School Spirit

‘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.

A few weeks ago we started on an initiative known as the Trivia Challenge, organised through schools by the Epilepsy Foundation of Victoria. The aim is to increase the kids’ awareness and understanding of epilepsy as well as give them a challenging, fun activity in regards to working in teams to answer various trivia questions. We took part last year and a team of our Grade Four kids got through the the final in Melbourne, which was a fantastic result. This year, we’re taking part again.

First, we warmed them up a few days earlier with a grade challenge of 25 questions, and gave them some ideas on epilepsy, how it’s caused, what it does, and how to help someone who has it, etc. Then we split the kids into teams of four and gave them an hour in the afternoon to answer as many of the 100 questions as they could. Our highest scoring teams from each Grade level will then move on to the next level of competition. As of yet we haven’t announced those teams.

Great idea, but part of participation in the Challenge is the obligation to donate money to the Epilepsy Foundation of Victoria, which is where Stripes Day comes in. One of the questions asked whether wearing striped socks could cause a seizure. The answer, clearly, is no. But this made us think of holding a Stripes Day to raise the money to be donated. So tomorrow, everybody wears striped clothes instead of school uniform and makes a gold coin donation. All money collected is passed on to the Foundation. Great idea.

Except it meant me spending this afternoon hitting the shops looking for pants with stripes on them…

Tomorrow will cost the kids $1 each… tomorrow will cost me $35…

All in a good cause though, eh?

And now for a quick band update.

Great success was our first performance of the year earlier this week, which gave the kids a nice little top up of confidence going into this afternoon’s rehearsal. With five of them, it’s somewhat light hearted and easy going, but that just makes it a fun half hour or so for me after work as well.

We tried another song we hadn’t touched for a while and it seemed to come together pretty well - a few more run throughs and it’ll be up to performing standard - when they started asking for something from a particular movie.

The new Indiana Jones movie starts today, so it was in the kids’ heads at the time. Seems they wanted to play something from the Indy movies. Well, last year we had a quick look at ‘Raider’s March‘, the theme from the movies. They couldn’t play it too well at all last year, but we brought it out this afternoon and the five of them had a run through with myself topping up the brass line.

Fair dinkum, we could almost play it next week if we had to, they read through it that well. There’s a few holes to fill with instruments we haven’t got, and a few bits that are tricky and need work, but nothing the five of them couldn’t pull off. They’re demanding another assembly performance as soon as possible, and a gig outside of the school immediately now too! Looks like Indy’s gonna get a run somewhere soon, no matter how few times we’ve ever played it!

So looks like we’ll be fronting the assembly in two Monday’s time to blast ‘Raider’s March‘ throughout the multipurpose room, and they don’t know it yet, but a local Arts Festival has just sent us a request to play there later on too…

Indy rides again, eh?

Saturday night a week and a half ago now, the final day of the Easter holidays, I went down to Melbourne to watch the footy and support my team. It was the first home game of the season and our first game we could get to this year. We beat the Old Enemy (well, one of the two Old Enemies) so all was good with the world and I bellowed my lungs out in support of the Glorious Crusade.

Sunday night, the day before I’m due back in the classroom to front the kids, I start to feel a little sore in the throat. Shouldn’t have yelled quite so much. I’ll be okay though, the kids were just about working well and quietly two weeks ago. We’ll just carry on nicely as though the last fortnight hasn’t been missed.

I fall for that every holiday!

Reached Wednesday night and the throat has not gotten sorer, it’s actually cleared up, but the voice has gotten croaky. Thursday, tough day not being able to talk louder than the kids (wasn’t gone, the kids are just a little rowdy this year), and there’s only so far holding one hand in the air and waiting for them to face you can go. By the end of the day, we were sort of glad to put the day behind us and pretend it never happened.

So… what better way to remedy a rapidly disappearing voice? Spend the last day of the week at the District Sports directing kids to all of their events, of course!

