March 9

Well, it's my last day here... It's been so hard to say goodbye to everyone. I've met so many great people and learned so much.

On Wednesday we began the day by reading some poetry but it was cut short because we had swimming up at the high school. Following swimming was maths, where I worked with my group and did some check-ups that are required by the Scottish School Council. When they come to audit the school, each child should have a check-up done to show their progress in maths. None of the kids have any so we will be working on them for the rest of the week. For the last 15 minutes of class I let them have fun maths, where they did the Maths Masterpieces. I also worked with Dylan on his re-test of the Maths National Assessment. He hasn't finished it so we will continue that on Thursday as well. By the time maths was over it was lunch time. After lunch we carried on with Peru. I continued to work with one group creating the Andes Mountains. It's coming along good! On Thursday the P7s are going to be leading Shake til Break so the last 20 minutes of school was dedicated to coming up with a routine it. Thursday the day started with poetry again. We looked at the poem Eldorado by Edgar Allan Poe. I read it through once and then gave each of the students a copy of it to read on their own. We discussed how it's a poem that tells a story and then we tried to interpret it. After our discussion, I had each student divide a piece of paper in their jotter in 4's and had them illustrate each of the 4 stanzas in the poem. They seemed to have fun with this, but it also let me see if they really understood the poem. Following this we had maths, where we continued with our checkups and I worked with Dylan to finish up his Assessment. He did and he passed! We were all very excited for him. We cut maths short a couple minutes because our class was in charge of Shake til Break and we needed to practice. It went perfect and was so much fun for the whole school. After break we had music. This was a lot of fun as well because their music teacher told anyone who played an instrument to bring them in so we had a few guitars and even a didgeridoo. The kids showed us how they played them and even did a couple songs for us. Following music was lunch and then the afternoon was spent with Peru and then French. In French the students made lessons to share with the other P7 class. Today was a very crazy day. We started with Wake n' Shake and then the Rotary Club from Duns came and presented the school with a check for €10,100 pounds to go towards playground equipment. There was balloons and lots of music and pictures. It was great! After this the kids were given time to work on their poetry anthologies. Following this, we did our 10 questions quiz, this time on Duns, where they live. It was very interesting, especially for me, to learn more about this town. We didn't have maths today because there didn't seem to be enough time. During lunch on Fridays, the kids are allowed to walk down the street to buy something from any of the local shops. The kids have been begging me to go, so I decided that I would go with them today. After lunch was when it started to get really hard. The class gave me tons of cards and gifts and the teacher said really nice things about me. I got a card from everyone in the class, 4 of the boys bought me flowers, and I got chocolates from many of the girls. From the entire class I also got many gifts. I then had made some cookies and puppy chow for the entire class so we had that and then both P7 classes headed down to the hall (gym) and we played music and games, and had some more cake. It was also the last day of one of the girls in the class (Lucy) so we all wanted to say goodbye and good luck to her as well.

It was so hard leaving at the end of the day. Everyone was asking for my email address, home address, and phone number. They told me I shouldn't leave them and one boy even said that the kids in any class I teach will be the luckiest because he learned and had so much fun with me and they will too. That was one of the best things to hear! It was hard to get everyone out of the classroom at the end of the day because no one wanted to leave because we all knew I wouldn't be here anymore. Many of the girls even began to cry which made me cry. I would have never imagined it to be this hard to leave. I've had so much fun here and have learned more than I thought I ever could. It's been such a great experience and I know it's helped to make me a better teacher and all-around person. I don't regret coming here at all and if I had the chance to do it again I would in a second. I'm definitely going to miss being here everyday!