"It is a good divine that follows his own instructions; I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching."
Portia, The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene II.



Monday, December 5, 2011

Secret Santa

Last week was essentially the final week of the school year for us, since in week 7 we have Activities Week rather than the normal timetable.

It was somewhat frenetic. My Y10s were finishing NCEA Level 1 static images. Note to self: do this earlier next year! I do not want to be assessing anything for the Y10s in term four except for possibly wide reading. Actually I don't want to be doing any internal assessments at all for anyone, but I'm allowed to dream.

Senior signout day on Wednesday was disappointing. It had not been well advertised and the turn out was extremely low. This leaves me a big headache in terms of worrying about how many of the English texts will eventually come back and how many will be lost forever as Y12s and Y13s leave without signing out. The deans will now have to phone the Y12s and Y13s who didn't turn up, and inevitably I will end up phoning parents of non-returners at the start of next year, sigh.


Enough complaining! The highlight of the week for me was getting my last two Y12s through their final Level 1 assessment to get their literacy. There was a sense of urgency about this (for me, not them!) given their existing credits were all old standards and they needed to complete within the transition year. I felt a huge sense of relief when they both finally passed what they needed to pass :-)

Junior Prizegiving on Thursday afternoon went really well and students and parents seemed to enjoy it. There were some great music performances to enliven the proceedings, including Maddy from my form class, who won the local talent quest earlier this year. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling well later on Thursday afternoon and did not make it to the Y13 Leavers' Dinner. Apparently it was a really great evening.

My Year 10s insisted on having a Christmas tree in our form room, and we did secret Santa on Friday for our last form class meeting, which was lots of fun. Santa gave me a new mug, which is very cool. Thank you, Santa!