Monday, November 11, 2024

St. George’s College (Week #87) – Day #398

Date for Entry: (Monday 11 November 2024)

Actual Date of Online Entry: (Saturday 30 November 2024)

[T1, W:11 – WD:47, (Td:2)*].

Dear Diary,

    This morning I got up alright on my own. Daddy knocked on the glass and then I got out of the house on time. Waiting for a bus on the bus route was a little wait. The driver this morning was nice. Somehow he resembled Captain Red from Gerges a bit. I met Kayla Wright on the pavement by the road, but she must have gone elsewhere. The road was very empty. I saw Mr Sawh driving in and Jessie now crossing the road from his home to get to school.

    The early ones were in the staffroom already and Miss “Celia” gave announcements early. One of the toilets was clogged. I hope it is not in the men's room as usual. We heard from “Mr Marlon” that none of the Form 4 and Form 3 Form Teachers were present for the morning. There was mention of Prefects being tired of teachers being late and the work becoming tiring.

    Jess was here early. She came and wanted to give me half of the 2F papers to grade from Friday's exam. I had to divide thirty-four by two for her mentally. This means the same might be done with 2L this morning. I sat outside in the corridor waiting for Jess to come. Looks like she went to have breakfast. Students went down to the music room thinking we had class there.

    We had to send a student to call them back to class, where they got 5 minutes for the test and it began. They were surprised that the test was being given today. Not a large number of students showed up to school. She left me in the final 30 minutes of class to go somewhere. The half-test papers were not even graded. Had a lot of unsettled behaviour from Kaeleb and Renako. Those children aren't looking like they did well at all. Maybe 2F was going to be the better failing class?

    I took all the papers back to the staffroom with me while she went down to the music room. I had a good time enjoying the two pies this morning. The pepper seems to be less and less for me. I feel maybe a new person is putting out the pepper. Dark clouds were coming while eating. It seems like we are going to have a rainy day today.

    I went to meet Jess in the music room at recess. I told her that I was taking the rest of the 2F papers and I gave her all of 2L to grade. I decided to finish them right away. Jessie and Matadin came in to hide from Mr Eustache and tried to figure out "Road Runaway" again on the piano. There was a joke about Matadin calling a pitch S. They brought "Cody" with them too. His voice was changing. He laughed when I asked him about it.

    By 12 all the papers were graded and tallied. 1L students came to and were given an exercise of topic questions to do. They were not given the note on rest which Jess did afterwards. It was surprising that she jumped into the Ties and Slurs notes too right after. She made a joke with the students about giving them another topic. I had thought of Dotted notes and that was the note. The students had some more work to do in their books.

    I remained in the music room all lunchtime. I spent some time with "Mr Warner" teaching him George's anthem on tenor pan. He did very well with the introduction. Only the last few bars of the first verse gave him some trouble.

    Jess kicked some of them out to do her Christmas practice and said Mondays the rooms would be used for that. She showed me her version of "Carol of the Bells" and said that she wanted it to be in C. There was something weird about the runs and she kept the flattened pitches (instead of E, F#, G#). They ran a few times and Mel did the tambourine by the time. She was asking about a song for her to sing and we laughed over my joke of "Santa Baby".

    Jess asked me to go buy her something but the cafe didn't have any more pies again.  When I got back into the music room "Mr Warner" was back in the pan room running through the same Georges anthem. He seemed happy at lunchtime when I told him we could find students and we put the whole arrangement I did together.

    Since the Form 4s were not taking me on, I joined Jessie, "Perry", and "Mr Warner" out by the piano. They were trying to figure out a song. Jessie said the name of the song had "Moan" in the song title. He also mentioned that it was from an anime. It sounded good. I could tell they were experimenting at the same time.

    Only when Jess came back at 1:55, she kicked everyone out for the class to begin. The students were going through their pieces and speaking about the concert coming up. The date was moved from the 15th to the 30th of November. The class was moved to the classroom for discussion on the texture of music. Miss Carthy was loud and it was good to hear “Pablo” singing from outside. He kept on asking Jess to come in for air conditioning.

    Mel did her Pan practising in the other room after school. I was surprised that she was put in a guitar pan. The movements from pitch to pitch doubled and gave her some trouble. She did it a few times and then I went back to the staffroom. I was also almost hit by a football and it flew into a classroom.

    I saw Dr Jogie and remembered that he was hosting a TUTTA meeting at half-twelve in the Mathematics room. The other teachers for playing pan were liming in the staffroom for class. There was an issue with the two field trips happening today and attendance.

    Coach came very late this afternoon. It was only after half three that he got up from his sitting to get the tables set out. I left at 4:10 for the staffroom to cool out. Miss Dayna was still there. While cooling out, GG and Waverney were talking about the cheating in the school and then moved on to shocking experiences of online teaching during the COVID lockdown. Got a ride up to Curepe with Mr Raymond. Daddy was waiting by the terminal. He didn't have his phone with him to get my call. We had a nice drive through the countryside to get up to Curepe and spoke about the poor behaviour of a girl on the field trip earlier that day.

    I went home to eat quickly and play five word-search games before cooling out to host the library meeting, which lasted 40 minutes in duration. We went through the main catalogue and the Membership Roster in detail. Alex and Ria were very surprised about the games and puzzles sheet. The number was a lot even though they could not see the puzzles. I told them that they were stored in brown envelopes on the shelves of the library. 

    The rest of the night was used to do the Form 1 Visual Arts exam restructure. Mel and I spoke over the phone on WhatsApp making the changes of drawing images and editing the wording of some questions. Form 2 was left for another night because of an interruption and my library work to get done for the night.

    I finished making puzzle picture cars to be printed tomorrow by Isa. The new version of the Package Label Sticker was also sent. It was now after 1 AM and I had to get to bed. Hopefully, there will be time in school to work on the Author's Card.

 

Daryl Zion M. Ali

(7:49 am – 4:52 pm)

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