Dear World

     Today was really cool.  I felt that both of the grade 8 lessons went really well.  Tyler is going to type about his when he is finished with his homework.  Until he finishes I will talk about my lessons.  The girls in our class are very quiet when it comes to answering questions and sharing ideas in class, so we thought it would be a good idea to do a public speaking lesson for class.  We started off by sharing some embarrassing stories about times when we or people we knew messed up whiles speaking.  I did mention the story about Julia hitting her head on the microphone that one time.  The girls thought it was pretty funny. =] Anyways, we gave them some basic tips about public speaking and what are the important things to do.  We talked about it together for awhile and then gave them an assignment.  We gave them really easy and broad topics such as friends, family, future plans, Lynedoch, etc.. and asked them to prepare a 1 minute "speech" on the topic they received.  They seemed really nervous to talk in front of their teacher, so we took them outside to do their speeches just for us.  I was actually really surprised at how well the girls did once they were out of their room.  They spoke up loud enough for us to hear and went into pretty good detail about their topics.  At the end of the class we let the girls give us one topic each to talk about the same way they did.  Their topics were pretty funny.  My topic was my husband, Vanessa's was her love life, and Maureen's was her parents.

This is Hannelie.  She was really nervous, so I was just talking to her about it for a bit before she spoke.

Celestia

Simonay

Bianca

       Mr Williams was a total jerk today.  First, he started looking at our tables and was making faces at them as if he had an issue with them which was pretty rude.  Then, he was smoking in the classroom again.  He also asked us if we minded if he borrowed one of the girls for a minute, so we said yes because we didn't see anything wrong with it.  We assumed that he needed her to do something for the school or something of that nature, but as it turns out he made her go out, make his coffee, and then bring it to him.  I was shocked.  To top it all off, for this lesson, when we were leaving he was being super passive aggressive saying things like, "Oh, are you done yet?" and all this crap.  I am pretty much over him but there are only 3 weeks left, so it's not worth bringing it up to him.
     The second class was pretty awesome.  We discussed personal motto's today and showed the videos of people back home which they really enjoyed.  I don't know if anyone reading this has heard about it, but there is this thing called Dear World (you can google it) that we did today.  This program (I guess that's what to call it) is where you write the one thing you could say to the world on your arms/palms/hands/body and send it into this website.  It is really cool and the kids enjoyed doing it a lot.  Some of them surprised me as to what they put.  A lot of them put things like "Stop drinking" which surprised me because I have never viewed drinking as the one thing I would say to the world.  I think it speaks more to the specific issues of the community that they live in.  It's a really big problem here and it's obvious that they wish it was different.

Luciano

Celestia

Jermaine

Ruben

Kusanda

Lorenzo

Bianca

Simonay

Our group..minus Vanessa because she was taking the picture.

Vanessa

Meeee.

Maureen.

      After we did this lesson and sent them back to Mr. Williams and then they came back to us with all their stuff.  I asked them if anything was wrong and they told me that Mr. Williams sent them back with a message to tell us to "keep them until 1:20" which was about another hour.  I was confused, so I asked Grant if there was a staff meeting or anything and he said no and sent the kids downstairs and told them to tell Mr. Williams that he said it was his responsibility to teach them.  Grant wasn't very happy with Mr. Williams.  He said there is a thick binder filled with complaints about him.  He said that if he wasn't two years from getting his retirement pension that he would be fired.  The ironic thing is that grade 8 will no longer be at Lynedoch next year because it's becoming part of High School, so he has to find another job.  I can't even imagine how hard it's going to be for him to find another job, but I don't feel bad about that.  People like that shouldn't be teaching children.
     Here is Tyler's day!  "Today in class we talked about peer pressure and they did not know what it was. Which was kind of surprising considering they are 10 to 14 year olds. After the first part we started to make our paper mache project with them. We blew up balloons and put the first coat of newspaper on it. We are making globes and they seemed to really enjoy it.  We also talked about Australia and New Zealand."
     We got home and did our homework and now we are just hanging out.  I don't think I have mentioned this, but we have been watching seasons of "How I Met Your Mother" and we are on the last dvd! =[  We have gone from season 1 to now the end of season 6.  I don't know what we are going to do when after this one.  Anyways.  That's about it for today.  Hamba Kakuhle.