BOO! ster

So last week I went to sub at a school that was only 20 minutes walk from my house. It was loooOOvely being able to walk to a job for the first time, and not to be crammed on the underground with the rest of London. It was so lovely in fact, that I somehow left the school with a semi-perminent job.

Damn it I love walking!! I'm now cursing that fact though, because I really didn't want a proper job. Not yet anyhow. I had settled quite nicely into the idea of supply teaching all year. At the end of December I was going to a few interviews, feeling around for something that fit, but nothing ever did. Apparently by 'fit' all I meant was close enough to save me a bus fare.

If I'm honest though, it is a pretty sweet job. I am boostering 10 kids in english, math and science. In the UK kids write final exams in those subjects in year 6, and the results of those exams determine what secondary school they go to...sort of. So I am basically working on the same materials as the other year 6 classes, but giving small group support.

Of course after five days there, everything is not so sweet. And this blog wouldn't sound right if I wasn't bitching about something. My classroom is basically a narrow sliver of another much bigger room. They pretty much just stuck a little wall up, and not all the way up, so the giant high ceiling funnels all the sounds from the big class into mine and vise versa.

The teacher in the big room, with her 25 students, popped her head into my nook today and said, "Is it as noisy for you as it is for me?" And for a moment I thought of saying back, "No, no. Your 25 students can barely be heard through that glass wall and empty space above it. Are my ten kids overpowering them so that you can't hear anything??"

I resisted though, smiled sweetly and said something that was only a partial lie.

It's only my first week, after all. There is plenty of time for them to really get to know me...