Gawd…

Actually, the voice survived the day quite well. I gargled a few glasses of warm, salty water the night before and softened the chords up enough. I just didn’t talk all that loudly with the kids on the day. Made cheering loudly for them as they approached the finish lines a little harder, but a quiet pat on the back or a knuckled nudge to the shoulder as you walk past afterwards is often more suitable and meaningful. Quiet recognition can carry a lot more weight, I reckon.

The kids did really, really well. Only about ten or so actually received any ribbons, but that’s not really what we consider these sorts of things about. Every one of our kids that fronted up for a race or event left nothing behind and tried their absolute guts’ out. You can’t ask more than that. When a few had a quiet grizzle about coming third last out of twenty seven competitors and stuff like that, I just asked them a simple question.

‘Are you at school doing maths right now?’

‘No.’

‘Then there’s a win right there, eh?’

Even better, the kids behaviour was fantastic. Only a few issues that cleared themselves up easily, and for the most part the kids not competing kept themselves occupied with a tennis ball, a nerf ball, and a footy they found… somewhere. They even threw together a scratch match against the kids from another school. We had to call it off after about forty minutes or so of continuous play as it was just about to get nasty. Our kids came back complaining.

‘They cheat! They change the rules and call stupid free kicks!’

‘That’s why I called the game off, fellers.’

‘Yeah, we weren’t gonna win.’

‘It’s not winning the game I’m worried about. I stopped it before you won the fight afterwards!’

That picked their spirits up a bit!

Technorati Tags: sport, children’s sport

I’ll open first by stating that this post is a bit of a gripe. It’s an issue that keeps popping its head up from time to time and, to be honest, I think it’s blown quite considerably out of proportion. And this issue of critical importance is teachers giving the odd lolly or unhealthy treat as a reward for good behaviour. With this apparent childhood obesity epidemic running rampant through Australia’s primary and secondary school aged population, the blow torch has fairly regularly been turned on us for having the good old lolly jar or similar sitting on the desk as the odd reward for good behaviour or winning some little competition within the classroom. Things like that. There have been pushes from various outside (and internal) sources to have things like this removed for the health and wellbeing of the children.

Well, I’m holding out against these invaders. My lolly jar is staying firmly on my desk and I’ll keep using it until some bureaucrat in a fancy suit makes it officially illegal and damaging to the chance to continue my career and forces me to remove it. Let me run through a few things.

This riled me yesterday afternoon while I was reading the daily Herald Sun newspaper after I’d spent the day at work. Specifically, the article ‘Mothers sour on sweets‘. More than 95% of parents surveyed claim their kids are receiving unhealthy treats for performing well. Surprise surprise! Of course they are. No argument there. Used well, it’s a cheap and effective and, more importantly, fun, little thing for the kids involved. Apparently though, according to these figures, 90% of these parents disapprove of the practice. News to me. I’ve yet to have any parent complain about the lolly jar sitting in plain sight on my desk. When most parents see it for the first time they look down at their little darling and suggest ‘you’d better behave if you want one of those, eh?’ In fact… I get a lot more complaints from parents about running the kids around the oval for various reasons.

Ironically, I read this article after spending the day with 60 odd kids at our local district school sports! I’ll post about that one later for a bit of good, light hearted stuff!

Back to this article though. It seems to even imply a negative response to the practice of kids bringing lolly bags and cupcakes to share with their class on their birthdays. It’s the kid’s birthday! If that’s not a traditional time to celebrate with a lolly or a little bit of cake, then when is? You see the kids walking in as proud as punch with another year on their age and a tupperware box filled with a cupcake for each kid (and the teacher, mind you!) that will take all of three bites to consume. Let the kids have their day, eh?

And yes, apparently there is a childhood obesity epidemic we’re not helping to remedy too. The odd lolly given out as a prize for working their backsides off compared to three or four laps of the oval each week. Which side of the ‘healthy/unhealthy’ kid ledger am I likely to have those kids on?

