We've just finished a crazy, busy term 3 at school and are so happy to have a couple of weeks of school holidays, before an even busier term 4 begins.
When I haven't seen friends for a while and they ask me how I'm going and how work is, I always tell them how much I love work. I look forward to going to work every day as I work with amazing people, love my school, and love my students and seeing them progress and learn English.
I think that only working four days a week would be perfect, as it would give me more time to get things done at home, but I'm so grateful that I have full time work, and I also like being at school five days a week, as I get to teach my students right across the week and don't have to play catch up after a 'day off'.
But it always means that the house is never really clean, the garden is always a mess and I play catch up on the weekends and school holidays. But that's life as a single mum and being able to work full time takes away other stress, so I'm grateful that I don't have to worry about having enough paid work.
This term I did a seven week professional learning course - TYCEMC (Teaching Young Children in English in Multilingual Contexts). It was on Wednesday evenings for 3 and a half hours after school and didn't finish until 6.30 pm. It was a lot of work as a part of the course is doing readings and between module activities, which you then had to reflect on and submit. There was no time limit of when we could hand these in, but I hate having things hanging over my head to do, so I worked hard to get it all done within the same week if I could. I'm so glad that it's over and it'll feel like I have a bit more of a life next term (once learning plans for my students are written).
My job is so interesting as I'm teaching children from so many different countries and cultures. Some of the Prep classes at school have been doing work on different foods, and I was lucky to be invited to help out at to their multicultural food day (I usually only teach the grade 3-6 EAL students).
Some of the mums of our EAL students came in and cooked beautiful food from their countries. The students then sat down and had a lovely meal together. We had lentil soup and flat bread from Sudan, momos and homemade tomato sauce from Bhutan/Nepal and rice paper rolls from Vietnam.
It's always a special treat when one of my students brings in freshly cooked food from home. One day one of my boys brought in some home made samosas for me, which were still hot. That was the best before school snack, recess and lunch ever!
After school has been busy with the end of season for club basketball for both Harri and Kobe. Harri had a tough year as he was
out with his injury for about a quarter of the season. He was so happy to finally be able to start playing and really enjoyed his team this year. They didn't win many games as they were in a tough division 1.
His team got to participate in some community events, including an exhibition match before a Tornadoes game, and playing against the Chilli FM radio hosts at the opening of an awesome new park that we have in our city - Riverbend Park.
I was the team manager for Harri's team this year, so they made me get in their photo at the Devils presentation night.
As well as club basketball, Harri has also participated in a couple of state weekend tournaments with Launceston Lightening this year.
Now that club basketball is over, Harri has started playing after school basketball for his school, just one day a week. He tells me that after school cricket is just about to start up. I don't mind that he has sport year round as it's good for him to keep active. He's loved playing footy this year at school and was asked to be the captain on the day that they played on the 'Aaron King Oval' at Kings Meadows High. He was very emotional about the whole thing and I knew that Aaron would love that he was playing there and was the captain that day.
Harri has done so well at school again this year. He works really hard to get good marks and received an Academic Excellence award and Letter of Commendation again last term.
He has some good friends at school and it's nice seeing some of the boys that he went to primary school with, get awards as well.
Kobe has loved basketball this year. He played in division 2 which is great for him, as it gives him a lot of confidence and there's not as much pressure, so he can relax and have lots of fun. He was lucky to have a great coach (thanks Abbi!) who is also his Assistant Principal at school, so she knows a lot of the boys well.
They didn't lose a game all year, and had one draw. Kobe was so excited to win their grand final, and had a little cheer squad come along to watch, which was lovely.
Kobe is my only boy who has ever really said he doesn't enjoy school. I don't think it's that he doesn't enjoy school, he just doesn't enjoy hard work! He complains all the time that he doesn't want to go, but I know when he's there he enjoys it.
This was his last year for the Swimming and Water Safety program which he's happy about. As I work full time I miss out on seeing my boys do lots of things at school, but I was lucky to be able to go and watch him swim a couple of times, and he loved having me there.
We've really enjoyed going to watch lots of basketball matches this year including the Tornadoes and Southern Huskies games. Unfortunately the Southern Huskies are no longer going to be playing, but we hope that Tassie may get an NBL team soon. It was great being able to watch an NBL games in Tassie a few weeks ago when they did the NBL Blitz in Tasmania. We watched Brisbane Bullets play Adelaide 36ers. It was fun being able to meet the players afterwards. Kobe also had some of the Bullets players come to his school, and he was lucky to be given a tank top.
It hasn't all just been basketball this year. We've also loved going to watch Hawthorn play live. Aaron's dad has come to a couple of games with us this year, but chose not to come to a couple as the days were really cold and windy. It's always fun when Tim and Helene are there with us. Helene goes for Brisbane Lions so she loved seeing them beat Hawthorn in Tassie.
On the last day of school all three of us had our school's Footy Colours Day. I always have to explain to my students what 'Footy Colours Day' is for and show them some pictures of AFL football and the geurnseys and scarves from each team. I have a lot of old Hawthorn scarves which I let my students borrow for the day, and I also put a call out on Facebook and
Instagram to see if anyone else had some old scarves that they would be happy to donate to our students to wear.
A very generous Instagram follower dropped off 18 scarves and in the end I had about 40 scarves and 6 old geurnseys for my students to borrow and they were all Hawthorn! The students were so excited to dress up in footy colours and it made me laugh to see most of the EAL students in Hawthorn colours. The Assistant Principal did mention some brain washing happening, but I told him that they all just know the best team!
We had to do the 'footy pose' before we went to school :)
Jay is back and forth to Uni in Hobart as he comes home for the weekend every couple of weeks or so. He's really enjoyed being in Hobart and has enjoyed Uni and has been studying hard. He could come home a lot more, but chooses to stay down so he can concentrate on just studying, so that when he's home on weekends he doesn't have to worry about school work.
We were so sad when he moved down there, and it felt like the year would go so slow, but he's actually going to be finished in another month, and will then be home for a few months before starting his second year at Uni. We are used to him being away, and I talk to him every day as I drive home from work (on the bluetooth of course!). It'll be nice to have him home for the summer though.
Jay's uni holidays are different to our school holidays, so we haven't seen him at all these holidays yet. We have one more week before we have to head back, and as much as I don't think I'll be ready to go back, I know that the next term is going to fly, and it'll be summer holidays before we know it.
