It's been an insanely crazy month since I last updated. Teaching my own class got rather all-consuming, what with the lesson planning and marking and parent-teacher interviews and IEPs and various inspections and general insanity that seems to crop up when you're supposed to be educating 27 10-year olds. Bear with me as I try to remember everything of note that happened in the last month! haha.
First of all, I finished up the year at Cleves and said goodbye to my class. There was general surprise when I announced to my kids that I wouldn't be back next year, then lots of questions about why and things like, "don't you like us anymore?" I was quick to try to squash those kinds of thoughts because, in the end, I really did love my class. The first couple of weeks with them were hard going, but then they started to feel like they were mine and it all went brilliantly. So, I explained to them that I had signed the contract at the new school before Cleves offered me one (though, to be honest, I would probably have taken the new job if offered both at once anyway - it's permanent, it's a great school, and they're going to sponsor me for a visa after all!), which was perhaps a mistake because the kids then launched into all sorts of discussions about how stupid the Head was for not offering me a contract first and why she wouldn't sponsor me for a visa.
Then the real insanity began: the kids began to dream up ways to stop me from going. Bombs and explosions were mentioned. Football matches between schools where I was the prize were floated. There was talk of chaining me to the school so I couldn't go anywhere (my protestations about starving to death were overruled by declarations that they would take it in turns to bring me food), and then ideas of the children chaining themselves to the new school. Every day, the deputy head's son would come into my classroom and say, "Linda, I've got a new idea...!"
The children finally tired of that, though. Then the begging and more serious conversations began, which were heartbreaking. "Linda, please don't go," became Thomas' (the deputy head's son) daily refrain. "I want you to teach me in Year 6." Other children began to become clingier - during class work, I would sit down at a table to help a particular child and find that other children would migrate to the table to sit with me.
Amusingly, it turned out not to be only the children who didn't want me to go. In the last couple of weeks, my conversations with the Deputy Head began to run like this:
Me: Good morning, Jim!
Jim: Good morning, Linda! [pause] Are you sure you want to leave us?
Me: [laughing] I don't, but I'm going to!
Jim: But you're going to be so bored at your new school. You need a challenge!
Me: Well, we'll see about that...
Jim: [confidently] I'm sure you'll miss us. And, if you do and want to come back at any point, there'll always be a job for you here.
Then there came the day when the Head cornered me and asked me the same question. And at the final Assembly, while telling the entire school I was leaving, she said, "Linda is leaving us to go work at another school. We would have liked to have kept her, but we missed the boat because she'd already signed a contract."
In any case, it was nice to feel wanted and sad to leave the school. I think that's all I'll say about that.
Apart from work, I did manage to do some fun things :). I think I may have mentioned previously that I went to Leeds Castle and Canterbury for a day a little while back (it must have been last half term! Wow, time flies!). During term time, I managed to catch the new Harry Potter movie on the day it opened, which was interesting. All the Harry Potter fanatics were there and, I swear, the moment the barriers opened, they RAN for the cinema! Talk about craziness!
Then I travelled up to Manchester a couple of weeks ago for a very specific reason. Those of you who know me well know that I love musicals. Living in London is a perfect outlet for that but, even before I moved here, I was quite a frequent visitor to the West End. One of my favourite musicals was Billy Elliot, and my favourite Billy was a young Chinese boy named Matthew Koon.
Here's where I'm going to let you in on a secret that may seem a bit odd. On one of my visits to the musical, I happened to be sitting next to a Chinese woman who, in the interval, asked me if I was enjoying the show. I told her, yes, that I loved it and was particularly happy to be watching Matthew because he was my favourite Billy. We got into a discussion about why I loved his interpretation so much and, just before interval finished, Hilda turned to me with a wink and said, "Actually, I'm Matthew's mother." After the show, Hilda and I walked around to the stage door where, sure enough, Matthew soon emerged to give his mother a huge hug. And, since then, Hilda and I have been friends and kept in touch.
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Matt stopped performing as Billy back in 2006 and moved back to his family in Manchester. Hilda and I continued to email and she became a sort of mentor for me - she's a teacher, so she understood all the troubles I was having student teaching and then in my job search. In the meanwhile, Matt continued dancing and I was invited along to see his competitions and whatever else he was doing in the year. Hilda and her daughter, Anna, even came to stay with Justin and me 2 Christmases ago when I was in London, and Matt and Hilda stayed with us last summer (when I was living at Justin's) so that Matt could go to the English National Ballet summer school.Matt, meanwhile, has continued to develop into a BRILLIANT dancer and seems to have won every big dance prize in the country. He's auditioning for the big ballet schools next year (he was accepted to the Royal Ballet when he was 11, but he decided not to go because he wanted to stay with his family a bit longer), so I'm sure I'll see a lot more of him when he's coming down to London to audition.
Anyway, going back to why I was in Manchester, well, I went to see Matt's dance school show on a Sunday afternoon. Then, yesterday, I went to see Matt dance in the All England Dance Finals in Central London :). The All England Dance Finals are exactly what they sound like - it takes 2 years to qualify for and all the regional winners come together to compete against each other for the title of national champion. Matt has done really well so far, over 2 days of dancing. He's competing against people older than him (some administrative rule has made it so that he's dancing against 15 year olds, even though he's 14), but he's managed to win the Character dance section, come 2nd in Modern and Tap, and come 3rd in National dance, and he's still got ballet to go, which is his strength.
It's really just lovely to see him grow and progress. One of the reasons I loved him as Billy was that, whenever he danced, you could see the joy in him and, in turn, YOU felt joyful and giddy. It's still exactly the same - Matt's got that rare special something; that star quality that can't be taught. I'm looking forward to seeing him on the Royal Opera House stage someday soon! :)
Okay, what else - I've covered school and Manchester. I also went to Windsor, but I'll cover that in another post. Hmmmm. I guess that's about it for now! Until next time! :)
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