Last Friday, the Deputy Principal of the ‘Ladies’ College’ phoned, completely out of the blue. And so it was that I ended up in front of a class today for the first time in nine years. In my usual calm fashion I was such a mess of anxiety overnight that I managed about 4 hours of broken sleep for the whole night. I wasn’t so much worried about the teaching itself as about the idea of not sleeping. So I didn’t sleep.
Nevertheless today involved the most gorgeous, co-operative, industrious class of Year 4 girls that could be imagined. I’d just forgotton what an absolute delight a group of 16 little girls can be. (A mere 16 of them, given the class sizes in this school). They were almost embarrassingly polite and hard-working. It was like living in an Enid Blyton book for the day.
We started the day with Chess. Given that the Chess teachers are sub-contracted, I had nothing more taxing to do than collect and mark all their homework from the night before. Next lesson was Drama - again with a specialist teacher - so I finished the marking, checked the running sheet for the day and got organised. Next up was an ‘Extra’ with Grade 2. Revision of Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives. We had a lovely discussion about snow trips, listed all the snow words we could think of in various categories, then did a page in their workbook with a snowman incorporating grammar exercises.
After recess it was back to Grade 4 for a 2 hour literacy block on “Argumentative Essays”. I explained the concept and outline, we did some class discussions and pair work, then they had to write an argumentative essay in their workbooks. All I could hear was the scratching of pencils for the next 40 minutes. I used the time to go over some of the homework issues individually with girls who had had trouble. Just before lunch was Touch Typing in the computer room, where they all sat silently and furiously typing. Again I had nothing to do so it was onto correcting the Argumentative Essays.
Lunch involved a happy reunion with at least 10 colleagues who used to teach at the school back in my day. Yard duty followed, which was patrolling the halls and shooing out stragglers from the lunchtime classes such as Choir and Music. I noticed the French room was plastered with Year 6 stories, a whole A4 sheet each written in French, and each of them using the imparfait. It was very good French. I was quite jealous.
After lunch, it was back to Year 4 for 20 minutes of silent reading as usual each day, during which I finished marking the Argumentative Essays. Then Science, on the topic of ”Liquids, Gases and Solids”. We did a bit of investigation work and discussion, then a computer-based activity on the topic on the laptops. Again they were so quiet that I managed to go over the Argumentative Essays individually with each girl, making sure they fixed up anything that was a bit amiss with their written expression. Last lesson for the day was Maths. We had to measure temperature in various locations around the school and do a workbook activity.
All of them managed to finish all their Literacy, Maths, Science and Computer work and many went on to do extension tasks. Almost all of the correction was able to be done in class. Then just as they were about to be given a short game for working so beautifully all day, the school bell rang. I could not believe this but they volunteered to stay behind for a few minutes so they could play a game of “heads down, thumbs up”! Oh my goodness they were cute!
I’m not sure how much work will come up but I’m on the ET list for two days each week while James is in Kinder. Grandma is happy to help out with minding him in the mornings and then dropping him off to Kinder for the afternoons. It was a bit hurdle to overcome to get back in the classroom, but you really could not get an easier school almost anywhere.

