Year 2 Day 57: Last Day of Work

I finally got a call from my primary supply agency for a day's work today -- SCORE (my first one from them since July)! The best part was that it was for a school where I have done supply work before and also located conveniently along the train line, which meant Matt could drop me off in the morning and still have the car to take to work. I didn't mind that there were 3 legs in the hour-long journey as this simply meant I wasn't squished behind the steering wheel of a car whilst on my way into gridlock Birmingham traffic.

When I reached the school's reception, the secretary recognised me right away from when I was there back in March -- well, she sort of recognised me. She asked when I was due, and when I told her a fortnight, she assured me I was in good hands as the TA in the classroom next door to mine was a licensed midwife. Still, reassured or not, I was hoping to not need to put her to work.

The Year 5 class I was assigned to was typical of what I expected from any school in or near Birmingham. The children tend to be a little more lively and it's no surprise that there will be a few in the class that make it their personal goal to just be oppositional. No worries from me though, because I have been there, done that, and bought the XXL t-shirt.

By the end of the day, after consulting the classroom teacher (who popped back into school to do some planning) I decided to wind the kids down and allow them participate in some friendly "Girls vs Boys" competition. I loaded a PowerPoint presentation that had questions where they had to name '5 of something' in only 10 seconds. By the fifth question, the girls were ahead 3 to 1 and the boys didn't like it one bit. Unfortunately, the boys had a major weakness of arguing with one another which was the main reason they couldn't score a point above the girls -- whereas the girls just got on with it and worked together.

I offered for this final question (pictured above) to be worth 2 points to make the result a draw if they boys could pull through. If you look down at the bottom of the picture you see the answers they submitted. They only gave 3 names: The Queen, The King, and The Pope. This is both sad and funny to me -- sad to me that as an American, I had to prompt these BRITISH children when they started to whinge about how hard the question was that ONE of the most important people was ON THEIR FREAKING MONEY!!! (To be fair, I'm sure it's like asking 9 & 10 year old Americans to name 5 U.S. Presidents.)


Then funny of course, because although 'The Pope' is NOT a member of the Royal Family, I was teaching at a CATHOLIC primary school.

::sigh::

Kids.

My travels finally concluded after a train delay at Gravelly Hill, a cancellation at Birmingham New Street, and finally one set of 4 cars from Smethwick Galton Bridge too rammed with people to accept any more passengers. I eventually made it back to Stourbridge Junction before 6pm where Matt was patiently waiting to take me home. It was then that I decided that today would be my final day of work before bunny's arrival.

::points thumbs towards self::

This turkey is cooked! (Happy Thanksgiving!!)