I've been saying that I'll go to this week's training, unless and until it proves to be a waste of my time (as a lot of Teach SA's stuff has been). So I thought I should set down my criteria for what a good training session should include, rather than letting the whims of the day (no doubt shaped by my desire to get more holiday time) determine ( Read more... )

This week was not much fun. I started by invigilating a grade 12 class, and they were fine. But every class after that got worse and worse, until I had a grade 9 class where I had to actually run after a kid to keep him from leaving early. I had to prioritise the rest of the class, though, so he got away. And I was supposed to be free that day; I ( Read more... )

I have survived term 1. More details later, cos right now, I'm exhausted.

1. Check the science paper, when it finally gets delivered, and see if there's anything I still urgently need to teach my kids. I won't have time for more than 1 extra hour per class, but I'm reasonably certain we'll still be a little behind ( Read more... )

I've managed to survive my first term as a teacher, just about. The march pseudo-exams started today, so my teaching finished yesterday, officially, and next week will just be a lot of standing around and doing nothing while I invigilate classes and subjects I don't teach. The physical science test will be next friday morning.

The bulk of this week ( Read more... )

It's been a long week, and I haven't had time until now to get to my parent's place to abuse their internet (nor the time to set up my own connection ( Read more... )

My lab got cleaned! In all the time I've been there, it's only been cleaned once before, by special arrangement with paid cleaners. And ever since then, it's just been getting worse and worse. Not just a natural build-up of dirt, but also mountains of packets and papers and other crap the kids leave behind. At Landulwazi, the kids are responsible ( Read more... )

I sat down today to work out how much of the syllabus I've covered so far, and how much I still have to push through, and things don't look too bad on paper. We'll still have to keep up the extra lessons for the rest of the term, but at least I should be able to teach all the prescribed stuff. What still worries me, though, is that at this pace, ( Read more... )

Today just dragged on and on ( Read more... )

Monday, I ran the first class test I'd prepared for my kids, and the results were terrible. Out of 147, only 30-something reached the government's minimum pass mark of 30%, only 24 of those reached the school's goal of 40%, and a mere 6 scraped over the 60% mark, my personal minimum requirement. Even the kids who were trying to cheat (my system ( Read more... )