My Day To Teach - British BBQ

Friday July 18^th. MY DAY TO TEACH – BRITISH BBQ

Back to the school for 8:00. Today was my day. I set up both projectors again and got my room ready by putting up some chart paper to write on. My topic was authentic assessment. I had found three PDFs and PowerPoints on the internet from the CTF Project Overseas website and the TDSB website. First I asked them to work in groups and write a list of all the forms of assessment they currently use. Then we shared. I asked if they thought most teachers used mainly paper and pencil tests and they agreed. Then I led them through a PDF called the Eight Best Reasons for Assessment. I showed them the other two briefly and promised to post all of them on the blog that George is creating with them.

For the rest of the time I explained to them the Time Capsule that I do with the kids in my class the first week of school and how they can use it for some early assessment to find out what the kids need to know or already know. They really liked it and even Wendy said she learned something from it. I was very pleased how well received it was and I enjoyed working with them today. I repeated the lesson to all three groups. The last two I finished ten minutes early. So I saw that I had a picture of Terry Fox’s statue on my desktop. So I told them his story. At the end I said “So don`t tell me that a person with a disability or any kind of challenge can’t achieve, it is our job to help them all to reach their maximum potential.”

After school we had a team meeting and Jimmy actually showed up for a bit. The ministry lady who had tried to undermine our first meeting was there and wanted to know how we were going to let her do her stuff next week. After some bantering back and forth we decided that George would continue to run his ITC sessions, one ministry lady would run a differentiated session and the third session would be a subject specific course focusing on science, social studies and math, for a half hour each. Then she told us she would not be there as she has another workshop to attend! So we will see on Monday how it pans out.

When we got home we relaxed for bit before walking up to the home of Ken’s British neighbour’s house for the bbq that we had been invited to. Ken and his wife Nettie (in the last photo) were there already with another couple, Tippy and Paddy, and their two daughters. Later a few other local people showed up. Alan and Lynn bbq’d chicken and served a mac and cheese pie and coleslaw. The food was really good and the conversation was great. We had a few drinks and yacked about teaching, St. Vincent, travel, CTF and our goals and a bunch of other stuff. Everyone was very nice to us and we thoroughly enjoyed the night. I had a great time talking to a local Rasta named Sylvester. He was too funny. He was supposed to go to work by 8, then 10, then 11 and he was still there when we lef at 11:30. I bet him that we would get to Bequia (tomorrow) before he got to work! Great evening. Late to bed.