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?

‘We worry what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.’ – Stacia Tauscher

It’s the Monday of the Queen’s Birthday long weekend and I’ve just drawn the curtain on my reports for the kids for this first half of the year. Okay, later on this afternoon I’ll pull the curtain back just a little and give them a once over look to check for errors and things – a second read through should be mandatory for any sort of report – but I think I can safely put them aside for most of the afternoon and enjoy what’s left of the public holiday.

The reports won’t be handed out to the kids for another fortnight, but they’re still to be proof-read then handed back for minor tweaks and corrections after the cross-examination. There’s usually at least one sentence you’ve snuck in that someone from higher up requests be, at best altered or at worst removed completely. You have to be honest and truthful when reporting to parents about their abilities and where they are, but only for a given value of ‘truth’. Sentences like ‘your son is in the half of the grade that makes the top half possible‘ and ‘somewhere your son is depriving a village of its idiot‘ tend to be frowned upon.

Which is a little bit of a shame, because I’m sure it would make both the writing and the reading of these reports much more entertaining. Mind you… there’d probably only be a select calibre of parents who’d appreciate the humour, eh?

I think I’m fairly happy with what I’ve served up though, although I’ll probably spend a bit of time tonight running through the ’scores’ I’ve given the kids for ‘effort’ and ‘behaviour’. Have another think about them and decide on whether they’ve been very good or acceptable in those cases. Have they worked as well as they can, or could they do with a rocket placed under them to get them moving a little more in the second half of the year? That’ll be the final thing I re-read before uploading them to the server tomorrow morning, along with perhaps a final sentence addressed to each kid at the end.

They’re funny things, these reports. Easy enough to write when you know the kid, and after five months you generally know the kid. The strange part is you’re often reporting on them with an eye on the rest of the year, or where they’re going to be in the future. There only seem to be a few parents who come in to talk about their kid in the mid year interviews who have read the reports with their eyes on where the kid is now. Most of the time you’re talking about where they’re going but, honestly, I think the best part of a kid is seeing where the little tacker is right now.

I guess that’s one of the best things I like about this job. I may not get to see who they are in the future, but every day I get to see who they are now.

This week, May 18th to 24th, is Education Week in Victoria. It’s an annual initiative of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (another name change!), and the official site is here. If, like me, you really don’t care too much for what’s on official education websites and things, then here’s a cut and paste job from their front page.

‘Education Week will be celebrated by Victorian government schools and kindergartens from 18-24 May 2008.

During the week, schools and kindergartens are encouraged to hold activities that engage parent and community networks while profiling their learning opportunities and achievements.

Open days, art shows, musical performances and other special events are among the many activities that give an insight into the vibrant education settings in which young Victorians learn, thrive and grow.‘

Learn, thrive and grow seems to be the current hype phrase this year.

Anyway, that explains why the Band played at the assembly, and why today the 3/4 Unit opened their doors to parents, grandparents and any friends of the kids who wanted to rock up to come in and spend part of the morning with us to see what goes on in these classrooms. It was quite a good turn out in regards to the number of parents and families we had drifting through during the day. Also gives us a chance to sometimes meet parents for the first time, which can make the parent teacher interviews in the next few weeks a bit more relaxed. We have five grades in the unit, which causes a few timetabling problems. In this case, a half hour rotation activity for each grade doesn’t fit nicely into two hours, so we had to carry it over after recess. That’s fine, but by the time the kids finally got back to our own grade (with a few parents in tow), they’d just about reached the end of their tethers and were quite unready to settle back down again.

Had to give them a quick growl and remind them that we had an audience today and they were embarrassing themselves. Didn’t seem to make much difference. Sending them around the oval for a run seemed to work though. At least, it gave the parents a good excuse to skedaddle out of there!

To be fair though, the morning rotation activities (language and maths games spread around the five grades) worked well. The first two hours have never passed so quickly, but at the same time, you definitely knew you’d earned your pay at the end of it. I spent the morning playing dice maths games with the 120 odd kids that passed through the room. It was a fairly easy activity that all but ran itself, but I still felt like I’d done nine rounds with a big red roo at the end of it.

Ah, Education Week. Fantastic idea, well worth the effort, looking forward to it again next year.

Just glad it’s only the once!

