School Spirit

Term Three has just begun as of today, and that means a new theme or general topic we’ll be starting as well. As it’s an even numbered year, we’re back to teaching Energy as our theme for the term again. Electricity, solar and wind power, energy conservation - stuff like that. Also, I’ve got the fun task of putting together a few weeks or work based on Toys.

Yep, that’s right. Toys.

Toys use energy, too, remember. Most of them nowadays rely on batteries and electrical energy to run, of course, but that’s not necessarily always the case. We’ll fiddle around with some Lego Technic kits and stuff, check out static electricity by rubbing balloons in our hair, might possibly make some kites, and make balloon powered cars and rockets. Lots of fun stuff there. Potential energy, kinetic energy… lots of fun.

If I get time, I might even put a few of the activities up here from time to time as well - let you see what the kids can get up to.

For now though, this song fits in appropriately with our current Toys theme, although maybe not so much the Energy theme. Too bad there, though. It’s a great little song and more often than not the kids enjoy it too. Every now and then one of them pipes up to say their dad may have sung it to them too when they were ‘little kids’. It’s written by Tom Paxton, but here’s Peter, Paul and Mary singing it. Mind you… they have a bit of fun with the ending!

THE MARVELLOUS TOY

When I was just a wee little lad, full of health and joy,
My father homeward came one night and gave to me a toy.
A wonder to behold it was, with many colours bright
And the moment I laid eyes on it, it became my heart’s delight!

Chorus
It went ‘zip’ when it moved and ‘bop’ when it stopped
And ‘whirr’ when it stood still.
I never knew just what it was and I guess I never will.

The first time that I picked it up, I had a big surprise.
For right on its bottom were two big buttons that looked like big green eyes.
I first pressed one and then the other, and then I twisted its lid
And when I put it down again, this is what it did,

Chorus

It first marched left and then marched right and then marched under a chair
And when I looked where it had gone it wasn’t even there!
I started to cry and my daddy laughed for he knew that I would find
When I turned around, my marvellous toy, chugging from behind.

Chorus

The years have gone by quickly, it seems, I have my own little boy
And yesterday I gave to him my marvellous little toy.
His eyes nearly popped right out of his head as he gave a squeal of glee.
Neither one of us knows just what it is, but he loves it just like me.

It still goes ‘zip’ when it moves and ‘bop’ when it stops
And ‘whirr’ when it stands still.
Neither one of us knows just what it is, and I guess we never will.

Chords here are in D, but you can transpose them wherever you wish, I suppose. I fiddle with a capo on third fret and play in C instead.

D / A / D / A / G / D / E / A /
D / A / D / G / G / D / A D / A

Chorus:
D / A / D / G / G / D / A / D

‘You don’t have to brush your teeth - just the ones you want to keep.’ - Author Unknown

‘A good friend is cheaper than therapy.’ - Author Unknown

Had my first tooth pulled today.

Now, I haven’t been to the dentist in about sixteen years. Never a filling, never a toothache. Once I had the braces removed I pretty much abandoned all interest in ever setting foot into another dental clinic of any sort again. And until February, I didn’t.

Now, sixteen years is not bad, I reckon, for looking after your teeth on your own. Not bad at all. At least, until a few of them started to fall apart on my while I was eating about a year or so back. I pondered the problem for a few weeks as I continued to find little bits of enamel in my dinner, but before too long they seemed to stop disintegrating, and even better, they didn’t ache or hurt. So I ignored them.

Then I noticed another threatening to do the same. So I bit the bullet (pardon the pun), and wandered into the local dentist clinic I hadn’t set foot in for the better part of sixteen years. I wasn’t even on their records any more!

They couldn’t fit me in for about six months, so I wandered down the street to the next clinic and asked about a check up.

‘When was your last one?’ they asked.

‘Aw, really early nineties?’ I answered.

‘And you still have your teeth?’

They fit me in and I had a check up. Short story was, two had to be pulled, and three had to be filled. I thought that was a pretty good score considering the time between visits and my irregular brushing. So I made the appointments and finally had the first last week to put three fillings in. Unfortunately, then they noticed there were two more fillings to be done and a third tooth to be pulled. Bugger.

So I wandered in this afternoon to have the next appointment. Fill another tooth, and pull the first one out. I wasn’t too concerned now about the filling and the needles - they’ve improved since the last time I had one in my mouth, but the extraction was concerning me if I’m honest. I asked him to talk me through it, but I figured I’d only feel uncomfortable and hear the odd crack and splintering sound. Any aches would come after the happy juice had worn off.

Short story again, it came out before I realised it as I didn’t actually feel it come loose. Yes, I felt the wriggling and levering and rocking stuff as my head rolled from side to side, and at one point I was concerned he would stretch the corner of my mouth too far and it would get the dental equivalent of a hamstring tear, but it was quite a simple procedure.

