Throughout the last year, our school has been working towards becoming an accredited ‘Kids – Go For Your Life’ school. Go For Your Life is an initiative of the Victorian government that, in schools at least, seeks to promote healthy eating and an active lifestyle. Noble intentions, I’m sure you can appreciate.

Today, Tuesday September 16th, our school officially launched the ‘Kids – Go For Your Life’ program with a nice little assembly and presentation after lunch. Throughout the last few terms, ten select students from grade five have been training to become Peer Leaders who’s responsibility will now be to organise and run active games and activities regularly throughout lunchtime periods for the rest of the school children. These kids were selected as leadership roles with the intention that, next year, they would be in grade six and able to run the program with little outside influence. Throughout that year, they would also train another group of grade five children to carry the program on again.

It was a good little session. The kids were right into it, there was a lot of excitement and colour, and with the many outside dignitaries of various circles invited and present, it certainly came across as a very important and significant achievement for the school. While I’ve already been focusing on healthy issues such as eating fruit after lunch, regular active sessions outside wherever appropriate, several laps of the oval each week and letting the kids drink water throughout the day while working, the launch pretty well won me over to the entire program. It will certainly help further promote a healthy lifestyle to the kids who come through the school in the future.

Whether they all take it on board is another matter, of course. Kids will be kids, eh?

Mind you, one issue with the program and its accreditation that sort of snuck up on us until only a few weeks ago when everything was in place was one little issue I disagree with.

No longer are we to give lolly rewards to the kids.

Yes. A lolly reward is against the Kids – Go For Your Life policy. Which is a little disappointing, but there’s little that can be done about it, eh?

I didn’t break the news to the kids until early last week, letting them know that at the end of this term (Friday), we will no longer have lolly rewards for their raffle ticket draw each Friday afternoon, or for winning table points each fortnight. They were a little snaky at the news, as you can expect, and I was honest and told them outright that I agreed with them.

One of the boys brought up the topic of Easter and Christmas. Did this mean no Easter Eggs the last day before the Easter holidays, and no candy cane given at the end of the year. Interesting thought. I think we might just make an exception for things like that. The kids thought that appropriate too, even if they didn’t necessarily agree with the complete removal of their lolly reward – five kids get one each week.

‘So even though we do all that running and activities outside and eat fruit after lunch and drink water all day, we’re not allowed to have half a musk stick when we win the raffle?’ one of the kids asked, which I think sums up the entire issue quite nicely.

‘No, mate, not any more.’

‘What about you? Can you have lollies then?’

‘Do you think I should be allowed to?’

‘No,’ they all answered rightly, ‘that wouldn’t be fair.’

I agreed quite happily. I wouldn’t be able to look them in the face if I did.

So by the end of the week we’re going to decide on what other rewards we can give for the five raffle tickets each week and the six table point winners each fortnight. It will probably end up being nice erasers and fancy greyleads or pens for them to use. Things like that.

Yes. It will cost me a fortune!

Not to worry though. Just play the gig. Don’t get involved in politics, just play the gig!

Related posts: Childhood Obesity – Don’t you dare rewards my kid with lollies!, The Easter Ferret

‘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.

This particular topic poked its nose out at me over the last few days due to an issue I read on a few other blogs over the weekend. While I don’t want to go into detail, be content to know it involved the privacy and general safety of kids and the unknowns of people’s true identities when masked behind an internet username and small square avatar picture. If you think you may well own one of the blogs I’m speaking of and are wondering why there’s no links, it’s because I’d rather keep topics like that at a little more than arm’s reach from School Spirit. Hopefully you understand.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the personal information I have access to both now and previously with children past and present. I consider myself an honest, loyal sort of person, so the information and knowledge I have about certain kids (well, all of them, really, but in some cases the information about some kids is more… personal… than others) will stay safely away from the ears of people who don’t need to know, but sometimes I pity the way the world is turning when innocent little events make me look at stuff like this in a more simple light.

It’s a pretty straightforward professional rule. As a teacher, I’m not allowed to disclose personal information about any of the kids to anybody outside of the school staff, although you don’t generally have to because much of that sort of information is available for us through the school records anyway. It’s a rule that makes perfect sense, too. You can’t just fling the odd phone number, address or medical status of the kids out willy nilly to any old character that wanders in to ask for it. Who knows what purpose they may have for the information? You can never be too safe, can you?

But how do you explain that to an eight year old?

In our room, each grade has a class roll. The names of all of the kids in the grade are listed there alphabetically by surname, and as you’d expect, we keep records of which days they have missed, whether they’ve gone to medical appointments, extended holidays or gone home early because their little brother’s broken his arm playing ‘I’m a bigger moron than you’ (the rules of which are usually to jump off the highest surface possible – bonus points if it’s a hard surface underneath!). It also holds information such as parent names, birthdates, addresses and phone numbers. Obviously, the kids aren’t meant to go looking through it because of the sensitive information inside it. Not that they care – they just like looking at all the little marks I make on each page. But this is where the boundaries get a little blurry sometimes.

