‘It isn’t the size of the gift that matters, but the size of the heart that gives it’.

~ Quoted in The Angels’ Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman, 1994.

Lunchtime had just finished today and we’d started our afternoon session. I’d sorted my kids out, packed them up and sent them on their way to Rotations. They’d visit two other rooms this afternoon for two different activities, and in return I’d have two different grades for music. We chanted rhythms and sang a few songs about Dads because it’s Father’s Day soon.

In rocks the kid I watch (and occasionally drive to and fro) at basketball with a plastic bag from the shop.

‘Okay, I’ll bite. What have you got there?’

‘This is for you, Mr V. Happy birthday!’

‘Um, mate… my birthday was a month ago now…’

‘Yeah, but I didn’t get a chance to get you something. So here it is.’

So in front of someone else’s grade I opened my belated birthday present (or, more accurately, pulled them out of the plastic bag. An Essendon Football Club key ring and an Essendon Football Club number plate surround for my car. He scampered back off to his own class again shortly afterwards.

It’s been two years since I taught him in grade four. It’s going to be bittersweet to see him graduate at the end of the year. With a bit of luck though he’ll still get me a basketball timetable for next year.

But first, I’ll have to watch his next game tomorrow night, eh?

‘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.

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…

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!!!!’

You hear a lot of talk about teachers through the media and your every day man on the street. Your every day woman on the street too, but I’ll use the common phrase here and if anyone gets their back up because it’s not politically correct then just substitute the gender of your choice and read on, eh?

That’s the way.

Especially now that, here in Victoria, the Government and the Union have come to terms over a new pay deal (which is still to be signed off on - no word on when that may happen, but that’s another issue I’m not interested in rabbitting on about), there’s talk about what we should also be doing to earn it. Or, what we’re already doing to earn it but what the Government wants us to do as well. I’m just going to leave this bit hanging though and say that, often, especially in regards to building a relationship with the kids, it doesn’t start and end with those two book-end bell tolls at the start and end of each day. I find it carries on, and is often more powerful, when developed outside the school setting.

And I’d like to add too that, for me, it’s just as rewarding for myself as the kid, maybe more so in some cases. At school, the relationship is always that of the student and the teacher. If you play the card right though, outside of the school setting, these kids you’ve made an effort getting to know start to move closer to equals without losing that respect for you. I know several kids who see me closer to an equal rather than just a past teacher because they saw me showing an interest. In school situations they switch back (usually, it must be said - you can’t always keep the cheek down, eh?) to that student to teacher relationship, but once outside of that again, it’s back to a healthy mutual respect.

I’m sure other teachers may disagree with this in some cases and prefer not to blur that line between the relationship, and that’s fair enough. For me though, a bit of blurring outside of the school grounds can work wonders for both parties. There’s things kids won’t necessarily feel comfortable sharing with a teacher, but if they see you as something more than that, they’ll open up if they think they need to.

Here’s where I’m going to with this.

One of my kids let me know that he and his family were off to watch the footy on Saturday night, down at the MCG. We both support the Bombers, despite their very ordinary year so far (and the prospect of much more pain to come in the near future!), and I told him that I’d be down there watching too. Well, he had to know where I’d be sitting so I showed him the back of my membership card and he told me he’d be sitting somewhere down at ground level.

‘Maybe I’ll see you there then, eh?’

By Friday they’d given me their seat number so what else could I do but wander along before the game started and say hello, eh? I’ve met with kids at the footy the odd time before (once sneaking my way into the ticketed Members stand to do so - that’s another story), and besides, this kid’s a real genuine little feller. I caught them wandering out of one of the retail shops there just before the game (there goes $100+ in merchandise right there!) and had a quick little chat with him before the match started.

Then the family coming with them appeared around the corner. Someone’s been telling stories about me because once I’d been introduced (’who’s this bloke hanging around your son?’) it was all excitement from these people I’d never met. I’ll have to ask him what was said on Monday… you shouldn’t get that excited meeting a kid’s teacher at the footy, surely?

