From Year 1 to 12 in One Day

I don't really have any sort of schedule at the school yet, so every day is still a bit of a surprise.  Today, I got to start off in Year 1.  I had been in that class once before, and it was really fun -- the kids are all wicked cute and full of questions.  When I got to the class, they were finishing up an art project where they were creating a bunyip, a mythical Aboriginal monster.  I saw crayons and feathers scattered all over the room, and one little boy names Tyson walked right up to me with glue all over his fingers.  He was the first to show me his bunyip, and then a bunch of other boys followed suit -- I'm not sure what the monster is supposed to look like, but most of theirs were feathery and covered in googly eyes.  After they finished, we did some group reading.  The three boys I was with were all great, and we worked through until snack time.  Then I started to get some questions, anything from "What's the name of your school?" to "Do you have an evil cousin?"  Really a great group!

After year 1, I prepared to do a year 10 math lesson.  It's a foundations math class, so not exactly rocket science...which I didn't mind a bit.  I've been working in the class for a bit now, helping out the boys with their work, and today I led them in a review.  It all went really well -- the teacher that was in the room (a sub, since the regular teacher was out) kind of kep the boys in order and let me handle the rest, so it worked out nicely. 

I continued to work my way up the grades by ending the day in a year 12 philosophy class.  They were reading some Hume, Anselm, and Kant...I blanked out on the Hume, just as I did in Civ, enjoyed the Anselm (like I did in Civ), and then the teacher skipped the Kant (just like I did in Civ).  It is interesting to see how he teaches all of this stuff to high school age students.  I don't know that it's the way I would do it, but the boys still seem to get a lot out of it.  The second half of the class they spent in discussion of different issues, and some of the boys actually sounded surprisingly intelligent.  I think it's so interesting to hear about the different cultural and politcal issues in Australia, and how some of them are so similar to what we have in the US -- before this I never thought much about Australia beyond exotic animals and cool accents. 

I think tomorrow might finally be the day that I meet with the deputy principal and nail down a schedule, and this weekend might be when I finally get to hold a koala!

P.S. -- I've been having trouble with my internet, and it isn't letting me load pictures -- but as soon as I get it figured out, I will be sure to post some!