School Spirit

‘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.

I finished today feeling a lot of pride.

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…

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

With ANZAC Day fast approaching, I’m spending this week and next talking about Gallipoli, the First World War, and the marches. Trying to get into the kids heads the importance of this day and the weighty history behind it. The kids find it strange and hard to grasp that, despite shooting at each other across the trenches of Gallipoli, there was no real hatred between the ANZAC troops and the Turks. I guess war is still black and white at that age - good versus bad - but they’re slowly starting to realise that being on different sides doesn’t mean you don’t like the other bloke. They’re also starting to appreciate the humour of some of these situations such as both sides raising wooden targets for the other side to aim at and throwing supplies and friendly notes across No Man’s Land, even sharing cigarettes and family photos with the ‘enemy’ while helping to bury the common dead.

‘Two Little Boys‘ is a song we’re going to focus on a bit leading up to ANZAC Day, especially it’s themes of friendship and loyalty, and to a lesser extent the loss of innocence. It’s a great little song recorded by Rolf Harris of wobble board fame. The video file to the side plays the recording alongside appropriate photos and images. I play it in C with a capo up a few frets.

Two Little Boys

Two little boys had two little toys, each had a wooden horse.
Gaily they’d play, each summer’s day, warriors both - of course!
One little chap then had a mishap - broke off his horse’s head.
Wept for his toy then cried with joy as his young playmate said;

“Did you think I would leave you crying when there’s room on my horse for two?
Climb up here Jack, and don’t be crying, I can go just as fast with two.
When we grow up we’ll both be soldiers and our horses will not be toys
And I wonder if we’ll remember when we were two little boys?”

Long years passed, war came so fast - bravely they marched away.
Cannons roared loud and in the mad crowd wounded and dying lay.
Up goes a shout, a horse dashes out, out from the ranks so blue.
Gallops away to where Joe lay - then came a voice he knew.

“Did you think I would leave you dying when there’s room on my horse for two?
Climb up here Joe, we’ll soon be flying, I can go just as fast with two.
Did you say, Joe, I’m all a-tremble, perhaps it’s the battle’s noise
But I think it’s that I remember when we were two little boys.

Did you think I would leave you dying when there’s room on my horse for two?
Climb up here, Joe, we’ll soon be flying - back to the ranks so blue.
Can you feel, Joe, I’m all a-tremble, perhaps it’s the battle’s noise
But I think it’s that I remember when we were two little boys.

Technorati Tags: ANZAC Day, songs, music

This post actually follows on rather neatly from yesterday’s entry, the one dealing with writing a reference for one of the kids. I originally planned on leaving that topic be until later on when I learned whether or not the kid managed to win himself the scholarship to one of the local secondary schools. Seems I probably can’t though, as another kid brought it up himself this afternoon.

I was back at the basketball stadium once again this afternoon after work. As I’ve said earlier, I’ve found it’s not a bad way to wind down after a day at work and a good way to get to see some of the kids outside of the school environment. They’re definitely a little more relaxed and cheeky around you once they’re more familiar with you, but I believe their respect for you grows too. Anyway, I’m wandering off a bit at the moment.

I was early (should have read the draw I’ve got hanging on my fridge this morning) but fortunately one of the kids had turned up early as well just to hang around so it gave us a chance to catch up and chat about everything and nothing. Those are the best kinds of chats. He’s left the school for his final year of primary school, so basketball is also a good way to keep in touch now too. It was good to hear him talking and asking about the kids he used to run around with last year. Seems he knew already that this other boy was pushing for a scholarship and he was really eager to hear how it was going. At the same time he admitted a little feeling of guilt. Seems he wants this boy to get the scholarship, but at the same time, quietly hopes he’ll miss out because that means they’ll be back at the same school next year in year seven. A little bit of selfishness there, he admitted, but I reckon that’s great. His old friends still mean something to him. He wants the best, but failing that, he’s happy to know they might be back together again.

He was also rapt to hear that several of his old mates will be competing in the district sports on Friday. Another chance to catch up with kids he hasn’t seen since December. He was even bold enough to state that he’d sneak away from his own school group to come and visit us on the day. Who cares if he got a stern talking to, eh? I sort of suggested we’d love to see him, but keep his head down, eh?

‘What, are you gonna be there too?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, I’ve been sucked in this year too, mate.’

His eyes lit up like cracker night bonfires with empty jerry cans lying nearby.

Leaving schools doesn’t always mean you leave your friends.

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Technorati Tags: friends, school, kids