If these primary school kids keep tugging at my heart, I just might stay forever!
I cannot even begin to explain how happy I am to be back in an elementary classroom. I started my second practicum at Colwill Primary School on Monday. I am in Elisa Patterson's year 4 and 5 class, which is the equivalent to 3rd and 4th grade students. A lot of the classes here in New Zealand are a mix of two different grades. I don't know how the teachers do that, but they seem to make it work. My first few days have consisted mostly of observing and getting the hang of how things work here, but it's been great. I think I now know everyone's names, although it took me a minute to get the hang of such names as: Njun Di, Taiaha, Taupiri, Ardalan, Daesharn.
The schools here run a different schedule than the schools back at home in the States. They have morning tea for about 40 minutes every day. At this time, the students can have their morning tea snack and then go out to play on the playground. The teachers all retreat into the staff room to drink their coffee and milo. Milo is a chocolate and malt powder drink. It's like watered-down hot chocolate. It's not my favorite, but I'd rather have that than coffee or tea. I like morning tea but I think they give the kids too much time to play. When you add up the time they get for morning tea, lunch, and then recess, they don't have much time in the classroom for their studies. And then you also add on the time they get for PE and swimming (yes, they have a pool and it's part of the standard curriculum that everyone take the class)...the teachers hardly have any time to teach the core subjects! I'm interested to see what other differences I can find in these New Zealand classrooms over the next 6 weeks.
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