For now though, I’m happy that the regular strips are all up to date. The End of Year Report can slip in whenever, but finally the regulars are up and in their correct order and positions. Now I can just put any future strips together and up date them normally without thinking about what date they should be and which number in the sequence they are, etc.

Anyway, more to come later, and not just concerning the comic.

I think I have to update one of the ongoing ’stories’ from last year’s blog posts too.

Later for that one.

Cheers.

G’day.

It’s been far too long, but I’ve decided to give this blog a second try. I think I’ll be setting it up somewhat differently and possibly changing the general direction of it as well. While I’ll still use it to write up about the various day to day adventures that might befall someone teaching in a primary school, I think I’ll also use it more specifically to tie in with the School Spirit comic as well.

So, to begin with, welcome to 2009 from School Spirit. The comic itself is almost back up to date after falling behind in late 2008 due to being snowed under by just about everything. The good news though, is it is still running, and will be for as long as possible. Below is the first strip of 2009, like each year a recount of the last year’s content.

I’ll have to see what I can do about rearranging the blog now. Clean it out and give it a good flushing. Set it up in such a way it can work better for what I now think it needs to be.

Until then…

Cheers.

July begins today, and while I’d love to see it continue to grow each month, I’ll be happy to see it break through that 4000 mark a third time running. Let it settle a bit before I start entertaining thoughts of 5000, eh?

Back with more over the next few days, and this time focusing more on teaching and education themes again. Holidays have just started and reports and parent / teacher interviews are all done now, so there’s probably more time to share around again.

Technorati Tags: webcomics

‘The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, inate, untold,
Of being only four years old.‘
- Christopher Morley, To A Child

Four years ago today, I officially launched my little webcomic, School Spirit. I’d never read a webcomic before, I’d never even heard of them. A friend had just told me ‘I’m writing a webcomic and you’re drawing it for me’. I said ‘where am I going to find the time to draw a webcomic, whatever that is?’ and half an hour later had emailed him a quick sketch of what would become the first School Spirit strip.

On June 12th, 2004, School Spirit was officially launched and here it is, four years later with 580 regular strips, 57 special ones, three new strips a week and an unblemished updating record.

Now it’s even spawned this blog site!

As you’d probably guess, it revolves around kids at primary school, with spirits living in the cemetery next door. It originally grew out of a primary school musical production I was writing at the time but since then has taken on a story and life of its own. If you’re interested in reading it, or at least having a look, go right ahead. I’ll let you decide whether you think it’s worth your time or not. I’ve been here four years now… I’m well past that ‘look at me and love me’ drivel.

Leave that to those who think they’re going to be the next best thing, eh?

Cheers.

June begins today, and I’m thinking it may be a bit of an ask to expect the strip to continue growing each month. We’ll just have to see how things go. 130 or more readers a day is a fair ask, considering just last December it was still only getting about 80.

Mind you, it will reach four years online on June 12th, so with a little bit of extra publicity I might manage to wrangle up, just maybe it will repeat the effort this month. However it goes, all I can do is keep those three strips coming out each week and enjoy spending my free time on it, eh?

Technorati Tags: webcomics

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard but sounds like bird.
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead -
For goodness’ sake don’t call it “deed“!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!

A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn’t learned by fifty five.

No wonder kids have trouble spelling, eh?

And outside the window, an entire flock of flying pigs.

No. A day will come, and if we’re honest, it will come tomorrow, when you will walk into your classroom, fully intent on endowing upon the children new and exciting pieces of knowledge and improve talents, that you look around and… you can’t find your desk.

You know it was there. You saw it yesterday. Or was it the day before. Maybe it was last week. Anyway, you know it’s there somewhere because, I mean honestly, who’s going to pinch a desk? I mean… those things weigh a truckload, eh? Exactly. But still… the fact remains. You can’t see it.

Why? Because it’s submerged under that deluge of paperwork, kids correction, planning folders, kids show-and-tell bits and pieces they’ve left there for six weeks, the odd lonely hair clip (lost as well) and quite probably, somewhere beneath the crust, that ham, salad and beetroot sandwich you were really looking forward to eating last fortnight. What do you do about it? Do you spend your lunchtime and recess and an hour after school sorting through everything with the greatest of care? Rein in some sort of order and file everything where it should be? Correction in a pile by your bag (which you haven’t remembered to take home for the last two weeks anyway, but the intention is always good). Show-and-tell bits and pieces distributed into the corresponding child’s locker tub. Planning folders open in the centre of the desk so you always know what you’re doing.

