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

~ 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?

‘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.

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?

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.

Well, that’s probably not quite true. They were standing in a long row across the netball court playing ‘Elimination’ together. You know the game – the first person has a shot at goal (on a basketball backboard), and if they get the goal, they go to the end of the line and are still in. If they miss, the next player has their turn and if they get it in, the first person is out. Play continues until one person is left. Well, they were playing that, and half of them were from my grade last year. I wandered across mainly because I noticed the kid who was out lying down on the asphalt so I had to go across and ask if he was out.

‘Yep! HE got me out!!’ while pointing with a friendly accusing finger to one of the other boys.

‘HE got you out? Gee, you must really suck!‘

‘Yep!’

Anyway, this lead to half of them crowding around asking that great question the kids from your previous year always end up asking you…

‘We were your best grade, weren’t we, Mr V?’

How do you answer that?

There are probably new teachers out there right now wondering how you mould the kids into a perfect grade. How you change the behaviour of the whole group to fit that perfect mould. Where they listen intently, work hard, produce great work that all comes out great, don’t talk out of line and behave impeccably all day. Well, to those people, I say ‘don’t fix what ain’t broke‘!

Bad behaviour, yeah, for sure, work on changing that… but who really wants a perfect grade? A perfect grade is what you make of it. Let’s take that question from above again.

‘We were the best grade, weren’t we, Mr V?’

How do you answer that?

It’s true, last year’s group were fantastic. And they quite possibly pipped the grade before that as the best I’ve had, although there are kids in each grade I’ve really enjoyed. Okay, there have been a few grades that have given me merry hell all year, but I take the approach that if you can find one of two kids in each grade that make it absolutely worth your while to come to work every day, then no matter what the rest of the grade’s like, you can still enjoy your job.

Fortunately, the last few years have been very good. It’s been a while since I’ve had what I’d consider a ‘hard’ grade. And boy, was that particular one a doozy! On the plus side though, I still get along really well with one of the kids and keep in touch fairly regularly, so I also see that year as one I wouldn’t have swapped.

But how do you answer the kids when they ask you that? Because you know it’s going to filter back to the kids you’re teaching right now, and probably to the kids you taught the year before, who asked you last year if they were the best. And so on and so on.

I’ve got a really interesting mob this year too. Not a single behaviour problem amongst the whole lot of them. Not a single kid on medication or tablets. And often not a single kid who would rather sit still and listen than have a good old chat with whoever may currently be sitting next to them.

Yep. They’re a great, big, dirty mob of chin-waggers. And it’s taken me until nearly the end of May to regularly get them sitting relatively quietly on the floor to listen to me. It’s only these last few weeks where they’ve cottoned on to the fact that, hey, guess what, I’M the bloke you’re supposed to be listening to, not Noddy sitting next to you!

So yes, each day I’ll work to keep them listening and not carrying on their own conversations or piping up with their own contributions to the discussion without bothering with the process of putting their hand up first and waiting their turn. I mean… that just takes too long, eh? By the time Mr V gets ’round to me it’ll be too late, and besides… what I have to say is so funny it’ll make you all wet yourselves!!

Yep. It’s one of those groups of kids.

But… really… do I need to clamp down on them and turn them into a bunch of quiet, attentive little gnomes sitting serenely before me? They generally work hard, they get along with each other, and they look out for each other. Okay, I had to have a stern little chat with one feller who gave one across the face to one of the girls during lunchtime, but he stood in front of everyone afterwards and told them why our grade wouldn’t get a Yard Behaviour award this week. A one off blue like that doesn’t tarnish the kid for the whole year.

I honestly couldn’t see this group of kids working as well if they sat quietly all day and barely said ‘boo’. It just wouldn’t be right. Actually, it’d be downright spooky!

So no… while they’ll talk the handle off a door while underwater with a mouthful of marbles, I think I’ll put up with that side of them in return for a group that enjoy coming each day, enjoy each other’s company, and make me laugh.

Who wants a perfect grade? I reckon I’ve got one pretty close as it is.

‘Ouch,’ said Limpy. ‘Why’s my back hurting?’

A horrible thought hit him. Perhaps it was a fork wound. Perhaps while he was unconscious the human had tried to eat him. He looked around.

‘Stack me,’ said Limpy.

All he could see was blue plastic.

Limpy’s on a quest to find toad heaven. A place where cane toads won’t be blown up with bike pumps or bashed over the head with folding chairs. Limpy’s determined to find this place if it takes the rest of his life.

But first he has to get out of the bucket.

The first sequel to Morris Gleitzman’s original Toad book, Toad Rage, Toad Heaven continues the adventures of Limpy the cane toad and his goal of finding a way to keep the rest of his cane toad relatives safe from being run over on the highway by humans in their cars. Whereas the first children’s novel focused on Limpy trying to make humans treat cane toads with respect, Toad Heaven sees Limpy trying to find a fabled ‘national park’ where all living things are protected from harm. Joining him on his adventures once more are his younger sister Charm and his bigger, stronger, more handsome, somewhat stupider cousin Goliath.

Once more, Goliath intends to bash up any human he can find along the way, and eats pretty much anything he can get his tongue around, including a few creatures he probably really shouldn’t. Along the way the cane toads must face a flock of sheep, a scientist intent on killing them all with virus germs, a swarm of fire ants, a flooded national park and the cunning plans of Malcolm, who intends to sell the other cane toads prime real estate at very reasonable rental prices.

