Cheers Mate!

Remember Kindergarten Cop?
Watching it tonight made me remember all the hilarious kids and Arnold moments, especially this one:
Detective John Kimble: "They are pushing me around"
Phoebe O'Hara: "Who?"
Detective John Kimble: "The kids. They're walking all over me."
I feel like that sometimes.

Maybe I should use this line:
Arnold (in his accent): "You're not going to have your mommies here to wipe your tushies. Oh, no. It's time to turn this mush into muscles. No more complaining. No more, 'I have to go to the bathroom.' There is no bathroom!" err 'toilet'

The kids and I talked about chicken pox because 3 classmates were sick with them.
Me: "How did you feel when you had the chicken pox?"
Kid: "They tickled"
Those sound like damn good chicken pox.

We talked about 2 and 3-D shapes (actually it was more of a review since most of the kids knew what a triangular prism was!)

There was play and reenacting The Little Red Riding Hood and recapping Cinderella and listening to Disney music...and more play.

Good day.

I know that every class that I teach the students act differently with me than they do with their classroom teacher. I told a year 5 class that I was pretty sure they behaved differently with Mr. so-and-so to which a girl replied, "Yes, miss we are not usually like this."

Supply teachers can relate: don't you just love the kids in class who you can trust to tell you what the usual classroom teacher does and how the day should go? These kids are my lifesavers.

The Good
Taught at this school twice before and had good days, 'today would be a good day' I thought
Susan and I were at the same school (both in year 4 classes)
Lesson plans were provided and a teacher ensured I was comfortable with the material/prepared
I had an educational assistant
Felt much better after a couple of beers and fish & chips (you'll find out why I needed it)
Laughed all the way home after deciding to rename the British currency to 'two-poundie' and 'poundie'

The Bad
Many of the students' names were difficult to pronounce, therefore remember
The educational assistant had to leave in the afternoon for an appointment
Took at least 5 minutes to get all the students' attention (every single time)
Students tattle-tailed all the time
Students chased each other with rulers
Gave the students a 5 minutes spiel about respect and listening and blah, blah, blah
Had the students sit in silence for 5 whole minutes
Wanted to cry at the end of the day (but didn't)
Two boys roughhoused in line to go for recess playtime resulting in one pissed off and the other crying

The Ugly
Said 'pants' instead of 'trousers' resulting in an uproar of laughter and possibly a dirty look from a teacher walking by (fyi: pants means underwear here)
At exactly 3:15pm (home time) a student said, "Miss, there is someone crying on the floor" - apparently a student got shouldered in the mouth (accidentally of course)
Two trains home were CANCELLED
Ordered a beer at a pub and found out they stopped serving food (the original purpose of going there)
Old man stared at me at the 'old man' pub
Some random guy tried to get my attention at the pub (he didn't really get it)

Good day with a year 6 class at a school I have already worked at (twice). The students are good and the staff is super nice. The morning was typical curriculum but the afternoon consisted of the students building robots from K'nex for a robot challenge! Those kids are so creative.

One of the toughest things of supply teaching is not knowing the students' names...even by the end of the day. I hate pointing to a kid whose hand is up and saying, "Yes, you in the back." I need a better system of remembering them all.

My day began in a year 5/6 class where I taught the life cycle of plants (you know, the spreading and germination of seeds and such) which the teacher provided a power point presentation for (sweet!) and maths which was about parallel and perpendicular edges on 3D shapes (some of which I couldn't even name, eep!)

I let the students guess where they thought I was from. The first response was "America" and then they got "Canada." They mentioned they knew because of my 'accent.' Ha! I thought they were the ones with the accent.

My afternoon was in nursery [big stretch from the morning class] where I basically watched/interacted with kids while they played learned through play. One kid did a painting and I asked him what his name was so I could write it on his art piece but he didn't know it...

I got a call this morning for work and it was for a year 4 class. The kids were pretty loud and rowdy. It always took me about a good 2 minutes to actually get their attention so they could hear what I was saying. It was also a Catholic school that has a collective worship in the gymnasium hall every morning so I thought they would be angels but not quite. Of course when another teacher entered the room you could hear a pin drop.

I managed to get an english and math lesson in the day. Independent reading was, well not independent and not quiet either. The plan for PE was dance but I didn't know much about that so we just played a game that I've played with 5 year olds back home and they loved it. Unfortunately they weren't listening to directions very well so I cut PE a couple minutes - you gotta follow through with the discipline.

At the end of the day if the students behaved well they could have free time golden time where they play games. Not all the students really deserved it but it was the end of the day on a Friday so I was nice.

One girl asked me if I was Irish. I said no, I'm Canadian. She said, I have a lot of friends in Canada, Canada is a big country!
Another girl asked me if I was American. I said no, I'm Canadian. To which another girl belted out, she sounds American doesn't she?!
It's funny when kids try to guess where I'm from because I clearly don't have an English accent.

Surprisingly the principal head teacher praised the way I talked to the kids and handled the class. I didn't think I did that good of a job, maybe I had high expectations?

Today I was in a year 3/4 class. The students were well behaved and the day went smoothly.

