Katie's Irish Experience

Week 6

This week went extremely fast. I feel like it was just Monday and I was complaining that I had to begin my week and now it is Friday evening and I am done with another week. This week I did a lot of things with my classes and I had a lot of new experiences at school.

On Thursday it was Open Enrollment night at school. This meant that we got done with classes early so that the students could help clean up the school. The girls each had to clean their own rooms and set them up so they looked nice for the evening. Open Enrollment night is when 6th class girls, from primary schools all over the area, come to look at the Presentation Secondary School. In a way it is kind of like an audition for the secondary schools. In Ireland the students and parents have full choice of where they go to school. So all of the secondary schools are in competition to pull in girls from all over the area. At the presentation school there were a lot of cool things set up for the new comers to see.

For example, some of the older students were baking biscuits (in the US we could call these cookies). The smell of the baking cookies was amazing, you could smell them throughout the entire school. The sewing room, art room and history rooms were also set up with projects and activities that the girls had done throughout the year so far. The Presentation Secondary School is really cool in that a lot of the learning is done through projects. The students are always doing hands on activities. One room had all of the sewing that the students had done and the history room had a few of the family histories of the students from when they did their genealogy unit. One of the coolest rooms that I really enjoyed was the science room.

This room had about 10 different mini labs set up from having a cows lung, where if you blew in a tube the lungs would inflate and then deflate. They also had an electricity lab, tuning fork lab, litmus paper lab and a human bone lab. It was really cool. I went through all of the labs and had the girls teach me about all of the cool experiments that they have done throughout the year. I was really fascinated. After going through the science projects I found the coolest room in the entire school, one that I did not know existed until the Open Enrollment Night.

The room contained a working and running beauty shop. The 5th year and 6th year LCA's (Leaving Certs Applied) have a beauty salon where they can do people's hair, makeup and nails. It is amazing. There are two sinks in the room where they can wash hair, two tables set up to do nails and then a few salon chairs to do people's hair. I was completely amazed that a secondary school would have this type of room. It is great so that the students can go into the real world and learn about cosmetology but then they can come back to school and practice what they have learned so far. The line to get into this room was extremely long. Some of the incoming first years were waiting in line to get their hair and nails done. Some of the teachers were even getting things done. If I would have known about this before I would have signed up to have the girls do my hair but all of the spots were full by the time I got there. Oh well, I hear they take reservations. So next week I am going to see if I can get in. The girls are really talented. They do great up dos and things. I was truly amazed.

Other than that this week was pretty good. On Friday the school was almost dead. One of the teachers did not show up today so I had to teach some of her classes for her. When I walked into the classrooms I was amazed. In one class only 3 girls showed up. I asked the three girls that showed up where the rest of the girls were and they said their was a bug going around and that everyone was sick...ok...15 girls all out with a 'bug' on the same day. I think there is something fishy going on. Because there were so few girls and because the teacher didn't leave a note saying what the girls have been working on I let the girls ask me questions about America. It is really cool to hear what kind of questions the girls ask. Some of the questions are: Do you have a boyfriend? (Adam you are famous here...so you better be reading this!!!!) If I did have a boyfriend, is he in Ireland? Is your town close to New York? Boston? Have you met any famous people? and so on. The girls are so cute and so interested it makes it really fun to go to class. Maybe it is because I am foreign, but all of the girls that I have taught here have been great and have given me all of their attention, even when I am teaching them maths lessons. I could not have asked for better students.

Overall this week went really well. I got to see the girls outside of school in a different setting and I got to see the girls interested and excited about school. The coolest thing was seeing the girls show off their school pride when they were showing the school to the new incoming 1st years at the Open night. The girls really seem to love their school.

posted by Katie @ 9:30 AM