First Day of Student Teaching

Today started early at 6am. I've been sleeping til at least 10 or later everyday for the past two weeks. I figured I would be so tired, but I guess the excitement had me up and ready to go. Holly, Sean and I left the house at 7 and walked to school. I met the headmaster of Kingswood Junior School and he introduced me to my teacher, Mrs. Linda Reynolds. She has been teaching for over 30 years. She has taught Kindergarten, grade R as they call it, second grade and is currently teaching third grade. She has 14 students total, 6 girls and 8 boys, 5 African, 8 white and 1 biracial. Kingswood Junior School has students from first grade to seventh. There are two classes of each grade. This is a boarding school so some of the students do stay in hostiles on the school campus. They are divided into four different houses/teams. The houses are Tarr, Rich, Slator, and Dacam. They compete against one another for points. (Like they do in Harry Potter). Other students come and go to school with their parent/guardian. Kingswood is a Methodist based school so they do have chapel and prayer.

To start the week, grade one-three came together for assembly. They talked about the weekend, made announcements, talked about what would happen during the week and then sang songs. After the assembly was over we went back to the classroom. Every student then shared what they did over the weekend. I thought this was nice because it gets the chatter out of them, so they won't be talking about it during teaching time. I've seen this done in classes before, but only one student shares and then they use it for writing. Math, or Maths as they call it, started at nine. The teaching was pretty much the same as at home the students worked in their math book silently while the teacher took small groups to work with. Next they had Xhosa (The x makes a c sound). Xhosa is one of the main African languages. It was neat it sit in and listen to them speak it. Then the students went to music with the other third grade class. After this, the entire school has a 20 minute break time. The teachers all go to the lounge for tea, coffee and sandwiches. This is a lot different than schools at home, teachers usually just get a planning period, which is filled with a meeting or something so there never really is a break.

After the break we went to the Gala, this happens once a quarter, it just so happened to be on my first day. It was the perfect day for it because it was 96 degrees. The Gala is a swimming competition, kind of like our swim meets, between the all houses. All students, first-seventh grade participate in the breast stroke, back stroke, free style and the butterfly. They are timed and earn points for their house. They put me in charge of taking pictures. The students not swimming at the time where doing cheers for their house to gain points as well. This was a neat experience. All the girls wore the same one piece swim suit and the boys wore speedos, they were in red in black, nice bulldog colors:-) They call them bathing costumes. When the competition was finished there was an hour break for lunch and then the students came back for sport. All students have to participate in two sports. The sports are: swimming, tennis, cricket and squash. My teacher helps coach tennis and swimming. Today was tennis with grade three girls. We walked to the tennis courts and had practice that ended at three. After sport is prep, or homework time. 

Overall I enjoyed my first day. Things are definitely a lot different than schools at home and the township schools I visited with Debbie. I just can't help but think how those township children are sitting in a classroom with no books, crowded, having to share crayons and sometimes without a teacher; and then the Kingswood kids participate in two sports, have multiple types of school uniforms, plenty of books and school materials. Blows my mind how these schools are in the same community and are run so differently. Guess it proves that money does make a difference. I'm not hating on the Kingswood school or parents for paying for a great education, but its just sad to think that its not an option for some families. Their children miss out on learning so much and aren't even able to enjoy reading a fun picture book because they don't have one.