Alright, these last couple of days at school have been full of ups and downs. Thursday started off easy enough with myself waking up quite a bit later then I usually plan causing me to haul ass and miss breakfast which just so happened to be cocoa puffs. Freaking cocoa puffs! After a week of crappy cardboard cereal they throw a curve ball of cocoa puffs and I miss it. Whatever, I survived (barely) and made it to school just in time for 6th grade geography. The class was as chill as the teacher allows it, which means it was practically out of control, but not as out of control as Fridays 8th grade history class! Everything was going just dandy in the 6th grade class until my CT asked me to teach a lesson the next morning his way (mind map always mind map) in his 8th grade geography class (a class I have yet to even observe). I spent the rest of the day jumping around different classes, a 6th grade math class (a good reminder why I didn’t go into math), 4th grade music class (wow, little kids are awesomely crazy), a 4th and 5th extra help class and an 8th grade math class (had to see who I’d be teaching even if it was math). After a long day of class and prepping for the next day’s lesson, a lesson that I got lectured by 3-5 different teachers about how I should organize the lesson (moderately frustrating)(mind map always mind map). we had one of the international schools monthly staff development afternoons. The staff development meeting started with the rewording of the schools philosophy, a philosophy that to a native English speaker sounds more than a little awkward, but what do you do as the guest of the school tell them that something they have been working on for so long sounds terrible. Naw, I think I’ll sit back and make a couple of minor suggestions. Yup that sounds like the best thing to do. After another hour of “staff development” (I’m starting to see what some teachers complain about) we were free to leave and with that I headed to where everyone knows your name. Well not quite everyone or anyone, but none the less it did the trick.

Friday started off with some success, the lesson I taught went alright, would have been better with more prep and less interference from my CT (in my opinion). The next period with same group of students got a quite rowdy and boiled over when one student slapped another causing a classroom chase and ending with a chair being thrown across the room. A CHAIR! This is an international school with class sizes of 10-15. If it can happen in a school like that it can happen anywhere, but a freaking chair… I’m still a little shocked about that. Besides a freaking chair being thrown in one of my classes another thing about my day that was tough to deal with was hearing the students berate my CT, not only do they not listen to him, but in the middle of class they make comments about him while completely ignoring what he has to say. It’s terrifying to see a teacher lose control of his class like what I’ve seen this past week. I think these next few months might be “what not to do in teaching” and how to handle an already gone classroom.

What a week, the school definitely is not what I expected, but I know its going to be something to remember.

As requested pictures of my place, the school and some of the ohh so delectable food to come soon, but for now I have to take my new whip out for a ride.

Captain Awesome