A Day in Primary School.

Hello everyone,

As mentioned in my previous post, I have recently made the leap from day-to-day supply, to a long-term position in the same primary class for the remainder of the year. While there are several really nice things about this (Continuity! Getting to know the kids! No early morning supply calls!), it's definitely been an adjustment.

As a supply teacher, there were so many things that I could just leave at the door on my way out of a classroom. But now, I take them all home with me: work to grade, planning to fill out, the stress of knowing that the education of these little humans is currently resting on my shoulders... That kind of thing.

This afternoon, I saw an infographic on Facebook about how many hours are REALLY in a teacher's day, since apparently, some people think that it begins at 9:00 and ends at 3:30. Honestly, it surprises me that people are still so disillusioned (or perhaps just uninformed) as to believe this. Seeing this has inspired me to create my own little "log" of how an average day might go for a teacher in the crazy little bubble that is the Primary classroom.

6:15 AM: Alarm goes off.

6:20 AM: Alarm goes off again. I actually get up this time. Grumble and groan, but bribe myself out of bed with the promise of coffee and breakfast. Shower, get dressed, eat.

7:25-7:40: Depending on how much I have to accomplish in the morning and how proactive I'm feeling, I hop on my bike anywhere between 7:25ish and 7:40ish. Luckily, my new place is situated along the railway path, so I speed alongside the spandex-clad commuters for about 10 minutes until I am at school.

7:35-7:50: Arrive at school. Write the date on the whiteboard. Connect laptop to Smart Board and load up the interactive slideshows and online activities for the day. Print anything that needs printing. Photocopy anything that needs photocopying. Potentially sort out any technological issues that may occur. Consult with TA about the day.

8:30: If it's a Monday or Friday, teachers have to attend a "briefing". If not, I am probably still starting to panic a little about where the time has gone, as the kids will be arriving soon.

8:45: Go outside and greet the children and parents. Answer parents' questions, take names down for the parent-teacher conference, act really excited over the toys and jewelry that the kids brought to school and want to show you.

8:50: Bring the kids inside, collect signed letters from home, corral the kids into putting away said toys/jewelry/that weird piece of string they found outside and tell them about 5 times to sit down with their reading book.

8:55: Once again panic because somehow it's 8:55 and you need to take the register and line the kids up for assembly, quickly enough not to face the shame of showing up late. Spend the assembly watching my class out of the corner of my eye, ready to shoot the "evil eye" at anyone misbehaving.

9:30: Bring the class, who are now super chatty, back to the classroom. Somehow, manage to restore some semblance of order and begin teaching for the morning. It's English and Phonics. Deliver lessons that account for the fact that some kids can write a detailed story using adjective and adverbs, and some can barely string together a sentence in English that makes sense.

10:50: Break time for the kids, and possibly for me... though more likely, I am out on duty, dealing with someone who has lost 5 minutes from their playtime for their behaviour, or hurriedly setting something up for the next lesson as I scarf down an apple.

11:10: Go outside to fetch the class. Arrange the boisterous clump of children into something that resembles a line. Walk about 5 steps with children in tow, but stop because someone has run off to go pick up a hula hoop and begin rolling it. Sternly tell this individual to come back to the line. Meanwhile, someone has come up to you, crying because "so-and-so- pushed in front of me in line". The culprit is now arguing back, and the rest of the line begins amassing itself into a blob again. I begin to feel like I am herding cats.

11:15: Begin teaching maths, or more likely, spend about 15 minutes dealing with behaviour issues and praying that they will finally settle down. Comfort a child who has "hurt themselves" on the playground (if I squint, I can see the scrape). Deliver a maths lesson, and sort out which children are getting which set of questions -- once again, the class ranges from high to very low ability. After about 5 minutes, some kids are complaining that they don't get it. After about 10, some kids are complaining that they're finished and have nothing to do while I'm busy trying to help the ones that don't get it. WHY DOES THAT KID HAVE THE WEIRD PIECE OF STRING AGAIN??

12:15: Lunch time AT LAST. Once again, make the all-important line and bring the kids into the dining hall. Over the next hour, I will cram food and coffee into my face, potentially deal with more behaviour problems, and run around setting up for the afternoon. Walking through the playground to the main part of the school is like walking through tall grass in Pokemon. If a kid in my class spots me, I will more than likely be pulled into some argument about who had the skipping rope first.

1:15: Go outside to fetch the kids again. Deal with same lining up issues.

1:20-3:15: "Teach" afternoon lessons. This week, I had to plan a week's worth of afternoon activities to do with France. By the afternoon, the kids are extremely rowdy. On top of this, the TA (who has been there the whole year and who the kids listen to better than me) is in and out doing various assessments with children. So it generally ends up being half sorting out behavioural issues, and half actual teaching. Students keep talking over me. Someone has crawled under a desk. Someone is sticking a coin to their forehead. I stop the lesson and wait, again and again. I send disruptive students to the back of the room, and try to carry on. I'm not proud of it, but I will likely raise my voice a lot. It's rough.

