Day 109: 19/4/13
I decided this morning that I'd get dressed an everything and I'd be fully ready if I got a call. I don't know if that made a difference to my luck or not but I did get a call! They told me it was fairly close and should be easy for public transport- it was a place called Kew which was difficult to understand as it sounds like Q! I got the call at 7:15 and I didn't need to be there until 8:30 do it seemed like loads of time, but when I looked up how to get there I would need to get a bus at 7:20 to be there in time and I wasn't going to be there on time! The school didn't seem to be close enough to any train station to get a train. So I decided to get a taxi, so I had plenty of time to get there then! The taxi only took about 25 minutes and just cost 22, so it wasn't too bad!
I had a grade 2 class. The teacher had left her timetable and some ideas for what she wanted them to do so I followed that mostly. The kids were very good- a few chatty ones, but really well behaved in general. The class next door had the partition open so we could see and hear everything which made it hard to get mine really quiet, but we figured it out! They did reading groups first and more or less knew what to do. Then she wanted to do some writing about exclamation marks so we wrote some sentences that needed exclamation marks. After recess she had wanted spellings with ai and ay words and some dictation. We did that but it proved very interesting as their pronunciation of that sound is much more like aye! After that they had maths groups and were really good again and did their work easily.
After break they usually have catch up time on a Friday which means they catch up on some work they have missed and when they are finished they have free time!! I wasn't having any of that!! So I got them drawing a picture- it's a flower picture I've done before with a specific design and it just means really they have a lot of colouring to do! It keeps them quiet!! So while they did that we chatted a bit about Ireland and I played some tin whistle for them which they really liked. The class next door obviously had free time as a lot of them wandered over to see what the tin whistle was. The teacher was just on the laptop and didn't seem to mind at all! We went to assembly then which was fairly short and they went home after. For most of the assembly they interviewed a teacher that had been in the Philipines helping out teachers there- it sounded interesting.
I was speaking to the teacher next door a few times during the day and she didn't seem too happy with the school- she gave out about every thing! She didn't know what the teacher in my room was doing and had no intention really of working with her as the teacher I was covering for had a leadership role and the one next door would be left with all the planning. She gave out about assembly being on Friday and mentioned how there was b****iness between staff on other occasions. It sounded like she just found a problem with everything. It was interesting as I was beside her at lunch and noone seemed to sit near her at all!
Anyway, the class I had were lovely and it was a good day there. After school u had to figure out how to get home. I saw a train station on the map on my phone so I walked there which took a half an hour. I kept an eye out for a bus or tram in the mean time but didn't come across any. When I got to where the station was on the map there was no station to be seen so I had to keep walking to the next station, which took about 45 minutes in total, in shoes not made for walking!! So I still don't know how I'd get to the school another day!
I didn't do much when I got to the hostel. I ate some dinner and read a book, that was about it!