Here’s a little poem that’s been a favourite of mine for a while. It was written by one T.S. Watt in the Manchester Guardian, which I assume is a newspaper from Manchester. As to the date, I don’t know. I’ve got it published in a hard cover book about the crazy language of English. It probably works best if you read it out loud – but be warned! Just because it’s using the same letter patterns for words, don’t expect them to all use the same sounds! I’ll just let you read it for yourselves!

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?

I was sitting there during lunchtime today, just minding my own business while I killed off a cheese and olive roll I picked up on the way in from the bakery this morning – because today is shopping day and that usually means there’s bugger all in the pantry – when I felt a presence beside me. I turned my attention from the sports page of the paper (much more interesting a read when your team’s won on the weekend) towards this figure who has knelt down at the table beside me and there she was. All sweet smiles and innocence with a hint of a question. And that hint is all you ever need if you know what you’re looking for.

‘What?’ I asked, knowing my services were being sought. Can you ever trust that innocent, sweet grin you get when someone drops beside you and just waits for you to turn around and see them? Of course not! Especially when it’s coming from a fellow teacher, eh?

‘I have a big favour to ask you,’ she said to me, ‘but you’re not allowed to say no!’

‘Oh good, I hate decisions.’

Turns out her son has applied for a music scholarship to one of the secondary colleges around the traps. Being the music coordinator (or the closest thing we’ve got at our primary school), he needed a reference from me in regards to his attitude, abilities, talents and so forth. By Wednesday. Could I do it? Would I do it?

Silly question, eh? Of course I’d do it.

Fact of the matter is, the kids a better musician than I am already anyway. Okay, I probably know a bit more about how music’s put together and held together and stuff like that, but this kid could outplay me with one hand tied behind his back plucking a catgut string tied between two goalposts. I know enough to belt out or pick out a tune on an acoustic guitar to make ten year olds sit up and take notice, but that’s just simple tricks and deliberately playing bad chords to make them laugh. Plug it into an amplifier and they’ll think you’re a rock god. This kid though… he played lead guitar in the school musical two years ago when he was in grade four and only ten… and the little bugger deliberately played a little solo riff at the very end of each song so he could get the last note in!

So I’ve just spent the last hour or so typing up a few paragraphs to hand over to his mum tomorrow covering a few points I thought were important. Hopefully it’ll be enough to make this other school sit up and take notice and give him the result he deserves. I’ll just ask the kid for a free copy of any CD he cuts when he starts a proper career!

I never had the chance to teach him for a year myself, but I’ve worked with him for the last four years with the band now, and I reckon I might just have had the best side of the deal.

Related Posts: Advancing a teaching level, Writing a reference… follow up

Technorati Tags: teaching, references, kids, music

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

Technorati tags: teaching, tutorial, cleaning

The Easter holidays have just started now, so this is likely to be my last regular post for much of those two weeks. There’ll be a few updates about School Spirit, the webcomic, but I doubt there’ll be too many more about teaching the kids. A good reason for this is that I’m not going to see them for two weeks, eh? So, hopefully, if you’re reading, this one will tide you over. I hope it comes out sounding sensible, but it’s something that I’m not quite able to explain to myself. I still thought it suitable to go up here though. Every now and then I suppose you have to ramble to get the important things out… even if you can’t quite put your finger on it, eh?

Anyway, here goes. I experienced a change in my role as a teacher the other day, and it really had little to do with the professional side of the deal. As I’ll say further down, I’m sure there were other things that have contributed to this awareness, but in this case it’s the relationship side of things that mean more. Enough rambling though, eh?

Feel free to comment at the end if you’ve something worthwhile to contribute, eh? See you at the end.

This is my eighth year teaching now… although granted it’s only the first term completed. That still means I’ve been at this caper for 29 terms. That’s a bigger number, eh? The Easter holidays have just begun and, although it’s been a short term with only seven and a half weeks due to the early Easter period this year (apparently it’s the earliest Easter has been since 1913!), once I arrived home on Thursday afternoon (an hour earlier than usual, I might add!) my body basically just decided it was time to shut down. I don’t think you ever quite manage to maintain your energy levels through the term quite adequately. Even through a shorter term you still seem to be running on fumes and adrenaline by the end.

I’ve brought this up though because, although I’ve completed seven full years working day in, day out with the kids, most of the time you think you’ve pretty well got most of the job covered. There’s not really all that much you need to learn to carry on with your job after seven odd years of experience, eh? Well… I don’t think that’s quite correct.

