~A School Day
2005-03-01 - 6:47 p.m.

Well, I got through the day alrightish. It was very hot, but another teacher asked if I could swap yard duty with her, so I won't have to do it until the somewhat cooller tomorrow! And on "outside" duty, which is the outer playground areas where the bigger kids play (and only if they have a hat on). I much prefer "outside" to "inside" duty, with all the silly little kids and the naughty, hopeless kids who never bring hats. Of course, big kids can sometimes be more than a handful, but generally they're better. It's also nice because the majority of my own students play in the "outside" area and I like being around to see them play and interact.

The Children weren't too naughty today and I didn't spend the end of the day in a frazzled attempt to get everything finished and packed up and checked and signed and sent home. Maybe that was because I skipped on spelling words this week. I feel bad, because we're up to week 6 and they've only had spelling words once! However, we didn't start them til week 4, and I was away for the end of week 4 and beginning of week 5, so we had our test at the end of week five. I was doing Numeracy Interviews with grade 3s all of yesterday, so I didn't see them then, and we'll have a curriculum day on Friday, so we won't really get to do a spelling test, anyway!

Probably the worst part of the day was when we had a Numeracy team meeting after school. Every year we get all of this assessment data that we have to summarise into statements to send to the Department of Education & Training. The various graphs barely make any sense at all to me and I certainly am incapable of picking out the relevant statistics and making meaningful general statements. So I was typing girl. Perfectly suited me, because slow typers frustrate me so much. My fingers itch to push their plodding fingers out of the way and clickity clack.

Only one problem: The computer was in front of an uncovered window. Glare City. The migraine started about five minutes after looking towards the window. In need of food and shade, it was actually a rather painful process (literally). But I still would prefer that to trying to feel useful/watching a two-finger typer tip...tip...tip away.

The highlight of the day was the unexpected yo-yo show! It's called "The NED Show" and is provided for free by an American organisation - they left yo-yos and order forms for kids to buy afterward, and the procedes pay for the show and some go to the school. It was great. This American came and told this story about his friend NED (which stands for Never give up; Encourage others; Do your best), illustrating it with yo-yo tricks. He was genuinely funny (I enjoyed it for myself, whereas sometimes I enjoy it for my students) and I didn't want the show to end. It was an unexpected peformance for the school, and the grade 4s were also unexpectedly included. I went with the grade 4s because Rae/Marcie/OtherTeacherWithTheFluidPsuedonym wasn't interested, and so stayed with the grade 3s. To think I almost sent the grade 4s over and stayed to work with my 3s! It was so much fun!

I think I should get off compy now. Eyes very tired, back stiff. *hugs A-M*