Anyway, instead of sneaking into their ticketed area to find them for a decent chat later, we organised to meet just beyond that rail I wasn’t allowed to step beyond (but I’d have found a way…) at halftime.

Now, I know right now that this is now one family I’m never going to have an issue with, and one kid who I’m pretty sure I’ll have on my side for the rest of his primary school career. How? One little visit at a place the kid is interested in. Show you share their interests (even if you wouldn’t generally do so normally - kids just appreciate you turning up) and their trust just builds.

And what did I get out of it?

A got half an hour of quality time with a top little kid and his family and a strong little parting handshake.

Monday it will be student to teacher again, but below that facade will be a stronger level of respect from both of us.

To me, that’s something that will help the kid more than a week of schooling.

A few weeks ago we started on an initiative known as the Trivia Challenge, organised through schools by the Epilepsy Foundation of Victoria. The aim is to increase the kids’ awareness and understanding of epilepsy as well as give them a challenging, fun activity in regards to working in teams to answer various trivia questions. We took part last year and a team of our Grade Four kids got through the the final in Melbourne, which was a fantastic result. This year, we’re taking part again.

First, we warmed them up a few days earlier with a grade challenge of 25 questions, and gave them some ideas on epilepsy, how it’s caused, what it does, and how to help someone who has it, etc. Then we split the kids into teams of four and gave them an hour in the afternoon to answer as many of the 100 questions as they could. Our highest scoring teams from each Grade level will then move on to the next level of competition. As of yet we haven’t announced those teams.

Great idea, but part of participation in the Challenge is the obligation to donate money to the Epilepsy Foundation of Victoria, which is where Stripes Day comes in. One of the questions asked whether wearing striped socks could cause a seizure. The answer, clearly, is no. But this made us think of holding a Stripes Day to raise the money to be donated. So tomorrow, everybody wears striped clothes instead of school uniform and makes a gold coin donation. All money collected is passed on to the Foundation. Great idea.

Except it meant me spending this afternoon hitting the shops looking for pants with stripes on them…

Tomorrow will cost the kids $1 each… tomorrow will cost me $35…

All in a good cause though, eh?

And now for a quick band update.

Great success was our first performance of the year earlier this week, which gave the kids a nice little top up of confidence going into this afternoon’s rehearsal. With five of them, it’s somewhat light hearted and easy going, but that just makes it a fun half hour or so for me after work as well.

We tried another song we hadn’t touched for a while and it seemed to come together pretty well - a few more run throughs and it’ll be up to performing standard - when they started asking for something from a particular movie.

The new Indiana Jones movie starts today, so it was in the kids’ heads at the time. Seems they wanted to play something from the Indy movies. Well, last year we had a quick look at ‘Raider’s March‘, the theme from the movies. They couldn’t play it too well at all last year, but we brought it out this afternoon and the five of them had a run through with myself topping up the brass line.

Fair dinkum, we could almost play it next week if we had to, they read through it that well. There’s a few holes to fill with instruments we haven’t got, and a few bits that are tricky and need work, but nothing the five of them couldn’t pull off. They’re demanding another assembly performance as soon as possible, and a gig outside of the school immediately now too! Looks like Indy’s gonna get a run somewhere soon, no matter how few times we’ve ever played it!

So looks like we’ll be fronting the assembly in two Monday’s time to blast ‘Raider’s March‘ throughout the multipurpose room, and they don’t know it yet, but a local Arts Festival has just sent us a request to play there later on too…

Indy rides again, eh?

Yes, I know. The NAPLAN (National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy - and a partridge in a pear tree) finished up yesterday with the final component of the four all done and dusted by recess. I did have to send one of the kids off to sit a make up test booklet this morning for missing Wednesday’s part, but other than that, it’s all over. Today was Friday though. Friday after NAPLAN. Friday after three solid days of pretty full-on, heavy-handed, don’t-talk-or-I’ll-rip-your-tongue-out-and-feed-it-to-the-cat-work. So what else could we do?

