Back to the grind I went on Monday. Well, kind of...

 

So the 6^th form part of school is in its own building and each lesson I have, I am always late to get there. One the way, I have to pick up a projector, AC remote and whiteboard pen, check that these things work once I am in the classroom then begin a hunt around for whatever the broken item is. I feel like such a moany ass when one of these is not working. I go stomping into the office and try to ask for batteries, a new pen, an extension cable etc. and nobody really knows what is going on.

The strange thing is, I teach all of my normal lessons with a blackboard and piece of chalk but as soon as I get given a resource, I expect it to be there and working all the time. We turn the AC down to 16^oC, which absolutely lush when you first step into the room. The projectors are also really good, you just have to set them up each time you want to use them.

On Tuesday morning, I headed to Eve Leary Training Ground. I arrived to a scene very similar to what I had seen back in July this year at Crystal Palace Ground in London. A big wooden pavilion filled with students wearing one of four colours. My house was Makushi this time round so I was wearing my Makushi-blue t-shirt and standing with my organising sheet for the events. People kept asking what I thought of Guyanese sports day. I could only reply with it being almost the same.

The biggest difference was the speed of the teachers in the teachers’ race. To be fair to the London teachers, I did train for that race and spend the whole previous year dreaming about winning it (I did win it by the way, beat a Jamaican too). This time round I came 3^rd out of five! Sorry team Makushi.

The rest of the day steamed on in a never-ending list of different track events. The poor kids had to run 3K and 5K races in the midday heat! They all did the typical tactic of sprinting the first two laps then walking the rest. Egg and spoon was slotted in just before lunch time. Oh, no, wait; it is the Caribbean so we did the lime and spoon race. The late for school race turned into a fashion parade rather than a race as it didn’t matter how long you took, only how well-dressed you were at the end. One girl took five minutes longer than her rivals and ended up winning it. But the most controversial had to be the bun-eating contest. Each house deliberately selected the fattest members of their house to devour a bun then waddle across the finish line.

By 5pm and 72 events we were finished, tired and I didn’t want to see a track event for the rest of my life! Thankfully the secondary school had a day off today for resting so I only had to teach my A-level students. I am not completely into the swing of teaching A-levels yet. I can get the lessons to go well and the students understand and can do lots of the new stuff by the end. They have trouble completing the exam questions though. I am going to relate each lesson to an exam question on the next units to see if that helps. I am fishing for advice here. Has anyone taught science A-levels and found this issue?