You see, the kids know their addresses and phone numbers are in there. They’re not interested enough to look, they just know they’re there. So last Friday this little eight year old feller spent his Free Time Friday (once he’d finished his weekly work, naturally) trotting around the room collecting phone numbers from some of the other boys so he could ring them to come to his birthday party sometime this week. One of the kids couldn’t remember his, so he came up to me with what I thought was a good little solution to his problem.

‘Mr V, can you look in the roll and tell me his phone number so I can ring him about my birthday?’

I have to say no.

Although he accepted that I wasn’t allowed to do that, try as I might, he just couldn’t understand the reason why.

If only they could stay that innocent longer, eh?

Technorati Tags: privacy, schools

The Easter holidays have just started now, so this is likely to be my last regular post for much of those two weeks. There’ll be a few updates about School Spirit, the webcomic, but I doubt there’ll be too many more about teaching the kids. A good reason for this is that I’m not going to see them for two weeks, eh? So, hopefully, if you’re reading, this one will tide you over. I hope it comes out sounding sensible, but it’s something that I’m not quite able to explain to myself. I still thought it suitable to go up here though. Every now and then I suppose you have to ramble to get the important things out… even if you can’t quite put your finger on it, eh?

Anyway, here goes. I experienced a change in my role as a teacher the other day, and it really had little to do with the professional side of the deal. As I’ll say further down, I’m sure there were other things that have contributed to this awareness, but in this case it’s the relationship side of things that mean more. Enough rambling though, eh?

Feel free to comment at the end if you’ve something worthwhile to contribute, eh? See you at the end.

This is my eighth year teaching now… although granted it’s only the first term completed. That still means I’ve been at this caper for 29 terms. That’s a bigger number, eh? The Easter holidays have just begun and, although it’s been a short term with only seven and a half weeks due to the early Easter period this year (apparently it’s the earliest Easter has been since 1913!), once I arrived home on Thursday afternoon (an hour earlier than usual, I might add!) my body basically just decided it was time to shut down. I don’t think you ever quite manage to maintain your energy levels through the term quite adequately. Even through a shorter term you still seem to be running on fumes and adrenaline by the end.

I’ve brought this up though because, although I’ve completed seven full years working day in, day out with the kids, most of the time you think you’ve pretty well got most of the job covered. There’s not really all that much you need to learn to carry on with your job after seven odd years of experience, eh? Well… I don’t think that’s quite correct.

If you’ve ever played a role-playing styled computer game, then maybe you’ll sort of understand what I’m about to get at here. At the risk of betraying some sort of computer-geekish background (which is probably not quite accurate, but there you go, I generally enjoy the stories behind these sorts of games and I’ve had an interest in midieval history since, well, forever!), I’ll just leave that sentence up there! I’ll see if I can suitable explain what I mean.

When most of us talk about going up a level in regards to teaching, at least down here, it’s usually to do with the pay structure. You start out as a graduate and that’s the pay scale you’re on. Each year, provided you’ve met certain standards and so forth, you move up a level until you reach the top tier. I honestly have no idea what the top tier is now, nor which particular level I’m on right now either, as the structure has changed a few times since I started and I’ve just lost interest in exactly where I am on the scale. I know my pay has improved considerably since that first pay packet, but that’s as far as I’ve looked. But that’s not the sort of ‘Teaching Level’ I’m thinking about.
When I left work on that final afternoon a few days ago, yes, I was exhausted (as was everybody else working there, I should add!), but I stood by a gate watching one of the kids (not technically mine, but I taught the little bloke a few years ago) wander home after a quick chat and felt… satisfied. Like I’d reached some new step. The job seemed a little easier… a little more fulfilling. I actually felt more experienced now. Can I put my finger on why? Not specifically.

While I’m sure there are lots of things contributing to this new sense of accomplishment, I would suggest it was this last quick conversation with this boy that earned me that last few bits of experience to ‘gain’ this new level, if I can stick with the role-playing analogy. I’m usually a little uneasy mentioning particular instances such as this, but I think in this case it’s worth while. This little feller’s been having a bit of a hard time around the traps lately and trying hard to pull it all together, but I’ve seen the boy he is inside and know he’s going to do okay. I reckon he just needs somebody in his corner unconditionally, and I’m pretty sure he realises he’s got someone there. I won’t elaborate any further. Some things should remain close, eh? I’ll just say I think it was just this one conversation as he left for home that did it. A real smile and a thumbs up as he said ’see ya later, Mr V’ and he was off with a spring in his step.

