What I Learned....Last Week

Well, it’s been a while since my last post….I apologize profusively for that. I have been quite the busy bee over the last week. However, I am here now and ready to provide you with a wonderful commentary on how my week went!



First off, I completely lucked out on schools this week. I worked four out of five days (sweet) with two days each at two different schools. I worked Thursday and Friday at Overton Grange (the school I was at on my first day) and Monday and Tuesday at Riddlesdown Collegiate as I discussed in my previous post. The entire week went really well and I had little to no problems with the classes I was filling in for. The only reason I didn’t work Wednesday was because I took it off deliberately to get some sleep after the England match (a huge disappointment but I’ll talk more on that in a dedicated post). SO, without further ado I present to you all “What I learned this week”.


1. Students and computers are a pain in the ass combination. Don’t get me wrong, when students have to work on computers it usually involves some sort of project or assignment that they need to do and I just need to monitor their usage. Therein lies the issue. It doesn’t matter how many times you say it students will naturally veer off course and end up checking football scores, clothing websites, streaming music, etc. I found that this is really dependant on the policy that schools put in place for internet usage and how strictly the school implements it. At Riddlesdown I had a big problem trying to get kids to stay off websites that didn’t pertain to the lesson. At Overton however, there were no problems as the students stayed on task with the appropriate material. Either way, it requires constant monitoring on my part and it’s always really funny when I tell a student to close an internet window and they just minimize it….like I don’t know those tricks.


2. I’m oddly good at teaching Religious Education. First off, I want to say that Religious Education (RE) in the UK is AWESOME. It’s mandatory for students in secondary to take it and I like the idea. You don’t have to be religious at all (and a lot of kids in the classes aren’t) but the point of the curriculum is to cultivate a culture of understanding by opening the students’ eyes to all of the varying religious traditions are out there. Hopefully by learning what each religion entails will help them get along better in society. The students study Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Sikhism among others. I think this is a truly noble cause at the fact that it’s mandatory really helps to broaden the message. I’m not a particularly religious person myself in most cases, but I pride myself in at least knowing a lot about the basis of many world religions. I was actually able to step into the classes fairly easily and discuss the content from an impartial and non-biased viewpoint (essential when tackling such sensitive material). In three different classes I taught about the Jewish Creation Story and how it might affect how humans treat the environment, the Buddhist enlightenment theory, and Women’s roles in the Christian church. Amazing!


3. Years 10 and 11 are WAY harder to teach than Years 7 and 8. I have definitely found in my first couple weeks of teaching that the older they get the harder they get to teach. I’ve been enjoying my Year 7 and 8 classes way more. I think this is mainly to do with the fact that the younger kids are brand new to secondary school so they are less likely to act out in class. Also they’re just plain young. It’s Grades 6 and 7 so they’re 12 and 13 years old. Way easier to have fun with and to keep under control. The older the students get the more rebellious their personalities get and the more they begin to realize that they can try to take advantage of the fact that they have a supply. For the most part the work that gets assigned when there’s a supply is just book work…reading and answering questions. I can only try to keep them on task so much but if they’re not motivated enough to do the work I can’t really make them. I can just make notes on any disruptive behaviour, try to keep them quiet, and move them on to the next class. Let me say also that it’s not all of the students; a lot of them work really well. A lot of the boys and a good chunk of the girls just lose a lot of maturity at this point and it scares me sometimes to think of how misbehaved a Year 11 class is juxtaposed with the fact that they could be out of the mandatory school system and into the workforce in less than a year. Mentally, they’re definitely not prepared for the real world. It makes sense that the British government is extending mandatory education right through to Year 13 as of 2015.


Anyways, in a nut shell that was my week. Long, trying at times, but ultimately worth it.


Other than the teaching thing I didn’t get up to too much else. I ended up at The Tup for a couple pints on Friday during Happy Hour and just turned in to eat some dins and watch a movie with a couple flatmates. On Saturday night we all went out to a charity event at a club in the city. The theme was “Rocktoberfest” so we had to go as rockstars. Pictures are on Facebook and that pretty much tells that story. We stayed in London until around Midnight then headed to Clapham to finish up the night and caught the N155 home. Sunday was a good day, I ended up heading into London to go to The Sports Café in Haymarket. This is a North American style sports bar that plays a lot of North American sports among other things. I wanted to check it out for a while and Liverpool played Everton yesterday so I figured I could kill two birds with one stone. The bar was pretty cool but Liverpool sucked and lost 2-0…not impressed with that needless to say.


That’s about it people! I was at Overton again today but I don’t have any other pre-booked work this week as of yet. Hopefully I’ll get a good chunk of days in this week. A lot of teachers are out sick it seems so I should get in at a couple schools. Then it’s off to Belfast on Saturday!


One last thing, a HUGE shout-out to two newly engaged couples: Smitty and Sarah as well as Rob and Michelle. Congrats to all of you and I wish you all the best!!!


Cheers, Love, Rock That World!


Erik