First Day Jitters

We just had our first week of school at WBHS. It was a short and odd week that started on Tuesday with a teacher-only day. I spent most of that day either in meetings or in front of the copy machine. On Wednesday we met with our form classes (the equivalent of homeroom) for a full day of geting-to-know-you style games and activities. This year we have a different setup this year that required a full day of teaching the kids the new ropes. Instead of having a form class made of students of the same age, we have a mix of students aged 13 to 18 years old. This is meant to mix the students up and introduce them to other students that they may not ordinarily meet. It also takes a bit of the load off of me, as I will be placing the older students in leadership roles. During our thrice weekly meetings the olders students will help out the younger and new students when it comes time to exams and studying and other sorts of things. They'll be able to get help on their homework from other student that took that course the year before or from other students who are just good at that subject. The kids seem to like this new system. It was really cool to watch them trading tips and offering information about different parts of school life like I've never seen at this school before. I think this was a highlight of the week for a lot of the kids, espectially the younger ones. We took about an hour break in the middle of the day to play some team-building games. We had chair races and even a few games of Bullrush. Even the too-cool-for-school types (which I can now spot a mile away) let their hair down and joined in on the fun.

Thursday was the big day of the week for me, though. This was the day that I met my English students for the first time. I barely slept the night before. Yes, I came down with a case of the first day jitters. I kept thinking about what the students would be like, and how I was going to introduce expectations to avoid some of the problems I had last year (a bad start to the year caused major year-long issues in two of my classes last year). I knew that I would have a few of my students from last year and I found myself wondering how they were going to act in class this year. Would they try to buck the rules because the already knew me? Would they assume that they could behave like they did last year because they are in my class again? As I lay in the dark I wondered how many students were awake at that point thinking about school, just like I was.

I had nothing to worry about, though, because the day went very smoothly. The prep work that I had done paid off and my students seem pretty nice. I even threw some homework at them on the first day and got a really good return on Friday. Most kids are pretty good on the first day, though, so I know it doesn't mean much. I am glad that I don't have many larger-than-life personalities. Those guys can be a bit hard to manage in a room of 30 boys.

The first week finished off with a staff competition afternoon on Friday in which we had to compete against other staff members for a House Cup. As mentioned in my previous posts my school has initiated a House system in which every student and staff member belongs to a "house." These are akin to the houses in the Harry Potter books and are a very British invention. Each house has a name, emblem and colour that we wear during competitions. The Staff House competition pitted house against house in a variety of team building exercises. We went to a sport complex off school grounds and had to do a variety of tasks for points. I was expecting the worst going into it. Most people have to endure this type of thing in private sector jobs. These events typically involve making a structure out of office supplies or mastering trivial trivia pulled from teammates like so many wisdom teeth. Our team day didn't turn out to be that bad but did drag on a bit. We mostly got to hang out in the sun and do the silly stuff that teachers tend to do, except that we were able to be silly with the staff of other departments. Most people at our school are really friendly but we're such a numerous lot that we don't get to really meet many people outside of our own departments. This was very good thing. The last event of the day - market a product (soap powder) with a presentation - was particularly fun. Most people decided to take the piss out of some aspect of the school. My team came up the the idea to poke fun at racist attitudes that can pop up in New Zealand and in the South African community we have on staff. One group even composed a full satire on the TV interview our Headmaster did just that morning on a controvercial initiative our school has put in place this year. The whole event was quite entertaining and let us all make complete asses of ourselves. Where else but in New Zealand?

Next week the real work starts. Fun and games aside, I now face the task of collecting writing samples from each of my students and figuring out where they stand. I'm also teaching completely new curricula this year. I'll be able to recycle some of the units I did last year, but not many. I'm basically building up 200% more original content than I did last year, and I say that with no exaggeration. Whereas last year I taught a nuber of groups in Form 4 and Level 1 (9th and 10th grade in the US), I'm teaching four other age/level groups this time around. It'll be challenging, but after this week I know that I have a lot of good students and staff to help make the job enjoyable.