Friday August 26

Today was an interesting day. Mel and I had the world’s most awkward meeting with the teachers this morning. The plan was to have me work with two teachers each week for the rest of the term instead of all four but the teachers were clearly not happy about that. I wish I could describe the look on their faces. I guess it was mostly shock mixed with confusion, either way they did not look happy. It was extremely awkward for me and I felt bad because they clearly want my help but it’s so hard for me because I feel like I’m not being used in the correct way. I just wait for them to teach and then either take a group of students out or I wait for the students to be finished with their work and I mark their papers. Either way I feel like I spend more time waiting than doing anything productive. Mel asked them how they felt about only working with two teachers and they were clearly opposed to it. They suggested that I work with one group of students per class and mirror their lessons. The goal is to meet every Friday to discuss what they plan on teaching the next week and then every day before their classes we’re supposed to meet and discuss exactly what I’ll be doing. I hoped that the meeting encouraged them to get their act together but no dice.

I was able to meet with most of the teachers to discuss next week’s lesson.  I felt like only one of the teachers really had it together because she literally gave me exactly what she would be doing next week. Both the numeracy teachers are doing mean, median and mode but didn’t give me any specifics. I was hoping that with the meeting it would have encouraged them to work harder with but no such luck. I’m not sure anything changed because of that meeting. Hopefully now at least they know that they don’t have to have my assistance in class. I couldn’t find one of the teachers but she is the choir director and Jim’s last day at school was today so she was busy preparing the choir for his presentation. The presentation was awkward and not nearly as fun as Nick’s. We went into one of the classroom and the volunteer teachers (minus me) preformed the Glee version of “Don’t Stop Believin’” with some students from their afterschool workshop. I was super jealous because I love to dance and I would have loved to do something like that with the students, but I have to do Grade 6 workshops and they have to almost all academic so it’s not as fun as teaching the students a dance for no real reason. It was awesome though and Mel had her camera so I took her video of it and put it on my computer. Then the choir sang and they were amazing as usual. Mel got video of that as well and there were speeches. Speeches by Mr. Stofile, Jim, Will and other teachers who I unfortunately don’t know their names. It was really nice though. We were outside because the weather was so great. Luckily, I have a video to share with you which is ten times better than anything I could put into words. Enjoy! Just so you know you have to download the video to watch it. Sorry I couldn’t figure out another way to do it. Jim’s Farewell