So many things

[oloriel]

are happening. And as usual, I want to write about them all - and don't get around to doing it. This is a summary post of some of the exciting developments of the past weeks, which will either satisfy my sense of duty, or not. In the latter case, maybe I'll feel compelled to write more once I've started. In the former, at least I won't forget everything in a couple of weeks...

In no particular order:

- Felix' first year in school ended two weeks ago, and he turned seven on Wednesday. How time flies. School has been a mixed bag (mostly due to Felix, it has to be admitted) and I definitely should write more about it. For now, he is thrilled to have his first "real" summer holidays.

- Julian's Kindergarten is going through some difficulties. One of the teachers (as far as I can discern) is manipulating some people, bullying others and turning them against each other and (especially) against the lady who founded and still runs the Kindergarten. So the atmosphere has been... tense. Then a couple of the other teachers fell ill, including the manager - and her sub. To her surprise, the teacher who has been poisoning the mood was not declared sub-sub. Instead, that position was given to the only remaining full-time teacher (sensible enough, right?!), which ended with the disappointed teacher first calling in sick and then suggesting that she can resign at any time. (She can, at little personal risk. Germany is currently desperate for educators, so she can be pretty sure of finding a new job before the month is through.) The board of directors decided that this is actually exactly what they want (I tend to agree) but it hasn't made things calmer. Fortunately, the summer holidays have arrived for Kindergarten too. Only three weeks (instead of the six for school) but maybe things will have calmed down enough for a fresh start.

- I missed the last week of Kindergarten shenanigans anyway because we went, as usual, to the Drachenfest. It was tough. It was really really stressful. Our region is going through a bit of a drought along with temperatures of ~40°C and we're none of us equipped to deal with them, least of all while LARPing. The kids were cranky. Everyone was exhausted. You couldn't do anything before 9 pm when the frigging laser sun finally went down, and couldn't sleep longer than 5 am when our g*ddamn mother star rose again and turned the tents into furnaces. Ugh. UGH UGH UGH. Half of me keeps saying "OK, that's it, no more Drachenfest until the kids are old enough to do their own stuff". The other half goes "All RIGHT, and here's what I'm going to prepare for next year!"... XD

- My own foray into alleviating Germany's desperate search for educators is taking shape. A week before the holidays, I was invited to attend the get-to-know-the-school afternoon for the new 5th graders. Because I'm going to be an assistant homeroom teacher for a new fifth grade. Oops. Well, I was able to attend and meet "my" class. So that is definitely going to happen. I'm terrified. Also excited, but yeah, terrified. Homeroom - all classes, really, but homeroom in particular - is assigned for two years. This is going to be my reality for the next TWO YEARS. I can only hope I won't disappoint everyone (including myself). Today I got my first glimpse at the finalised schedule. I'll be teaching English to "my" class and a ninth grade, and geography to a different 5th grade. Then I'll be doing one hour of recess supervisions and one hour of revision supervision. ("My" school doesn't believe in homework, but from grade 7 onwards, they have one hour of revision each day where they get to complete assignments they didn't finish in class, or prepare stuff for upcoming classes). That completes my 14 hours of active duty (it's a part-time job, which, for the start, suits me perfectly well.)

- So I definitely hope the Kindergarten situation will calm down. And I also hope that Felix will manage to get along with attending the after-school activities his school offers. (German elementary school typically ends at 11:30 or 12:30, but they're offering supervision until 16:00. So far, we haven't needed this - and I think it was a good thing that Felix wasn't away for so long during his first year - but now we do. (Or do we? Jörg still hasn't returned to work, nor has he found alternative employment, but he will have to eventually.)

- And now it's well past midnight and I really need to sleep off my Drachenfest exhaustion, so this shall be all for now. Construction news may or may not follow some other day. Nighty night!

Comments

[heartofoshun]

Wow! The little you say about Felix's early school adventures makes me think of Alex's first three years. Wow! Stressful, but he's likely to survive intact. Alex did!


The "Kindergarten shenanigans" sound frustrating and infuriating. I hope those settle down.

Congrats to you on your new adventure. I hope you really like it. Sounds like parttime is a way to get adjusted to the idea of it and how it all will work for you. I taught school too and I think I was pretty good at it, but not wild about teaching kids that young. I only did it for a couple of years--transitioning from substitute work into a fulltime fourth-grade class at the end of my first year (took over from someone on maternity leave). I was not crazy about teaching young kids in such a challenging environment (a rough inner-city school) either--the parents weren't engaged at all.

I do not believe in homework either! The time for revision with the older kids sounds useful, however. A good way to teach them some time management and allowing them to leave at the end of the day free and clear.

Been thinking a lot about the heat in Europe and the UK and feeling bad for people. Terrible if one is not accustomed to it. (Let's face the truth--terrible if one is accustomed to it!)

[oloriel]

I certainly hope he will! I really can't blame the school (his teacher not only has nerves of steel, but also a great amount of sympathy and experience with "different" kids), nor can I blame Felix (for whom it is yet another developmental stage), but there simply is a lot of friction.

