First Couple of Days at School

So... I've finally started my student teaching! Though, right now I'm basically just sitting around observing the classes. However, I have two classes that I will be taking over very soon, one being Year 8 (a.k.a. 7th grade) history (they're studying British history 1485-1750, or the Tudors and Stuarts). The other is actually not with my CT but with another humanities teacher (and the only lady in the humanities department!), Katie, and that is Year 7 (a.k.a. 6th grade) History (studying British history 1066-1485, or the Battle of Hastings and the Middle Ages). I've met the classes, though they have yet to actually meet me. I'll do a lesson with the Year 8s on Friday (Dave my CT has the lesson all planned already, I just present it), and then I'm in charge of creating a starter for the Year 7s lesson next Tuesday. So I'm excited for that!!

The school I'm at is really quite neat. It's a very nice building and the students are all quite well behaved (in class, at least). They're very respectful and address the teachers as "Miss" and "Sir" and the younger kids, Years 7-9 (6th - 8th grade) are all expected to line up outside the classroom door before the teacher lets them in, then must stand behind their chairs and wait for the teacher to ask them to sit. It's quite orderly, but I'm thinking that's just a British thing. Of course, this is the first British school I've ever spent time in...

And with all the things that I find drastically different at the school (like, for example, a student talking about the "American War of Independence" a.k.a. the Revolutionary War), I find so many things to be similar. Teachers are practically the same no matter where you go - there's the disciplinarians, the nice ones, the weird ones, the fun ones... and there's definitely cliques of teachers. They've all been very welcoming to me, too, so that's a plus :). The students are all very similar to students in the states, in terms of dress and behavior (just maybe a tad bit better behaved?). Some dress much nicer than I've ever seen students in the States dressed, but the majority of them look like they could have just walked into a typical American school.

But the biggest difference - and probably the coolest one - is the fact that, truly, in a class of about 10 students, only 3 of them speak English as their first language. The vast majority of students have pretty thick accents, ranging from Iranian to Indian, French to German, Czech to American to English. It's really awesome. The only problem I have with it is the fact that with all those various native tongues is various names which I can't pronounce. It'll be a challenge, but one I'll gladly accept!