Here’s a little poem that’s been a favourite of mine for a while. It was written by one T.S. Watt in the Manchester Guardian, which I assume is a newspaper from Manchester. As to the date, I don’t know. I’ve got it published in a hard cover book about the crazy language of English. It probably works best if you read it out loud - but be warned! Just because it’s using the same letter patterns for words, don’t expect them to all use the same sounds! I’ll just let you read it for yourselves!

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard but sounds like bird.
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead -
For goodness’ sake don’t call it “deed“!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!

A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn’t learned by fifty five.

No wonder kids have trouble spelling, eh?

It’s been a while since the last (and first… and at the moment only…) Teaching Tutorial was posted, that one guiding the reader through the important steps necessary to start your day on the right foot, fit and fighting and ready to take on the world, or at the very least twenty five kids. So I thought it high time another post was added for those of you wondering exactly what this job entails from day to day. A lovely, ordered utopia of sharpened pencils lined in their appropriate tubs, quiet days strolling between the tables while children focus intently on their work, heads bowed in concentration, and not an unsavoury odour on any slight breeze anywhere at all.

And outside the window, an entire flock of flying pigs.

No. A day will come, and if we’re honest, it will come tomorrow, when you will walk into your classroom, fully intent on endowing upon the children new and exciting pieces of knowledge and improve talents, that you look around and… you can’t find your desk.

You know it was there. You saw it yesterday. Or was it the day before. Maybe it was last week. Anyway, you know it’s there somewhere because, I mean honestly, who’s going to pinch a desk? I mean… those things weigh a truckload, eh? Exactly. But still… the fact remains. You can’t see it.

Why? Because it’s submerged under that deluge of paperwork, kids correction, planning folders, kids show-and-tell bits and pieces they’ve left there for six weeks, the odd lonely hair clip (lost as well) and quite probably, somewhere beneath the crust, that ham, salad and beetroot sandwich you were really looking forward to eating last fortnight. What do you do about it? Do you spend your lunchtime and recess and an hour after school sorting through everything with the greatest of care? Rein in some sort of order and file everything where it should be? Correction in a pile by your bag (which you haven’t remembered to take home for the last two weeks anyway, but the intention is always good). Show-and-tell bits and pieces distributed into the corresponding child’s locker tub. Planning folders open in the centre of the desk so you always know what you’re doing.

Or do you sit the bin where your chair usually goes, reach across to the back of the desk, drag everything forward and watch with desperate satisfaction as everything crashes into the depths of that black plastic bin liner and start with a clean slate?

The first one sounds like that utopia again, the second sounds easier. One doesn’t exist, and the other gets you in strife when report writing comes around and you haven’t got anything to report on except your gut instincts. And you can’t really back them up without all that paperwork, eh?

No. So you perform a balancing act. You get yourself through the rest of the term and tackle the desk on a day during the holidays. Yes, much of that day is spent finding it… but once you’ve found it you’re halfway there.

Spend a good hour at least sorting everything into various categories (or, if you want the easy, realistic term, piles) on the floor, and keep that recycling box handy too. Correction there, ready to be done once you’re finished, various learning area books and texts back onto the shelves. It’s amazing how you didn’t have time to put them there when you were finished with them first, eh? Fair dinkum, those kids are a distraction, aren’t they? Eventually you’ll find that your piles have become neater, many of them will have been placed in more appropriate locations (and the bin is generally not one of those places, no matter how tempting it may be - unless it’s old work that’s no longer necessary because you’ve taken down the kids’ results, I suppose. Your decision, I guess).

Finally, when much of your bits and pieces are back into some sort of order and logical locations, set your desk out. Get those pencils into their tub in the corner, straighten out that planning folder (we might have to have a post about that too, eh?) and stand back to admire your clean and sparkling desk… of which you can now see almost half of the surface of! Enjoy the order and the neatness of the piece of art you’ve created, and go home content with the world.

Because next week you’ll be back to the start again.

Those kids are a big distraction, eh?

Related posts: Teaching Tutorial 1: How to start your day

Technorati tags: teaching, tutorial, cleaning

In response to the events of our recent Easter Fair, and the Easter Ferret which somehow managed to bite one of my kids on the back of the leg and draw blood, the next morning between finishing my breakfast and getting in the car to drive to work, I wrote this quick little song for the kids. They thought it quite amusing. Yes, it’s four chords repeated over and over, but what do you expect for a ten minute song writing session when you’re technically already late for work?