Or do you sit the bin where your chair usually goes, reach across to the back of the desk, drag everything forward and watch with desperate satisfaction as everything crashes into the depths of that black plastic bin liner and start with a clean slate?

The first one sounds like that utopia again, the second sounds easier. One doesn’t exist, and the other gets you in strife when report writing comes around and you haven’t got anything to report on except your gut instincts. And you can’t really back them up without all that paperwork, eh?

No. So you perform a balancing act. You get yourself through the rest of the term and tackle the desk on a day during the holidays. Yes, much of that day is spent finding it… but once you’ve found it you’re halfway there.

Spend a good hour at least sorting everything into various categories (or, if you want the easy, realistic term, piles) on the floor, and keep that recycling box handy too. Correction there, ready to be done once you’re finished, various learning area books and texts back onto the shelves. It’s amazing how you didn’t have time to put them there when you were finished with them first, eh? Fair dinkum, those kids are a distraction, aren’t they? Eventually you’ll find that your piles have become neater, many of them will have been placed in more appropriate locations (and the bin is generally not one of those places, no matter how tempting it may be – unless it’s old work that’s no longer necessary because you’ve taken down the kids’ results, I suppose. Your decision, I guess).

Finally, when much of your bits and pieces are back into some sort of order and logical locations, set your desk out. Get those pencils into their tub in the corner, straighten out that planning folder (we might have to have a post about that too, eh?) and stand back to admire your clean and sparkling desk… of which you can now see almost half of the surface of! Enjoy the order and the neatness of the piece of art you’ve created, and go home content with the world.

Because next week you’ll be back to the start again.

Those kids are a big distraction, eh?

Related posts: Teaching Tutorial 1: How to start your day

Technorati tags: teaching, tutorial, cleaning

The chords are C / Am / F / G, with the fourth line changing to F / G / C / C. Easy! The first part is slow, and the rest of the song follows the same tune and quicker speed of the second half. The little Ab / Bb / C ending you can also add in after each chorus if you wish.

The Ferret Song

Small, sharp teeth, beady eyes,
Whiskery nose twitching side to side.
Stalks its prey without a sound,
OUCH! I should have turned around, ’cause

Chorus
I got bitten on the leg by a ferret,
I got bitten yesterday at school!
I got bitten and it’s not really fair, it
Should have bit my friend as well!

The lady said, ‘What? It’s got a lead on!
If you don’t believe me then take a look!
It could’ve been worse, you could’ve been weed on!
Don’t be such a sook! But…

Chorus

Next time I see a ferret, gonna chop it half and
Kick it across the netball courts!
Or if my best friend won’t stop laughing
I might stuff it down his shorts! ‘Cause…

Chorus

It should have bit my friend as well!

Anyway, the kids thought it was amusing. The young feller who was actually bitten by the ferret the day before was so chuffed he actually substituted his own name into the lyrics instead. That’s all for now… more original songs next time something out of the ordinary happens at school, eh?

Cheers.

Related topics: The Easter Ferret, the School Spirit webcomic Easter Ferret story.

Technorati Tags: ferrets, Easter, songs, music.

Either way, here’s the beginning of the latest storyline, The Easter Ferret. For those who’ve read this blog a few times in the last week or so, yes, this will feature a few of the events of our own Easter Fair during the last week of term – especially the events recounted in my previous post of the same name – The Easter Ferret.

Clicking the strip will take you to that particular strip on the site. Incidentally… I packed away my Christmas stuff earlier than this. I took it all down on Easter Saturday.

Technorati Tags: Easter, webcomic, ferrets.

The cartoon to the side is clickable, as always, and will take you to the School Spirit website. Specifically, it will take you to the page of this particular strip.

Meanwhile, the Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal will run again today so no doubt I’ll have the telly running in the background so I can pop my head in and out and keep up with how much money Victoria has raised this year. I think they’ll looking at about $14 million or some amazing total this year. We keep seeming to beat the previous record each and every time lately.

Anyway… enough for now. Hope you enjoy the Good Friday humour, and all the best.

I don’t actually think I even have any hot cross buns in the house today…

Technorati Tags: Good Friday, Easter, hot cross buns.