There's always someone worse off . . .

This course is teaching me so much; I have become so much more organised; I am tidier, my hair is now all one colour and most of the time lies flat; I even organise my computer files into folders (sort of) and (for the first time ever) my car has no dents; but in one particular direction I am definitely regressing.

There once was a time (not that many months ago) when I knew how to cook. More importantly, I remembered to eat, and remembered to shop for things to eat. I would even cook for lots of people, like 3, or 10, sometimes (but not very often).

For most of this weekend, I have been curled up in a ball feeling very ill, and eating has been even lower on the priority list than usual. But I was beginning to feel better yesterday, and offered to make some food for one of my housemates (who was in a bit of a rush).

I opened up the fridge and investigated my shelf. It is a very tidy shelf. On it was small cube of apricot stilton, 5 eggs and a tub of spreadable butter. Frozen to the back was a large tin of beetroot with 3 baby beets floating around in oceans of red stuff. Not a lot to work with, especially if the person you are making tea for has a phobia of eggs.

I've still got one or two tins though, so combined with someone else's bread = beans on toast.

After this fiasco, I was DETERMINED to go to the supermarket this evening and buy something - ANYTHING to eat. As soon as I've done my lesson plan.

Lesson plan is taking a while. I decided it's not a good idea to go to the supermarket when hungry. So back to the tin cupboard . . .

This evening, it dispensed a packet of supernoodles, a tin of beans and a tin of tuna into the same saucepan. Magic slop. Back to the lesson plan.

Whilst eating slop I hear from my sister. I tell her about magic slop, and as people always seem to do when you tell them what you're eating, she lobs back at me "I had leeks for lunch".

I'm thinking; "You jammy get." The last time I had anything fresh like leeks in my cupboard was over 19 days ago. I picture a nice cauliflower cheese type dish (made out of leeks, of course), maybe with some smoked ham chopped into the sauce, or maybe some quiche made out of leeks or served with leeks, and some cherry tomatoes, and mashed potato, with a sprig of parsley, or some pasta and mushrooms and goats cheese with leeks, or some artichokes and leeks in a flan, or an asparagus, leek, shiitake and potato ragut. Or at the very least, leek and potato soup.

It turns out, when she says she had leeks for lunch, she had just that. JUST leeks. In fact, not even a whole leek. Half a boiled leek. On a plate.

Hospitals and fabrications

School = germ incubator.

And not just any old germs, either, really scaring sounding ones like scarlet fever and impetigo.

The class looks ill.

(And so do the teachers. And student teachers).

The bursar's job = Doctor. At lunch time, she matter-of-factly rattles off a rapid progress report to teachers, detailing colour of the sickest children, (green or white), temperatures and dosages of calpol administered.

I have a lot to learn about dealing with sick children.
I taught them dance in P.E. this morning. (It had been a noisy morning, and my voice was little more than an ineffective croak by this time, but we were nearly at the end of the lesson, and the morning had been mega fun). It was time to stretch, and we put Will Young on, with the kids singing their hearts out whilst we plucked imaginary apples from high branches and other stretchy-things (n.b. giving instructions over Will Young and a class of singing infants didn't help make the voice any less croaky). A child started tugging at my joggers,
"Miss, Miss, I feel sick."
Miss stops, mid-apple pick, and sees a luminous green face staring up at her. (Class look confused; they are left with one hand stretched up in the air, looking at each other)
"Right, Stephanie, go to the office and tell Mrs Bursar."
Instantly a t-shirt pulling and shoving fight ensues among the three girls closest to me about who is going to take Stephanie to the office, while Stephanie informs me she is actually going to be sick, so I send her straight to the toilet, alone.
Before I get chance to go back to the apples, a second girl presents herself in front of me.
"Miss, I feel sick too!" She also looks a bit pale (but not glowing green).
I am stumped - my sense of fairness insists that I trust this child, so I start to tell her to go to the office, but before I finish my sentence, 7 more girls have presented themselves in front of me:
"Miss, I feel sick!" they chorus.

ARGH!!

The class are outraged;
"Miss, they're not really sick, they just want to go home!"
"Miss, they're pretending!"

I'm putting a sneak-o-scope on my Christmas list; and in the meantime, "learning how to smell liar-liar-pants-on-fire" is my next target for my personal development thingy.

Happy Day

Today I experienced my first official "observation" and I passed everything! Happiness!
:-)
:-)
:-)
. . . one step closer to them letting me be a trulio-realio-life teacher!

Next week, our outside "moderator" will come to observe a lesson and my teaching will be scrutinised again. She is not the smiliest of people. I anticipate that the experience of having her observe my lesson will be as comfortable as sitting in a wicker chair made from thistles.

The main part of tomorrow's lesson, I have decided, will be learning the difference between MISS and MRS. I don't care if we spend 45 minutes practicing how to say my name, because the children WILL (gritted teeth) get this right before wicker-thistles lady arrives.