The chords are C / Am / F / G, with the fourth line changing to F / G / C / C. Easy! The first part is slow, and the rest of the song follows the same tune and quicker speed of the second half. The little Ab / Bb / C ending you can also add in after each chorus if you wish.

The Ferret Song

Small, sharp teeth, beady eyes,
Whiskery nose twitching side to side.
Stalks its prey without a sound,
OUCH! I should have turned around, ’cause

Chorus
I got bitten on the leg by a ferret,
I got bitten yesterday at school!
I got bitten and it’s not really fair, it
Should have bit my friend as well!

The lady said, ‘What? It’s got a lead on!
If you don’t believe me then take a look!
It could’ve been worse, you could’ve been weed on!
Don’t be such a sook! But…

Chorus

Next time I see a ferret, gonna chop it half and
Kick it across the netball courts!
Or if my best friend won’t stop laughing
I might stuff it down his shorts! ‘Cause…

Chorus

It should have bit my friend as well!

Anyway, the kids thought it was amusing. The young feller who was actually bitten by the ferret the day before was so chuffed he actually substituted his own name into the lyrics instead. That’s all for now… more original songs next time something out of the ordinary happens at school, eh?

Cheers.

Related topics: The Easter Ferret, the School Spirit webcomic Easter Ferret story.

Technorati Tags: ferrets, Easter, songs, music.

We held our annual Easter Fair this afternoon and one of the activities our grade organised and ran was what has become my staple Easter Fair event, Whack-a-ferret. In this case the burrow is a dirty great piece of white polypipe with a bend at the bottom, the kid waiting at the end is holding aloft a little wooden mallet to belt the snot out of the ferret as it comes out of the pipe, and the ferret itself is a soft yellow ball with eyes, whiskers and a tail drawn on in permanent texta. If they manage to whack the ferret on the way past they win a little solid Easter egg. If they don’t, then they’ve donated 20c (or three turns for 50c!) and generally come back to try again later and give us more money.

Nothing all that dastardly, eh? Nothing really dangerous except maybe a squashed finger if anybody nearby isn’t paying attention. It’s not like it’s a real ferret, eh?

Which is what turned up today.

Yup. While dropping our ferret down the polypipe and watching kids belt the life out of the asphalt as it rolled past, a mother held a real ferret down where I could see (on a leash with a little seat-belt harness, naturally…) and with a grin suggested they were here to protest the unfair treatment of ferrets. I thought nothing much more of it and gave a friendly chuckle while wondering why you would bother bringing what is basically a hairy snake with legs to a primary school anyway.

At least, until the cunning little blighter bit one of my kids…

Yup. It’s not everyday you write up a sick-bay incident report when the incident involves a kid getting bitten by a ferret. What more could I do than get him to clean the blood away and whack a bandaid on?

Fortunately, Mum was quite okay with the whole deal when I approached her with the story at the end of the day. Turns out they actually see this woman every now and then walking her ferrets down the street! It was only last night when they joked that he’d be coming to school to help run Whack-a-ferret and wouldn’t it be funny if a real one bit him. He’ll get a proper clean with some Dettol or something tonight and she’ll let me know if it causes any more trouble, so I’m appreciative of her good humour and understanding.

But honestly… bringing a ferret to an Easter Fair…

At least I can add that to my list of ’strangest things I’ve had to tell parents’, eh?

Related Posts: The Ferret Song

Technorati Tags: ferrets, Easter, parents, teaching

There’s an art to starting your day of classroom teaching off on the right foot. You can’t just roll out of the car, saunter casually into the room, cast your eye across the impeccable neatness of the room, sit back with the daily newspaper while the last ten minutes tick by before the bag bell rings, and then settle into your big, comfortable teacher’s chair as the kids file in and politely sit in three equal rows before you, eyes fixed intently on yourself and ears alert and eager to drink in the knowledge you are bound to feed them that day.

No. There’s a certain order to things, and the above just isn’t reasonable.

Let’s start with your arrival at the school in the mornings. The first thing you plan to do when you arrive is set up the daily timetable so the kids know what they are expected to do today. But somewhere along any major road you travel to get to work, you’ll find yourself stuck behind some small little hatchback with one of those bobble-headed cats grinning at you like an idiot from the parcel shelf. It will be travelling at half the current speed limit, and there will be no safe opportunity to over take. What’s worse, if you are well enough prepared that morning so that you actually leave early, then your chances of encountering such a hatchback will in fact double. This will mean that, even though you’ve left for work ten minutes earlier than normal, you’ll get to work five minutes later than usual anyway.

