You shove your shoulder into my door at 3 AM. I wake up, bleary-eyed, just as you grab my shirt.
"Where's the journal for 21 March?" you cry, shaking me.
It was Human Rights Day, so we didn't attend school. I'm tired of this scene.
So it's intensely weird coming back to school from a public holiday when there's only four more instructional days before the term break. I was told that I could probably teach during this time, but it's... such a weird, short time that I really doubt I'll be able to get into any class in a teaching capacity. Oh well. Always next term.
The first period of the day was Enrichment, which... I'm not entirely sure about yet. I think it's a set-aside time for other school activities that don't fit into the schedule and are only necessary once or twice? Either way, I went to watch the spirit team practice some cheers today.
They're called something different when the school staff speaks about them--the real name is in Afrikaans, and I can't pronounce it--but it's like being transported back in time to 1950. All the cheers are traditional and fairly classic. The other student teachers and I watched some 200 students rehearse for stand calls that they'll bring out at sports matches.
The first period of the day after that was with another lower-grade class, either Grade 9 or Grade 8, and they were doing general housekeeping work. Not a lot to be said about it. Not much interesting for the next class, either. Term-end classes wind up being a lot of "file this away in your brown folder" (which is something I need to talk about later) and "let's discuss the marks you got this term" and so on. Which is understandable.
My fourth period class, though. This class was memorable. Again, I attended class with a favorite teacher of mine, and she was working with a tracked group of underachieving learners. Remember how I said there are ability-tracked classes? These are the stragglers.
She made a point to tell students when they improved their grades from previous years, from previous terms. She wouldn't let students say, even jokingly, that they were stupid. Being teens, they turned their faces away from that sort of talk, but it evidently left a mark. One student improved her grade by 10% over the term previous.
What I really liked was that this teacher didn't resort to the glowing motivational-speaker tone. She made it really normal. You're intelligent, don't call yourself stupid, let's move on. It was an essential, yet an unadorned, part of her class culture. I want to be like that someday.
Anyway. Last period of the day was the same class that I saw this time Tuesday, except now Dr. Singh was sitting in the back of the room judging me. We didn't get through everything that I wanted to in the lesson (I planned to finish chapters 14-16 and their questions, but we only got through chapter 15 and no questions aside from the ones I had asked while reading), but he seemed impressed anyway. I got some good evaluation marks and found areas for improvement. Thank god the kids behaved.
And now on to Footloose. The show continues to be brilliant and near sold-out every night, but you can start to see how tired the cast is. We're all tired for good reason. It's been a great run, but I'm very ready to take a nap.
All in all, I'd say the Thursday show was our weakest so far--not that it was bad. It was safe, but not energetic. Though I did get some nice videos of the pit orchestra playing before the show. Be sure to upload those later.
Final note: I'm feeling much less sick. I can now attend classes without taking a roll of toilet paper.
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