I certainly hope I like it! Above all, I hope I'll manage it. I can be pathologically shy when thrown into a new group of people, so it's going to be interesting how quickly I'll adapt to the classroom. I've been tutoring individual students before, and I've done oh-so-many presentations in university, but teaching a whole horde of kids at once is going to be a new challenge. They were very sweet during the get-to-know-each-other afternoon. I suspect we were all relieved to find that the "other side" was friendly! The good thing about kids that age is that they're (for the most part) ready to accept instruction and cooperate with authority figures. The 9th graders are going to be very different! Their current teacher told me that "they're lovely, but they're so talkative" - they need to discuss everything, apparently. If I manage to get them to discuss everything in English, it might work out? XD

The hour of revision does sound like a good compromise. A lot of homework is just bullshit, but sometimes students do need to be made to practice, review and prepare (which some wouldn't do of their own accord)... so this daily class of doing that might actually be the solution. I'll see how it works out in practice! Fortunately, I am allowed to assign vocab to my 5th graders even under the no-homework rule. That definitely is something that I can't have them do during regular classes - that is, I could, but it would make classes tedious and waste a lot of actual teaching time...

Just recently, I read a comment from an Australian who said something along the lines of "27°C is the perfect temperature - cool enough for long sleeves but not so cold that you need a jumper!" WTF, dude! 27°C is well into no sleeves territory! So I suppose one can get accustomed to it. But we certainly aren't - it's not that we don't sometimes get hot summer days, but not for three weeks straight without a single hard rain or thunderstorm in between. Fortunately, we had a very wet winter, so the reservoirs are well-filled.

[grundyscribbling]

Wow. That's a lot of drama for kindergarten. Fingers crossed that the summer holidays are enough to calm things down, and that Julian and Felix enjoy their holidays.

Hope the heat breaks soon, sorry it wrecked Drachenfest!

[oloriel]

Seriously. Right now, the kids seem to be the rational ones, and the teachers and some of the parents are behaving like kindergarteners...

It didn't wreck Drachenfest, it just wrecked the players! Everything was moving a lot more slowly (and with greater effort) than usual. Last year it was very nearly wrecked by a week of relentless rain. So I suppose I shouldn't complain. XD

[hrymfaxe]

The weather has been so hot here as well - not quite 40C but above 30 which is unusual for these long stretches of time. The worst is the warm nights! D: I can only imagine sleeping in a tent would make it harder to ignore.

When does school start up for you? I would be scared too, but I always am ahead of new challenges and everything usually works out one way or another. I hope it becomes fun quickly!

Construction news?!!?

[oloriel]

Yeah, we've had heat waves before, but they rarely last beyond a couple of days before some thunderstorm comes along and cools everything down again. Three successive weeks of non-stop sunshine are something else entirely. (And it wasn't exactly cool before those three weeks, either - just not THIS hot!)

But the nights in the tent were actually very pleasant! Even in this heat, the field cools down nicely at night. The actual problem was that as soon as temperatures became pleasant (so you could've moved around and done stuff), you knew you ought to go to sleep because in six hours' time it would get too hot and stuffy to stay in the tent. This year we were located in the eastward-facing corner of the field, so brightness and heat came particularly early. In past years, I often wondered why certain camps (who were then located in that corner) always attacked so damn early (around 9am)! Now I know! By the time that more fortunate sides of the field awaken, they've already been awake and restless for two hours! XD

Late August. I do mean to prepare as much as possible, but then, my actual fear is not so much the material as rather the classroom situation. I do hope that it'll work out fine once it's underway. (I presented an in-character quiz show at Drachenfest and that, after a great deal of angst and anxiety and hours of preparation, turned out to be great fun and - dare I say it? - a reasonable success. I really hope school will end up being like that, too.)

ETA: Actually, more like reconstruction news. Around Easter, a wall in our lower driveway fell over. (An important wall, not a decorative wall.) It had been crumbling and leaning for a while, and the long, wet, cold winter was the final straw. We're now almost done with rebuilding it - hopefully in a way that won't fall over again... More tedious than exciting, anyway!

[hrymfaxe]

We haven't had rain in Copenhagen for 10 weeks now... And the temperature has not been below 20 for jus as long. I just want a huge thunderstorm like you say, to come in and clean up!

LOLOLOL did you catch some of the other campers unawares?!

It would totally be the classroom situation for me too - so I would be glad to have the first week over and done with so I knew what I had to deal with. And I'm sure it will be fine!

Tedious tends to be the word of the day in construction news. We are nearing the end of redoing our apartment. I should really post some before and after photos! It doesn't look the same at all anymore.

[oloriel]

Oh dear! We had a little rain in between, at least. Just not in the past weeks. It's long overdue.

We might have, if it hadn't been so freaking hot. We always joke that there are two weather variations at Drachenfest - constant thunderstorms, or the "laser sun" - but this was definitely the worst laser sun event ever. It has lovingly been nicknamed "Summergeddon".

Yeah. And remembering all the names! XD At least it's only 23 kids. That's a reasonable class size. Some schools struggle with classes of 30 kids. (From 31 onwards, you technically have to split classes - but you can only do that if you have teachers enough!).

Same here!

[independence1776]

I hope the kindergarten issues are well on their way to being sorted by the time break is over.

40C is unreasonable by my standards; I'm honestly surprised you were able to get anything done. I wish I could send you my weather: lower than normal highs and threatening rain as I type this.

Best wishes for your job! That sounds like a reasonable schedule to me.