First Day of Term!

After quite a long time away from this particular school, because of the teacher strikes immediately followed by school holidays, it was exciting to return and actually be a language assistant again. I didn’t quite realise how long it had been until I walked my usual route and noticed how much I’d missed it over the last month or so.

Out of the five classes that I’m normally scheduled to have today, three were having assessments, so I didn’t have to go to them. Meaning I got to start late AND finish early – jackpot!! A real blessing, since I’m still trying to get over the cold from hell.

I had secondes and premiers today, equivalent to Years 10 and 11 in Australia. For both classes I took a handful of students to another room and we played games, quizzes and discussed the catastrophic bush fires in Australia. The kids were genuinely heartbroken about what is happening back home and wanted to know more, so I explained about how over 5 million hectares have been burnt so far, and that the scale of the disaster is due to climate change. I didn’t want to get bogged down in too many depressing details so I steered the discussion towards how it shows we need to do more to protect the environment, and show solidarity and resilience in face of the crisis.

One activity that I’d been wanting to try for ages, and that worked really well, was a game known as Running Dictation. It’s where you get students to partner up, with one having to read and memorise a passage at one end of the classroom, and then run up to their partner at the other end and whisper the text to them so that they can write it down. The kids loved it – it got them moving, it was competitive, and they got to practice reading, writing, speaking and listening all in the one package! Definitely going to do that one again 😀

Over lunch in the staff room the teachers had another meeting about the current pension reforms and the prospect of going on strike again (which the vote was almost unanimously for). It’s so nice being basically a fly on the wall in the middle of these meetings and, even though I’m far from understanding every single word, it’s still an interesting insight into a less common aspect of professional life here.

All in all it was a good day at work, although I think I might have pushed myself a bit too much as my cold feels a bit worse now. No idea when I’ll be going back, thanks to the strike!