Welcome back! Today was my first day. I woke up with mixed emotions of nerves and excitement. My neighbour Maria kindly offered me
a lift in the morning, so I was out the door at 8 o’clock, dressed in my formal
skirt and shirt and ready to go. Maria was really welcoming, chatting away in
the car. I received my timetable first thing and was given a quick tour by
Maria. I found it quite funny how as soon as I crossed the school threshold, Maria
immediately switched to Irish just like that. She was on yard duty, so I headed
up to the staff room and met the rest of the teachers. Again, they were really
nice, even when they had to wait a little bit for my brain to process their
Irish, translate it, and then formulate an English response, and translate that
back to Irish. Honestly, I’m jealous of people who speak it like second nature.
At 8.30 I headed back downstairs to the senior infants.
Fionnuala asked me to go through reading with some students. It was a nice
start, since I got to spend time with a few of the kids one on one. I liked
this type of teaching because improvement was immediately evident. The morning
got the week off to a good start, even if one girl insisted that she always reads her entire book to the teacher (boy, was that long). Halfway through, I
switched to the other senior infant class. There I went around, helping the
children with their maths. Wow did that bring me back. It’s funny how you
forget just how far you’ve come since then. I didn’t like this quite as much as
the reading since I mainly spent time walking around. Most of the children understood
the work, so I only had to point out a few corrections, and I didn’t get the
chance to talk to any of the children and get to know them. Little did I know
that that was about to change.
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Break time. Was. Hectic. I had some time to grab a quick
snack before I was out in the yard supervising the children. They were going
crazy running all over the place. So many children I didn’t know ran up and
began chatting away like we were old mates. It was pretty hilarious. I liked
getting to know the kids outside of the classroom and let me tell you I got to know
a lot! Often, I had to gently direct the kids back to their friends so they
wouldn’t miss out on the chance to have a run around and use up some energy
(because did I mention that they were jumping about everywhere?!)
Fifteen minutes later I was back inside with the junior
infants. Maria teaches them, so she asked me to come in for the aistear, a
creative class. I got the chance to discuss pastimes with a small group of the
students. Their assignment was to start a scrapbook-style booklet by drawing
what they liked to do. (This was all said in Irish of course, yippee!) While I
stuck pictures into their books for them, I asked them about their pastimes and
sometimes got a bit more than I bargained for, with the children ranting for
minutes about karate, which I know nothing about I may add. It was great to see
them come out of their shells though, so I wasn’t that disappointed when I was
asked to stay with the class instead of working in the office. Just before
lunch I learned the useful, exciting task of using the photocopier. Yay!
I headed upstairs for lunch and met Rachel for the first
time. She is hilarious, and always kept the conversation going, always saying
what came to mind. She definitely made me feel at ease and we had a great
laugh. After that I was back to the yard for the longer break. This was similar
to the first break, but alas there was more time for fall-outs. I lost count of
the amount of children who came up to me with stories telling on other
children. I did my best to deal with any problems, through some pretty
interesting Irish that the children may or may not have understood (I think
they did anyway!) Nothing major came up though, thankfully, and other children
coming up to me for a chat kept me in a good mood.
For the last bit of the day I helped out with the mixed class
of students from 1st-3rd class. Again, I read with groups
of students. This was similar to the morning, except for the fact that I could
see how much more advanced their reading was. And in a year! It actually amazed
me.
At the end of the day I walked home. It wasn’t too far and
gave me a chance to reflect on the hectic day. Although the day ended at 2.10,
I was shattered from a mixture of thinking in Irish and working with the
energetic kids.
Needless to say my first day was jam packed. I’m sure I’ll
have plenty more to tell you tomorrow so stay tuned!
Ceri
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