First Days of School

School started this Monday, and so far I have been too tired to write. Even though I am still unsure of many of the routines at school, I love it. I enjoy working with the kids, I like being part of a staff, and I like the idea of working at a school for a whole year. It is also exciting for me to be part of a brand new school. Ok, well they have actually been in containers for 2 years already, but the building and half of the staff are new.

All the students, except the students in reception and grade one starting school for the first time, started on Monday. My grade ones were in reception last year so that is when they started. We met them in the foyer and then took them back to the classroom. It was fun getting to meet them and over this week start to get to know them. They are a fun class and seem to work pretty well as a class. They have been having some trouble listening...but we'll see how much of that is just getting back into school routines. The first two days there were no subject classes, the kids were with their teacher for the whole days. I liked this because it meant we got the time to get the year started and do all that beginning of the year stuff. We decorated labels for things, talked about our summer holidays, toured the new school, played outside...

Thinking about summer holidays, that conversation was rather different than any school I've been in. Students had been to France, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Turkey (that one was popular!), Spain, Switzerland! They didn't all sound like extravagant big trips, like when you go to Europe from North America, they were the equivalent of going to visit family in another province or going to California or Hawaii to lie on a beach.

On Mondays - Wednesdays I work after school running the after school daycare program, or Hort. This week was a bit hectic as kids came and went way more than they normally will (with parents touring the school and attending the opening). Today we took them outside, brought out the bin of toys and just let them play. It was fun to have some time with students from all different classes and just be able to relax and have fun with them. After it raining on and off for the past two days, today we had the perfect weather. I wish it was like today all year round.

It is interesting listening to the kids play. As most are native German speakers that is how they communicate with each other. But they are so use to teachers who only speak English. Joining in with them creates a neat mix of English and German. They know when they need to speak English, and when they need to translate. Sometimes even we have conversations where I am able to pick up what they are saying in German and respond in English. And no this isn't because I have an amazing ability to pick up languages, rather that it is amazing how much of communicating doesn't need you to understand every word that is spoken. Rather I use the non verbal cues and being able to guess what they are saying (pretty easy sometimes!). I had some interesting conversations with one of the new reception students. He speaks less English than I speak German (if any) but kept coming up and asking me things and telling me things. It was like we were having a conversation with each speaking our own language, but I think for someone who understands both it would have been pretty funny. I doubt we were actually talking about the same thing!

The new students started today. They had their big Einschulung yesterday. It is like a big welcome to school extravaganza. It even involves these weird decorated cone present-filled things that the parents give their kids. Check it out: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einschulung

Yesterday they also had the big opening for the new school building. There were press people taking pictures after school and lots of important people in suits being given personal tours by the heads. Luckily, I was doing the after school hort and so couldn't go. Today I heard that it was way too long and kind of boring. It was suppose to be from 5-7pm but didn't end until 8:30! There were students who were at hort until the end, as their parents were attending. At about 6:20 I went home as there weren't too many students and the hort coordinator said he'd stay until the end.

Well that was quite a bit longer than I'd anticipated. But now my laundry is done so I can hang that up and go to bed. A post about the laundry machine here will have to come another day!

Tschüss!