Once you’ve managed to park your car, it’s time to get yourself across to your classroom, and then set that daily timetable up. No easy matter. You’ve got your lunch in your hand, and maybe the basket or bag with books you took home to correct the night before. If you’ve found time to actually accomplish this correction, then clearly you’ve forgotten to do something else of major importance which will come back to bite you on the freckle at the most inopportune moment. That’s not the immediate problem though. You will get halfway to your room and realise you’ve left something on the front seat. Do you return to the car and juggle everything in two hands, or sacrifice a little more time to unload in the classroom and then make the trek back?

Neither will work. Juggle everything and you’ll drop it all opening the classroom door, if you even get that far. Decide to stop by the classroom first and you’ll be distracted by the first kid that wanders past (who shouldn’t even be here yet at this hour, but that’s working parents, eh?) and you will forget you ever had to go back to the car in the first place.

If you’ve left something in the car though, it couldn’t have been that important anyway, eh? Unless it’s your key ring and you can’t get into the classroom.

Once you are inside, you’re nearly there. Well, you’d like to think so. Where did the cleaners put the classroom bin this time? In the bag room? On one of the tables? In the classroom two doors down for no apparent reason? What about that daily timetable you update each morning so the kids can keep track of what’s expected of them today? That won’t take long, so let’s do something more important instead. Photocopy today’s maths work. Right. There it is… and right on cue! Paper jam. A paper jam that won’t let you get the paper out unless you spend the next ten minutes up to your elbows in photocopier guts.

Right. The photocopying is done. Better put lunch in the staffroom fridge, pick up the daily paper, and read the bulletin and the staffroom information board (which will be updated the moment you walk outside again). The paper’s haven’t arrived, you’ll have to rearrange the shelf of the fridge so your sandwich doesn’t get squashed by three apples, a plastic salad container and twelve old bottles of sauce that no-one’s thought to pitch out yet.

Okay… after getting distracted by one hundred and thirty seven kids on your way back to the classroom, all wanting to tell you every intricate detail of their latest adventure which usually involves a trip to gran’s, the latest elitist new toy fad, or the state of their dad’s tinia, you arrive with the intention of setting up that daily timetable just as the bag bell rings and the kids pour in.

A few minutes later, after you’ve spoken to a few parents loitering around the door, yelled at Johnno for doing a swan dive off his table, and fobbed off another dozen kids with their little stories, the bell goes again and the kids are falling over themselves on the way to sit on the floor. You’re about to call the roll when one kid calls out that the timetable hasn’t been changed.

At which point you think about stabbing him with your pen, calling it quits and finding something easier to do like run the country.

Instead, because you’ve learnt to keep all that inside and show a chirpy, eager grin, you instead make up a glorious excuse involving something of drastic importance you had to do this morning.

Yes, that’s right. You tell a little white lie because you know the moment the kids find out you’re not actually in complete control they’re going to eat you alive.

And then tomorrow, you’ll do it all again!

Ever noticed how, whenever there’s a few old fancy clothes and things lying around, it’s usually the boys who can’t help themselves and end up prancing around with some frilly lace thing on their head or twist their ankle falling from Mum’s high heel shoes? When they grow up, it usually ends up being an apron while they’re drinking around the barbecue, and a lamp shade when they’re finished. I suppose not a lot tends to change for boys from childhood to backyard boganhood, eh?

I found myself thinking about this thanks to a picture on another blog recently. This one features this little feller dressed in a stunning little pink ballerina number. Okay, the little tyke’s all of a few years old and has to stretch up to scratch his head, but he’s a little bloke wearing a pink tutu! Yes, his sister dressed him in it and he’s too young to know any different, and besides, it’s all fun and games when you’re that little, but still!

To be honest though, I found the picture rather cute and amusing, and I reckon it’s great! If any male in the country claims to have never worn female clothing in their life then they’re just out and out lying! When you’re a kid you do stuff like that. You totter around the house in Mum’s high heels that she hasn’t worn since Cocky was an egg. Your big sister attacks you with a box of hair clips. You come home from Nan’s place one afternoon to proudly show Dad your newly painted fingernails in the latest pensioner colours. You’re a kid. It’s fun

In fact, it’s typical developmental behaviour. A kid with a healthy upbringing and imagination does stuff like this. According to this American doctor with more credentials than me and letters after his name that probably actually mean something, this is all standard stuff and nothing to be worried about. Dad’s can be embarrassed though, that’s fine. Just take young Jack out into the shed later on and give him another manly lesson in the noble art of burping. That’ll sort out any gender imbalance you may be concerned with.