But before that, let's celebrate! Time for tea and choccy biscuits methinks.

He's got the whole world in his hands.

When my sister was 6, her ambition in life was to become a teacher.

Reason?
Because education is concerned with the battle against tyranny, oppression, inequality and exploitation? . . Given that she was 6, somewhat unsuprisingly; No.

Because she wanted to help children learn to read and write and do numbers?
No.

Because she wanted to help children know where countries are and what happened in history and how to draw well and remember to recycle? No.

It was because she wanted to be able to keep her eyes open in prayers.



Well, sis,
NER. NER. NER. NER. NER!!! I get to keep my eyes open in prayers!

N.b. She currently finds herself inescapably ensnared in a terrifying-time-space-warp- pre-determined-parallel-zone- horror-dimension where despite choosing different A-levels, different schools, a different University and completely different degree in a completely different subject, she handed in her proposal this morning and it stared back at her with the same dissertation project that I handed in this summer.
("How?" she jibbers down the phone at me, disolving into unintelligable random words, which sounded like "ice cream" and "international law" and "pears")

Well, sis, you're handing in my dissertation, and I'm living out your dreams. It's a small world, and he's got the whole of it in his hands, apparantly. It's no wonder he gets it a bit muddled sometimes.

Social Life Memorial Service

Long time, no post.

Simple reason: Lesson planning.

On Monday we began our placement full-time.
On Sunday, my social life had it's official funeral. (I would have gone but I was too busy organising story-board boot camp in our flat; DRAW people, DRAW! think of the children sweet squirrels, spatulas, and small boys, just DRAW!)

It has been a busy week. Each day I get more immersed in children-world and the funny things they do are becoming so normal I hardly notice.

A couple of things did stand out though.

Scene: Maths lesson - learning to tell the time. My partner opens her lesson with a big interactive clock on a screen. She sets the big hand to twelve, and the little hand to twelve. She turns to the class and says;
"Right class, hands up - can anyone tell me what time the clock says?"
Lots of eager hands shoot up; "Yes, Angela?"
"Lunch-time, Miss!"

And proof I haven't yet become completely severed from real-world - I nearly failed to hold it together in assembly this morning when the opening bars of Kum-by-Yah filled the hall. "Someone's crying Lord" - sweet chickens; realio? trulio? little pet dragon? I thought it was mythological buffoonery; yet there I was, second assembly, Kum-by-Yah-ing away and trying to think of all the saddest things I could to stop myself from belly laughing in front of entire school and entourage of parents.

Miss, my ears are bleeding

Sweet spatulas; what a week.

Here follows a concise(ish) summary:

The Lows
Wednesday. Woke up wishing that I'd turned off the heating before I'd tumbled into bed. Result: perma-headache. Then was totally baffled by some milk which paraded to still be in date yet had curdled itself into solid lumps onto my musli. mmm nice.

The rain was POURING down in sheets. My pale-faced soggy partner climbed into my car, and gave me the unfortunate news that we had failed our maths preparation statement. Bit complicated to explain, but basically failing = bad.

After *help* and *but we worked so hard* and *it's just not fair* on route to school, we consulted our mentor at school *what can we dooooo?*, and she advised us to leave school for the afternoon to repair our punctured plan. (This would mean avoiding our course leader at all costs, as she was unlikely to find us missing an afternoon of school "groovy").

The morning with the kids included *miss, my ears are bleeding* *miss I'm about to be sick* (another baffling moment - I accompanied a green looking child to the minature hobbit-sized bathroom, where aforementioned child spat in the sink and announced "done it!", then skipped back to the classroom, followed by me with a metaphorical question mark hovering above my head.) And a very unsucessful explanation from miss about the moon being round but not like a mouse on a football. And practising walking down the corridor to the ICT suite quietly a lot. And very quickly it was time to go back to college and try and uncover where we'd gone wrong with our maths preparation statement.


A flat tyre and a missing maths tutor later, we both were ready to throw ourselves off something high up. Not a good day.

n.b. we bumped into our course leader. not groovy.

The Highs
Thursday. FANTASTIC day. (despite a very wobbly start relating to me cursing at my alarm clock). I've remembered why we're doing this.

My partner delivered a fantastic lesson - I was so proud of her. Well done, Mrs G. And although my lesson wasn't quite so smooth, (in fact descending into complete and utter chaos at one point, and all my resources being trashed), it meant that I found myself doing my first bit of major telling off ("class 2, I am very, very cross" served with a side-salad of *stern teacher look*) and I give myself an A* for that (especially as it was my first time).

And one of the kids even called me Miss instead of Mrs (that was the child with blood dripping from his ear).

And we got an email to say our re-submitted maths has passed. Life is sweet.