We went to school today! My supervisor, Tony, picked me up at 8:30 this morning to drop me off at school. My school, St. Michael's Infant School in Mickelham, is the cutest little thing. It's up on a hill, hidden from the roads, and surrounded by trees and pretty scenery. It's a tiny school too.. only 3 classes - Year R, Year 1 and Year 2. Each class has two teachers. So, in my Year 1 classroom, one teacher is there Monday-Wednesday, and the other teacher is there Thursday and Friday. The two teachers in my class are great! Jenny is my cooperating teacher, and Denise is the other teacher (obviously I'll be working with both of them). Denise is also giving me a ride to and from school on her days. The head teacher (aka principal), Anne, is giving me a ride the other days.
Most of the teachers there are older ladies, except for Anna, who teaches Year 2 a few days a week, and Jenny, my teacher. Anna is really funny. She doesn't fit in with the other teachers at all. Most of the ladies are in their 50s and pretty plain, whereas Anna is probably in her late 20s with bleach blonde hair and fake eyelashes. The first thing she did this morning was try to put volumizing dry shampoo in everyone's hair. Then she looked at me and said "Has everyone in America got white teeth like yours? How do you do that?" Apparently they don't have Crest white strips in England because she was amazed when I explained them to her.
Today was an inset day, so we started the day off with a staff meeting. We all got there around 9, and Anne gave us until "half past nine to have some tea." We had tea 3 more times between 9:30 and 12:30 when we broke for lunch! I guess I'm going to learn to like tea while I'm here. I did drink coffee this morning that the teachers made and learned that they like their coffee strong and bitter over here! That will take some getting used to, since I don't really like coffee in America that's not strong or bitter! We spent the morning going over health and safety policies (learning about fire extinguishers and those kinds of things). Then we did topic (or theme) planning and organizing who has playtime duty and who gets to use the hall (or auditorium) on what days. There aren't any music, PE, or art teachers, so those responsibilities are split up between the teachers and the head. After all that, we went down and did some planning in our own classrooms and set things up, like putting the children's (they aren't called students here in primary school.. it's either children or pupils) names on their hooks and printing out different things.
One thing I've noticed about this school (it could just be my class and teachers) is there is a lot of ability grouping. For the different subjects (literacy, numeracy, and reading) the students are split up into groups by ability. So there is a high ability group, middle ability group, and low ability group. In our classes at Winona, teachers have really stressed not grouping students by ability, but we'll see how it works out in this class. Tomorrow is another inset day. The governors are coming to talk with us about a school improvement plan. I think the governors must be like the school board? Or something? I'm not really sure but I'll figure it out tomorrow!
I also ventured into Dorking alone today (because Kate and Megan were still at school) to buy notebooks and pens. They have different sized paper here, so it wouldn't have done any good to bring paper from the US. They also only punch 2 holes in their papers instead of 3. So many little differences!
So interesting, Allie!
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