I'm a Teaching Assistant in a primary school. There's 28 kids in our class and 2/3 adults (one is part time so not there all day) and I also do a 1:1 with a girl who struggles to work with other children the year above the classroom I'm in. I was told on Thursday I won't be in Year 3 (the class I'm usually with) on Tues and Thurs afternoons after half term and that I will be working in Year 4 all afternoon which will be a struggle!

Yayyyy, that's good :D How are the hours, and the people working there etc.?

For sure!!!! Hopefully you get good use out of it! How's your WE going?

I can hardly take care of myself, let alone 5 kids XD I'm sure it takes some getting used to!!! The stress will definitely go down after a while! How are you liking it otherwise?

I'm good. Just started in a new lab, which is interesting!

Ah, that is the way to do it. I hate having to wait between episodes! Your outfit is terrifying XD But great!

I want to watch the last GoT season, but I don't want to ruin the next book for myself :(

I love it, but because the area the school is in is quite a poor area a lot of the kids are behind because their parents don't have time to spend time reading/doing homework with them.

We're currently filling out a dyslexia form for one of the girls because she is SO far behind, she had a form that takes maybe 30 minutes to fill out? Her mum bought it back in and asked if we could take her out of a lesson to fill it out because she doesn't have time to sit down with her and do it, and that is really so sad.

That girl and another boy won't do any work unless they have an adult with them for help. The boy can write pretty well but can't read it back because he can't read words like him or her or other 3 letter words, that's literally how behind some of the kids are. It's really sad but I love it

That's strange that he can write it but not read it :o

That must be quite frustrating D: Are there a lot of kids in big families?

Three of the kids in our class are cousins, and there's another 6 of their family throughout the school. That's probably the biggest family we have in the whole school haha

Oh geez, that sounds rough! Ultimately I would also like to be a paraprofessional because I like being able to provide one on one help to students when the head teacher doesn't have time. But where I live now, the schools don't have a big enough budget to afford assistant teachers. So hopefully it will be a thing when I move.

Josh has been sick, so most of my weekend has been spent taking care of him. He had to go to work today because he's out of sick days (he gets sick more than anyone I know), but he's still not feeling better. He threw up again this morning, and I really hated to see him go. How's your weekend so far?

One of the other girls who is in my class (working) is mainly a 1:1 with a deaf girl but does some other more general stuff in lessons too, I would probably rather be doing that than what I'm doing but I'm kinda looking forward to doing more 1:1 with the girl that I see because she's so nice (to me)

That would be my dream job! I really want to learn sign language so I can hopefully work with deaf and hard of hearing children in the future. I'm hoping when I move to a bigger city this summer, I'll finally be able to take classes for it. ^_^ It's good that the girl you're working with is nice to you, you must be really great with her!

Funny enough we don't use sign language. We have some kind of device that you wear around your neck and she can hear you talking through her hearing aids! I really want to learn sign language too.

She's only really played up around me once and that was when someone was jokingly teasing her so she thumped him around the back and she needed another of the staff (who she's known since she started) to calm her down. I let her play on the computer in the mornings and we do colouring in the afternoon and she loves it, I just hope things won't change when I'm making her do work in the classroom!

Oh that's really neat! Haha when do you have to start making her do work?

At the moment I see her 15 mins in the morning and 30 mins after lunch. I will be spending 2 hours with her straight from lunch in the classroom assisting her with her work and making sure she doesn't disturb everyone else in class

Ahh, okay. Coming back from lunch or recess always seems to be the toughest time to get kids to settle in and focus. When I was doing my student teaching in an elementary school, I really liked having recess duty so I could get out and play with them. I could tell it really made them happy. Even though playing soccer in dress shoes was not my best moment xD

I do break duty on a Friday and they always swarm me and want to do stuff. I'm pretty chill for a TA. One of the boys in my actual class is pretty badly behaved and I have actually found a pretty good way of negotiating with him and getting him to behave in class but the only problem now is he ONLY listens to me and the actual teacher told me off on Friday because now he won't do his work unless he can talk to me first so I guess I now have to get him out of that habit after half term!

Oh no! But that's not your fault if he doesn't listen them. Hopefully they can find a way to communicate with him better so he'll respect them, also. I had students that liked me better than their actual teacher, also, but to be fair, their teacher was awful and rude and had no place working with children.

I really like the teacher, she's really nice but I think she should work in a different school. She's just graduated Uni like last year so this is her first year and it's a pretty rough school to be teaching in really. A lot of the kids have bad behaviour. There's a boy and girl in Year 1 (so 5 years old) who throw chairs and flip tables if they're not happy!

Oh wow! Yeah, it sounds like she either needs an easier starting school, or stronger willpower and patience. Working with children with behavioral troubles can be super difficult, especially if their home life isn't good. I like spending time with them and making sure they know that I care about them and I want them to succeed.

I feel like Freya probably gets that, I always ask her how she is and what she's up to and she likes general chit chat like that. Her parents are in the process of splitting up and I was the same age when my parents split up so I told her I know exactly how she feels and explained. Fingers crossed it will stay the same though!

Aww, I know what that's like, also. Freya is a pretty name! Your HA is really pretty also. I keep meaning to tell you that and forgetting haha

Aha, that's quite cool.

So how are the other teachers in the school? You getting along well with them?

Aw no, I'm so sorry to hear that! I hope his day wasn't too horrible!

My week end's been good. I reread a book that I loved during my childhood yesterday: Ella Enchanted. It was good fun! And then today I went for a run under the snow, and now I'm going to have lunch, do some cleaning in my flat, some laundry and watch the Flash all afternoon XD

Heya! Hope everyone is doing well!

Haha thank you! I kind of threw it together. I'm not sure if I like the new butterflies with the older ones in my wardrobe but all butterflies are good butterflies tbh

They're all pretty nice. One of the other TA's is a bit rude. Considering it's my first job in a school and I started on the 16th she really nitpicks the little things. Eg on Fridays I monitor the stairs after breaktime at the bottom, and she was stood there and she realised I was stood in a corner at the foot of the stairs and she was like that's not where you stand. I'd rather be stood at the foot of the stairs so I check check they're walking/single file ect than be around the corner and not be able to see all of that where you're "meant" to be. Little things like that really bother me because if I had any doubt I'd always ask!