january 8

on monday we all woke up early for a meeting with david, the head master of godstowe. he basically gave us a welcome to the school and asked us to come back at midday with a good idea of what we wanted to do as our job. i hadn't really thought about working in lodge, with the kids aged 3-7, but once david started talking about it i was really interested. caitlin and i had to discuss seriously which one of us was going to do it because we both wanted to, but in the end i got the job!

at midday we went back to his office and met the house mistresses, yvonne the head of lodge and iliffe the vice head. we settled on our jobs and discovered yvonne is irish, from co. wicklow!
iliffe gave us a tour of the main school and then we went back to our home in highlands house to move out. after 4 trips along the path, across the tennis courts and up 3 flights of stairs, i was moved in and georgie and i began to unpack. this involved throwing everything that had been left behind OUT of the wardrobes and emptying our suitcases. neither of us have finished unpacking yet...but i will do it today.

tuesday and wednesday i was working in lodge, helping the teachers to organise themselves and doing photocopying and setting up displays. on thursday morning we were all ready to go by 8.15am and set to work. i was sent to do readers with a kindergarten (like grade 1) class which was the cutest thing ever. the kids were all really excited and some were a bit shy to meet me, and all their reading was great. the thing about godstowe is that all the children seem to love reading by the time they're 7. i went on my break at 10.20 and was put on break duty which was a rainy day program so that just involved setting up a video in the hall for the kids. after that i did some readers for a transition (grade 2) class and had lunch at 12pm. at 12.45 i went over to the nursery with one teacher to put the nursery kids (3 and 4 years old) down to sleep/rest and after 20 minutes anyone who was still awake was allowed to play. i played "noah's ark" snap with a girl called olivia  before i went back to lodge.

in the afternoon i did more readers and at 3.30 went down to the hall to do after care. the kids have to be witnessed being picked up by a parent, so they have to individually go up to a teacher and say "good afternoon mrs ____" and shake their hand before leaving. at 4pm, the remaining children were seated in a circle for izzy and i to pass around glasses of water and marmite or jam sandwiches. little by little parents picked the children up. after eating, they were allowed to play and a few of the kids put on a puppet show for us until at around 5pm we were let leave as there were only 3 kids left and 2 teachers to watch them. we went up to the flat and collapsed with tiredness before getting up for dinner at 6.30. later on of course i spoke to my family and did some emailing.

yesterday was quite similar, readers, lunch duty, working in the nursery. i spent a couple of hours in the art storeroom, cutting poster paper to stick paintings on to and i spent a while sitting with one little girl to try and help her pay attention.
in the evening we watched just my luck and hitch and all went to bed even though it was everyones night off and we had all wanted to go out. the truth is that we're too tired at the moment.