Half term

This Thursday and Friday Mahali Pa Watoto has been closed for the half term break. It's shorter than in the UK but I was still extremely grateful for it, I wasn't feeling too well on Wednesday and it's done me good to have some time to catch up.

On Monday we had our staff meeting after school. I had to lead it which was a new experience! I was pretty nervous but it went really well. The teachers are all very supportive, they had some ideas of their own for things they felt would improve Mahali and it seemed like a constructive meeting. They were also really pleased to hear that I've arranged for them to spend a day each observing in a local private Montessori nursery. Although it is a very different setting from ours, I felt it would be helpful for them to observe a very different way of doing things, particularly with the emphasis on play-based learning, and we can talk about it afterwards and see whether there are any ideas that they would like to use. I know from my own experience that just visiting another school helps you think about what you do and how you could do things even better, and I hope this will be a really useful experience. This will happen the week after next and I will be covering their classes while they go - could be a challenge! Another outcome of the meeting was that the teachers were keen to have individual feedback from me, which I was happy to give them.

At the end of the meeting when we were just chatting

So on Tuesday I wrote up feedback specifically for each teacher, as well as the minutes from the meeting and a few other things, and met with each teacher. I was as nervous as them, as I'm usually not the one giving the feedback, but our chats went well I thought. I did feel pretty exhausted by the end of the day, and my eyes were a bit frazzled with so much time on the computer. Anyway, the next day I overslept and woke up feeling yucky. I made it into school eventually and did the things I needed to but I felt quite sick and didn't eat lunch. I also decided against homegroup in the evening as I felt quite migrainey. Thankfully after some tablets and about 10 hours of sleep I felt a lot better!

Over the last couple of days I've been relaxing, doing washing, getting food shopping (fun fun fun on a crowded matatu with umpteen bags!) and also thinking about next week. I have agreed with the teachers that I'll take groups during the first three sessions of each day, alternating maths and literacy ones. I'm going to take small groups of children who are struggling in class out from lessons and give them some extra help. This should help the teachers but also it will hopefully be an opportunity for me to try out some new ideas such as learning through playing games, and then if they are successful I can pass that on to the teachers.

Anyway, I need to get to bed, there's moths flying round the lightbulbs and it's getting late. More tomorrow perhaps - including safari photos - I had a day out today!