Who Knew...?

I've completed another week, and it feels like I'm teaching at home (i.e. I am enjoying it and it feels "normal"). That being said, my week did have a couple hitches.

My new computer must have some viruses or some tracking cookies that are causing pop ups to attack me galore (please don't click on any attachments on my blog, they have somehow attached themselves there as well). It caused me to be up VERY late on Wednesday evening (with the assistance of Alex) trying to figure things out. It carried over to Thursday morning as I had to re-scan my laptop - which I started after I got out of the shower. Problem was, that while I was upstairs, something else came up that paused the scan, and I didn't realize that until I came down for breakfast. This forced me to leave the house at 8am instead of 7:30 with the girls. (Fingers crossed that what I've done worked...if not, I have finally found the computer store Alex told me about. I really can't miss it, as I walk by it EVERY morning...who knew?)

It actually felt kind of nice to walk to work, listening to my Vinyl Cafe podcast and taking my time (as they speed walk ahead of me anyways). There was an awkward moment, though, where I had to walk through the "alley" to the round-about to get to school where I saw a horde of students standing around smoking. It's not like they didn't see me, and they knew I was coming, but they didn't even try to hide their actions. So, as I walked through them, I was trying to figure out what I should do...so I said, "Good morning, gentlemen" and kept walking. Unfortunately for them, I did know a lot of those students, and I had to report what I had seen to the school so that they can get the community patrol officers to be more vigilant in the area in the future...oh well.

So, I entered the school and the first thing I get told by my coworkers is that Martin is looking for me. Without the chance to take off my jacket, I made my way to the Maths office in search of Martin. He was just beginning to write a note asking me to head the NQT meeting after school that day because he wasn't feeling well and was going to head home. This is the second meeting I have been asked to hold (as I ran one of our last staff meetings in December for Angela who wouldn't be there). Still, it was kind of neat to hold our meeting in the "restaurant" after school over a cup of coffee - it made things feel more relaxed. Well, it was eventful too as Nike came late and told us how a student was hurt falling down the stairs and she had to help with aiding the student until the parents came to pick him up...you can imagine how happy the parents were, especially when they heard from someone that their son was pushed down the stairs.

My classes did go by with some unhappy occurrences. I had one student walk out of both my lessons with him - and I honestly didn't know what to do. This is where a PA system would be handy...did I mention we don't have any way to communicate with the office? Today, I had a student be too disruptive to the lesson and I asked him to leave, and he chose to go running around the corridors, disrupting other lessons instead...yay, more referrals to fill out! Where's a PSO when you need them?

I also had to do a "cover" lesson today for half of period 2, after which Nike was to take over. Strangely enough, it was a humanities class (read: social studies) where the students had to watch a quick video about 9/11 and then had to create the beginnings of a newspaper article about it. What I found frustrating is that I wasn't given any lesson plans for the lesson and had to get direction from another teacher. The work itself wasn't very hard - so I guess it was a good thing I decided to speak with the students about the event...not like it really meant much to them as they were what, 2 or 3 at the time. What I also found odd was that as I went through the basics of what has to been in a newspaper article (W5H questions), the students answered the "why" by saying it was due to racism. I asked the students where they heard that the 9/11 attack was due to racism, they said their teacher told them that. Hmmm...I've never heard that before.

Anyway, the rest of the day was uneventful. I came home, made some steak, green beans, baby corn, and some garlic bread. Mel eventually came over and her and I shared a bottle of wine as we watched a couple movies (joined by Krista). It was a nice way to end the week - although I think I'm going to have let off on the wine before I get a wine belly...

Tomorrow, Jen and I hope to go to Leicester - hopefully accompanied by Amy and Bruce. We shall see!

Hope all is well with you all at home.

P.S. Today was Big John's 50th birthday! We decorated the office with balloons and a banner...we were supposed to have cake but John has a wheat allergy. It was really funny because I had a feeling John wouldn't notice the decorations...and he admitted he didn't ;) ...at least not right away (typical male!)