Well, it has definitely been quite the action packed week so far for me. I started out this week as I ended last week, at Henry Compton School. This is the all-boys school that I was mentioning before in previous posts. I haven’t had too many issues at this school thus far but I knew I was bound to have a bad day eventually…luck can only hold out for so long ha ha ha. There’s a great student body in this school but there’s also a lot of students that come from difficult or deprived backgrounds, plus when you factor in the “sibling rivalry”-esque atmosphere that lies like a fog over a school of only boys, it’s bound to breed some difficult students.
Monday was actually a pretty good day. I started out the day with a Year 7 Food class which I thought was pretty cool. Unfortunately we didn’t get to actually do any cooking at all. The students were assigned to design a three course menu for the school canteen (in practice). The point is to understand a balanced diet and why certain foods are priced certain ways, etc. The only problem was these students were fully expecting to be doing some cooking that day so they weren’t too impressed about the written work. Plus, this was a very small class but full of kids with special needs, mainly ADHD and hyperactivity so they had a hard time to sit still. I had them for two straight lessons so I gave them the chance to get up and stretch their legs between lessons. Giving them the taste however unfortunately unsettled them to the point that I was hard pressed to get them seated and working again. Luckily I had a couple of TAs in the class helping me out and it ended up being an alright lesson overall.
After this class I had a Year 10 Art class for two consecutive lessons. This was actually a pretty good lesson overall. They were working on supplementing their portfolios by taking still life pictures of insects and scaling them up to sketch them on larger paper. There’s some serious artistic talent in the class and I was very impressed. A couple of the students were chatting to me about football during the class while they were drawing which was pretty cool. The kids really like the fact that I can talk to them about the sport and it definitely helps to break some barriers. There were a couple issues with keeping some of them on task through 2 hours but it was an enjoyable lesson nonetheless.
To finish off the day I had a Year 11 Art class. This was definitely the best of the day. These students are working towards their GCSEs in Art and it’s an elective course so they definitely want to be there. They were working on portraits of villains from films and hey just got to work as soon as they were in the room. No problems and once the bell went I packed up and on my way home! It was definitely a great way to start off a week (way better than last week anyways). Once I got home I tinkered around on my computer, chatted with my flatmates, made dinner, and eventually hit the sack.
Now, today was a COMPLETELY different story. Funny enough I ended up back at Henry Compton School today as well. Today was the day my string of luck for classes would end. I had to cover the Head of Department for languages and ended up having four Year 9 Spanish classes and one Year 8 French class…..yeah. The Year 9’s in this school are definitely the biggest handful and are definitely the hardest to get under control and working. I won’t fill up this post with every single detail about the classes but every single class was the exact same routine. It took approximately 15 min just to get them into the class, settled, and quiet so I could just take attendance…amazing. The ones that did get to work were fantastic but most of them thought they could wreak havoc for the simple reason I was a supply. Most students have this notion that there will be no consequences for their actions because they think they’ll never see me again…they were dead wrong. I ended up having to have at least one student removed from each class for extremely disruptive behaviour (one throwing pencils left, right, and centre, two for constantly throwing paper airplanes at me, and one for repeatedly telling to shut-up when I requested him to sit back in his seat and start getting some work done.) It’s definitely just a few kids in the bunch that go too far but there were still a good chunk of kids in each class who were talking and not completing their work. Unfortunately for me a lot of them did not understand the work and I could do nothing to help them because I didn’t understand it myself. I tried my best to channel Casey and Julie for Spanish and French respectively but to no avail. It definitely didn’t help my cause. It’s all good though, I received a TON of help from the Assistant Head and he was very friendly and helped get me set up for the day. He was pretty impressed with my organization (I make detailed notes about each class I cover and leave them for the regular teacher) and thought I handled everything very well. He was going to be talking to the teacher I was covering and told me he would make sure to put in a good word about me. Even better than that I received a call from Protocol asking me if I could go back to Henry Compton for the rest of the week! A silver lining at the end of the day, I get a full five day work week for the first time. It should be interesting when I have some of those students again who think that they’d never have me in their classes again…eventually it should get to the point when I’ll know them very well and hopefully avoid some of these situations. Only time will tell I suppose.
Oh, and when I got home I checked the mail and I get both my ticket for the England-France match at Wembley next Wednesday and the tickets for the Fulham-Birmingham City match at the end of the month! So, not such a bad day after all.
I’ll make sure to update how the rest of the week goes at the school once I get to Friday. It’s only three days away! Ha ha ha ha. Until then:
Cheers, Love, Rock That World Everybody!
Erik
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