School Spirit

We’ve nearly reached the halfway mark of the year. By next Friday, we’ll have kicked the kids out for their holidays an hour early (granted permission from School Council to do so on the last day!), and will have started our mid year holidays. And probably not a moment too soon as this term has been a monster twelve week effort. Usually a school term lasts ten weeks. At least they do down here in one of the states with four terms each year. I think only Tasmania still works with a three term model, but I could be wrong. Each of the other states generally has their holidays on different weeks anyway so it’s never uniform across the country at the best of times.

But by next Friday we’ll have reached the end of this mammoth term. Usually you know it’s week ten and you just have to get the kids through those last few days when they’ve really just had enough of each other. This time though… there was still two more weeks to go.

My lot though haven’t done too bad a job of putting up with each other in the lead up to the end of term. Sure, they’re occasionally getting narky with each other (that’s an educational term) and are starting to get on each other’s goat, but generally they’re trying to to completely wind each other up. This means I tend to leave work each night with all my hair and my sanity a little further away from the edge than could otherwise be the case. But… I’ve worked out how to best manage them and we’re running along quite smoothly.

Loudly, but smoothly!

But then there was this afternoon…

Rotations. I’m running the music rotation for our five grades. Two each week, and my own grade once a fortnight. Today… today I had two other grades for the final time this term. And they were both absolutely mad…

Now, my own kids are by no means perfect. They’re quite probably the noisiest, rowdiest and more talkative bunch of kids in the entire school. But at least they generally work as well as they can and genuinely like or at least openly tolerate each other. Also, there’s not a single behaviour problem amongst them. They could just talk underwater with a mouthful of marbles. In fact, one of the other teachers today after having them for Rotations herself asked me whether I was going to go deaf by the end of the year. Yes. They’re a talkative bunch.

But… after half a year, I’ve learned to appreciate all their little positive sides and little antics. And to be honest, they more than balance out the rowdy, talkative bits that make sitting a test a fair old challenge for me when trying to get them to sit still, shut up, and not try to help each other out. Yes, they’re that helpful for each other that they’d even help each other out in all innocence through a test!

Meanwhile though… I’ve just sat through two sessions after lunch with two grades that didn’t want to listen, couldn’t keep their mouths shut, and generally just weren’t in the right frame of mind to do anything.

Yes… quite a lot like my lot, eh?

But… I’ve grown used to my lot…

I guess it’s like they all say… you can’t smell your own, eh?

A few Grade Five kids caught up with me in the school yard while I was on yard duty today.

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.

Found this little article in the paper today. I found it in the Herald Sun, but this link will take you to the Australian newspaper site instead. It doesn’t matter though - it’s the same article written by the same bloke. I just couldn’t find it on the Herald Sun’s website. Anyway… seems there’s a blight of school children’s parents drinking at school fetes and similar school events. Worse, their buying their alcohol from the school itself as fundraisers and generally getting themselves blind as the day carries on. All very education behaviour for the kids to see, isn’t it? Well…

Where are all these schools that are doing this??

I mean, we have to go through School Council and get their approval several weeks in advance if we even consider selling soft drinks or fruit boxes or even the odd hotdog day! How on Earth can any school with these sorts of contingencies legally be allowed and capable of selling alcohol to parents while the kids are there? We’ve had our share of trivia nights and things like that where alcohol has been available, but on those nights kids aren’t brought along, are they? The school needs to actually get hold of a liquor license for the night to be able to hold things like this as well.

Yet… apparently there is a scourge of primary schools selling alcohol to parents because otherwise they wouldn’t come to their fetes and so forth.

Surely if this was going on we’d hear about it outside of the newspaper rags, wouldn’t we? I’m pretty sure if any of the schools around our district tried pulling a stunt like that the rumour mill would be working overtime and we’d have heard about it before the first tinny was knocked back!

Honestly, if things like this are happening, then come out and name the schools. Don’t make a blanket statement tarring us all with the same brush. I mean, we’re not even allowed to sell icypoles without a permit any more!

Related Posts: The kid didn’t know I was coming for dinner…, The Easter Ferret, Childhood Obesity… don’t you dare reward my kid with lollies!

Sometime, somewhere, during the first few weeks of the year, when the madness and hooley-dooley of the first few days starts to wear off, there comes a point. One single, prominent point. It’s the point when, during one of those few quiet moments when nobody is pestering you with questions about what to do, telling you a story about their pet rabbit because clearly maths is the perfect opportunity to do so, or giving you the droopy lower lip and the knock-kneed dance of the bloated bladder, you look across the gaggle of kids working at their tables and realise that, yes, the grade is starting to purr.

You’ve done the hard yards through the first few weeks setting your various rules and expectations. You’ve relocated certain sections of your classroom population to a term of service keeping the rubbish bin company. You’ve proven that, just because you’re doing the knock-kneed dance of the bloated bladder, doesn’t mean that the teacher’s going to cave into your boredom and work-avoidance tactic and let you spend five minutes of your handwriting time wandering the slightly stale refuge of the toilets until you think you’ve reached that length of time where, any more and you’re pushing it, and any less and the other boys will think you’ve caved in.

No. This is the point where the kids have woken up to the fact that, despite all the evidence, you’re the teacher and, knock me down with a feather, you’re actually running this sanitised Lord of the Flies tribe of egos and insecurities.

For me, that point arrived at 9:35 this morning, ten minutes or so into our final reading block Learning Centre activity for the week.

All four tables were working quietly, helping each other out with hints and pointers, and if they were talking about something other than their work, they were still working AT THE SAME TIME! Granted, a bit of that might have been because the one table filled with boys were doing the mix and match cloud activity and half of them had spread themselves across the floor to give themselves room to organise their cloud pictures, names and descriptions and were therefore far enough away from each other not to flick each other’s ears while the other poor kid wasn’t looking. Still, they were all working properly, and it was quiet, serene and peaceful in the classroom.

So, of course, there was only one thing I could possibly do.

I gave all four tables about 50 points each over the next twenty minutes until the session was finished.

That point might have arrived, but a healthy dose of blatant bribery hardly ever goes astray, eh?

Whether others may think it morally ethical or not, or grizzle about rewarding kids with abstract things like table points or even, heaven forbid in this age of apparently obese Australian children, give them a lollyroo, the kids kept working well all day. It was a fantastic end to the week, and left me, the poor feller in charge who’s hoping day by day his facade of a teacher who really knows what’s going on will last one more day, feeling quite proud of them all. They think well of me, they want to be here, and they’re enjoy their learning. It can only mean respect.

Then I found the rubber spider on my desk after I’d sent them all home…