In the "Hood"

I have so much to write, but I find myself absolutely exhausted and thinking I should treat myself to some sleep pretty soon. So this will probably be short and sadly lacking in LOLcatz pictures. Sorry folks :)

I woke up at 6 this morning, and had MAYBE one full hour of "Me Time" between 6 AM and 11 PM. Does that make this a 17 hour work day? I'm thinking it does.

My morning: Got to the department at 7 when the building opened. Prepared a lab practical, fixed a broken projector, and wrote a homework set all before the kids showed up at 8:30 for their first lessons. Because of first-day things like assemblies, my morning classes didn't meet, so I took the morning to sit-in on the lessons my colleagues were teaching. It was a very mixed bag. On teacher, whose nickname is "Dr. Death" is beloved by his students, and he told me he improvised his entire lesson. Even so, he was articulate and held his students rapt. He insulted them all as a form of getting to know them, and they loooooved it. The other lessons were mixed, and most tended to be a little more conventional than Death's lesson. One of my colleagues who I thought was going to be great to watch turned out to be very unclear in his lesson. I was very surprised. Another was very good at engaging the class and he made the whole lecture almost seem like a dialogue. And yet another teacher gave a very conventional chalk-and-talk that was effective if not thrilling. It was really really really good to see what other kinds of things were going on in the chem department.

My afternoon: Had lunch in my boarding house and met with my Tutees. We actually have longer meetings scheduled for tomorrow one-on-one, but today was a day to touch base and assure them that I know all of their names :) At some point, when I have more time to write, I'll have to write about what I've observed about this all-girls boarding house. Some of it is a bit . . . much. Just imagine 60 teenage and younger girls living together. Yeah . . . today I heard the shrillest version of "Happy Birthday" that I could have ever imagined even in my worst nightmares.

After lunch: Three periods of teaching students! A single block with my Lower 6th form Research Projects class. The class is only four students and me, so I started the lesson by explaining my expectations for the caliber of their work and the nature of the projects, and then I met with the kids one-on-one to help them brainstorm projects form their interests. With different kids, we thought about projects on anything from isolation of ethanol from different types of beer to the creation of healthier baby foods. The kids came up with great ideas and have broad interests, and I'm excited to help them find ways to turn them into good science projects! Again, I'd love to write more about this, but ZOMG SLEEP SOON.

My last class of the day was a double-block with my class of 4th form chemists. In the first half I lectured, and in the second half I ran a lab practical. In the lecture, I reviewed what they knew about different types of bonding, and then we went more in depth on the subject of covalent bonding. I felt pretty darn good about the lecture. I felt a little less good about the practical. Imagine 24 teenagers who have just gotten back from a good summer: they have Bunsen burners, they have to use lit matches to test for hydrogen gas (it makes a shrill popping noise if there is hydrogen gas present), the boys are pyromaniacs and use fire to flirt with the girls, the girls want to talk with each other at a mile a minute, and everyone wants to dive in to experiments before they've really thought about them. Now I'm making it sound worse than it really was, but even so I felt like the kids got a little out of control in the lab. I see the same kids tomorrow, and I'm going to try to be a littler sterner with lab behavior. Just having it be my first day, I was a little frazzled by the situation today. Now that I know what to expect, I'll be able to show them my teeth tomorrow, haha.

Evening: After sticking around for about an hour after the kids left to clean the lab and sort out some paperwork, I had about 30 min before eating supper in my boarding house again. Then I met with the head hockey coach to talk about how the heck I'm going to be an effective hockey coach for lots of little boys starting on Thursday. Haha, I'm still not sure what the answer to that is . . .

And finally, I found myself back at home around 8:30 where I promptly poured myself a glass of wine and got to lesson planning. And I didn't look up from my plans until 11 except to eat one of the LOVELY sugar cookies my darling housemate Allie made for us. Haha, her idea of a treat for us after our first day was baked cookies. Mine was sharing a bottle of white wine. It was a pretty nice combo :)

And now here I am. Exhausted. I feel like I've run a marathon today, and I have to jump into another full sprint tomorrow. I think I am going to EARN those 18 weeks of vacation in this year. I think teachers need that much vacation because we don't seem to have any time of our own as long as there are students attending school.

Oh yes, and I bet you are confused by the title of this post. It was a fun "English" moment of the day. In my chemistry studies in the US, the place where we carry out the really noxious reactions is called the "fume hood," often just "the hood" for short. And it turns out the English do NOT call it that. So when I casually told my 4th form class that I was going to do "a particularly nasty reaction in the Hood" I got quite a few giggles. They thought I had been trying to talk like a gangsta. And obviously I am a gangsta, so I don't know why they laughed :-P Probably out of fear of getting shot by this street-smart American who knows how to cap some chemists in the Hood.

Ok . . . yikes being exhausted turns these posts into a bit of a sick parody. I love you all for reading despite the weirdness.

<3 Freddie