Published at the end of 2001 in Australia, it races along again through 30 short, sharp chapters that generally keep the kids laughing along and wondering what mess the cane toads will get themselves into next time. It can also introduce them to various national parks and places in northern Australia, and fits in nicely with a theme on rainforets, which is nice as that’s the theme we were working on at the time.

Like Toad Rage, and the third book in the series, Toad Away, Toad Heaven is another book I read religiously each year with whatever grade I teach. In every case, once Toad Rage is complete, the kids wait impatiently for the following term so this second book can be read. They’ll wait eagerly for third term again for the final book in the series.

It’s a great, quick read, full of fun characters and exciting, humourous adventures but with a heart of gold and a few morals the kids can soak in as well. If you’re interested, you can read the entire first chapter of Toad Heaven here at the Morris Gleitzman Collection.

Related Posts: Review – Toad Rage

‘Education Week will be celebrated by Victorian government schools and kindergartens from 18-24 May 2008.

During the week, schools and kindergartens are encouraged to hold activities that engage parent and community networks while profiling their learning opportunities and achievements.

Open days, art shows, musical performances and other special events are among the many activities that give an insight into the vibrant education settings in which young Victorians learn, thrive and grow.‘

Learn, thrive and grow seems to be the current hype phrase this year.

Anyway, that explains why the Band played at the assembly, and why today the 3/4 Unit opened their doors to parents, grandparents and any friends of the kids who wanted to rock up to come in and spend part of the morning with us to see what goes on in these classrooms. It was quite a good turn out in regards to the number of parents and families we had drifting through during the day. Also gives us a chance to sometimes meet parents for the first time, which can make the parent teacher interviews in the next few weeks a bit more relaxed. We have five grades in the unit, which causes a few timetabling problems. In this case, a half hour rotation activity for each grade doesn’t fit nicely into two hours, so we had to carry it over after recess. That’s fine, but by the time the kids finally got back to our own grade (with a few parents in tow), they’d just about reached the end of their tethers and were quite unready to settle back down again.

Had to give them a quick growl and remind them that we had an audience today and they were embarrassing themselves. Didn’t seem to make much difference. Sending them around the oval for a run seemed to work though. At least, it gave the parents a good excuse to skedaddle out of there!

To be fair though, the morning rotation activities (language and maths games spread around the five grades) worked well. The first two hours have never passed so quickly, but at the same time, you definitely knew you’d earned your pay at the end of it. I spent the morning playing dice maths games with the 120 odd kids that passed through the room. It was a fairly easy activity that all but ran itself, but I still felt like I’d done nine rounds with a big red roo at the end of it.

Ah, Education Week. Fantastic idea, well worth the effort, looking forward to it again next year.

Just glad it’s only the once!

There’s one little feller running around our school I’ve had a fair bit to do with over the last three years, and I’ve kept an eye on him as he’s moved up the grade ladder since I taught him back in grade four. While you have to maintain a professional standard with your relationship with the kids you work with, we’ve always managed to get along really well, even before he reached my grade. Of the really prominent days and good strong memories I’ve got through my career to this point, this feller has been central in quite a large percentage of them.

The day he learned he would be in my grade the next year he told me straight up it was going to be fun – we’d barely shared five words with each other before that year’s camp. Although he loves running around and joining in with the footy on the ova, every single time I was on yard duty that year he’d make sure to tag along and just chat – and chat properly too, not the chatter you usually get from kids hanging around you because they haven’t got friends of their own. Stepping on his back at camp when he was crawling through the mud pool to hear him squeal and laugh. The end of year trip to the pool where he dared me to try to knock him off the inflatable dinosaur with a hose of freezing water. Beginning basketball and winning a premiership. Inviting me in for tea after dropping him home one night when he wanted to stay at the break up party a little longer. Not even waiting to say ‘g’day’ on the first day of this year before making sure I knew what day and time he’d be playing basketball this year.

And a few little things that weren’t always such good news.

But through it all, he always spoke respectfully with me, even when having a laugh and a joke at my expense.

He got himself into a little bit of a bother at the start of the year. Despite that, he managed to persuade the Green House team to elect him to one of the four captain positions for this year’s House Sports. It was generally agreed though that he’d forfeit the badge the next time I got himself into trouble. Most predictions were within two weeks. I quietly voiced the opinion that I had no doubt he’d make it, but I generally just sat back to watch what he’d do. I don’t think he ever realised though that he was that close to messing it all up.

The House Sports was today. About three months after the elections. There he was leading our team

There are times, ever now and then, when I get the feeling that I just know what is going to happen. Today was one of them. Last year, after having their first basketball grand final all but stolen from them (they finished the game one player short with their four best players fouled off, two before half time – that’s another issue!) I walked in to watch their next one knowing they would win. No doubt about it. Today was the same. Green House would win.

Sure enough, while I watched on from beside the green kids trying to keep a knowing little smug grin off my face, they announced the House Sports winners. Green. He’d done it. He’d just proven to everybody why I have absolute faith in him no matter what, and he didn’t even realise it! And now there he was standing before the rest of the school leading the year’s victorious House Sports team. This is why I believe in fairy tales.

Proudest moment though? When he looked across with the broadest grin his face could hold and gave me a big thumbs up.

Better than a trophy.

Related Posts: Scoring for basketball… leads me to drink!, Scoring for basketball… the sequel, Advancing a teaching level, When it rains it pours…, More than just yesterday’s teacher…

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?

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