Week 3 Summary

Goals:
To make time for my mental and physical health. 
To carry out all my roles (teacher, HSA director and Across Schools CoL) to the best of my ability. 
To support staff wellbeing. 
To actively maintain a positive personal outlook. 

• Visits to the gym this week: Zero. Terrible. Was so exhausted on Wednesday that I went straight home, napped for an hour and a half, made dinner, ate, and went to sleep for another 9 hours.
• McDonald's eaten: one BLT and coffee again.
• Casual sports games played this week: 1 game of touch.
• Books read: Started my first non-fiction book... perhaps ever? It's about the rise of Vladimir Putin.

• Teaching highlights: Mum coming in to volunteer with the Year 9 class. She came in with her paperwork on Friday last period as I was about to take them - so I invited her in to meet them and see what a class is like. Mum's going to help with the reading of the 4 ESOL/low-reading ability students in the class. They really do require as much 1:1 reading time and support as possible, and I just can't provide that quality or quantity of time within their large, energetic class. It was both nice and nerve-wracking to have my Mum watch me teach. I was more worried about what she'd think of me as a teacher than I ever was recording Class OnAir for the general/teaching public. The kids were GREAT and took to her well - Mum said "one of them was calling 'Miss, Miss!' and I thought she meant you - but she was asking for me!" They're so used to visitors from being in Manaiakalani schools.

• CoL things: Russell Burt and I sent out emails to principals of the teachers who helped The 31 accelerate in their reading last year to ask if I could please meet and chat with some teachers! 
• I met with one of the teachers from Glenbrae and we had a fabulous chat about what reading looked like in her class last year and what she thought might have caused the acceleration of each student individually, as well as as a class. 

• Health Science Academy: Completed the paperwork for our May 31st Careers Conference at North Shore Hospital. It's our last trip for the year. And continued to track the class attendance at Period Zero - students know they must attend 70% of Period Zero tutorials to stay in the HSA next year. It's one of the only expectations they need to meet, to show that they want to invest in their goals and future as much as we are. 

• Teacher well-being support: I arranged for my team-mate Joey to come in and run a session for us about breathing and meditation. I learnt so much! He told us about the different muscles used to breathe as we age, and how it's linked to sleep. We practiced breathing with our diaphragm and then did some guided meditation. It was really relaxing, and I'm pretty sure a few people were close to nodding off! Karen messaged me the next morning that she'd slept better. Joey mentioned some apps he finds useful, so if you'd like to check them out they're called Smiling, and Insight Timer. He also said "Mountain Meditation is a good guided meditation track by Andy Hobson." Thanks for visiting, Joey!

• Gratitude emails sent: none this week.