Ahh, assembly day. Hearing about a bunch of sports teams and clubs and pretending I'm not nervous being stared at by 1,200 students. Not at all.
Not much exciting to report from there; some athletes won national titles, but to be honest, that happens every week. I'm kind of numb to it by now, which is saying something. If the zombie apocalypse strikes Africa, we know which students will survive.
In my first class period, I stayed at the back of the room and wrote comments to my grade 10 students. I gave them the option to submit their work digitally, and a few people took me up on that. It feels weird to have my phone out during class, but at least I could start my work early.
Then I got to see my advertisement group (grade 9) again. They had a full workday, and I can already tell which ads will be mind-blowing and which will be clumsy. Much like home. There's a lazy group in every class.
I wish I had more to say about them, but honestly I sat on a table and graded while they bickered over color pencils. There's only so much I can recap before every reader decides to find another blog.
My highlight for the day: I visited a design class! Design is held in an outbuilding overlooking the netball courts, and it's really quite nice. There are huge glass doors with curtains and a gently slanted roof with--get this--tasteful track lighting. It manages to look very studio-esque rather than distressingly 90's.
Anyway. It's a grade 10 group, and as far as I know the design group is a group of students who are going into some sort of design, advertising or publishing field when they graduate. It's separate from the traditional art classes. Today they were working on stylization, starting with some exercises and eventually culminating in a sharp-looking self portrait in bold acrylic paint. I enjoyed it a lot, and it makes me want to do more studies!
After that I headed back inside for a Matric English class, which was doing Hamlet. Somehow I never see Matrics on language or writing days, just on Hamlet days. The students had a fairly hard time focusing on the class for the entire period. It's just before break, so I don't blame them.
In period 5 I spent some time doing office work, filing students' absentee notices. A few were in Afrikaans, and I felt far too accomplished when I could actually file them without help. Nothing eventful here, though.
And then the moment I've been waiting for: collecting the grade 10 procedurals. There were a couple of absentees, but so far I have everyone's work save those two, which is more than I can hope for on average. Color me impressed! Their actual lesson was with the sub (it's literature), so I spent the rest of the day grading.
In the evening, I bought a samosa for Sun and then wrote a little bit. I've got some fiction that's itching to be finished. More later.
<< Previous Next >>