I’ve just looked through the class photos of each of my grades over the eight years I’ve been teaching. If I had to be mean and nasty, I could count 18 kids who would possibly be either fat or obese. Six of these play sport at quite a high level all the same. That’s less than 20 kids out of a total of about 420. Puppy fat, baby fat and kids who you know are going to shoot up and become string beans I’m not counting, and I don’t think they should be. Yep, lots of kids are unhealthily fat, but I’ve yet to see this range of 20-40% that is regularly bandied around. Personally, my figures are about 2%, but I must just be a little kinder on the little fellers burning off their baby fat.

Anyway, this is the way the lolly jar works on my desk. Firstly, if anyone is going to get fat from it, it’s going to be me. When the kids are elsewhere and I’m working alone in the room, I’m going to graze from the jar myself. Not to mention my practice of eating one of these lollies in front of the kids when they’re working too loudly. A quiet ‘you’re too noisy, I get a lolly’ shuts them up a lot more efficiently than calling out ‘too much noise, lower the volume or lose your tongue!’

Okay, that phrase has worked at times too, but the kids know you’re joking.

At the end of each week, we hold a raffle draw. One ticket is drawn out for each day we’ve been at school that week. Usually five, then. And each winning kid gets to choose one lolly from the jar. The largest lolly in this jar is probably a musk stick which has been broken in two. The rest are usually licorice allsorts, chocolate bullets or jelly beans. No matter the size, they win one lolly. So at the end of the week, five kids get one lolly. And you can bet there are fifteen to twenty other kids wishing they were the lucky winners instead. All for one lolly.

At the end of each fortnight, we see which table group won with the most table points. These lucky kids get two lollies for their two weeks of good work. Which means, if they’re lucky enough to also win the raffle draw, they walk out at the end of the week with three lollies!

We then add up the points for all four tables. If this combined total is higher than our previous high score, then every kid gets one lolly as a reward for the whole grade working well. This happens maybe once a term, which is good, because otherwise I’d be running out of money refilling my stocks! So, again, if a kid is really lucky that week, they might get a raffle prize, win the table points, and the grade might break their points record. Which means the kid might walk away at the end of the week with a total of four lollies.

Which apparently will set them on the path of childhood obesity.

I’m going to go back to the start of the week though and begin again. Monday mornings, unless it’s absolutely belting it down with rain, the kids all do a lap of the oval after assembly. Complaints fall on deaf ears unless they can show either a note from their parents or a plaster cast on their leg. As often as possible, the half hour before lunch after maths is a huff’n'puff session. Twenty odd minutes of physical activity outside after, yep, a lap of the oval. The kids could do up to six laps of this oval each week. Adding in the distance from the room to the oval and back, that’s about a kilometre over the week alread with recess and lunchtimes still to come.

We have the favourite ‘apple slinky’ machine in the room where at recess and lunchtime, kids can peel, core and slinky their apples to eat. Up goes the apple consumption of the school by about 200%! After lunch during silent reading, the kids are also allowed to eat any left over fruit they’ve brought from home. Twice a term we usually have a ‘healthy lunch’ day as well. If the kids have water in their drink bottles, they can keep them on their tables and use them throughout the day. Lots of healthy options and nutrition and fitness happening all week.

But at the end of the week a kid might get four lollies!

Surely there’s room for the odd lolly amidst all the fitness, healthy eating and exercise we also promote.

Yes, I know there are fat kids out there and schools are working their own weight off trying to bend their curriculum and timetables around new guidelines and requirements being passed down to us to keep these kids fit and healthy, but it goes too far sometimes. No lollies in the jar for the odd little treat that makes being a kid so much fun? Hopefully my parents will continue to let me reward their kids with the odd little morsel of sweet, sugary delight without worrying that I’m damaging the health of their little prides and joys.

I know there are a few readers out there with kids of their own. I’m looking at this purely from my side of the debate, but I honestly can’t see any serious reason other than allergies or similar to particular additives and so forth where, run like this (as the vast majorities of classrooms seem to) could realistically be seen as negligent. I’d be interested in any responses to either side, but I’ll say again though that I’ll fight to keep my lolly jar until they tell me ‘lose the jar or lose your job’.

Let the kids be kids while they still can, I reckon.

Cheers.

Technorati Tags: childhood obesity, health, children’s health, lollies, teaching