School Spirit

Tomorrow, or probably today considering it’s nearly ten o’clock when I’m writing this, is our school’s Prep Open Day. Tomorrow, for the first two hours up until recess, prospective Prep parents for next year will be touring around the school, most likely being lead around by a few of the older children. A very important day for the continued health of any school, as if you don’t get the Prep enrollments to cover the number of Grade Six kids heading off to high school, you can jeopardise the number of staff you have the following year. Lose 40 kids to secondary school but only get 20 Preps you’re looking at one less grade which could mean one teacher’s out of a job.

Yes. Quite an important day to get those Prep parents hooked early and enrolled, eh?

Mind you… for a better chance of hooking them in, the joint should be neat and tidy, eh?

So that’s what most of us spent the first fifteen minutes or so after lunch doing this afternoon.

‘Kids! Get back out there and CLEAN THAT YARD!’

So we did.

With strict instructions that we were to clean the area around our classroom WITHOUT playing on the monkey bars, we scurried around along the gutters, burrowed under the play equipment, dragged one or two inquisitive and over-eager kids out from between the two portables, scampered through the bushes and fished little wrappers out of the puddles on the asphalt.

And laughed at the older kids who thought they’d cheat the system by pinching rubbish from our grade’s bin to show that they’d collected a lot themselves, only to walk back to their own grade with their friends trailing after them singing the ‘Bin Scab!’ Chorus.

We did have to call it off short though. Not only was it a little chilly by then, but the clouds decided it was time to open up too.

Ever tried to get twenty five kids across the yard to wash their hands and back again while it’s raining and they think it’s more fun to dance around in it? Or decide that the taps are all well and good for normal washing… but we can wash our hands just as well by rinsing them in the asphalt puddles or scraping water off the monkey bars.

Well… we got them inside eventually, and generally dry all things considered.

‘What’s next, Mr V?’

‘Okay kids… now you can clean the room.’

‘AWWW!!!!’

It’s been a while since the last (and first… and at the moment only…) Teaching Tutorial was posted, that one guiding the reader through the important steps necessary to start your day on the right foot, fit and fighting and ready to take on the world, or at the very least twenty five kids. So I thought it high time another post was added for those of you wondering exactly what this job entails from day to day. A lovely, ordered utopia of sharpened pencils lined in their appropriate tubs, quiet days strolling between the tables while children focus intently on their work, heads bowed in concentration, and not an unsavoury odour on any slight breeze anywhere at all.

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

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Officially, Clean Up Australia Day is this Sunday, March 2nd. The little problem here is that the kids aren’t at school that day. They’re at home, probably sitting in front of their X-boxes, their PS2s or in the corner. Maybe that’s a slight generalisation tainted by the ever-so-slightly-mental Friday I worked my way through today. If I’m honest, I reckon it probably is. But anyway…

Because the kids aren’t going to be here on Sunday (and, most importantly for us, neither are we teachers!), today, Friday, February 29th (and didn’t we talk about Leap Years a lot today!), was Clean Up Australia for Schools Day. Meaning… we dragged the kids around the school ground and the sports oval complex nearby with plastic bags and a shortage of plastic gloves. Yes, plastic is not really environment friendly, but neither’s leaving all that rubbish flitting around in the breeze either.

Lots of glass around, to be honest. The kids thought it was great to find an old VB bottle or two, but I did get a little sick of trying to pick up shattered glasses by the roadside, and I didn’t even bother when the kids found little tiny bits of glass scattered across the asphalt car parks.

The kids seemed to enjoy it, even if it did cut into their Free Time Friday afternoon, which most had to use finishing off their week’s work anyway. Maybe that was why they were happy to stay out there as long as possible…

I don’t think we’re technically allowed to call it ’scab duty’ any more… I think ‘emu parade’ is the more politically friendly and slightly amusing term for it now.

Shame. I always liked the term ’scab duty’.

* Not to do with this post, but if you missed today’s previous short post, read on again. Seems my other site is of Cultural Significance!