So week 1 of teaching is in the books and here a few things worth highlighting from the past week:
- Much to my relief, things are a lot more orderly the 2nd time around teaching. The flow of the lesson, even just my thoughts during a class worked much better. Having lessons at the ready well before the date of teaching them really does help out and overall things are less stressful and hectic.
- The new grade 7s are a great bunch. If past indications are any sign of future outcome, then I have a really bright and capable bunch. This group by comparison with the last group shows a stronger "elementary school conditioning". They'll ask if they've been dismissed yet, when leaving the class to go to an assembly, they explicitly ask if they can go ahead of me, and they actual wait outside the classroom before class begins and won't come in until I prompt them to.
- My old grade 7s, still very much like my company. In the mornings, my classroom is filled more with my former students then with my current ones. In the hallways, they are very emphatic with their greetings for me, in a way making me feel like a bit of a rock star. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss them. Although, I wouldn't mind if they didn't come swarming into my classroom at the beginning of the morning.
- The first week of the staff dinner club was a great success. We had 16 members turn up to our Wednesday dinner at a Thai restaurant. A good time was had by all in attendance and a location has already been picked for next week.
- We had the first team meeting and tryouts for the junior girls volleyball team. I'll give the girls credit, as a whole they did very well for not having playing any volleyball during the summer. As mentioned before, this will be a significantly longer and more involving season. It will also be a more complex setup as we are participating in 3 conferences, with differing age requirements, meaning that building the team will be challenging. The first season is the DSEJ local Macau conference, which starts in October. For that TIS will have 2 junior girls teams. The 2 girls will be blended into 1 team for the other 2 conferences in the new year, including the much anticipated return to the SCISAC tournament to hopefully pick up gold this year.
- On the topic of volleyball and sports team, last year our junior basketball teams had personalized jerseys for their games. The overall reception to the uniforms were very positive with a LOT of students from other teams wanting jerseys too. With that in mind, I whipped up a few designs this year. Granted, it would be great to see this to fruition but money is always an issue, so I leave to the coaches, parents, and students to figure out if this is a worthwhile part of the student athletics experience. In the absence of pictures so far, I thought I would share the designs with you. Feel free to provide any design suggestions as this is only still draft phase :)
