27 July 2009

Monday, and at long last the three times postponed Inservice at Good Shepherd is happening! As Ken needs to go to the bank I'm on my own to start it off. Due to start at 8am so Ken insists I leave at 7:30am to drive myself there. He will follow in a PMV [public motor vehicle -mini bus]. So I arrive at 7:55am, no one around as I expected! We started at 9:30!

After the usual Act of Worship I outlined the task and set them off to do an audit of resources for the new curriculum. Something that they really should have done 18 months ago but never mind, they set to and it most productive! I think in many cases they actually talked together as departments for the first time! I had estimated one hour but they then kept asking for more time so that's what we did. The photos called Good Shepherd 2 are worth looking at as they show the conditions that they have to work under. One good outcome was that at least two departments realised just how much old stuff they were keeping that was of no use and actually started throwing them out!!

Kaikai time came [lunch break] and we were really looking forward to this as the school had applied for a grant for Inservice [teacher training] and we were told that they used some for buying in lunch. The driver had been sent into to town at 11am, he arrived back at 1:30 [round trip should take 45 minutes] so Ken thought that great kaikai was coming. So we eventually ate at 2pm. On the table [in one picture Mary is sitting with her male colleague at this table, none too clean!!] were two white loaves, one tub of marg, one tin of corned beef [they love it] and a tin of mackerel. One teacher was making sandwiches and everyone was tucking in!! OK ex-colleagues, remember me with bread?? Corned beef!! The smellis enough to put me off and always has but Ken loves it!!

So that was kaikai!! I had in the morning thought of a good activity on the spur of the moment for them to find out from each other what hidden talents they had that other staff could tap into ie human resources and so we played speed dating!! That was a great success and they loved the explanation of what speed dating is!!!! They found out a lot about each other and how they could use others expertise.

Some pictures show them in the library looking through boxes of books. The Friday previous, Ken and I had been able to take 20 double desks to the school and 29 boxes of books all donated by Rotary and these were being gone through!! The boxes had a mixture of books in and they found lots of sets of text books that they could use.

The Head then arrived at the end of the day to thank Ken and I for the desks and books and our support. A good day.

The last picture is of the lady in charge of the library with her daughter and first grandchild!!