The top of the hill!

 

While on placement we used to call Wednesday ‘The top of the hill’ because from here there is only two days until the weekend; which is the bottom of the hill. YAY!

This week has been good and they are starting to listen to me now! Only two children have been given a playtime detention so it is going well. However the children have lost about 9 minutes of Golden Time (this is when the children are given 20 minutes to do what they would like to do – within reason!) due to not following the class rules. But today they got the right to start gaining Golden Time back for good behaviour; they had two lunchtimes in a row with NO bad feedback! But I did tell them they must continue to have good lunchtimes otherwise the right to earn back Golden Time can be taken away. So my fingers are crossed!

However, I am getting a bit stressed and feeling a bit down in the dumps. When on placement I would just walk into the classroom and take over where the teacher had got to. This meant that the children knew exactly what was expected of them. However, I am the teacher so I need to set the behaviour expectations. This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I am battling on in the hope that it will soon get better.

Another reason for being a bit down is that I am missing uni life more than I though I would. I miss the social bit of it, going out to the pub with a moments notice. I am just too tired to be able to get anywhere or even have a ‘normal’ conversation with anyone! Again this will change as I get more confident with the work/social life balance.

On a better note I feel that most of the children are warming to me and my teaching. I am hearing less of ‘Last year…’ or ‘In year three…’ or ‘Mrs Sullivan…’ which I am liking! Plus one of the parents told me that her child came home singing my praises; now that did cheer me up this morning!

Another thing that is cheering me up is that I have non-contact time all day tomorrow. This is due to the fact that I am an Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) otherwise I would only get half of Thursday. During my non-contact time I will be catching up on paperwork that I have not managed to get done the rest of the week. In the afternoon I will be planning with the other Year 4 teacher for next week. So a nice relaxing but eye-hurting day.

Tomorrow is Thursday so I am seeing the Thursday Gang (such an original name haha) so I will get some contact with people my age, I actually cannot wait!

NB: I am sorry for the grammar mistakes; I am hypocritical teacher as I don’t read over my work…I really must start doing what I preach!