Day 8: Parent's Evening

Today I spent exactly 12 hours at the school. This is something to which I have become accustomed, but for some reason it felt harder on this particular day. Probably because I experienced my first ever parent's evening. I say in the singular, as I only saw one actual parent.

Anyway, it was the third of my 4-period days in the week, and the strain was beginning to show. There's something about being told "you look tired" that really makes you feel like shit when you drag yourself in after less than 6 hours' sleep.

So lesson one was year 7. I had a teaching assistant, which was a first for that group, and was embarrassed when she corrected an answer I gave to the group. I really need to double check what I'm teaching before I do. Although I'm not hugely confident with my year 7s, I generally like what I do with them and there are some really bright kids in that group so it makes it fun. I'm going to organise a trip to the library soon.

After the year 7s were year 9. I had help again this time, in the shape of another English teacher, who will hopefully be team teaching with me throughout the year with this group. Overall it went ok, actually. I tried a bit of active learning, the kids held up laminated letters to spell out "Rooney's foot" and had to put the apostrophe in the right place. They managed to do this, and complete the task which was pretty good to see. Then came the reading. I was completely upstaged by my colleague who read it with such aplomb, and a fantastic scottish accent, that the kids were hooked. Those that complained that we had so many pages to read through wanted him to read on, which he did. It was really great watching him as he made it so entertaining and I hope I can implement that into my own teaching soon. The behaviour was generally much better in the group, which came from the added support, and I also hope I'll improve my confidence enough to get the guys to listen.

So break time, and I was amazed to see a year 11 boy turn up to complete the homework I'd set the group. It was even more surprising to see that he was the only one who completed it, as everyone else blamed the rain for ruining the worksheets I'd given them. I've yet to decide what to do about that. K was up to his old tricks, sleeping rather "because he went to bed too early and woke up at 3 and couldn't sleep". Hmmmm. Frankly I was just pleased to finish the lesson. I had some rather unpleasant news about my year 11s, which was that they did not, in fact, complete their Sherlock Holmes piece of coursework and are therefore one under, and there is no room to fit it in during classtime. I don't even want to think about the implications of this just yet.

So yeah, lunchtime, lesson off to prepare for my last one, and finally year 10. Unfortunately this did also not go to plan. I have great difficulty in getting them to shut up, and I need to address this in the next lesson tomorrow. We ended up watching the film for the rest of the lesson, which was good to aid understanding of what happens leading up to the scenes we are studying, but I felt like a bit of a fraud anyway.

It would seem that these blogs are getting more and more tedious to write, but perhaps I'm just not in the mood tonight. I'll be more reflective tomorrow, and will tell you the story of how I'm spending the day on Friday helping one of my year 11s rewrite his coursework (one mark was 3/40)

Off to bed.