7 June, 2006

Hi again.

Much better news to report now that the wicked witch of the east is no longer our classroom assistant. I don't think I told you that one day she screwed up a sheet of paper and stuffed it into Namo's mouth. He is 7. She was called Jarn, but I decided she should be called Jarn-tanamo.

No.........we now have a lovely lady who has been working at school for a while as a kindergartne teacher. She's older than Jarn, and has that wonderful motherly presence in the room, which has a great effect on the kids. So guess what? My job is 100% easier! That makes me happy. I can now plan to actually DO stuff, rather than spend all that time trying to control the class. This week's topic for Year 2 has been Birthdays, which has been fun, and I'll be continuing that next week. Year 1 are doing Families. Very interested to see my photo of Granny!

Last Friday rocked! I took my guitar to school and taught all my students my rewritten version of "Yellow Bird". The usual Jamaican accent and dialect of the song are not much use here, so i changed it into a cleverly-disguised prepositions song! And just a really nice song!
YELLOW BIRD, UP HIGH IN A BANANA TREE.......
WHY ARE YOU SO HIGH, HIGH UP IN THE SKY, FAR AWAY FROM ME, IN THE BANANA TREE? PLEASE COME DOWN TO ME, COME DOWN FROM YOUR TREE; WE WILL BE VERY HAPPY

They bloody loved it! i had them all eating out of my hand, and they actually SANG, they didn't make a horrible noise. It was beautiful, and so moving! I'll record them one of these days. Now I suppose i'll have to keep coming up with lots of songs to keep face!