Day 4: Hill of Happiness

I can't quite believe it. I feel I don't actually want to say anything lest I jinx myself but, what the hell:

I had a GOOD day.

I started off this morning feeling slightly better with a couple more hours sleep than the night before and the warm, fuzzy feeling that comes from spending the evening in the company of old friends.

My first lesson was year 9. I let the two boys in, and again, the other one turned up 40 minutes late. My mentor sat in to observe and assist (which was basically whipping the third boy off to another teacher when he finally swanned in. Arse.) I have a little conundrum in the shape of a turkish boy who "doesn't speak any english" according to another turkish boy, and so sat chatting with him, I hope about work but I was too busy to check. I've realised that my lessons really need to be differentiated down as I can tell it's already over their heads a little bit. There are some bright kids in there but it's difficult to get through to everyone. The rest of the lesson passed without any real incident apart from boy number 1 chatting, moaning and then moaning more when I called him by his surname. I will have to be harder on him. He is very distracting and won't stop talking off topic.

This was followed by year 10 and, despite a few troublesome youths, I enjoyed myself. There was a mini debate on the idea of love at first sight, which even entailed a couple of intelligent points, and then a rather more fun activity where they worked in groups to answer questions which were hidden on my monitor and they had to send an envoy to retrieve. Other than the one group that misunderstood me and wrote down the questions but not the answers, and one group that chatted (argh!) it seemed to go down well, and I bought some pens to award as a prize to the winning group which I will hand out tomorrow. I'm going to try drama in the next lesson too - not sure how that will turn out, but we'll see.

My final lesson was year 7. I was instructed to be as hard and strict as possible and I tried, although I have integrated a merit and warning area on the board to make it easier to remember warnings and so forth, and to offer some inspiration. It worked well with the kids, and there are a few of them that I will have to watch out for but otherwise the lesson was good.

So yeah - the day finished, I stayed till 7 to plan for tomorrow, and then came home, feeling happier than I have all week.

I suppose that's the point of the course and the job. The unpredictability. It can go well, it can go terribly, but you never really know. I guess with experience you learn how to cope when it does go tits up.

Right, time for bed I think.