Monday 11th - Sunday 17th January
Again, I would like to apologise for the tardiness in this entry - it's been on my "to do" list every day for quite a while, but has repeatedly been overlooked or given simply a cursory glance!
So, after the first week of hand-shaking, snow, and trying to remember how to speak German it was time for life to return to some sort of normality. This week itself will probably be one of the shortest blog entries, simply because not a huge amount happened!
School was pretty standard, although I did start a 4 week project with the 8. Klasse (Year 9 equivalent) whereby they will produce 5 minute presentations about different counties. This should be quite interesting, not only for them, but I intentionally chose counties about which I have a limited and hazy knowledge - so hopefully I, too, should learn something new. I'll report back at the end of the project to tell you how it went!
Friday, my day off in the week, was an interesting day - I met up with one of my fellow Bathonians who I'd not seen since she was in Strasbourg, and we had a nice day just wandering round the town; seeing the sites. Here's a good time to mention that Saarbruecken is not a particularly big city, and so it can be difficult to drag out seeing the sites to a whole day - so I ought to own up to the fact that a fair amount of the afternoon was spent in a cafe; people watching and catching-up!
Saturday was the Open Day at my Gesamtschule, to which I had been heartily invited (which is one step down from being expected to go!) It involved having to get up at 6, and be in school for 8, and finishing at about 12.30. It was a knackering day; I worked with a class I hadn't worked with before, but they weren't really interested! Still, it gave the parents, remarkably few in number as they were, the chance to see the school. I, personally, have reservations about holding an open day on a Saturday. It is a compulsary school day for the kids (and teachers too, obviously), which immediately causes alarm bells. It's difficult persuading kids to see a Saturday as a school day - so many simply didn't turn in, others forgot to check the bus times, and as such turned up up to 45 minutes late. Also, the teachers were tired, and not really able to continue their normal lessons due to the high absence rate, so had to do something less productive. I think a system, similar to that which we did at Sheldon (my old secondary school) whereby the Open Days were held on normal school days gives a far more realistic overview of school life than opening at the weekend. Still, it gave me something to do on Saturday morning.
Sunday was my hermit day of the week, where I spent it inside doing some uni work, lesson planning, and catching up on TV!
Also, I'd just like to further comment on the weather situation over here in Saarbruecken. It's still winter, so it's still cold, it still might be icy and it still might snow - but everything is still carrying on as normal!
So, hopefully, in the next couple of days you should see the entry for this last week,which was slightly more interesting!
No comments:
Post a Comment