I remember much the same happening a few years back… but this was with nine year olds…

I don’t know where the dress ups came from, but they appeared one Friday afternoon from the back of some cupboard in the classroom during Free Time. The girls weren’t interested at all. As for the boys though… you’d think it was Christmas. They were prancing around in all sorts of dresses thrown over the top of their uniforms and mincing back and forth on display to anybody who’d look and giggle in little soft shoes and parasol hats. The cheeky little showboats even willingly posed for photographs when I slipped out the camera, complete with super model postures, although somewhat mismatched by their frumpy choice of clothing.

But then one of their mums turned up to take the kid home early.

Fair dinkum, it was the quickest change of outfit I think I’ll ever see a boy make! He was out of those clothes so fast he almost took his own off as well and was back in front of mum in a flash with a slightly flustered look on his face, his bag on his back, and hurrying mum out the door before she had time to inquire as to why everyone was laughing.

Just a pity he’d forgotten the clip on earrings…

Although I posted this topic a week or so ago, I didn’t realise that the nine points I posted then were just the first nine of a list of twenty one reasons that you know you are a teacher. This Monday, the rest of the list found its way into my pigeon hole via the back of the weekly staff bulletin and timetable. So now, here is the complete set.

Once again, I don’t know where this list originally came from, but there are so many accurate sentences here it’s almost scary.

How do you know you are a teacher? Here you go!

1. You can hear 25 voices behind you and know exactly which one belongs to the child out of line.

2. You get a secret thrill out of laminating something.

3. You walk into a shop and hear the words ‘It’s Ms/Mr ______’ and know you’ve been spotted.

4. You have 25 people that accidentally call you Mum/Dad at one time or another.

5. You can eat a multi-course meal in under twenty-five minutes.

6. You’ve trained yourself to go to the toilet at two distinct times of the day: recess and lunch.

7. You start saving other people’s rubbish because most likely, you can use that toilet paper tube or plastic butter tub for something in the classroom.

8. You believe the teachers’ staffroom should be equipped with a margarita machine.

9. You want to slap the next person who says it ‘must be nice to work 9 to 3:30 and have summers off’.

10. You believe chocolate is a food group.

11. You can tell if it’s a full moon without ever looking outside.

12. You believe that unspeakable evils will befall you if anyone says “Boy, the kids sure are settled today”.

13. You feel the urge to talk to strange children and correct their behaviour when you are out in public.

14. You believe in aerial spraying of Ritalin.

15. You think caffeine should be available in intravenous form.

16. You spend more money on school stuff than you do on your own children.

17. You can’t pass the school supply aisle without getting at least five items!

18. You ask your friends if the left hand turn he just made was a “good choice or a bad choice”.

19. You find true beauty in a can full of perfectly sharpened pencils.

20. You are secretly addicted to hand sanitiser, and finally,

21. You understand instantaneously why a child behaves a certain way after meeting his or her parents.

All so very, very true…

Personal favourites… numbers 11, 12 and 21. You may have others…

Cheers.

This appeared on the back of our weekly staff bulletin in my pigeon hole this morning. I have no idea which staff member passed it on for inclusion on the back, but it gave me a little bit of a giggle. If you’re a teacher, you’ll recognise yourself here. If you’re not, you could probably still understand most of the sentiments behind these nine sure fire ways to know that you are a teacher…

1. You can hear 25 voices behind you and know exactly which one belongs to the child out of line.

2. You get a secret thrill out of laminating something.

3. You walk into a shop and hear the words ‘It’s Ms/Mr ______’ and know you’ve been spotted.

4. You have 25 people that accidentally call you Mum/Dad at one time or another.

5. You can eat a multi-course meal in under twenty-five minutes.

6. You’ve trained yourself to go to the toilet at two distinct times of the day: recess and lunch.

7. You start saving other people’s rubbish because most likely, you can use that toilet paper tube or plastic butter tub for something in the classroom.

8. You believe the teachers’ staffroom should be equipped with a margarita machine.

9. You want to slap the next person who says it ‘must be nice to work 9 to 3:30 and have summers off’.

All so very true…