3:15: Make sure the kids go home with the right parents. Send some kids off to after-school clubs (run by other teachers). Do a bit of tidying up -- barely making a dent in the messy classroom that I have inherited.

3:30: Begin marking the students' work for the day. There may be some other after-school responsibilities. Today, I had to let parents visit the classroom to see what the kids had been working on for Global Week.

3:45: Get pulled into a meeting with the other teachers about targets. We have to track whether each child is achieving targets that we have to come up with for them, as we mark their work.

4:30: Return to the classroom, Finish marking/target tracking and other odd jobs.

5:00-5:30: Pack up for the night, and head out to my bike. I'm getting emails from the other teachers about SATS, expectations, special activities scheduled for the week, etc, etc. By 5:30, I tend to make myself leave, even though there are about 1000 other things I could be doing in the classroom.

5:30: Run any errands that need doing. For instance, this evening I ran out to Tesco to pick up groceries for myself, and some special French treats for the students to end off Global Week -- making sure to pick up some dairy-free cookies for a student with dietary needs.

6:00- Some Time: Home. Dinner. Possibly eat a third of a dark chocolate and hazelnut bar in bed. Whatever. FINALLY STOP MOVING. I'll do the phonics plans on the weekend. My bed and I become one.

This dragon's expression accurately sums up how I feel upon being home, in my bed.

But the next day, it begins again at 6:15: Once again, I will spend my day as a nurse, a counsellor, an IT "specialist" (a specialist at googling "Smart Board sound wont work" anyway), a referee, a cheerleader, a performer on stage, a curriculum planner, a police officer, and somewhere among all of that, I am a teacher.

So can we talk about those holidays again please?


Until next time,
C.

Edinburgh: Haggis, Hikes and Hairy Coos

Hello everyone! I am coming to you live from my sofa, on the final day of half-term break.
Tomorrow it's back to school for me -- specifically, back to the Year Two class that I will be teaching for the rest of the school year. More on this later. For now, I'd prefer to dwell on the break for a little bit longer before thinking about the reality of working life again.

It's been a pretty exciting half-term for a couple of reasons:

 1. We moved to a wonderful new house that was a huge step up from our previous place, and:

 2. Beth was able to get time off work, meaning that the two of us could finally have a good old fashioned adventure together again. Note that this has not happened since we went to London for Halloween, so basically forever ago.

This time around, our adventuring took us to Edinburgh, Scotland. This excursion had been a long time coming. Beth has a friend who lives there, and we had been vaguely discussing a visit pretty much since we got to the UK.

I'm going to try a bit of a different format to talk about our trip, as I find that going through the whole thing chronologically can be a bit tiresome. So instead, I'm gonna sum everything up under some nice, neat little subheadings. Here we go:

Travelling

• We decided to fly out at night, and arrive to our hostel around midnight. This way, we could check in, have a nice sleep and then have a full day the next morning to explore. I would reccommend this system -- the flight is generally cheaper without having to book it for 8 AM or some other ungodly hour. Yes, it means paying for an extra night's accommodation, but it's worth it, as you don't waste half a day napping off your travel exhaustion.
• Somehow, Beth and I always end up getting stuck beside a really chatty individual when we are travelling and really tired. I mean, it's great that people are friendly. However, when it's 11:30 PM and you're falling asleep on the airport shuttle bus, you're not neccessarily in the mood to explain your whole life story and clarify that bears don't just walk into our houses all the time in Canada and casually eat our food.

Hostel Life

• When choosing our hostel, we took many important factors into consideration. Is there an all-female room? Do the beds have outlets beside them to charge our phones? When you step outside, are you immediately looking up at a huge castle perched on top of a massive rock formation? We chose one that fit all of these criteria. It was called, appropriately, Castle Rock hostel. It was pretty much everything that you could want from a hostel: cheap but filling breakfast, nice rooms with lockers for your valuables, several cozy lounges, close to all the touristy things. It pays to read the reviews on Hostelworld.
  
  

  

  View from my room.

  

  Medival Times?

  
  

  

  Well. There it is.

  
  

  

  The "Groovy Lounge"

• When you are staying in a room with multiple other people, you have to account for the fact that sometimes, people are the worst. I was all tucked into my bed on the first night, exhausted, ready for a solid night's sleep. And then it began. It sounded like someone was sucking the last bits of soda out of a McDonalds cup. Or perhaps a baby elephant with a sinus infection attempting to blow its trunk. But it was neither of these things, no, this horrible noise was actually being produced by someone's nose. Look, I know that sometimes people can't help snoring, but this fact didn't make it any less awful. By the second night, I couldn't take it any more and stormed down to reception in the middle of the night to ask if they sold earplugs. I think I must have looked really pissed off, because they just handed me a pair for free. Bless them.