The kids get to pay for hot lunches dinners if they like and they do rotary in pretty much every year (which is confusing to me as the teacher). The only thing I shouldn't have done was run physical education on the field where it was muddy and the brand new white soccer balls footballs got muddy and so did the kid's shoes. Oops. But when is the grass dry in England? I did get a laugh when a girl said to me, "Ms. K, I'm small but I'm fast."

The football match didn't last very long because within a couple of minutes there were about 3 kids down on the ground in pain from some kind of injury and complaints that I threw two balls in the game...I just wanted everyone to get a chance with the ball!

A kid also asked me if I was from Australia...wouldn't I have an Australian accent?

Today I was at the same school as where I taught nursery yesterday. I arrived early to give myself time to look over the lessons for the day. I was in a year 1 class. I taught the students comprehension, phonics, math, and music. I also read them two storybooks.

Overall my day went very well. The kids were loud and roughhoused but for the most part I think they got something out of the lessons!

The only scary moment of the day was when another child ripped apart a child's Christmas cracker thing. After the child stopped crying during playtime (aka recess) he looked at me and said, "You know what I'm gunna do to him? I'm gunna rip his face off!"

Today was my first teaching experience in London.

These are the events that occurred:
1. Left the house at 735am
2. Missed the National Rail train at the station by about a minute
3. Asked people what train I could take to my destination
4. Got on a train that was supposed to go to a particular station but did not so I ended up seeing more of London than I wanted to
5. Had to switch trains, finally I was going the right way but school had already started
6. Made it to the station, asked people for street names (people who live in London can't even tell you street names because they are never posted!)
7. Found the street I needed, found the school, but how to get into the school?
8. A man walking on the street noticed my confusion and pointed me in the right direction
9. I found my way to the nursery school by the primary school and started my day (30 minutes late)

If I could describe the room in 3 words it would be: FREE FOR ALL

No kidding. I don't think there were any 'rules' in the room to follow. Children just did what they pleased. I tried to motivate some children to use the building blocks to build buildings instead of walking all over them...that lasted for a solid 5 minutes.

One child had a lot of 'energy' and when I asked him for his name he gave me one...only for me to discover later that he gave me the name of another child in the room...these children are only 4 and they know how to trick a teacher.

I absolutely love reading storybooks to children and when a few children were interested in a couple I was reading I was glad they were focused and sitting still, however I noticed that they do shout out a lot and probably don't know what it means to 'raise your hand.'

Despite the nightmare of a commute it wasn't a super stressful day. Tomorrow I return to the school to teach Year 1.

A pub, a bar, a club, a cab and a pizzzzzzzzzza x2.
A picnic on the bed...

Today we went to the bank to get bank accounts and it happened to be closed due to technical difficulties and that was the ONLY branch we could use through our agency so we decided to walk around and go to a Protocol head office and photocopy resources because we might need them if teachers don't leave lesson plans which we hope will not happen.

We bought food and made fajitas which were amazing. But we have a long way to go with the whole independent cooking thing.

It can only be BRITISH chicken!

The final product, you know you want some.

We saw this Indian place called "Monsoon" and if you know Susan and I you know that is our nickname.

Today we woke up to snow! It's as though we never left Toronto. We left the flat to go to our teaching agency's head office in the south and I decided to wear my fall boots which I thought were waterproof because I had worn them in the snow back home but 5 minutes down the road my socks were getting wet. I hate that feeling of water squishing in socks. I should have worn my rainboots wellies.

We signed a lot of paperwork at the office and I was getting nervous about teaching and not having a permanent address. I bought a new phone with my 11 digit number, so call me! We ate at Burger King and then felt super sick afterward but we had wanted to try it because we were super hungry.

We cooked ourselves stir fry today, our first warm, fresh meal! Mmmm.


P.s. Homesick

I woke up Monday morning with my stomach in knots knowing that in just a few hours I would be on a plane to England. Chris came over for lunch and my sister skipped her 4th period class to take me to Pearson. With a quick goodbye to my dad, we Chris hauled all my luggage into the truck and we were off.

At the airport I had butterflies in my stomach. I weighed my luggage, checked in and stood in a long snake line to check my carry on baggage. After all that was done we stood around chatting and waiting for the inevitable moment of the big goodbyes. Stalling, we stood by the gate/check carry on area chatting and telling my myself this does not need to be a very emotional moment.


At 5 o'clock I decided to say my big goodbyes [I didn't cry] and waited in line to check my carry on. What a pain to take my laptop out of its case and take off my shoes before I could enter the scanner without beeping. Susan had her bag thoroughly inspected, something about some hand sanitizer or something. Watch out she might get ya in the eye. With a final wave to my family we took the quiet trek down a hall and down some stairs to sit by our gate. Sitting there it still had not sunk in my head that I was going to England. The last time I was in Europe was 8 years ago and that was with my family.

Our boarding time was supposed to be 6:20pm but even though we didn't have working cellphones or working watches we had a feeling it was getting pretty close to that time or about that time and we hadn't been called yet. Once we, finally, boarded the plane we passed by the "1st class" section where I had to take a second look at those seats!

I wouldn't have a problem falling asleep in these seats!

We don't look nervous at all!