In the mornings we’ve been having to do two trips with the school bus. At the start of the week our regular bus was taken to the shop for some repairs and we were stuck using an extra small bus (both extra and extra small, suffering from the first because of the latter). Our regular bus has since been repaired, but in that time, another route’s bus experienced some unfortunate problems and they have more of a need for a large bus, which has left us stuck with the small bus for the whole week. Two trips are necessary because we reach capacity about 3/4 of the way through our route. This capacity is not a standard law of maximum riders set by the government, but a very subjective and ever-changing estimate of how many kids can squeeze into the metal hull without having to rely on strapping some to the roof. The two trips means some kids get to school early and some kids, along with Abby and myself, get to school quite late. Today we arrived during the parade.
After parade I joined Ezekia in music. The first period we didn’t have any kids, so I finished my art project of drawing out some guitar chords and then taped them up. For the rest of the regular classes I was in music, teaching three classes of 8 year-olds three separate songs. The first got Twinkle Twinkle, the second attempted Mary Had a Little Lamb, and the third raved over Baby Shark. It’s very difficult because these young kids have almost no coordination with one hand on the fret board, let alone two trying to do two different tasks. It’s more of a learning experience for me than it is for them!
After lunch was sports and games (so it’s a bit of a half day for most grades) but I was oh-so fortunate to be given the task of supervising and marking some more exams. In all truth, I don’t mind it much, but I wish I was given some heads up so I could plan my day better around it as I’d made some commitments that I then had to back out of.
I didn’t go with the after school bus route because I continued marking papers. For an hour I buried my head in A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, and E’s, finishing my exam grading much quicker than any other teacher. I took my little tea and bread afternoon break for a couple minutes, head high, all excited I was done, just for the academic head teacher to tell me there was one more exam to finish marking. I went back to it and watched all the other teachers finish theirs, one by one, and start chatting away with nothing to do. It was fine because remedial classes were about to end anyways, but it means that after breakfast this morning I have some weekend “homework”! I went with the remedial route home. On the route I bought some peanuts for the kids—prompted by the driver because we were running very late, and just yesterday morning he was chewed out by a parent for being late, so I think he needed a good word from some kids. In the end I got home fairly on time, right around 7:30. Every once in a while a couple kids are absent who really help with cutting down the route time (which is nice), but yesterday was not one of those times.
Once home I took a shower, had some dinner and worked on marking the exams a bit more. I’d say in total and if I’m working at maximum efficiency, it takes between one and two minutes to mark and score one exam, depending on the test. So when I have 80ish exams, thats about two hours of marking. Today I’m going to school and I’m excited because we’re having a meeting with the Global Story Bridge kids.