Eureka!

I found the Friday after school drinking crew! It is so nice to wind down, debrief, whinge and get school out of your system before the weekend. It's also good to meet people you may be able to be friends with, but you don't work directly with.

I was telling one of the blokes about my theory of eyes and ears open, mouth shut and he reckons eventually when you hear all the different sides of what goes on in the place it doesn't seem like black and white any more just varying shades of grey.

Interesting observation from the senior school is that students there behave badly towards staff who treat them as if they don't have a brain. It's clear despite their disability that they know what's going on, but it's fully 'able' people who can't see or understand it.

I don't like Friday's at school. It's too hard. I have no specialists in or APT. My kids are a lot to handle at the moment and I don't have enough help on Friday with one of my SSOs off work with a broken pelvis! Maybe when my newies have settled in it will be easier and I wont feel like I'm short changing the well behaved students. I think that happens in all classes though – the squeeky wheel gets the oil.

First school assembly today. It was terrible. Embarrassing. Nice to meet some new kids though. I only had to take 2 kids but it turns out that last year Little Red Ridinghood had a screming fit at just about every assembly. Too many loud noises. However, the lovely librarian is very skilled at settling her down. I took LRR to a different spot when the first one started and was trying to calm her when I was rescued and she was right in less than a minute. The second time it started the lovely librarian just came and took her away... and then wizzed her around for a bit which worked wonders. After than when I suspected there might be a loud noise I helped her to cover her ears! It is something I will keep in mind for next time.

High schools are all about photocopying. This school is all about laminating.

SSO: School Support Officer. Usually these are office staff but here it covers office staff, program workers, helpers etc...