Today was my first day at Much Woolton Primary Catholic School, and I absolutely loved it! I was placed in Mrs. Pace's Year 2 classroom. The children are so sweet and caring, and I absolutely cannot wait to work with them over the next eight weeks.
Side note: The school has a strict photography policy, so I will sneak pictures of the room and the school as I can. Unfortunately I was not able to sneak any today since it was the first day, but I will be working on that.
I will now break down the day! We arrived to the school around 8:40am and were able to meet the head teacher and the assistant. These are like the principal and assistant principal in a school back home. After we met with them and they went over the guidelines of the school, we headed off to our classrooms! The first thing my students did today was go to assembly. 2-3 times a week, each year has assembly and they learn about a certain topic. The topic this morning was on internet safety and they showed them a creepy cartoon about how you think you could be talking to another child your age, but it could really be a 30 year old man. I absolutely love the teachers here at the school, but they are very blunt with the students and it almost looks rude, but I will get more to the similarities and differences of US vs UK schools later.
After assembly we went back to our classroom and got ready for something they refer to as P-TIME. Now when they said P time I was thinking it was a bathroom break, but boy was I wrong! P-Time is known as PE or physical education in the US. The students also all change in the classroom together. There were shirts and pants flying off everywhere. The girls also did not care at all to change in front of the boys and vis versa. For PE we went outside and played with tennis rackets and tennis balls. The students had to hit the ball to the partner and the other person had to catch it. After P-Time it was "playtime" which is recess for 15 minutes, then the students went in for testing.
Since my co-teacher and I were not allowed to be in the room during testing, we thought it would be good to head down to reception (which is like preschool in the US, but is formal) to see what it was all about. Let me tell you it was a mad house. We walked in and there was paint flying everywhere, students were standing on tables, and there were toys everywhere. It was literally like that scene out of Toy Story 3 where Woody and the toys go to the new day care and the children run in screaming and are throwing toys everywhere. I have literally never seen something so crazy in my life. It was fun, but a little too crazy for me.
After reception it was lunch time! What was nice about lunch is we had 75 minutes to eat! Normally in the US it is 20-30 minutes. In that time the students are allowed to eat, then go outside for the remaining time. The students here truly love to be outside. So I ate a brown bag lunch from Liverpool Hope with the other BSU students, then when the time was up we went back to our room!
The rest of the afternoon went by quickly! The students finished up their testing, then we went outside and planted bulbs as a class, then had another playtime for 15 minutes. Once we went back inside my class had art, then the students were to read quietly or come listen to me or my co-teacher read. It was so much fun getting to read to the students! I read from a series called Horrid Henry, which is really popular in the UK. I was amazed at the students comprehension level for such a young age! As I was reading they would raise there hand and tell me a story that related to their lives like Henry from the novel (this is also known as text to self, which I am currently learning about here in my classes at Liverpool!).
After school, my little group decided we would make the 40- minute walk back to campus so we could save money. We then had a nice dinner of fried chicken and potato wedges. We then walked to the ATM so a couple of people could get money, then we headed back to campus to pack! Tomorrow we head off to Scotland for two days, and I am so excited! I will try to post a blog tomorrow, but we will see how the wifi is. I will also post pictures by Sunday night, so look for those! :)
Now on to the US vs. UK schools. I thought they would be similar, but they are pretty different. The first thing I noticed is there is really no classroom management plan. The teachers just teach if they want and the students learn if they want. Fortunately my teacher had a good classroom management plan and the students were very well behaved, but most classes were not the same. Another difference is the teachers are allowed to dress down (sweats, yoga pants, etc.). This was strange to me because it really was not formal. I know dressing up not only makes me feel better and confident, but I also think it helps my students respect me more. The last thing I noticed was the teachers are very blunt and sarcastic with the students and they do the same thing back. In the US I feel this is seen as a sign of disrespect to each other. While these differences seem bad, the obviously are not for this school since it seems to be running well! I am so excited to go back next week, and hopefully I will have some funny stories to tell!
Until next time, Cheers!
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