Week 11 - Personal

Okay, so this week was filled to the straps with class! We had our two days of teaching as per usual and I taught my English lesson to the children. Again it went well and I am now seeing their English improve as I am able to hold a conversation with some of the children which is helping the ‘teacher-pupil’ bond; this really was a highlight of the week for me as I miss teaching at home sometimes just as the language barrier can be so aggravating at times…

Anyway, the week continued on as we had guest lecturers from different countries this week for class. I had signed up for Educational Disadvantages in Ireland and Bullying. The Irish lecturer was great as it was nice to hear a voice that sounded similar to home. Bar that, the fact the lectures were interesting as it made us think about how we could integrate the arts into our daily

routine at school and how the Arts made more children come to school more as it was interesting for them. This also let us focus in on how art mentoring schemes could be used in schools by focussing in on a certain theme or topic that the children would be interested in and then the teacher would use music, drama and art if possible to run through the topic. An example would be using The Titanic building in Belfast and bringing your kids to the museum and letting them see the different artefacts and then at school the children could look into old clothes or objects that would have been used during that time period. Then the class could look at the type of music at that time and then act out through drama a scene or play made by the children.  We also then had to look into designing a school of the future. This in my opinion was the best! I got to focus on the outside of my group and I designed with everyone’s ideas to design a forest at the back that contained animal pens, ponds, outdoor classrooms, mazes, gymnasiums etc. The lecturers were impressed by all our ideas including the indoors of the school as it was focussed on social skills, the ethos, learning and light!

The next lecture we had was on bullying focussing on bullying issues in America and it turned out to be the best lecture by far! It told us horrifying stories from some American schools about prostitution outside Primary Schools and how schools really do not know how to get over this problem. Another issue was bullying and how to respond as teachers to the problem. So, thankfully for our future career, we found out about all the different options that we could take and proceed with if or should I say when bullying occurs in the classroom. Some examples were talking to the parents, in school suspension e.g. time out unit or even just introducing a buddy system. We also got many useful websites to look at for information and numerous twitter accounts to follow when needing advice. All in all, bulling this week was beneficial and let us gain sight into the bully and the victim and what to do.

Finally the week finished off with a pre celebration of Eimear’s 21^st Birthday on Saturday night. As her birthday is on Tuesday we will be having a proper party then but on Saturday it was good to get everyone together for a good time. Especially as the weather is getting much better now! I even got to cycle in my T-shirt... I was very shocked! Hopefully the good weather continues as it lets us have many more outdoor activities as well as the 'boys' nights that we had this week too!

P.s. Top tip for this week, no matter how boring something might seem to be, attend the class as it will be more enjoyable than what you originally thought! (Yes I am telling you to attend class… I am as shocked as you are reading this now!)