Another couple of weeks in Canada, and yet another blog for your perusal. The last couple of weeks have brought with them some interesting challenges, new ideas and of course, a whole lot of fun! The oddest thing I've noticed recently though is the free gift at IGA if you spend more than a certain amount on your weekly shop, hence the title. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a fridge deodorant until now! I'm quite intrigued to find out what next week's present will be!
As for school, it seems that as the kids get to know me better, they are a lot less shy and a lot less willing to toe the line. Unluckily for them, I have no qualms in sending them out of class or giving them bad grades for unacceptable effort. The majority of them have learnt not to mess with me! I may not be much older than them, but I'm still the teacher! There have been many highlights over the last couple of weeks too, so I'll just mention some of the best. My Sec. 1 students (the youngest in the school at 12 years old) had me in stitches with their vivid imaginations. I had them all pretend to be shipwrecked on a desert island and make a poster about their adventures. Giant man-eating chickens and flying monkeys, electricity trees and cannibalism all featured, not to mention mermaids and flesh eating locusts. I also taught a couple of my groups to play "Wink Murder" (not really a language learning activity, but they all enjoyed it!) and they all had great fun pretending to die as dramatically as possible. My own oscar-worthy death scene left me with 2 bruised and swollen knees and a bump on the head!
I'm now almost certain I want to go into teaching as a career after university and I've been looking into all the training options etc. It's quite exciting knowing what you want to do with your life! I agreed to take a couple of whole classes this week instead of my usual groups of 10, for the experience more than anything. I certainly got that! 30 children make a disproportionate amount more noise than 10!
Some classes it's still like pulling teeth trying to get them to talk, these are my least favourite classes. Classes I like to refer to as "crowd control" are surprisingly more fun (although not good for my blood pressure!) Discipline is easy, actually motivating shy and/or apathetic teenagers less so!
Kids are entertaining and challenging enough, but dealing with their parents, oh boy. A whole different ball game, as it were. I was enlisted to help at the school board open day for prospective parents 2 weeks ago, and what an experience! The school system is very different here, choosing a secondary school for your child isn't a postcode lottery like in the UK. Here, you can just choose which state school you want your child to go to, and they have to accept them. The school board open day felt more like a cattle market than anything else, stalls for every different school, with teachers (and unwitting English assistants!) desperately trying to sell their school to the parents. It was 8 hours of handing out branded water bottles and bags with the school logo to kids, explaining the various strengths of the school and handing out paperwork to the parents. It was definitely an interesting insight to the school system and the culture as well as being an amazing opportunity to practice my French. Some of the parents actually mistook me for a quebecois student, which was flattering on more than one level! It was hard work but I really enjoyed the whole day.
In other news, as we've had snow again this week, I decided to bite the bullet and get myself properly kitted out for the Canadian winter. I may now be broke ($600!) but at least when it gets to minus 30 degrees, I'll still be able to go outside! And my coat is luminous blue, so there is little chance of me getting lost in a snow storm, or on the mountain when I'm skiing. I only live a short walk from the mountain, so I expect I'll be doing a fair bit of skiing this winter. I've never skied before but it should be good fun. And it gives me an excellent excuse to drink lots of hot chocolate to warm up afterwards!
That's it from me for now. I'm supposed to be at a training week in Quebec city with the other assistants at the moment, but as I currently have 'flu (again) I'm curled up in bed and taking lots of painkillers and sleeping instead. I just hope I'm better in time for the school trip to Ottawa next week!
A bientôt!
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