Our entire week’s worth of Learning Centres on Rainforests, of course. I mean… the next grade will be expecting them first thing Monday, and we’ll get two weeks worth of work on the local town by then too. We have to fit them in somewhere, eh?

So this morning I photocopied up everything we’d need, sat them all out on a table, gave them all a quick run through on what each of the four activities was about, made sure they realised there were only a certain number of books or pamphlets for each activity to go around, and then said ‘right, pick one and get into it’.

Of they went. Some finished two activities before recess, some finished three. Others typed up their reports on the excursion the other week. All in all, it was a quiet two hours of ‘do-what-you-like-as-long-as-it’s-work’ morning. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t bring myself to sit them down and run them madcap through as much work as we could fit in. It was more… well, I’ll be honest… after NAPLAN even I needed a quiet, easy morning.

Anyway, the kids appreciated it, and we actually got a fair bit done. So I guess there was merit in it, eh?

Maths though… maths would be a poser. Not a whole lot prepared, and once again, I wasn’t quite prepared myself to start anything particularly new on a Friday. So we played a few maths games.

All together.

On the floor.

In a space about four metres square.

With a score and change of excited, competitive kids.

Yes, it was noisy.

Which means it was a helluva lot of fun!

Free time after lunch, and then we draw the weekly raffle tickets, add up the table points, reward the winning table, and check if our combined points beat our previous high score. For an End Of NAPLAN Week reward, I had a bag of Fruit Tingle rolls to hand out when they broke the record (cos they were going to this week, I’d make sure of it!), but they didn’t know they were coming. They had to win though… you had to make sure they were proud of everything they’d achieved, eh?

I knew we were several hundred points behind by lunchtime, so I handed out points like they were Labor How-to-vote cards out the front of dodgy little election booths. What did I give them out for? Any kid who found something helpful to do. In fairly large amounts. The room hasn’t looked better since February!

Somehow though I miscounted and we were still 30 points away by the time we worked it all out. The kids let out disappointed sighs and I thought ‘bugger… mess that up’.

So I asked six easy questions from the last fortnight’s work and award five points each. New high score, kids go home loud and proud.

Sometimes you just need a day like that.

It’s over.

Well, I think it is. One of the kids was away yesterday and missed the Reading component so she might have to sit that on Friday, but otherwise, we’re finished. The Numeracy component was completed today and everybody breathed a sigh of relief. If the kid who missed yesterday has to sit it tomorrow, apparently she’ll sit a different version than the one we all did. Apparently that’s another ploy to beat those kids who talk about the questions. Not sure about that though. Will find out tomorrow.

Numeracy. Technically that’s everything to do with Number, but technically that’s only one part of the maths curriculum. Didn’t seem to matter. There was a fair spread of the other areas of the maths curriculum littered through the 12 pages of the test booklet as well.

‘Why didn’t they just call it maths then, Mr V?’ they asked, and quite appropriately.

‘You know my answer to questions like that by now.’

‘Oh. Because.’

‘Yep.’

This last one was to last 45 minutes, plus time at the start to run through the sample questions. Once again I photocopied the test (smaller) and gave it to the Fours as well so now I’ve got assessment evidence for both my Threes and Fours. Reports are starting… well… tomorrow, I suppose. Need all the evidence I can get. This time I photocopied the sample questions for them as well so at least they had something to do while we ran through them.

Forty five minutes this part was due to run for. The kids who finished early were now in the habit of closing their work over and finding something to carry on with quietly at their table. I threw a few of the Fours onto the computer to type up pieces of writing and rotated a few through that way as well. The rest contented themselves as they finished up with scratching away at unfinished work, colouring a few pictures or drawing a few of their own. By the time the countdown clock reached 10 minutes I realised something was amiss though.

‘Okay, Grade Threes. Hands up if you’re still working on the NAPLAN test?’

Not a hand to be seen.

‘Okay. We’re calling it quits ten minutes early. If you can stay this quiet then you can just keep doing what you’re doing until the time runs out.’

Once more, off around the oval to get the blood pumping again and five minutes going troppo on the jungle gyms then back inside, a few more chapters of the class serial, and twenty minutes left before recess.

