Obama and pals, you can come again!

Over the last two days The Hague has played host to all the most ‘important people’ in the world who have been here for the third Nuclear Security Summit. Now, I personally believe ‘Nuclear Security Summit’ is just code to hide the fact that what they’re actually doing is following yours truly around the world. Think about it, of the three summits there have been to date, two have been in cities around the world, on opposite sides, that I have lived in at that time: South Korea 2012 and now The Hague 2014. South Korea and The Hague of ALL the cities in the world? Come on. Coincidence? I think not. ;)

Anyway, despite the helicopters flying around till silly o’clock last night keeping me awake and the perceived hype and ridiculousness leading up to it over the past few weeks, it’s been quite a pleasant experience.  Having the summit here has meant, due to various factors such as road closures, that a lot of the children have been unable to come to school leaving us with very small class sizes; only half of the year group has been in school on both days. Yesterday we split all the children into two groups meaning the children got to work with new peers and meet up with friends they were grouped with last year. It also meant that each of the teachers in our year group got some free time to spend on planning and preparation which was great and meant I had a particularly productive start to the week. Today we kept the children from our own classes together meaning I had only 12 children to teach all day which was bliss! At one point I had only one child in my Letters and Sounds group - hilarious!

It’s been such a relaxed, quiet couple of days in which we’ve been able to give the children in our care some special focussed attention and really chat to them and get to know them. An aspect of the profession that often gets overlooked due to busy timetables and the constant pressure of levels and progress. So the past two days have been a nice reminder that beneath all that are the children - the individuals - who you became a teacher for.