Crash and Burn, Take One

Week 5, done and dusted. Hallelujah!

This week has been long and exhausting, even though I was really only at school for two days!

Monday: 

High Ropes and Mountain Biking with 12PE, check out my blog here to read more about our fun day out at Woodhill Forest.

I was considerably drenched from the rain, so I spent some time warming up with a nice hot shower and soup.

Planned. A lot. Even called one of my co-teachers to plan. Plan, plan, plan.

Tuesday:

My super busy day. 6 classes back to back, then a co-teacher meeting after school.

I then completed some admin for my tutor class and had a bite to eat before I pottered off to bootcamp. Yes, I go to a bootcamp. I decided to do so, because I have no time to think about my own training programmes. Therefore, a bootcamp keeps me active without having to think about what I am doing. If I am not active, my body gives up and my overall wellbeing (Hauora) crashes.

Post bootcamp and grass/mud removal, I worked through some of my PE 'to dos' such as planning volleyball lessons with a TGFU approach. Teaching Games for Understanding, is a model developed by Bunker and Thorpe in 1982, to teach skills and technique of games through modified, competitive situations (instead of standing and passing for example).

Diagram found here.

Wednesday:

In the pool for a short 1km swim at 5:45am to stretch out and invigorate the body a little.

Awesome day at school. Busy, but awesome. The kids are finally starting to warm to me, and open up, which makes a huge difference to our classroom vibe and overall learning environment.

Our first lecture! MDTA begun our Honours course this afternoon, with a basic intro discussion about critical thinking and how important it is to implement into our classrooms. I am definitely a critical thinker myself, and I do try my best to encourage my students to think critically at present - so I am really excited about what this course has to bring.

Tonight, I completed no work at all. Two friends from England landed this evening and I took them out for dinner in the Viaduct. I really enjoyed spending time with friends, this really boosted my overall wellbeing and Hauora. However, my throat was a little niggly...

Thursday:

Uhoh. I am sick. I woke up this morning feeling terrible. I think I have finally crashed, which was bound to happen eventually!

I am unsure whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that I wasn't at school teaching today. I was out with the Year 12s again, but this time we were kayaking. I really enjoy kayaking, so I tried my best to be involved and be positive even though under the surface smile I was feeling awful. Teaching involves acting!

After a power nap, I went to my sign language course. Ironically we were learning how to sign words related to Health and wellbeing, so I could explain all of my symptoms by the end of the night.

Friday:

MDTA digital immersion day. Boy, it was tough to stay mentally involved today. I really wasn't 100% there, but I tried to be.

Today we jumped into Google Sites and how we can best organise and present our sites both for our learning, and our students' learning. I was thankful I had already spent some time with a Google Educator learning about sites, so today was revision with the odd new piece of information thrown in. This screenshot shows the site I played with, creating a basic lesson about Little Red Riding Hood. Although it (clearly) needs some 'blinging' up, as it is ugly currently, I now know how to embed various photos, videos and Google products into my Sites.

Being sick and trying to learn is so difficult, I really just wanted to go to bed! This demonstrates the concept of Hauora wholeheartedly if one wall crashes, so does the whare.

However, my favourite part of today was playing around with HTML code. I remember writing HTML code in highschool and I really enjoyed it, so I can't wait to play around a little more and see what I can create in the future.

As this week as been a rollercoaster of emotions and hurdles, I think it is important to remind myself what I am doing here. Why I am putting myself through this organised mess. For the students. As cliche as it is, I want to make a difference. Not a teacher? Check out some ways others have made a difference.