‘Okay, troops. Keep it down and you can have some quiet free time till recess at your tables.’

At which point one of the kids approaches me with a suspicious look.

‘You’re planning something, aren’t you?’

‘No. Why?’

‘You’re being too nice today…’

Tomorrow… tomorrow I think we might have a bit of a lighter day. Start some work off, finish other bits, wind the week down slowly and enjoy a day with not quite so much full on work as these last three.

Friday on my mind.

The second day of NAPLAN testing (National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy - looks a little too much like NAPALM) played itself out today. On the agenda for today (done before recess, mind you! Just to stop any chance of the little tykes running up to their mates at recess and talking about the test!) was the Reading section for our Grade Three and Fives. I didn’t bother photocopying all of the paraphernalia needed for this quest for my Fours. They did some other language work instead, which, despite being a bit full by my standards, the kids thought was better than doing NAPLAN! A full 45 minutes allocated for the activity, along with the ten odd minutes it takes you to read out all the instructions (word perfect from the handbook every teacher is given - everybody has to have the same instructions, this is a standard test, after all) and it ends up taking a little longer. I was a little more prepared this morning though. I sharpened yesterday’s pencils before the bell went.

Not that I have a sharpener on my desk at all. Well… I very well possibly could. I could have anything on my desk. What I definitely don’t have on my desk is this thing called clear work space. So I opened up the first kids’ pencil case I could see and fished around for his sharpener. It was a cool little plastic robot face thing and you stick the pencil into either eye socket to sharpen it! The base is a concertina style thing that you can expand when it gets full to fit more sharpenings in. This is good because he can sharpen his pencil without leaving his table and has the added bonus of looking really cool! When he walked in as the music was going to start the day off, I handed it to him and said ‘thanks for your sharpener, oh, by the way, can I borrow it?’

Anyway… back to the all important Reading test. A test booklet to write their multiple choice answers into. A ’stimulus’ book (in plain kid speak, the book with the various little texts and stories they would read to answer the questions - we called it a ‘magazine’ because the kids reckoned ’stimulus’ was just trying to sound clever for the sake of it, and you only end up looking like a dill doing that). A sharpened pencil with an eraser on top (which for some reason squeaks every time a kid uses it…). And hopefully an awake mind ready to take this test by the horns and give it a good old shake.

Off you go, kids, work hard. Grade fours, thanks for waiting, I’ll come and see to all of those hands pointing up at the ceiling now.

Forty five minutes later, it’s all done and I’m only slightly discouraged by one or two kids who couldn’t seem to get the idea that ‘oh, you have to read the whole page of information to answer these questions? Oh, that makes more sense now!’ Once again, kick the kids outside for a run around the oval to get the blood pumping and let them be kids, and five minutes going off their collective faces on the jungle gym outside. Back in again, and we’ll read three more chapters of the class serial. Lots of laughter here due to a cane toad threatening to scratch a truck’s duco with a nail and drink all it’s petrol, and even more jocularity at same cane toad’s ability to turn himself into an outboard motor by eating stink weed and hanging his bottom over the edge of the esky lid they were floating on and into the water. Must give this book a review later!

There. Today’s NAPLAN piece is done. Send them all off to the office during recess, and we only have Numeracy to worry about tomorrow. But now… now we actually have time to do some NORMAL WORK! So we jump into maths and have a quick revision session on addition and subtraction (ie, just in time for tomorrow’s Numeracy test - if we didn’t do it now I KNOW they’d forget half of it tomorrow!) but this time we added in some decimal points. Scary stuff, those decimal points - until you talk about money. They ALL understand money.

Had a bit of fun talking about milliseconds though.

‘How long’s a millisecond, Mr V?’

‘Let’s see, eh?’

So I spend five minutes trying to start and stop my watch’s stopwatch as quick as I can. Fastest I could react was 12 hundredths of a second. They loved it!

Tomorrow… we start again, but this time for the last time.

Friday… Friday I think we’ll work on having fun.

And maybe trying to beat 12 milliseconds!