Touristy Things

• Edinburgh Castle: When we first tried to go, they were closed due to an IT issue that prevented them from printing tickets. So like the technological geniuses that we are, we followed the castle on Twitter and subscribed to live updates so that we would see when they tweeted about opening again. The castle was, in not so eloquent words: really really cool. I expected it to mostly be an indoor experience, but I was wrong. There were some indoor exhibits, but the coolest part was probably the way that the castle walls seemed to emerge from piles of stone, as if it were a naturally occurring part of the landscape.

• Arthur's Seat: "What a perfect day for a hike!" we thought. "The sun's out, the weather is mild!" we remarked. But as soon as we started making our way up the steep incline of this ancient volcanic peak, the clouds rolled in. The wind began to grow stronger, and we started feeling raindrops. Also, just a note that getting to the top of Arthur's Seat is not just a gentle stroll. We were definitely "feeling the burn" (in the 'my calves are on fire' sense, not in a "voting for Bernie Sanders" kind of way). But it stopped raining almost as soon as we reached the top, and we were rewarded with an incredible view of Edinburgh and the ocean. We then "mountain goat-ed" it down the opposite side to reach The Sheep's Heid Inn: the oldest pub in Edinburgh. Then, like the 21st century girls that we are, we decided against the 40 minute walk back to the hostel and hopped in an Uber instead. Don't judge us.

• The Scotch Whiskey Experience: We were unreasonably excited for this one, and not because we are whiskey connoisseurs. Not even close. However, we are big fans of riding in a giant barrel while the ghost of an old dude teaches us about how whiskey is made. We are also fans of swirling our glasses and pretending to detect hints of banana, when really, it just smells (and tastes) like booze. We never claimed to have refined palates.

•  Underground Vaults Tour: This was extremely interesting. Our guide took us beneath the South Bridge, into the damp, cold vaults that were apparently once a hive of activity -- both legal and not. Note that we very specifically sought out a "non-scary" and strictly informative tour because we are babies. No ghost tours for us, thanks.
  
  
  
  
• The Royal Mile: This is where all the touristy shops live. Want to buy a kilt, or perhaps a stuffed highland cow (or as they call them, "hairy coo")? Fancy some shortbread? Want to hear a bagpipe cover of "Fix You" by Coldplay? This is where you'll find it. Lots of tacky fun. I don't usually buy a lot in the way of souvenirs, but the cool and windy weather encouraged me to buy an Edinburgh bobble hat. I later realized that due to the seam placement, the front of the hat says "EDINB", which is not a word, but the back very clearly says "URGH". Also not a word, but it is a frustrated grunt. I think if I'm having a particularly grumpy day, I'll wear the hat backwards.

  

  Typical sight on the Royal Mile.

  
  

  

  Just a casual invisible man.

  
  

  

  Why are these so funny and passive aggressive?

  
  

  

  URGHHHHHH

• Princes Street: The main shopping street with the usual high street type shops, and some cool monuments along the way. But I mostly included this so that I could add photos of the random dog we saw in a Union Jack sweater carrying a flashlight. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Food:

Beth and I have determined that we suck at eating like normal human beings.

•  Example 1: Before I left, I found a Buzzfeed list of the best vegan food in Edinburgh, and we planned on hitting up a few of the places. However, I somehow overlooked the fact that going for GIANT JACKET POTATOES for lunch and THE BIGGEST NACHOS EVER for dinner is maybe not the best idea, and definitely does not scream "I am a responsible adult who knows how to eat in moderation". Post-nachos, we waddled back to our hostel rooms and pretended to be "just laying down for a bit" before going to watch a film in the hostel's movie room. We did not leave our beds for the rest of the night.

  

  Vegan curry "medium" potato. It was actually one big potato and one baby one beside it.

  
  

  

  We tried.

• Example 2: The day after the potato/nacho incident, we decided that we would have breakfast, just grab a light lunch from Sainsburys before hiking Arthur's Seat, and then stop into The Sheep's Heid Inn for a snack before heading back into town and getting a light dinner later. What happened instead was: We had breakfast, grabbed a light lunch from Sainsburys, grabbed some starters and a pint AND a dessert each at the Sheep's Heid Inn, and then decided to try haggis and veggie haggis with all the fixings for dinner before joining our hostel's pub crawl. Tottering up the stairs to our hostel, post-haggis, we realized that we had failed once again to eat responsibly and were a hopeless case.

  

  Veggie "haggis", neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes).

All in all, Edinburgh is a beautiful city with tons of history, lots to do, and even more to eat. Exploring a new city is my favourite, but travel is exhausting. I'm glad that I left myself a weekend to rest and recover before heading back to work, because I've definitely needed it. That being said, I'm off to go do nothing in particular -- and I'm very happy about it.

Until next time,

C.