Last Week at Colwill School

Okay, the last week of school… Well, for the first 3 days, I went to another year 6, 7, 8 class and got to observe the difference in classroom structure, planning, and teaching than with Raewyn. It was a great experience to have and I am grateful that I had the chance to see the difference. It also helped me see how much Raewyn’s class really appreciated having me in the classroom. I had been so stressed with the challenges we have in the classroom that I couldn’t see whether they were just trying to push my buttons or if they didn’t like having me in the classroom. It was a relief and humbling experience to be walking in the hallways to see a student walk by, give me a big hug and comment “Miss Swendsen, Miss Swendsen! You need to come back to our classroom! We miss you and it’s boring without you in class.” Or “Miss, Miss, please come back to our classroom! Why did you leave? We want you back in class. Come teach in our classroom!” I would reply that I missed them too and that they shouldn't worry because I was going to come back in on Thursday.

Thursday came in a blink of an eye and it was all so surreal! All day long, students would come up to me and the other student teachers, from all different year levels and give us hugs and tell us not to leave. Some students got ahold of my camera and I just let them take some pictures… Here are the results of letting them take pictures. I think some turned out pretty good!

Ethan and I  

At lunch time, my class threw a surprise shared lunch for me. It was so nice of them to do a shared lunch and it was a really nice time with them. They also gave me a ton of notes that I couldn’t read until later, because I didn’t want to cry in front of them… I was sure to get a lot of pictures and everyone was so kind to give me parting/thank you gifts for teaching at Colwill. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to teach here, I have learned heaps and will miss my students so much!

My mentor Teacher, Raewyn and I 

Colwill School Info

The last week of school has come and gone in a blur! I can’t believe that 6 weeks at Colwill School has cone by so fast.

A few things that I wanted to share about Colwill before I talk about how the last week went:

1: The schools in Auckland go by a Decile rating system with a range of 1 to 10 from lowest to highest by the Socio Economic Status of the funds provided to the school. Colwill School is a decile 3 school. So this school is by no means a privileged school but the students and staff are so great to work with. The students all definitely have their struggles (7 different primary schools in all 8 years of being in school etc.) and can be quite difficult some times, but they are hilarious and have their own little spunk that they add to life. Daryl is one of my students that is a good illustration of one of those students. She is one student who has been at 7 different primary schools in the 8 years she’s been in school. This is a result of both moving around and having delinquent behavior in school. When you can get her to focus though, she is a great student. J

2: There are so many unique students at Colwill School, there are 27 different languages spoken by the students at Colwill School and more than half of the students are ESL students… which may include Maori students that have lived here in West Harbor all their lives. In my class, the ESL student that stuck out to me was Payman. Payman is a cute little year 6 student from Kazakhstan who is always eager to help out in the classroom and loves learning… Of course we even have a “Payman hand wave” because every time she had a question or needed help, she would raise her hand and shake it back and forth by her wrist right in front of you until you were able to help her… It cracked me up. She left to go visit family in Kazakhstan 2 weeks before I had to go but here is a picture of her.

3: The staff here have their own little spunk and style of teaching. Our principal was trying to implement a new strategy of teaching called “positive behavior for learning”, which is basically using positive reinforcement while teaching to refocus and teach the students. The current  method of teaching is through reprimands and punishments, so it was definitely a  difference from last practicum to hear most of the staff yell at their students when they don’t listen or do an assignment the wrong way (whether on purpose or accident). They also have their own style of “professional dress” which sometimes consists of leggings and a long shirt, or very promiscuous dresses… Ethan’s student aid is an example that I thought was quite shocking, but she is a fantastic special aid. She works so well with kids and knows just how to help students with special needs.

Well there are some points and differences that I noticed at least from my last practicum and hopefully it helps know the school I was in for this practicum.