I wandered out able to talk with no pain and only half a box of tissues jammed in the hole in the back of my mouth.

So I wandered into the shopping centre for a quick browse because you don’t drive into town with petrol the way it is without making at least some effort to make it worth your while, eh?

Which is when I ran into one of the kids. Not just any kid from school, the little feller from the basketball team. By the way, they lost the grand final the other week. It’s a shame, but you don’t win them all. If you did, you’d have no reason to play, eh?

Now, most kids when they see a teacher will do one of two things. Wave with a slightly awkward, nervous smile, sometimes with a slight hint of guilt, or look the other way and hope to hell you haven’t seen them. Well, this kid’s different, at least when it comes to me, I suppose.

He ran half way around the plaza to catch me, grinning like a Cheshire Cat, to rabbit on about the things he’d just bought with his family and we wandered back to the checkout. After all, we hadn’t caught up with each other for, aw, twelve whole days. Twelve days is almost forever when you’re twelve, eh?

‘What are you doin’ here, Mr V? Shopping or something?’ Note the hint of boredom in the word ’shopping’, clearly something he thought wasn’t high on the list of ‘cool reasons to walk around the plaza’.

‘Actually, champ, I just had a tooth pulled…’

The sudden look of caring concern and the subdued voice asking ‘did it hurt?’ just made my day.

Better than a panadol, that was.

The month of June has just drawn to a close, and once again it’s a bit of positive news regarding my webcomic School Spirit, the hobby that spawned from the primary school musical I wrote, which in turn eventually spawned this blog. While June wasn’t the strongest ever month in regards to number of viewers, it was only a handful off. For the second time running, and the second time ever, it has gathered in 4000 views across a single month, which turns out to be an average of about 130 views a day, and about 900 views each week. While for four years of input, effort and continual regular production these numbers may not be fantastic (it can frustrate you when you see relatively new strips pop up and apparently gather these sorts of figures - and not be as good as yours - my opinion, granted!), it means the strip is moving along now on its own, which is a bit of good news, eh?

July begins today, and while I’d love to see it continue to grow each month, I’ll be happy to see it break through that 4000 mark a third time running. Let it settle a bit before I start entertaining thoughts of 5000, eh?

Back with more over the next few days, and this time focusing more on teaching and education themes again. Holidays have just started and reports and parent / teacher interviews are all done now, so there’s probably more time to share around again.

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It may be halfway through the year already, but tonight we held our first official Instrumental Music Program Concert. The School Band has played at a few school functions and assemblies throughout the year already, but this was the first time all of the kids involved in the instrumental music program had the chance to perform as one group in one place. Ten of the seventeen kids involved had never played in front of an audience before.

The short story -  it was fantastic. Fifteen families were involved but we still managed to pull a crowd of nearly sixty people, and raised $67 in gold coin donations at the door as well. That’ll go nicely towards maybe some new music for the beginners, or towards servicing some of the instruments.

While it only lasted just over an hour, the hype and excitement on the kids’ faces was great, particularly the beginners. The band kids are just about all old hands at this and took it all in their stride, but it appears the program is in good shape for what was supposed to be a rebuilding year. The immediate future looks particularly bright.

Highlight of the night? The band was playing to close the show at the very end and performed their two pieces well, but to cap it all off, we brought all of the kids together to play a finale blues piece, without music, that the beginners had only learnt with one practice this afternoon. Add some adlib solos from three of the band kids in the middle and we had a strong, loud, brash and bold seventeen piece band blasting away, two thirds of them having only picked up their instruments three months ago.

Yeah, I’m just a little stoked at the moment!

Today turned out to be a really good one by the time I got home. Sure, first day of the final week of term and the kids were a little off the planet. I blame the final week of term, a rainy, cold day, and… yeah. That’ll do. They were off the planet, but we got just about everything I wanted done. Their lockers are clean and most of their good, presentable work from the term has been taken down from the walls and glued nicely into their profile books, ready to be taken home at the end of the year. But… they were off the planet.

Not to worry. The afternoon picked up quickly.

Those who’ve been reading this blog for a while may remember a few of these bits I’m going to bring up again. First…

Early April I was asked to write a reference for one of the kids in the band. He’s played drums for us for over three years now, but with the inclusion of his brother this year, he’s been able to move onto electric guitar instead. It’s been a lot of fun including an electric guitar into your regular school band orchestral music. We’ve even started playing a blues piece and he just leans back and adlibs solos.

Anyway, a few days later I had the reference written, and he commented on it, which was nice. He thought it was pretty decently written and then, as seems to be the norm with kids around me, made a slightly little joke about me to keep my feet on the ground. Well, this afternoon his mum whispered some news in my ear.

The little bugger got the scholarship this afternoon!

