20 October 2014
Dear Richard
The semester is over! It’s been a long year! But now we just
have the exams and all of the marking and admin around that, and then planning
for next year and trying to do some research as well… But at least there isn’t
the pressure of teaching all the time :)
With the start of the 4th term at the schools
Caleb has started swimming lessons again. He’s been a bit resistant, and when
we tried getting him into our pool he was very unkeen. But this week he had a
much better lesson, so that’s all good :) Josh and Hannah are doing great, of
course, but they just love their swimming lessons!
I had a very crazy week in terms of work last week. We had
to get a whole lot of editing done for the new groups textbook, and I was
having to prepare a presentation for the UCT Teaching and Learning Conference
today. I was working until 23:00 every night after the kids went to bed! I was
definitely exhausted by the end of the week! But I got through it all by the deadlines
on time, which I was very relieved about!
For the last lecture for my 3rd years we had a
video premiere, showing the top 5 videos that they made for their projects, and
then they voted for the best. Our Head of College also came, and a few other lecturers,
and it was a really nice event :) Not a huge showy thing, but just nice. The
winning team did a Survivor themed video, which was really cool! And it was the
first time that the HoC has seen me in front of a class, and he liked what he
saw, which is great :) I also got really nice ratings and comments in the
student evaluations that came through last week. Really nice!!!
And we had our first School Governing Body last week, and
then the AGM the following evening. So we have been officially voted in now, and
in November we’ll have a meeting where we allocate responsibilities etc. It’s
quite exciting, I think, to be involved now :)
Today was the T&L Conference, and I presented a slot on
how I got the students to do presentations within the tutorials. Mom came along
for the day and went to a whole bunch of presentations, and then for the first
time ever got to see me doing an academic presentation. I have a good sized
audience, and there was a lot of discussion afterwards, which was so
gratifying! There were 5 concurrent sessions, so having a good-sized audience
depends on how appealing your topic is. But I’m really happy with how it all
went!
Yesterday I had an interesting experience at church. There
wasn’t anyone to really be teaching for the YSA class, because most of them
needed to be attending the Gospel Principles class, as ward missionaries,
because of which investigators were at church (that Gospel Principles class is
HUGE at the moment!) So I just went to the Gospel Doctrine class, but I really
struggled to focus and stuff, because I was so tired after working so hard and
sleeping so little during the week. But then Grant arrived at church 15 minutes
into Sunday School, and we decided to pull Vaughan out of the Gospel Principles
class and we had a class with the 3 of us. And from being so sleepy in the
adult class, as soon as the opening prayer was said I was completely alert, and
able to give the lesson really effectively, and I was aware of the Spirit
guiding me in some of the things I said. Wow! What an impact it can have to be
led by the Spirit! And it was a really nice intimate lesson about the Saviour
and His atonement. Probably one of my more favourite lessons in the end :)
And then I was kind of led to my FHE lesson topic for the
afternoon as well. I used Elder Scott’s talk from this conference on the 4
things we need to do to strengthen ourselves, being prayer, scripture study,
family home evening and temple attendance. And although the kids were going a
bit crazy we were able to have a nice little discussion with them too. I feel
like I really am doing better at being guided by the spirit!
So that’s my week. Crazy busy, but at least the semester is
over now, so it’s a different kind of pressure now…
Love you!
Shelly
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