So tomorrow I am going in a bus to Napier. While we are there we are going to play one game of netball.
I have to be at school at 5.45AM and we don't get back till 8PM. I have charged the ipod and Russ has packed the Biggest Lunch Ever. The car will be serviced while I am away. The kids are usually excellent on these things, so I am looking forward to it. But predicting that I will be Very Tired on Thursday.
The dishwasher in the staff room is broken! We have to wash our own cups! OH MY GOD!!
In other breaking news its Friday, but I am going to spend 50% of my weekend on school stuff. Netball and Science Fair.
On Wednesday next week I am going on a school trip. I have to be here at 6.00am in the morning, and we don't get back till 8.00pm at night. We are going to drive in a bus from Wangas to Napier and back again, and while we are there we are going to play sport. Huge day.
Drift around on the internet
Go to a hui at which the student who has called a teacher a f-ing c is allowed back into school
Drift around the internet some more
Figure out what you are going to do at netball training
Update blog
The poor husband is getting a bit of his own medicine at the moment. He sometimes goes out for a week or so on work things. I have had a meeting on Wednesday, a meeting on Thursday and tonight I have rehearsal and then am going to a movie. On Saturday I may do what I have always threatened to do, and book a motel room on Saturday so I can read the Harry Potter book uninterrupted.
And even when I am at home I am sleeping in the spare room. I am sleeping So Much Better. I'm thinking I had better move back into the main bedroom with him before I get addicted to having my own space to sleep in!, and insist on a slat bed, and the flossing of teeth.
When we first started sleeping in the same bed I used to want to keep contact with him. There would always be an arm or leg flung onto him. Just checking he was still there. Now, its like I am making sure he is not there.
Taking on any role in a school is fraught with the risk that you will end up doing everything. I took on the role of manager of a netball team, and lo and behold, I am now the coach as well. That would be fine if I knew anything at all about netball. But.
So today was our first coaching session together. They used to have a great coach, but it has been weeks since they have had a session with her. It was beautiful sunny day, which was a good start. I sent a message round the classes, so they knew about it, which was also good. I forgot about it when we actually got to lunchtime. Not good. I left the balls at home. Also not good. But we ended up having an okay session, and I have booked the gym for Tuesday lunchtimes. which will give us some privacy.
I have my year 8 technology class in front of me now - they are doing a science fair project on the effect of paint colour on heat retention in houses. They make a lot of little boxes and paint them black grey and white to do this - at the moment my room looks like an art class.
I really don't look forward to doing these technology classes. I find the little ones really lacking in any thinking about what they are doing, and they don't have much initiative. Seniors sometimes have a little too much initiative.
Anyway, they are often better than I expect, which is a jolly good thing! If they were worse I would have to find a new job.
This term we have a temporary principal. He is usually our DP and the best, kindest and most accurate one word description of his is 'random'. I also believe he is an alien, who doesn't understand human beings. It would be fair to say we humans at the school don't understand him... He likes to walk around the school carrying a cup of tea. Always has, but now he is the whole boss, he has started expanding the area he walks around, and has been spotted up the back of the school, staring into my classroom. I DON'T LIKE IT, not least because he habitually has a disapproving look on his face.
I have been getting out from behind my desk and looking at what the kids are up to out there - if you had a mixed ability class which had kids that were getting writing finished before other kids had got a quarter of the way through, what would you do? Work on the fast ones, and leave the others behind, or make the fast ones wait for the slow ones?