I guess this sense of ‘level advancement’ is probably more to do with realising I was right about this kid and watching his back while he found his way through a few rough spots. If that’s the case, I’ll have to say that the feeling that came from that short five minute chat alone by the school gate means more than any of the pay scale level advancements I’ve been through.

And he says he’s gonna build me another wooden box to store more DVDs in, too. He’s a top little feller, this boy.

Mind you, it’ll cost me a twenty!

Cheers.

The kids weren’t required at school today. We had another professional development day. In fact, we had the first of a four part series of professional development sessions, the last three of which will take place over the next three Wednesday afternoons after school. It was about recognising language learning difficulties and the current ‘best practice’ way to teach around them. Bits and pieces of it were worthwhile, but that’s not really the purpose of this post. Instead, I’m focusing on the teacher’s voice.

The voice the teacher uses when actually teaching and interacting with the kids.

One of the presenters today spoke to us all the way through with her teacher voice. It was vibrant, it was active, it varied in pitch, it over dramatised expression to promote interest.

In short, it got annoying really fast.

Honestly, it was like being back at home in the early 80s watching Romper Room on telly. I really felt as though I was being condescended to by this (granted, very well-meaning) teacher presenting parts of this session by the way she was speaking to us all through the day. It put me in mind of the way my mum used to read books to me when I was two or three, lots of exaggerated expression and over-the-top voices. Which was fine when I was two or three listening to mum read ‘The Pokey Little Puppy’ Golden Book.

It started me thinking about the way I talk to the kids in my grade each day. I’ve got the same level as this presenter, except that she’d come from teaching prep kids the years before. I know it wouldn’t work. I couldn’t stand or sit there in front of them all and rabbit on in this forced teacher voice all day and expect the kids to take me seriously! I know it wouldn’t work because there are times when, for a bit of a laugh, I’ve put on this particular style of teacher voice for certain lessons just to see the effect.

The kids generally just nod their heads lower, look up at me from beneath crooked eyebrows with wry little smiles and say things along the lines of ‘you’ve gotta be kidding us, Mr V’.

Yup. Kids don’t like being condescended to.

Which has left me wondering about it, because apparently all the kids at her own school adore her BECAUSE OF THE WAY SHE SPEAKS TO THEM!

I suppose there’s just different ways of doing things, eh? I guess the kids I work with (who’ve known me for several years already just coming up through the school) expect just the face I’ve always shown and not anything I’m not. This particular person presents to the kids in this way, with this voice and approach, and the kids recognise it as her way of teaching. I rock up and talk to the kids like I’d talk to just about anybody (which usually means pulling their leg several times during the day, granted), and they appreciate me for sticking with who I am.

While such a voice seems to work for others, I just can’t see myself changing my style of delivery. I reckon tomorrow I’ll just keep doing as I have, give them a high-five as they walk inside in the morning and a ‘g’day, Ugly’ by way of greeting and get on with it.

Kids aren’t dumb. They recognise quickly when you’re not shooting straight.

I’ve got a kid in the grade this year who brings an epi-pen to school with him in case of an anaphylactic shock. In fact, there are four kids in the school with such causes for concern. Each has their own epi-pen close by when they are here, and each has their own specific influence that sets off their reaction. For many it’s peanuts or nut products, bee stings, certain medications, eggs and regular cow’s milk. Any exposure to their allergen sets off the allergic reaction and that’s when things get serious.

Fortunately, we had the chance today to be trained once more (for many of us) in the understanding of anaphylaxis (this severe reaction to the above triggers), and the administration of the epi-pen (the small, single-dose medication device that delivers a shot of adrenalin into the child’s bloodstream to counter the reaction). I remember going through the training about three years ago, so I found much of it just a refresher course.

Meaning that much of what I knew but had forgotten I knew was brought back to the front of my mind again. I was pretty certain I knew how to administer the epi-pen and the process with which to handle any such anaphylactic emergency, but at the same time, I’d only done it in a training situation with practice epi-pens, eh? Those little ones you can practice on yourself which have no dosage inside them and, importantly, no little sharp needle to accidentally stab yourself with. It would be a whole new kettle of fish to actually be in the situation where you need to use it in a real situation.

Fortunately we have yet to have such an incident, and while I’m sure we’d handle it properly, you never really know until you’re facing it, eh? Even after today’s session, I know I’d rather not have to face such an emergency myself while wandering outside on yard duty.

All fears and concerns aside though, I think it’s probably the most important professional development session I’ll sit through for the entire year. Hopefully I won’t need to put it into practice, but, in case I do, it’s nice to have that little bit of confidence that you might just help the kid through something potentially fatal and have him home safe and sound that night because you spent two hours after school one evening all those months ago.