Day 134: 14/5/1
It's fecking freezing today!! Going to school I had the hat, scarves and gloves all on! I'm glad I didn't post them home at Christmas! The weather on my phone said it was 7 degrees this morning but it felt an awful lot colder!!
I ha a few things to correct in school from yesterday so I was glad to get there a few minutes early!
This week for show and tell they are talking about their pets so one guy brought his pet first thing in the morning. It was a gorgeous black Labrador and his mum brought it in for him. He was a very calm dog so was okay with a class of children looking at him! One guy doesn't ever sit down with the rest of the class though and the dog jumped up on him! Lovely!! He'll learn to sit down soon enough!
We had reading groups and then spelling and handwriting which were all fine as there was work left for them all. After break we had Maths and I dragged on a really long lesson about subtraction and they wrote their own subtraction story. After lunch we had science which a specialist teacher teaches. Then we had integrated studies and the teacher next door had a video and game for them to look at on the whiteboard!
So it should have been an easy day!! I had put stuff on my USB for the subtraction lesson but the USB wouldn't work. The computer was telling me that the folders on my USB were shortcuts but I know they're not. Another teacher tried to help but he just kept telling me they were shortcuts. I was trying to explain to her that they aren't but she seemed to just think that I had made them shortcuts and didn't realise it.
I was on yard straight after that and all was fine. I went inside as the bell rang and to put away the yard duty vest and bag and when I came back the class were in the line and all distressed! One boy had punched another in the nose and his nose was bleeding. The guy with the bleeding nose had already been brought to sick bay. The other guy was upset that he'd hit him. The guy who was hit is also on the autistic spectrum which doesn't help the situation! The principal spent a while covering all tracks with that during the day!
After lunch we went to straight to science. I could see that one boy was crying and it seemed one of the other guys had kicked him in the privates during lunch. They hadnt told the person on duty as the bell had just rang. The guy that had kicked them thought they were being mean as told him to be it and all ran away. It was all a bit of a misunderstanding really but I was a bit worried that the guy that was crying was hurt more than normal as he didn't even stop crying as they were looking at live bugs! So the principal had to check that out aswell and try to get the bottom of it! It was definitely one of those days!! I was talking to the principal after school and she said it often gets like this when it gets cold- they all lose their tempers!! She felt both situations were dealt with anyway and she booked me for the rest of the week. You forget about that side of teaching when you are just going from class to class all the time! It eats into so much time of the day trying to sort out who did what!!
Eimhin had sent a message today wondering could we try out the Skype this evening so I went on the computer downstairs for most of the evening. First I thought I'd use the actual computers in the hostel but they don't have Skype! So I was between the computer and the laptop trying to get my memory stick to work and trying to set up Skype! It turns out my folders were coming up as shortcuts as my USB had picked up some virus. That's the problem with using the free wifi I'd say! Anyway I googled how to fix it and I don't think I got rid of the virus as such but I managed to find the files that the virus had hidden and to get them back on the memory stuck. Hopefully it will work next time I want to use it!
I was texting Mike for a while this evening and afterwards I was talking to Shane aswell. Busy evening chatting. Eimhin never seemed to appear on Skype wherever he was so well have to try again tomorrow maybe!