Me, now in HD

So all my vlogs up to this point have been kinda low quality and that's just because I've been working on a little netbook, all the software I've used that allows me to work in HD has just crashed my laptop either while editing or while compiling. But I finally found something that works, and so the rest of my vlogs should be in HD from this point on! Happy times!

Don't forget there is a link to my channel with all my other episodes on the sidebar

School Prayers

I couldn't tell you what this was for exactly, sometime to do with it being a celebration for teachers, praying for and thanking teachers. Whatever it was exactly, there were some stunning flowers and it was all pretty good fun. The whole day had a relaxed (even more then usual) atmosphere about it (although maybe that's because I only had to teach the youngest kindergärtner group for 20 minutes then it was several hours break and class 5 followed by class 6).

So the crowds gathered. The stage had been built. The flowers were ready. The bell started ringing and I was asked to take lots of photo's because the main school camera hadn't been brought for some reason. Luckily I had spare batteries, a fresh memory card and my battery charger.

Then it all began, prayers were said and songs were sung. The first row of kids moved up, handing their offerings and saying their prayers. After four or five more rows, a monk arrived, one I hadn't seen before (we have a fair few monks visit the school, giving morning assemblies and teaching classes). He led some more prayers and talked for a bit before some of the teachers made offerings to him.

There was more singing and the playground began to empty. Normal lessons started up, about half an hour late, but most of the kids actually went around handing out their flowers and making more prayers for individual teachers for the next hour. Over the rest of the morning more photo's were taken and in the afternoon it was very chilled. The kids practiced a play, but it was all cut short and people went inside when it started raining.

The entire album can be found here

And the Vlog will be up this evening

Teaching

So it's the end of my second full day of teaching. Wow. This is something else! My last school, the class sizes were about twenty, with one being about thirty. There were a total of four classes (including kindergarten), with each of the normal classes containing two year groups with between ten and fifteen students from each. So classes were 5/6 (for year five and year six) and I taught each class four times a week. Here the school is massive. The class sizes are about thirty per class, and each year has two classes. Some of the classes There are a twelve elementary classes plus three kindergarten classes. Fifteen different classes. So sadly, I don't get to teach each class very much, just one lesson a week. Obviously this time I'm here for much longer, but in six months I'll only get 24 hours with each of them. So I feel a lot of pressure to make sure each lesson with them is the best that I can deliver, there just isn't time to have a lesson that just doesn't work.

So who have I taught so far? Well I've been introduced and done some teaching with every year group (but not every class) and those early lessons were to work out what I needed to do with that year group. So this week we kicked straight into actual teaching. Monday I had both the year six classes and today I had both the year two classes. Massive contrast. Obviously. The year sixes are so incredible. One thing I'm struggling to work out how to deal with, and I guess it's a problem faced by 'the school system' in every country in every subject, is their abilities really do vary. There are a clear two or three in both classes that are incredibly bright and I think they must have some kind of home or private addition tutoring and support. The rest are about on par with the sixes from my last school. All (but one guy) really work their asses off though, and I don't mind when they can't do something if I can see they are really trying.

With these guys I've noticed my ability to do something on the fly, to just come up with something if a plan hadn't worked and I needed to think of something new, or if we just whizzed through the plan, is getting much better.

For example in a conversation we were reading through the phrase 'I don't know' came up. They didn't know what it meant. I hadn't prepared for this (the book with the conversation had been given to me only an hour before the lesson, so my original plan went out of the window). So I put up on the board 5+5=? They started calling out "Ten!" I said "Yes! Ten! I know!" and wrote 'I know' next to the equals sign. We did a few more really simple maths, 2+2 3x3 and for each one wrote the answer as 'I know.' Then I wrote 1,784x922=? They looked blank. A lot of "ums" and they didn't know. So I said "I don't know!" and wrote that as the answer, with don't underlined. They all got it straight away.

They are a lot of fun, the work hard and pay attention. It's a joy to work with them.

The two's. Oh god. Just. Oh god. Crazy, completely hyper, insist on jumping on their desks until the fall over. Can't play games with them because there are too many and not all want to play or will play, they get distracted seriously easily if they aren't being literally watched over. This by the way is actually about half of them. The other half to be fair are little angels, they follow my instructions, they try and repeat what i'm saying. They play the games and are happy to wait for it to be their turn. But when it's a class of thirty four, and seventeen of them are little monsters, it's really hard to work with those who actually want to work. A huge part of me just wants to take those that want to work and try and listen downstairs into another class room, leaving the crazies to be crazy. But I know they are too young to understand it, too young to have any real discipline. But it just makes the whole thing harder. Tuesdays will be really trying days, since them and kindergartens are my only classes.

I'm thinking of going away this weekend and I'm trying to come up with a plan. Thinking water sports sort of thing, there is rafting, canoeing and kayaking available really close to where I am, I can get a bus for just a couple of quid. I think it would be a day thing because accommodation up there is pretty expensive. I'm trying to find out if I need to book any rafting/kayaking/canoeing in advance or can just show up on the day. There isn't much information available, and what is has been repeated on most of the websites. So we'll just have to see.