All that you have is your soul (Tracy Chapman).

Tuesday 6 September 2005

Veni Vidi Vici

It's over. I've made it through the first day.

The first three lessons went frighteningly well. Period 3 and I had the Year 7 kids in the palm of my hand. I was proud, arrogant and totally unprepared for what happened after lunch, with Year 10 in Period 4.

I was teaching another Year 10 class. I repeated the lesson from period 1 and saw that one of the kids had her head on the desk. I chose to ignore this. Then, another one went down...and another. Damn, they were dropping like flies. So I made the mistake of asking the first if she was feeling alright and did she want to see the nurse?

"I'm bored" came the cutting reply and then I heard the monotonous, droning, monosyllabic sound that I'd heard many times before. I was in a boring lesson, except this time, I was the bore.

I changed tack and got onto the kinasthetic bit. These kids didn't want to hear any more of me - they wanted to do something. Activity underway and not a head on the desk. I have learned a bitter lesson.

This evening, we hosted the sheva brachot and it was lovely. Dana and the Cleaner had gone to great lengths to totally transform our living room and enable over 20 people to sit comfortably therein. It's nearly 1 am and there's still a mess, but I don't care.

Now, I'm the one who's going to put my head down.

2 comments:

BarbaraFromCalifornia said...

Mazel Tov on making it through your first day of class!

Boredem is the silent killer of us all.

The Scribbler said...

Thanks for your support!