Thursday, April 7, 2011

Yesterday morning, I got a call from Tracer (they are the ones who call you to supply teach). I was sort of expecting a call since Luise told me the day before that I might get a call because the teachers were getting tired. So, imagine my surprise when I was asked to go to a different school. They called me to supply at a school called Sandy Strait to teach in a Prep (kindergarten) class - AND the teacher I was subbing for was male! That REALLY surprised me - I have never known a male to be a kindergarten teacher before. It turns out that he taught grade four last year and they lost so many children at the school, that they lost teachers at different grades - and he was reassigned to kindergarten. I was told that he is not happy about it. Also, he left no plans which actually annoyed me since I was told that he wasn’t feeling well the day before. Fortunately for me, he has a wonderful teacher’s aide (every kindergarten class has a teacher’s aide at least for half a day and sometimes for a while day here). Madonna (the aide) helped me work out what we could do for the day. There were 18 children in the class and I was told to keep an eye on three boys. I had to work my ‘magic’ and I think that I did very well. One of my ‘tricks’ is to use the ‘challenge’ child(ren) as my ‘carpet examples’ where I mention how well they are sitting and that everyone should sit like them. That works really well most of the time and worked with these guys. I also find that praising them for positive behaviour has a good effect, too. I left my supply teaching card for the teacher and the teacher next door asked me for a card as well. Then, I had to cover another kindergarten teacher’s class for the last part of the day and I left my card with her. When I left the school, I stopped by the office and left my card with the woman there. So, hopefully, this will lead to more work.


Dad spent the morning doing errands and then had to stay home for the afternoon as we were having some more furniture delivered. Our single beds for our second guest room and our two rocker/recliners came. Dad was so excited about his chair. :-)  Here is a pic of it. He quite enjoyed sitting in his new chair today. :-)

After school, we came straight home so that we could make lasagna as the missionaries were coming over for dinner. It was such a lovely day, so we decided to eat outside. It was fun having them over. They are two new missionaries from when we left to go to Canada. Both missionaries are from Melbourne, although they didn’t know each other there as they were in different Stakes. They get along really well which is good. They are working on finding out where the less active children are in our ward for me. As the Primary president, I want to know what we can do to help the children who aren’t coming out to church right now, but I need to know who they are and what their situation is before I can do anything.

Today was my day to go in and teach the grade 2s and grade 3s at Kawungan. I was really looking forward to today as I was going to be in Bronwyn’s class for half a day and then a grade three class. Before school, I went in to Bronwyn’s classroom to see what I was going to be doing that morning and she told me a nice bit of info. Her husband supply teaches at a catholic school and they had asked him if he ever supply taught at the primary level (he’s a high school person) - they said that they had some difficulties sometimes getting supply teachers for that level. I told her thanks for letting me know and I will go there tomorrow after school and give them my card. I had a lovely time in Bronwyn’s class today- they are all lovely and work well and listen well - the perfect class to supply teach in. I told her after school that she is welcome to take off as many days as she would like. :-)  She sure deserves this class after the last two years! The grade three class was fairly easy to teach as well as I knew most of the students from volunteering/working in the grade two classes last year. There were a couple of boys who were annoying, but hopefully if I ever get to supply in that class again, they will be better behaved.

Dad started off his day doing some errands before going to do his Meals on Wheels run. He was paired up with a new couple today who used to receive meals from MOW and now wanted to give back. They did the Baycrest run which is the one we have often done in the past. After MOW, Dad went to the chapel to help our friend, Rob figure out why he couldn’t get the General Conference videos to run. Another guy in our ward, Zander, had downloaded them, but for some reason, Rob couldn’t get them to play, so he called Dad to ask him to come to the chapel to help him figure out what was wrong.

After school, Dad and I went to the motorcycle shop where we bought my scooter from. We needed to buy a helmet and some gloves as we are starting our riding course on Saturday. We decided that, since we can’t both ride on the motorcycle at the same time (you have to have your license for a year before you can take someone else on your bike) and the cost of buying these accessories was hefty, we would buy one of each and then share them. There was a really good sale on the helmet, but not on the gloves ($80. for the gloves, can you believe it!). We asked the woman about the jackets even though we knew they were expensive, too, just so that we knew what they were like when we did spend the money on one. They were on a really good sale - too good a sale to pass up - and so we bought a jacket as well. I will have to work a couple of extra supply days before we can get another set of accessories. :-)  We are really looking forward to starting our riding lessons - I can’t wait until I can ride the scooter to school when I get calls to teach or when I am volunteering. They say the cost of petrol (gas) could go up to $2.00 per litre in the next while so not only will it be fun riding my scooter, but it will also save money. Two for the price of one! :-)

At SES tonight, Dad did a review of maps and navigation. They were given a map and told to get from A to B. They had to use a compass to complete the activity (it was all on paper). The idea was that they would have been able to go outside and do the search for real using the calculations they had made on the paper. It was pretty basic stuff, but it’s always good to go over it, Dad says.