Lamination

Today at work was chill, must like yesterday. I found out where classes were held and after talking to D. for a while I went to my first class. Since the schedules are messed up due to trips and low attendance, I get to pick which classes I want to attend. During this week, there are only the students who didn’t go on the trip left behind, and as the week progresses the number of students decreases. Yesterday, the classes that were going on were broken down by year, but today there were two groups. That’s a significant drop in numbers. Since there were two groups, there were two classrooms to pick from. So, I chose one and made my way there.

Period One I had a group of younger students. I had never met any of them before, so I don’t know what year they were. They were learning about debating. Since it isn’t normal lessons, they weren’t graded. The topic was whether violent video games should be banned. I took one group of boys into another room to use the computer for some “research” and then we all came back together to have the students debate. They did well, but of course a class of adolescent boys is not really in favor of banning video games.  I thought I would have the same students for the next period, but turns out my year 9 group from yesterday had that classroom. I decided that rather than going around with one class, I would just stick in one classroom. So in come the year 9 students, with the American boy and head boy. They had an English lesson where we read a short story and then watched an old black and white mystery movie. It was chill. The third class of the day I had was also English-y. I’m pretty sure for this final week; the school just places teachers with groups regardless of what they teach. This teacher really likes to yell. Like a lot. And he was a bit scary, though the kids just seemed to laugh it off. We started with giving our initials and birthdays to the teacher. He wrote them down. When we got to mine, I told them. Then of course we had to figure out how old I was. 21. Yep. And then we came to this terrifying conclusion: I am seven years older than the students in the class. That’s the weirdest thing ever. After collecting all this data, we used the initials and numbers to pick out words from a book and then write a poem. Once again, some silly busy work.

After lunch I was employed by D. to help her with some laminating. So for the next two hours I sat and laminated some signs that would be useful when teaching English next year. It sounds boring, but it was really great. We got to chat and listen to music. She’s also seen The Last Song, which was filmed in Savannah. So crazy! I shared some of my favorite songs with her and she shared some Romanian songs with me. And we got a lot of work done. I didn’t finish it all. There was a lot of paper that needed to be laminated and that machine takes forever to do one piece, so I will continue tomorrow.

Tonight we also went and saw Billy Elliot. This is the first play we have seen that I have not already seen or have already memorized the soundtrack. I had no knowledge, except for a rough idea of the plot, and was so excited to fully experience it for the first time. We began the show and there was a 5 year old in it who was beyond precious. The boy who played Billy Elliot was the most precious thing and he could dance like a professional! I was thoroughly impressed. About 30 minutes it, a stage manager came on stage. I thought this was part of the show, but he told us there were technically difficulties and they needed to pause the show. It was weird. So we waited and soon, it came back. I seriously loved this show. I laughed so hard and cried some too. I would recommend this show to everyone. Like, if this show comes back to the Fox, I’m going. I love love love Billy Elliot.

Week Five: Day Two: Internship 12