Pasifika Festival

The Saturday after Bungy jumping there was the Pasifika Festival and we had heaps of fun there. The Pasifika Festival is like a ginormous state fair, minus the rides and animal shows. They had it in a huge park that was divided into different portions, each representing a different pacific island and they had booths where they were selling items, foods, and heaps of souvenirs. They were also performing dances and activities that represent their country. It was so fun and intriguing to go look at the different booths and dances such as Kiribati and Niue among other islands. We ended up spending most of our day here at the Pasifika festival and had a blast.

After the festival, we came home and decided to just have a little fun and make homemade facial masks and watch a movie… we didn’t end up watching a movie, but the facial masks were a fun adventure. J

Sailing, Have a Go!

This week some students in my class had the chance to go and take sailing lessons for the day and my mentor teacher is the one who takes them. She being the one to go wanted me and Kirsten to have a go at sailing as well. So instead of teaching in the classroom all day, we got to chillax in a tiny sailboat all day and race with the students. It was great! We watched the students put their boats together and then the instructor let us use an actual sailboat that is typically for 1 person, but we both sat in it and each took over a job while on the boat. I was in charge of the sail and Kirsten steered the boat with the rudder. At first we had a little trouble figuring out the turning of the sail and the rudder, which lead to capsizing the boat twice, but once we took care of that, it was dandy fine! We were sailing all over the place enjoying out time in an actual sail boat and not the little training boats they had the students in.

Afterwards, they had a water fight with super soakers… Kirsten and I steered clear of that one until we noticed Kurt and Dave (an international student) were trying really hard to come out where we were sailing just to soak us a little bit. So we gave in and sailed towards them enough to squirt us with their soakers. It was hilarious to see them try so hard to soak us, especially since our sailboat was heaps faster than theirs. All of the students loved having us there and it was fun to learn how to sail with them.

Bungy Jumping and Waiheke Island

The second weekend in March was our first “free weekend” where we didn’t have anything planned as a whole group. And what did we do? BUNGY JUMPING! I was debating whether I was going to do it because I had already done the swing, but man am I glad I chose to bungy jump! I’ve never had so much adrenaline go through my body in such a short amount of time and it was totally worth it!  Kirsten and I took a ferry from West Harbor’s harbor into Auckland and met up with the other girls in the program to bungy together. The bungy place picked us up and took us to the bridge. It was really cool to walk along the bottom of the bridge until we got to the middle and went up into the little suspended bubble to jump off the bridge!

I wanted to go 3^rd or 4^th so I could see someone else do it but not have to wait forever,  but apparently they order the people by weight from heaviest to lightest, so I ended up being 14^th out of 16…It was quite the wait with anticipation building with each person that jumped ahead of me. It all happened so fast that I look back and sometimes wonder if I actually did it. When it was my turn, I told the guy I wanted to touch the water with my hands, to which he said I would because the water was at high tide by now… little did I know that not only would my hands touch the water, but my entire head up to my shoulders got dunked! It was a great thrill and I’m glad I can now say I’ve bungy jumped. They said that you could bring in your certificate and jump again for only $50 NZD, but I’m saving it up to go scuba diving in the Cook Islands!

Here is the video for your enjoyment! It's separated into 2 parts.

After bungy jumping, we took a ferry out to Waiheke Island to have a look around. This is a beautiful island and is one of islands out in the coastline to the east of the Auckland harbor. Unfortunately we couldn’t spend much time there because we had to catch the return ferry back in time for dinner an hour and a half later. But we had fun looking around, the view was absolutely gorgeous and we were glad we went out there to check it out.

p.s. I suddenly have this fascination with pictures of reflections on sunglasses, so you may notice a few of those in my collages. J

Field Trip Day!

In the 4^th week of school my class and 2 other classes from our whanau group went on a field trip to the Hare Krishna temple and primary school. It was an interesting experience that helped me learn more about their beliefs and also the differences between public schooling and private schooling in New Zealand… well what would be equivalent to those terms. The students really enjoyed being able to go to school with the Indian students and they learned a lot as well. Here are some of the pictures from the trip!

