First Week Back

This week has been hard work for everyone, as the first week back after half term always is.  We've had really hot weather, and some days of torrential rain.  The below picture is what I had to cycle home in on Wednesday afternoon.  It gets to the point where you actually can't physically get any more wet than you already are, and so your misery sort of plateaus.  Of course it stopped 20 minutes after I got home and Matt was completely dry when he walked through the front door!

Everyone is finally back in after 'Mumps-Gate' as it is now known, so I was able to go to a year 7 and year 9 class that I hadn't managed to get into yet.  I loved the year 7 Maths class, which was only 5 students!  They are all kids that I know really well from last year, and the atmosphere in the class is calm and lovely.  The teacher is great too.  I have the same kids, plus 15 more on Tuesday afternoons for Geography, which is more of an organised chaos.  I thought it was a horrendous lesson on Tuesday, as the storm made the kids all a bit jittery and hyper.  The teacher came up to me a few days later and said how much nicer the class were with me in there!  I dread to think what they are normally like!!!  The year 9 class was a mixed bag.  The kids were lovely and very friendly.  I enjoyed meeting them a lot, even though I was nervous because they are so much older than i'm used to.  Kids seem to do all their growing in year 9, so they were gigantic compared to the year 8s I had last term.  The Maths was quite tricky for me (not my strongest area), but I managed OK.  The trouble was that the teacher made a very snide comment in front of the kids when I first arrived about how I was meant to be in the class last half term but hadn't been able to make it.  It was really embarrassing.  The same teacher had made a comment to me in the corridor a few weeks before about how I 'hadn't bothered to show up' (I was covering other classes and let him know every week that I wouldn't be there).  I told my boss and he was so cross that I am no longer going into that class!  A shame, but the kids have exams from now on, so they wouldn't have needed me much anyway.

On Tuesday after school I ended up in the police station around the corner from my house.  Don't panic it wasn't for me or for anything awful!  My friend had her wing mirror knocked off the car that morning, and in Germany you have to report it or it is a criminal offence.  So we spent an hour and a half in the police station.  I went for moral support.

On Friday I covered a year 3 class, which was really nice.  It made a lovely change to be with the younger children for once, and the class are nice and well behaved.  One of the boys was sick in the classroom though, poor lad, so that made the day extra special!

Lots of us went to the pub around the corner from school to celebrate getting through the week, and for some, getting through interviews for the Assistant Head of years 1-6 positions.  Matt joined us after football, and we ended up staying for quite a while, not getting home until 9.30 - a long time to be drinking wine without any dinner!  The cat came to visit after dinner and I took some nice photos of her. Matt was teasing her with a ball of wool which was really funny.

Today we popped into Duisburg for a wander around, and had lunch at LoLu's, a vegetarian restaurant that does amazing falafel wraps. Matt isn't feeling well, I think he is getting a cold, so we're stocked up with vitamin C and honey and lemon, and hopefully he can stay awake for long enough to watch the England game tonight.