Day 1 – A good Day
I start every new day of teaching with a positive outlook. I think it’s vital. If I go in feeling negative and out-of-sorts, the children will be in a downward spiral before break time.
Today was a really good day. They were alert and motivated from the start of the day and, although that waned somewhat as the day went on, we all did some good work.
Afternoons are always tricky. I don’t know what it is, but something happens to them between 12.00 and 12.30 and many of them go off the rails. The school where I teach only has half an hour for lunch. This is partly because, as a large school, we have to have several sittings in the dining hall, to get everyone fed, and partly to cut down on behaviour issues in the playground.
In most primary schools, children could be out in the playground for 40 – 50 minutes at lunchtime but, in my school, the longest a child is likely to out playing is probably fifteen minutes. This is long enough to have a good run around and get some fresh air but not so long that children will get bored, start causing mischief and get into fights. It could be argued that, reducing the lunchtime break, cuts down on children’s opportunities to socialise and form relationships but, the reduction in playground incidents and the consequent impact that has on learning, more than makes up for it. It’s not all plain sailing, of course, and we do still get some disrupted starts to afternoon lessons because of issues that spill over from the playground. However, these are far less in my present school than in others where I have worked.
This afternoon, we started with R.E. and a story from the Sikh faith. The story was an audio recording, to which the children had to listen really carefully, partly because of the accent of the story-teller and also because of the unfamiliar names. A few of the children found this funny and were quite disrespectful, however, as the story unfolded, they were fully attentive, they remembered the key elements of the story and were able to ask some really sensible questions about it.
These children are a fascinating mix. There is a wide range of ethnicities, cultures and faiths in the school and, in school, there are remarkably few racist incidents, despite the fact that, in the world immediately outside the school gates, there is a significant amount of racism. The children love hearing stories from different religions and are good at noticing where the moral or lesson of a story from one faith is similar to that of another faith.
I often wish that we could do the same lessons with their parents.
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