Also, Ethan came on this field trip. He is the blondie sitting to the left of me. Believe it or not, he was very well behaved and was actually a really good helper with the younger grades that came with us on the trip. I think he has a nice side to him (as long as the odds are in his favor I guess). J The teacher in the picture with us is actually one of the younger grade teacher that hopped into the photo last minute. Oh, and the lei is a lei of gratitude that all the teachers got for being teachers.

Whangerei

To preface this blog post, there has been a local Kiwi that has been escorting us everywhere and offering us suggestions, tips and advice. His name is James Ah Mu and he is the nicest, funniest and most selfless person I know… I mean who in their right mind would put up with 20 American girls for 3 months, let alone invite them over to his house for the weekend?!

So anyways, we went to Whangerei the first weekend of March. We got to Whangerei and met James’ sweet wife. Then shortly after getting to his house and unpacking, we went to a dairy farm. Here we met Sid, the most famous All Blacks rugby player in history… and we milked cows. I sure had my fill of milking cows after being at Philmont, but hey, it was still a new experience with it being 21^st century form of milking them. So naturally I had to get a picture of me “milking the cow” to put with my 19^th century cow milking picture. All the girls were bummed they didn’t get to actually hand milk a cow, but when you’ve got 700 cows to milk, it’s just faster to use a machine. After the dairy experience, we went back to the house and had a chance to play games and chat with the YSA from the Whangerei area.

The next day was a beach day! We split the day into 2 different beaches, one for chillin at the beach, boating and other various activities while the other beach got surfing lessons! The first part of the day I went to the chill beach and went kayaking with Stacey. We had fun kayaking around and exploring the bay. We even found a secluded little beach in a cove; naturally we had to kayak over to it and hop out. Neither of us wanted to risk getting our cameras wet, so we don’t have pictures of it, but we had fun playing an intense dot game in the sand and talking together. After what seemed like an hour or so we realized we probably should head back so we can switch to the other beach. We soon found out that the kayak ride out which took us about 20 minutes was an hour back in because the wind currents were so strong and blowing us back to where we explored. Eventually we made it back and we got there right as they were switching beaches… perfect timing!

Surf lessons = “sweet as” (commonly used phrase here) time! Everyone in my group got wet suits and a board and were taught how to surf! At first it was kind of hard to figure out how to stand up, but after I got that portion, it was rather easy. Here are the pictures from the surfing.

Once done surfing, we all managed to get 24 people showered with only 1 working shower and we spent the night singing karaoke and playing games like banana grams! We also decided to make a scrabble/banana gram out of all the girls’ names in the program.

On Sunday we went to church with James’ ward and they asked us to sing for them in church. It was a nice experience and then James taught the Sunday school lesson. It was a beautiful Sunday and we drove home later that afternoon.

Happy Birthday to Me! Starry Thai

Right after we got back home from the race we had to quickly shower and head out the door for my birthday dinner! Elyse, Natalie (a girl we met in another ward) Kirsten and I got the wonderful chance to get a full course meal at a place called Starry Thai, just to celebrate my birthday! It was a really nice evening and we had an entrée, soup, main course, and dessert all in one sitting. And I ate ALL of it! Here are some pictures of the evening.

Sunday was my birthday and it was a very nice, relaxed day. I woke up and we all went to church. Everyone in the young single adult class found out it was my birthday and gave me many birthday wishes and I enjoyed being there. After church my host family and roommate were so kind and they got me a card, some gifts. As I was waiting for dinner, I got the chance to skype with my family and Jordan. Dinner was amazing and Michael, Kirsten and Elyse made a red velvet cake for me after dinner and they sang happy birthday as well. It was a great birthday. Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes, letters and those who went in on the camera, I love it!! I seriously am so incredibly blessed to have such wonderful people in my life!

Michael and I with the delicious cake

Thinking of a wish. :)

All ready to blow out the candles!