The dog ate it.
Placement
I have just been given my school placement.
It's in an all boys school...
Can't imagine why my mates are laughing about that...
I am keen.
It is 8.45 on Monday morning.
My first lecture is at 10am.
I am dressed, breakfasted and sitting in the library in college.
Keen.
Stealing culture
Today, after a long, complex and passionate discussion with 6 nine year olds about the ownership of the Elgin Marbles (ie the bits of Parthenon in the British Museum) and a bit of a giggle about the name of the chief historian quoted in our sources we were so fired up that we all decided to go home and compose letters to the British Museum in support of them keeping them (4 pupils) or in support of them sending them back to Athens (2 pupils). I have promised to package these letters up (with a very nice cover note) and send them to the Museum in the hope of getting a reply. This way I figured that my kids will learn that they can and must take their opinions to people in authority. I only hope that someone writes back to them or there might be tears.
Excitingly, this is probably the first time in the 6 years since I graduated that my classics degree has been even the tiniest bit of use to anyone.
We agreed that if the Greeks came to London and tried to steal Big Ben we would put up quite a fight... so if anybody in Athens is reading this - don't push me, I'm a very tired teacher on the edge...
Sesame Street was brought to you today by...
I said good-bye to reception this afternoon, as tomorrow I am teaching years one and two. I still basically loath little children (hence the fixed Cruella style smile), but I did feel a fleeting sense of sadness as they left me. I had been there for their first ever day at school. I had taught them to write the number six and the letter m. I mopped their tears, found lost lunch boxes, extracted them from the sandpit and read hometime stories to them about Dogs called Dogger.
But then, they have left their marks... there is red stain on my white shirt, and I have broken a beloved chanel coated nail, but when a little girl gave me a picture she had drawn of me and I had floor length blonde hair, was teeny tiny thin and was wearing a princess crown, I thought that maybe it was worth it...
Maybe
Multimedia message
Primary practice. Good to know that little boys still like multi coloured dinosaurs...
If you were there.
I'm about to head for a pub lunch and I give myself 3 weeks before I collapse under a pile of work and beer.
*Some things never change.*
And that's the best thing about this... of all the brilliant things. You think that maybe you've passed your time missed your moment, taken the wrong turning somewhere along the line. But, you can change your life whenever you want - honest!! It might take some balls and it might involve tears but then you find yourself doing a presentation on the curriculum, or giggling in a lecture or drinking beer on long sunny afternoons in the pub garden with lovely people and you know that it wasn't just worth the sacrifice, but that you've finally rejoined the right road (after a very nice d-tour through champagne).