I haven’t had a chance to see him since he found out yet, but we’ve got a concert and rehearsal and pizza lunch for the band kids tomorrow anyway, so I’ll have to give him a hearty slap on the back. Great news to start the afternoon off with.

Second…

I’ve been following a few kids with their basketball for a few years now. This season I’ve ended up scoring most of the games for them as there’s been very few parents turning up to watch (probably due to the Tuesday afternoon timeslot, to be fair), and until two weeks ago, they hadn’t lost a game. Then they did… on the final match of the season. But that was okay, because if they won the final the week after, they’d be straight into the Grand Final anyway.

But they lost that one too.

So they had to turn up this evening to play the team that beat them the week before in a second chance final to make it through. They pulled away to win by about eight goals. A great story from my perspective, as these two kids deserve the success after the various paths they’ve had to travel over the last few months outside basketball. Drove home quite chuffed and proud tonight, even if the do end up getting done Wednesday night and lose the Grand Final. They fought back and will walk away Wednesday night with something to sit on their desk, eh?

Does mean I’ll have to cancel my dentist appointment for Wednesday afternoon though. There are more important things than dental hygiene, eh?

Besides… it’s a good excuse not to have two teeth out.

Thanks, boys.

Related Posts: The kid needs a reference… , Writing a reference… follow up, The only loss for the season…

This afternoon we handed out the half year reports to the kids. I only actually received my proof-read, printed and ready for shipping reports at the start of lunchtime. Fortunately though I’d already been informed that there were no corrections or alterations that needed to be made to them, so I wasn’t in as much of a mad rush as you may at first have thought. I would have been surprised if there were lots of corrections or alterations to be made, as due to using the same comment database for the past three years now, I would have thought that I’d have filtered out all the little errors by now. Seems that’s the case.

Still… I had to juggle instrumental music lessons and photocopying these reports for filing in the kids’ records over lunchtime, but I managed to get back to the classroom door with a few minutes to spare. I was learning against one of the rails when the first kids started strolling up and one of them asked me if I was sick, the caring little kid. I just said ‘nah, but I reckon I’m due a holiday’.

They agreed and asked if we could start tomorrow.

I was tempted.

So all that was left was to sign them all, date them all, and put them into their report covers (which only arrived from the printers this afternoon too, but I was pretty confident they’d be there on time). Meanwhile… what was I to do with the kids for most of the afternoon while I was putting the finishing touches on these reports?

In a time of minor crisis such as this, you can never turn your back on a Muppet movie!

Kept them entertained all afternoon!

We’ve nearly reached the halfway mark of the year. By next Friday, we’ll have kicked the kids out for their holidays an hour early (granted permission from School Council to do so on the last day!), and will have started our mid year holidays. And probably not a moment too soon as this term has been a monster twelve week effort. Usually a school term lasts ten weeks. At least they do down here in one of the states with four terms each year. I think only Tasmania still works with a three term model, but I could be wrong. Each of the other states generally has their holidays on different weeks anyway so it’s never uniform across the country at the best of times.

But by next Friday we’ll have reached the end of this mammoth term. Usually you know it’s week ten and you just have to get the kids through those last few days when they’ve really just had enough of each other. This time though… there was still two more weeks to go.

My lot though haven’t done too bad a job of putting up with each other in the lead up to the end of term. Sure, they’re occasionally getting narky with each other (that’s an educational term) and are starting to get on each other’s goat, but generally they’re trying to to completely wind each other up. This means I tend to leave work each night with all my hair and my sanity a little further away from the edge than could otherwise be the case. But… I’ve worked out how to best manage them and we’re running along quite smoothly.

Loudly, but smoothly!

But then there was this afternoon…

Rotations. I’m running the music rotation for our five grades. Two each week, and my own grade once a fortnight. Today… today I had two other grades for the final time this term. And they were both absolutely mad…

Now, my own kids are by no means perfect. They’re quite probably the noisiest, rowdiest and more talkative bunch of kids in the entire school. But at least they generally work as well as they can and genuinely like or at least openly tolerate each other. Also, there’s not a single behaviour problem amongst them. They could just talk underwater with a mouthful of marbles. In fact, one of the other teachers today after having them for Rotations herself asked me whether I was going to go deaf by the end of the year. Yes. They’re a talkative bunch.

But… after half a year, I’ve learned to appreciate all their little positive sides and little antics. And to be honest, they more than balance out the rowdy, talkative bits that make sitting a test a fair old challenge for me when trying to get them to sit still, shut up, and not try to help each other out. Yes, they’re that helpful for each other that they’d even help each other out in all innocence through a test!

Meanwhile though… I’ve just sat through two sessions after lunch with two grades that didn’t want to listen, couldn’t keep their mouths shut, and generally just weren’t in the right frame of mind to do anything.

