Academy life
School on a ship
School has been running since early August and it has been quite a journey!
Gosh am I learning a lot, teaching on a ship! We teach the typical Primary subjects of Math and Language Arts (literacy), but some subjects I haven't taught before, or the same way, include Bible, Social Studies (history this year), Science and Life Skills. The students also have Art, Drama, Computers, PE and choir, to allow us some admin time.
The ship is equipped with a pretty cool playground up on the top deck (unfortunately only up to 12 year olds allowed...) where they can play. The children go home to their families for lunch and then come back for afternoon sessions.
One new experience was observing the action while the ship was evacuated for fortnightly fire drills. We were given the chance to watch the happenings from inside the ship - lighting the 'fire' in the laundry room, watching the emergency response teams in all their gear haul out the 'body'. Then we watched entranced as the emergency medical teams assessed the situation, performed CPR and used the defibrillators! We had actually just been studying the human body systems, so seeing the respiratory and circulatory systems up close was pretty incredible!
We recently finished the first quarter, and so last week was the first week of the second quarter (I really miss the NZ system of having a break in between terms!) I think I have more of a handle on how teaching on a ship works, so much still to learn!
School has been running since early August and it has been quite a journey!
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| Academy staff |
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| Grade 4/5 looking fly |
Gosh am I learning a lot, teaching on a ship! We teach the typical Primary subjects of Math and Language Arts (literacy), but some subjects I haven't taught before, or the same way, include Bible, Social Studies (history this year), Science and Life Skills. The students also have Art, Drama, Computers, PE and choir, to allow us some admin time.
The ship is equipped with a pretty cool playground up on the top deck (unfortunately only up to 12 year olds allowed...) where they can play. The children go home to their families for lunch and then come back for afternoon sessions.
One new experience was observing the action while the ship was evacuated for fortnightly fire drills. We were given the chance to watch the happenings from inside the ship - lighting the 'fire' in the laundry room, watching the emergency response teams in all their gear haul out the 'body'. Then we watched entranced as the emergency medical teams assessed the situation, performed CPR and used the defibrillators! We had actually just been studying the human body systems, so seeing the respiratory and circulatory systems up close was pretty incredible!
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| Ready to join the Emergency Team! |
We recently finished the first quarter, and so last week was the first week of the second quarter (I really miss the NZ system of having a break in between terms!) I think I have more of a handle on how teaching on a ship works, so much still to learn!
Look great, Karin! Yes, when I first hear NZ does 4 terms a year, I was like, this is such an amazing idea. Why the vast rest of the world (China included) do 2 loooong semesters a year??
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