*deep breathe in*
1. As usual leave way too little time to get to school! Speed walk in, so hot and bothered when arrive.
2. Hang on school gates desperately trying to catch someone's attention to let me in. Shouting "llave", "maestra" and "hombre" in equal measure which means key, teacher, man, in a desperate bid to get in school. Mental note each week, leave more time next week! Obviously will do same again next week!
3. Walk across concrete play ground, kick four different footballs back to kids as they cross my path. Why is it I am so able to play sports in far flung countries, but so incompetent in England? I still remember proudly catching a cricket ball that kids hit towards me in India and playing American Football with kids at Milton Hershey School in America when I was 14!
4. Into my classroom, quickly write up lesson on whiteboard. Turn round at 10.02, two mins into class, to find two faces looking at me. Ok, where are the other 28?
5. Send one of the two faces to get others, who drag themselves in over the first ten minutes of lesson. Why is it always the boys who are last?!
6. Such a well prepared lesson plan. I've even got sweets as prizes for those that answer my ultimate question! Yes, I have an ultimate question and yes, I am sad! First thing, make sure everyone has their computer on. Half the class have forgotten where Microsoft excel is since last week! Half the class need my help already. Real struggle, some computers have setting menus, like Brightness, frozen on the screen, so difficult to see the actual screen, some computers just don't have excel in there, it just seems to disappear! And some computers just down right don't even switch on. Frantic ten mins trying to get folk just to have blank excel sheet! I'm sweating already!
7. Get cracking on recapping what we did last week, this will be a doddle! I taught them how to use sum, plus, minus, divide formulae with cells last week with this identical example of a supermarket receipt. Lovely jubbly, This will only need ten minutes.... oh no.... All my pearls of disjointed Spanish wisdom from last week have sunk without trace! Cue an onslaught of "teacher?" At any given moment three kids want my attention. I literally run around classroom trying to help everyone, occasionally stopping to give general advice to everyone. Questions vary from checking formulae, getting my acknowledgement they got it right to wider reaching questions: what is my name, where do I come from and how much longer am I around for! I sense lots of the boys want my acknowledgement. I've literally just told one boy his work is correct and he's immediately calling me over again to show me!
8. Before I know it, time is up. Feeling exhausted and a little deflated I receive lots of thank you's and a few handshakes.
9. Then the really cool bit .... about 4 or 5 of the 30 come up to me at the end of the class. They have just quietly got on with the first exercise then took it upon themselves to answer my six questions, including the ultimate question, all written in very poor disjointed Spanish. Even having a go at understanding them deserves a medal! Now none of them got all six right, especially not the ultimate question (that's my sweets safe for another week - harsh, but fair you'll agree!), but the fact they had a go with no prompt was just a little moving and rewarding. So over the space of an hour and a half I've gone through a range of highs and lows, but ultimately I'm left scratching my head as how to tackle next week with such a range of abilities and standard of computers. Back to the drawing board (over a chewy sweet or two)....
*deep breathe out* and relax!
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