If you’ve ever played a role-playing styled computer game, then maybe you’ll sort of understand what I’m about to get at here. At the risk of betraying some sort of computer-geekish background (which is probably not quite accurate, but there you go, I generally enjoy the stories behind these sorts of games and I’ve had an interest in midieval history since, well, forever!), I’ll just leave that sentence up there! I’ll see if I can suitable explain what I mean.

When most of us talk about going up a level in regards to teaching, at least down here, it’s usually to do with the pay structure. You start out as a graduate and that’s the pay scale you’re on. Each year, provided you’ve met certain standards and so forth, you move up a level until you reach the top tier. I honestly have no idea what the top tier is now, nor which particular level I’m on right now either, as the structure has changed a few times since I started and I’ve just lost interest in exactly where I am on the scale. I know my pay has improved considerably since that first pay packet, but that’s as far as I’ve looked. But that’s not the sort of ‘Teaching Level’ I’m thinking about.
When I left work on that final afternoon a few days ago, yes, I was exhausted (as was everybody else working there, I should add!), but I stood by a gate watching one of the kids (not technically mine, but I taught the little bloke a few years ago) wander home after a quick chat and felt… satisfied. Like I’d reached some new step. The job seemed a little easier… a little more fulfilling. I actually felt more experienced now. Can I put my finger on why? Not specifically.

While I’m sure there are lots of things contributing to this new sense of accomplishment, I would suggest it was this last quick conversation with this boy that earned me that last few bits of experience to ‘gain’ this new level, if I can stick with the role-playing analogy. I’m usually a little uneasy mentioning particular instances such as this, but I think in this case it’s worth while. This little feller’s been having a bit of a hard time around the traps lately and trying hard to pull it all together, but I’ve seen the boy he is inside and know he’s going to do okay. I reckon he just needs somebody in his corner unconditionally, and I’m pretty sure he realises he’s got someone there. I won’t elaborate any further. Some things should remain close, eh? I’ll just say I think it was just this one conversation as he left for home that did it. A real smile and a thumbs up as he said ’see ya later, Mr V’ and he was off with a spring in his step.

I guess this sense of ‘level advancement’ is probably more to do with realising I was right about this kid and watching his back while he found his way through a few rough spots. If that’s the case, I’ll have to say that the feeling that came from that short five minute chat alone by the school gate means more than any of the pay scale level advancements I’ve been through.

And he says he’s gonna build me another wooden box to store more DVDs in, too. He’s a top little feller, this boy.

Mind you, it’ll cost me a twenty!

Cheers.

There’s an art to starting your day of classroom teaching off on the right foot. You can’t just roll out of the car, saunter casually into the room, cast your eye across the impeccable neatness of the room, sit back with the daily newspaper while the last ten minutes tick by before the bag bell rings, and then settle into your big, comfortable teacher’s chair as the kids file in and politely sit in three equal rows before you, eyes fixed intently on yourself and ears alert and eager to drink in the knowledge you are bound to feed them that day.

No. There’s a certain order to things, and the above just isn’t reasonable.

Let’s start with your arrival at the school in the mornings. The first thing you plan to do when you arrive is set up the daily timetable so the kids know what they are expected to do today. But somewhere along any major road you travel to get to work, you’ll find yourself stuck behind some small little hatchback with one of those bobble-headed cats grinning at you like an idiot from the parcel shelf. It will be travelling at half the current speed limit, and there will be no safe opportunity to over take. What’s worse, if you are well enough prepared that morning so that you actually leave early, then your chances of encountering such a hatchback will in fact double. This will mean that, even though you’ve left for work ten minutes earlier than normal, you’ll get to work five minutes later than usual anyway.

Once you’ve managed to park your car, it’s time to get yourself across to your classroom, and then set that daily timetable up. No easy matter. You’ve got your lunch in your hand, and maybe the basket or bag with books you took home to correct the night before. If you’ve found time to actually accomplish this correction, then clearly you’ve forgotten to do something else of major importance which will come back to bite you on the freckle at the most inopportune moment. That’s not the immediate problem though. You will get halfway to your room and realise you’ve left something on the front seat. Do you return to the car and juggle everything in two hands, or sacrifice a little more time to unload in the classroom and then make the trek back?

