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.

Tomorrow, or probably today considering it’s nearly ten o’clock when I’m writing this, is our school’s Prep Open Day. Tomorrow, for the first two hours up until recess, prospective Prep parents for next year will be touring around the school, most likely being lead around by a few of the older children. A very important day for the continued health of any school, as if you don’t get the Prep enrollments to cover the number of Grade Six kids heading off to high school, you can jeopardise the number of staff you have the following year. Lose 40 kids to secondary school but only get 20 Preps you’re looking at one less grade which could mean one teacher’s out of a job.

Yes. Quite an important day to get those Prep parents hooked early and enrolled, eh?

Mind you… for a better chance of hooking them in, the joint should be neat and tidy, eh?

So that’s what most of us spent the first fifteen minutes or so after lunch doing this afternoon.

‘Kids! Get back out there and CLEAN THAT YARD!’

So we did.

With strict instructions that we were to clean the area around our classroom WITHOUT playing on the monkey bars, we scurried around along the gutters, burrowed under the play equipment, dragged one or two inquisitive and over-eager kids out from between the two portables, scampered through the bushes and fished little wrappers out of the puddles on the asphalt.

And laughed at the older kids who thought they’d cheat the system by pinching rubbish from our grade’s bin to show that they’d collected a lot themselves, only to walk back to their own grade with their friends trailing after them singing the ‘Bin Scab!’ Chorus.

We did have to call it off short though. Not only was it a little chilly by then, but the clouds decided it was time to open up too.

Ever tried to get twenty five kids across the yard to wash their hands and back again while it’s raining and they think it’s more fun to dance around in it? Or decide that the taps are all well and good for normal washing… but we can wash our hands just as well by rinsing them in the asphalt puddles or scraping water off the monkey bars.

Well… we got them inside eventually, and generally dry all things considered.

‘What’s next, Mr V?’

‘Okay kids… now you can clean the room.’

‘AWWW!!!!’

The month of May has just concluded, and for the third month running, my webcomic School Spirit, the hobby that spawned from the primary school musical I wrote, which in turn eventually spawned this blog, has had it’s most successful month. Also, that’s a really long sentence. For the first time it has gathered in 4000 views across a single month, which turns out to be an average of 130 views a day, and about 880 views each week. I’ve tried hinting that there’s this blog site as well when I’ve posted things across there, but at this point it hasn’t been bringing many of those readers across. Will have to work on that later, eh?

June begins today, and I’m thinking it may be a bit of an ask to expect the strip to continue growing each month. We’ll just have to see how things go. 130 or more readers a day is a fair ask, considering just last December it was still only getting about 80.

Mind you, it will reach four years online on June 12th, so with a little bit of extra publicity I might manage to wrangle up, just maybe it will repeat the effort this month. However it goes, all I can do is keep those three strips coming out each week and enjoy spending my free time on it, eh?

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