading back to school. Once the children had safely all gone, I locked up and got home for 22:30. 7 hours for 1minute 11.3seconds of swimming! Worth it as the children behaved amazingly, cheered on rivals until we were hoarse, were upbeat throughout and got to swim at a level higher than they'd ever dreamt possible. My question for tonight is: would you have done it? (I would do it again in a heartbeat.) The road to blogging every day is paved with good intentions. I mean, you start off strongly and then it's Monday morning and you haven't blogged for Sunday. So soon! I will try harder. That's right - I will try harder to post a comment each day that nobody will read. Well, they may if I post the odd gem. Sunday's question (although you should say Monday!): what good intentions have you let slip and wish you'd persisted with? I am at the Spectrum Pool (In Guildford) for the Southern Division Primary Swimming Gala with our girls' freestyle swim squad. Having won the county qualifier, we are waiting to swim for a coveted spot in the Nationals. We are the underdogs, 9 seconds off the fastest team in our category, but spirits are high! As is typical, we are late to start, despite us being here 40 minutes early, and the girls' nervous energy is interesting to behold. As we are about to kick off, I will sign off for now and ask this simple question: how are you spending YOUR Saturday evening? Well. The first week of our new term is done. Our Acting Headteacher and I have managed to make it to the end of the first week and still be standing. And smiling! In truth, I'm surprised a deputy (or, in my case, acting deputy) Headteacher gets any of the work that they need to done. There has been a line of children to speak to (both praising for great work and admonishing for behavioural issues), parents to reassure, colleagues to advise and emails to wade through. I am one order away from being organised for sports day (June) and feel woefully ill-prepared for my Year 5 camp that finishes 4 weeks today. But all will be fine. I mean, it has to be, right? Thank you to everyone who posted a comment on the story I put up yesterday - and thanks to those who are going to! Today's question: what is your best experience when camping with children that aren't your own? I wanted to post a story done by one of my Year 5s. It was written for Radio 2's short story competition (a story in 500 words) and I challenged "L" to do something different to stand out from the crowds: I challenged her to write a story without the letter "A" in it and suggested it could be a mystery story where she tracks (can't use "tracks", we, HUNTS) it down (it's not as easy as it seems!). L rose to the challenge and has given me permission to share her work in this forum - so, please enjoy, steal the idea to use with children you have or teach or just know - or challenge yourself! But please answer this question: what should I tell L about her story? What are your comments? Having spent the day out of the classroom in my new role as acting deputy Headteacher, I was pleased to learn that things in my room had gone well. One always worries! It got me to wonder something. I mean, I know how I feel when I'm not in there teaching, but how do the young learners feel? Now, I am hoping that some bright students will find their way to my blog - and forgive me for it, I am still new to blogging despite being very old! - and would post some replies to some questions I have: How do you feel when your teacher is away and someone else takes you? What is the coolest thing you have done (at school!) since Christmas? Why was this the coolest? What would YOU be interested in reading about on a blog? What would YOU be interested in blogging about? If you were to blog, why should I read YOUR blog? What lesson would you like to have at school that you've never had? What lesson would you like to have at school that you could never have (for example to float in zero gravity whilst eating a bowl of smarties)? And a final one, what advice would you give my pupils at school about keeping safe online? I hope you can help me out...? Thank you. First day back and, like everyone else I spoke to, the Easter vacation already feel like a distant memory. Remarkably, I haven't had to do anything different today as ADHT than I did last term, but I suspect that's all about to change. I have a full day out of the classroom tomorrow and it will be telling: is it something I'm going to enjoy or is the lure of those expectant, talkative, familiar little faces going to be too much and cause me to remain a class teacher for years longer? Mind you - there are much worse things! Ours is an amazing profession, where no two days are the same. My question to you all (you all! As if...!) is: when you are out of the classroom on a school day, what do you miss the most? As the Easter vacation draws to a close (for some of us at least), I am overwhelmed with how much I still have left on my "To do over the Easter Vacation" list! But that comes with this job. You can never run out of things to do. There's always "one more" thing. I did manage to get in to school today to reaffix a display to the wall - I wanted it in place for when the children arrive tomorrow for that "Wow" factor. One question before I try and get two hundred last things done: what is the one thing you wish you'd done this break but ran out of time for? |