Yes… quite a lot like my lot, eh?

But… I’ve grown used to my lot…

I guess it’s like they all say… you can’t smell your own, eh?

‘The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, inate, untold,
Of being only four years old.‘
- Christopher Morley, To A Child

Four years ago today, I officially launched my little webcomic, School Spirit. I’d never read a webcomic before, I’d never even heard of them. A friend had just told me ‘I’m writing a webcomic and you’re drawing it for me’. I said ‘where am I going to find the time to draw a webcomic, whatever that is?’ and half an hour later had emailed him a quick sketch of what would become the first School Spirit strip.

On June 12th, 2004, School Spirit was officially launched and here it is, four years later with 580 regular strips, 57 special ones, three new strips a week and an unblemished updating record.

Now it’s even spawned this blog site!

As you’d probably guess, it revolves around kids at primary school, with spirits living in the cemetery next door. It originally grew out of a primary school musical production I was writing at the time but since then has taken on a story and life of its own. If you’re interested in reading it, or at least having a look, go right ahead. I’ll let you decide whether you think it’s worth your time or not. I’ve been here four years now… I’m well past that ‘look at me and love me’ drivel.

Leave that to those who think they’re going to be the next best thing, eh?

Cheers.

‘In order to succeed you must fail, so that you know what not to do the next time.’ - Anthony J. D’Angelo

This evening was the final regular basketball game for the Under 14 season. Okay, this week is the final regular game for all of the other junior age groups and divisions too, but I’ve only been following the Under 14s Division Two team this season on Tuesday nights… the Friday night matches with the teams I used to follow are now too awkward to get to before heading home. But… like that delightful old lady you meet on the bus with the great big book filled with photos of her grandchildren and her pet chihuahua, I’m rambling.

They’ve gone through the entire season undefeated, with one minor scare when they remembered how to play in the final five minutes of one match to scraped away with a draw they should never have pinched. The semi final is next week, a game they were always going to feature in, but tonight… I actually felt they were going to lose it.

Mind you, they worked their hearts out trying to prove me wrong!

But by full time the score read 31-34, with a final goal with under a minute to go pretty much sealing their fate and delivering their first loss of the season in the final match. Which I’m quite pleased with, to be honest.

Better to lose this week than next week and maybe lose the chance to play off in the Grand Final. As they say, it’s probably the loss they had to have.

Get their backs up… put a bit of steel back into them… remind them to be hungry.

After all, the game that gets you into the Grand Final is the most important match of the season, eh? At least then you KNOW you’re gonna get a trophy or reward!

So, while it was a little disappointing watching the kids have a loss, I reckon it might just have won them the Premiership this season.

We’ll have to wait and see though, eh?

‘We worry what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.’ - Stacia Tauscher

It’s the Monday of the Queen’s Birthday long weekend and I’ve just drawn the curtain on my reports for the kids for this first half of the year. Okay, later on this afternoon I’ll pull the curtain back just a little and give them a once over look to check for errors and things - a second read through should be mandatory for any sort of report - but I think I can safely put them aside for most of the afternoon and enjoy what’s left of the public holiday.

The reports won’t be handed out to the kids for another fortnight, but they’re still to be proof-read then handed back for minor tweaks and corrections after the cross-examination. There’s usually at least one sentence you’ve snuck in that someone from higher up requests be, at best altered or at worst removed completely. You have to be honest and truthful when reporting to parents about their abilities and where they are, but only for a given value of ‘truth’. Sentences like ‘your son is in the half of the grade that makes the top half possible‘ and ‘somewhere your son is depriving a village of its idiot‘ tend to be frowned upon.

Which is a little bit of a shame, because I’m sure it would make both the writing and the reading of these reports much more entertaining. Mind you… there’d probably only be a select calibre of parents who’d appreciate the humour, eh?

I think I’m fairly happy with what I’ve served up though, although I’ll probably spend a bit of time tonight running through the ’scores’ I’ve given the kids for ‘effort’ and ‘behaviour’. Have another think about them and decide on whether they’ve been very good or acceptable in those cases. Have they worked as well as they can, or could they do with a rocket placed under them to get them moving a little more in the second half of the year? That’ll be the final thing I re-read before uploading them to the server tomorrow morning, along with perhaps a final sentence addressed to each kid at the end.

They’re funny things, these reports. Easy enough to write when you know the kid, and after five months you generally know the kid. The strange part is you’re often reporting on them with an eye on the rest of the year, or where they’re going to be in the future. There only seem to be a few parents who come in to talk about their kid in the mid year interviews who have read the reports with their eyes on where the kid is now. Most of the time you’re talking about where they’re going but, honestly, I think the best part of a kid is seeing where the little tacker is right now.

I guess that’s one of the best things I like about this job. I may not get to see who they are in the future, but every day I get to see who they are now.