First Day at School

Day Notes:

• Coal fire fail #3. Today, I purchased firelighters and had the help from my landlord Martin, and the fire still went out! I think a coal fire in the living room is overrated. Until I get more ambitious, I’m going to elect to keep the room closed to conserve heat in the rest of the house!
•  I need to figure out when I can watch Game of Thrones. I don’t have enough data to stream from my house and I don’t want to hang out at the school more than necessary.

• My international students love President Obama. I asked them why and their reply was that he is doing so much to help their respective countries.
• These students were incredibly polite, energetic, talkative, and generally pleasant to be around. Most are 16-17 years old and want to go to college
• It has been incredibly windy here the past two days!
• The school had been closed for two weeks for Easter holiday, so the heat was turned off. This is an old building, latest renovation/remodel in the 1980s, so it takes a long time to return the building to normal heat. I was cold all day!
•  The layout of the school is interesting: three wings forming a triangular shape – each wing was constructed in a different decade: 1980s, 1960s, and earlier – talk about needing a new school!
•  Today I was asked, “do you believe in the American Dream?” by an international student who’s cousin moved to the U.S. and became a successful DJ – I am skeptical
• One class of students was enrolled in Philosophy and I was told they had to take that class because they are atheists and they needed to learn about religion. I will not be teaching philosophy – we’ll move on to science
• Teacher preparation in Ireland typically occurs after the Bachelor’s degree is obtained and candidates will get dually certified. For example, math and English. A lot of teachers instruct multiple subjects – often time outside of their subject area.
• There are at least 5 other student teachers at this school - all from Ireland
• I hope to take some photos at the school to include later

I was unable to find a map of the school, so I took a photo of a framed aerial photograph of the school that I found at the school. The layout is the product of additions made to the building over the years, which have left the school perimeter resembling the letter, g. The tennis courts belong to the school as well as a walking track that circles the tennis courts and the grassy area to the left of the courts. If you walk 5 laps around the track, your distance equals a mile. Mercy used to be a boarding school, and the old dorms were located on the top floor of the horizontal building located in the foreground of the photo and I think also the top floor of the perpendicular building.

Start of School

School begins at 9:05am with either a student assembly or meeting with their tutor (a tutor is a homeroom teacher of sorts). Me, being incredibly punctual and often early, arrived at 8:00am. The chaplain greeted me and led me to the teachers’ lounge, where I waited for the principal and met other teachers as they arrived. I was told that the chaplain is the only nun left at the school because all of the nuns, who normally live at the school were relocated to Galway, where there are better facilities.

This is a photo of the convent. ALL of the teachers hang out in the teachers’ lounge in between classes and drinking tea with milk is always offered. They knew I was American right away because I drank my tea plain, without milk. The teaching staff is relatively small, roughly 30-40 teachers.

Monday is an assembly and the principal gives announcements and the chaplain (nun) starts the day with a prayer. The students organize themselves by year (1^st year (freshman) through 5^th year (seniors) with a transition year (TY) in between). I hate to relate my Ireland experience to Harry Potter, my only experience with European schools, but it was very much the same except the students were seated at long tables (as in the movie), but were organized into lines – prefect and name-of-year sign in front). The assembly took place in the gymnasium.

Different from U.S. public schools, the school day is more relaxed except there is no time allotted between classes for students to travel between classrooms. Below, is my timetable (weekly schedule). My students are international and come to Ireland mainly to learn English. Some countries my students are from included: Spain, Germany, Finland, Austria, Italy, and some others. From what I can tell, their English is quite good already, but some students have trouble with comprehension.

9:05-9:15am	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
1st 9:15-9:50	Study Hall	Eng 8 students		Learning Support 4 students	Open 1 7 students
2nd 9:50-10:25
3rd 10:25-11:00	IT	Open 2 19 students	Open 2 19 students	Study Hall	Open 2 19 students
BREAK 11:00-11:15
4th 11:15-11:50			Study Hall
5th 11:50-12:25				Eng 8 students
6th 12:25-1:00
LUNCH 1:00-1:45
7th 1:45-2:25	Open 1 7 students		Eng 8 students		Eng 8 students
8th 2:25-3:05					Learning Support 4 students
9th 3:05-3:45	Eng 8 students		IT	IT

There are nine class periods in a day. Before lunch, classes are 35 minutes long and 40 minutes after lunch. I have two Open class periods in which I will be teaching science (any subject I want). After speaking with the students, I determined they have a strong interest in a unit in astronomy and the second unit I would like to coordinate in some way with my PA student teaching mentor so that we can coordinate some video conferencing between classes. In the IT class, the students had been learning Microsoft Office software, so I am going to try to teach something along the same vein – I’m open to suggestions! In Learning Support, I provide supplementary instruction in math/science/English to struggling students and finally, I will be teaching an English class to the international students. I did not feel this way initially, but this may be my favorite class I teach. The students need assistance in English Comprehension, so I will organize lessons to build their reading comprehension, speech delivery, and interpretation skills. I will have continuous assistance with the English teachers at the school to help in my lesson planning for this class. Already, I have been given a prep book for Leaving Certificate Exam Papers, which is an exam the students take for certification in ordinary level. This book contains passages to read with questions for the students to answer related to the reading as well as essays and photos for the students to interpret.

When I said the school is laid back, mainly I said this because the schedule for the teachers is that they teach 18-22 classes per week…total! For example, at State High when I was full time, I taught 5 classes per day, which sums to 25 classes per week. Since I have so much time in between each class, in addition to the study halls, most are 2 or 3 days a week, I have more time to plan lessons. I am hesitant to say this because I have underestimated my teaching workload before and I don’t want to make this mistake again.

It was suggested to me that I arrive at 8:45am tomorrow instead of 8:00am. Considering I’m not yet adjusted to the time change (5 hours difference) I will take advantage of the extra sleeping time…I wanted to make a good impression on my first day!