Neither will work. Juggle everything and you’ll drop it all opening the classroom door, if you even get that far. Decide to stop by the classroom first and you’ll be distracted by the first kid that wanders past (who shouldn’t even be here yet at this hour, but that’s working parents, eh?) and you will forget you ever had to go back to the car in the first place.

If you’ve left something in the car though, it couldn’t have been that important anyway, eh? Unless it’s your key ring and you can’t get into the classroom.

Once you are inside, you’re nearly there. Well, you’d like to think so. Where did the cleaners put the classroom bin this time? In the bag room? On one of the tables? In the classroom two doors down for no apparent reason? What about that daily timetable you update each morning so the kids can keep track of what’s expected of them today? That won’t take long, so let’s do something more important instead. Photocopy today’s maths work. Right. There it is… and right on cue! Paper jam. A paper jam that won’t let you get the paper out unless you spend the next ten minutes up to your elbows in photocopier guts.

Right. The photocopying is done. Better put lunch in the staffroom fridge, pick up the daily paper, and read the bulletin and the staffroom information board (which will be updated the moment you walk outside again). The paper’s haven’t arrived, you’ll have to rearrange the shelf of the fridge so your sandwich doesn’t get squashed by three apples, a plastic salad container and twelve old bottles of sauce that no-one’s thought to pitch out yet.

Okay… after getting distracted by one hundred and thirty seven kids on your way back to the classroom, all wanting to tell you every intricate detail of their latest adventure which usually involves a trip to gran’s, the latest elitist new toy fad, or the state of their dad’s tinia, you arrive with the intention of setting up that daily timetable just as the bag bell rings and the kids pour in.

A few minutes later, after you’ve spoken to a few parents loitering around the door, yelled at Johnno for doing a swan dive off his table, and fobbed off another dozen kids with their little stories, the bell goes again and the kids are falling over themselves on the way to sit on the floor. You’re about to call the roll when one kid calls out that the timetable hasn’t been changed.

At which point you think about stabbing him with your pen, calling it quits and finding something easier to do like run the country.

Instead, because you’ve learnt to keep all that inside and show a chirpy, eager grin, you instead make up a glorious excuse involving something of drastic importance you had to do this morning.

Yes, that’s right. You tell a little white lie because you know the moment the kids find out you’re not actually in complete control they’re going to eat you alive.

And then tomorrow, you’ll do it all again!

Although I posted this topic a week or so ago, I didn’t realise that the nine points I posted then were just the first nine of a list of twenty one reasons that you know you are a teacher. This Monday, the rest of the list found its way into my pigeon hole via the back of the weekly staff bulletin and timetable. So now, here is the complete set.

Once again, I don’t know where this list originally came from, but there are so many accurate sentences here it’s almost scary.

How do you know you are a teacher? Here you go!

1. You can hear 25 voices behind you and know exactly which one belongs to the child out of line.

2. You get a secret thrill out of laminating something.

3. You walk into a shop and hear the words ‘It’s Ms/Mr ______’ and know you’ve been spotted.

4. You have 25 people that accidentally call you Mum/Dad at one time or another.

5. You can eat a multi-course meal in under twenty-five minutes.

6. You’ve trained yourself to go to the toilet at two distinct times of the day: recess and lunch.

7. You start saving other people’s rubbish because most likely, you can use that toilet paper tube or plastic butter tub for something in the classroom.

8. You believe the teachers’ staffroom should be equipped with a margarita machine.

9. You want to slap the next person who says it ‘must be nice to work 9 to 3:30 and have summers off’.

10. You believe chocolate is a food group.

11. You can tell if it’s a full moon without ever looking outside.

12. You believe that unspeakable evils will befall you if anyone says “Boy, the kids sure are settled today”.

13. You feel the urge to talk to strange children and correct their behaviour when you are out in public.

14. You believe in aerial spraying of Ritalin.

15. You think caffeine should be available in intravenous form.

16. You spend more money on school stuff than you do on your own children.

17. You can’t pass the school supply aisle without getting at least five items!

18. You ask your friends if the left hand turn he just made was a “good choice or a bad choice”.

19. You find true beauty in a can full of perfectly sharpened pencils.

20. You are secretly addicted to hand sanitiser, and finally,

21. You understand instantaneously why a child behaves a certain way after meeting his or her parents.

All so very, very true…

Personal favourites… numbers 11, 12 and 21. You may have others…

Cheers.

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…