Day Forty Four: Make Good Choices

I am not sure what to write about today.  I could write about the fact that one of our students is going to India for three months, and so will miss most of the next term.  I could talk about the fact that there are some groups in my class that do social studies together that are going to end in blood.  I think I will talk about that.  There are two groups of girls in my class that are not working out well together.  They were told to make 'good choices' at the beginning of the year when they picked their partners.  So these groups made 'poor choices' I guess because they are not getting along.  Here is an example:  A and R fight continually and R has to be the queen bee all the time.  She doesn't share, she has all the answers and she screeches at her partner.  The other two, K and D have already been spoken to.  K is bullying D, but it was their choice of partner so I guess they have to live with it.  WHich to me is CRAP!! so one kid gets bullied, but because she picked her partner she has to live with it all year?  What is she going to remember at the end of the year?  How much she hated social studies and was bullied in class? Or that grade two was awesome?  D never smiles and when social studies comes along she gets all melancholy.  This bothers me.  R refuses to take directions and always blames all the problems on A.  It's rediculous.  Do a reboot of the groups after Christmas.  It is unfair to let GRADE 2 students know what is a good choice at the beginning of the year.  They might not know that jsut because someone is your best friend, doesn't mean they are the best partner.  It's so....argh!! This consequence of having this partner all year is too much for these little guys.  I can't say anything because it's not my class.  I asked about it today and the teacher said 'They were told to make good choices.'  So lets pass the buck to seven year olds because it takes too much effort to redo the groups.  I am so upset about this.  Bullying is something I can't tolerate.  I have seen what it does first hand, and the lack of action in this room is disturbing.

Day Forty Three: Snow Day

I was home for the weekend and it snowed and snowed and the wind blew on Sunday and I didn't go to school today.  So that is two days I have to make up later....in December.  The 13th and 14th when I should be on holidays.  I am crabby today and I don't feel like writing.

Day Forty One and Forty Two: Brain Drain

I am so ready to be done.  This blog post is five days late and I don't even know what I did on Wednesday and Thursday.  I did a Powerpoint and that is all I remember.  I can't seem to keep track of stuff.  I need a break and a different direction for my brain to go.  Sigh.

Day Forty: Girly Bullies

I have noticed that girls bully each other in a completely different way than boys.  Boys are more overt about it and girls are totally covert.  They like to mess with your mind, instead of telling you outright that they don't like you.  They whisper to other girls that the person being bullied is no good and so then other people in the class don't want to hang out with them.  OR they whisper about that person while STARING at them.  The bullied girl can't hear, but she KNOWS that she is being talked about.  Then her mind goes crazy wondering what they said, and she gets sadder and sadder.  It's horrible.  I saw it yesterday.  So what do you do?  I talked to the bully and asked her what was up and she wouldn't tell me.  I found out later that she had kicked this other girl in the past and she had been talked to about it.  So now she is making a concious effort to bully someone else.  It's so sad.

Day Thirty Nine: Gone Gone Away

Today I had a wonderful visit to the CT scan machine in High River.  I got to have magnets take pictures of my spine.  Then I went home and did a Power Point pres on building community in the classroom.  I even tied it in to Star Wars...oh and one reference to Star Trek.  So I mixed my genres...do you think the nerds will be mad?  haha.  Well that was it for my exciting day. Woot.

Day Thirty Eight: Farting Noises

You know what's funny?  Farting sounds.  Yes I know I am not a kid, but they are freakin' hilarious.  Today in Case, there was a group doing a presentation on Tone and Tact, and one oftheir little skits was about this kid that kept farting in class (apparently one of the group members has a kid at her field placement that does this).  One of the other girls in the group sat in the corner and provided the sound effects.  It was funny.  So the idea was to do this skit and then freeze it and have members of the Case class come in and tell how they would handle it in an inapropriate way.  One girl said something like 'yo who farted!? It STINKS!!  She actually said this to one of her kids at placement and then thought better of it.  SHe told us all that it smelled like something died.  So all I could think of was this one time when someone I knew farted and another person said 'what crawled up your butt and died?'  So then  I hada laughing fit because I had this mental image.  I then I thought how good it felt to laugh like an idiot.  Yeah it doesn't matter how old you get, it's still funny.

Day Thirty Seven: At Home Again

No school for me today again.  The roads are still crap.....we got 25cm of snow since Tuesday.

Day Thirty Six: Snow Day!!

I didn't go to the elementary school today.  It snowed 10cm overnight and the roads were a mess.  There were cars in the ditch all over the place and semi's too.  I stayed home and finished my paper for ProSem.  It's done.  14 pages an Native Education.

Day Thirty Five: Shall We Wait for You?

We have a set of twins in our grade 2 class that are six instead of seven.  They squeaked under the cutoff for kindergarten.  Anyway, on Monday one of them decided that he would rather play than listen to the instructions for the next activity.  He was sitting at the back talking to his friend, and blowing things up with his hands.  He was making quite a bit of noise.  The teacher stopped her lecture and asked if we should wait for him to stop playing so we could continue.  He said no.  Then she asked him to come sit up front.  He went up front and proceeded to blow things up there too.  Then she asked him to come sit beside her.  He got up and flopped down beside her, like someone had told him he was going to be executed that day.  He then closed his eyes and pretended to cry.  When that didn't work he threw his head back and sighed, then closed his eyes again and threw his head forward and sighed again.  Then he flopped over onto his bum and did the whole thing again.  Meanwhile everyone ignored him.  Eventually he stopped when he realized no one cared.  It was hilarious.  He did this one other time when he forgot his back pack outside.  I think he would be good in drama.

Day Thirty Three and Thirty Four: Booooring

So as you may have noticed, I have less and less things to say.  The semester is winding down and so we are basically handing things in and doing presentations, so there is not much going on.  My days at the elementary school continue to be fun, so I have stories from that.

Day Thirty Two: We Have a Sub

On Tuesday we had a sub, who had no interest in keeping the kids in line...or in doing anything really.  All he wanted to was chat.  I am trying to run a Guided Reading Centre on the school newsletter and he kept interrupting to talk about my ipod Touch. I don't care about what you think of them or what I can download for it.  I don't care about Smartphones.  I am busy....maybe you should go TEACH? So basically my partner teacher's co-teacher and I ran the classroom, which was fine for me, it gave me lots of experience.  And it kept me busy.  I put down my dog on Monday and so if I am busy I didn't think about it.  We played Inuit games in social studies and did some inline skating.  Anyway, I am glad that the teacher is back next week.

Day Thirty One: Attack of the Killer Coyotes

Today we had a visit from some urban coyotes at the elementary school.  Panic ensued and the kids were called in early because as one teacher put it 'coyotes are dangerous'.  They were at the far edge of the school field and they were feasting on some rabbits.  We were not allowed outside for DPA or gym and so we were all stuck inside all day.  The kids couldn't go home for lunch unless their parent came to get them.  I asked my partner teach why we just couldn't let the kids out and she said 'we don't know if the kids will chase the coyotes so we need to keep them safe.'  Oh man.  It's a wonder that more rural kids aren't killed every year by CHASING COYOTES!! Surely we should set up some kind of fund for the education of children and the options that are available to them besides chasing coyotes.  I see 'yotes at my house all the time in the country, so do country kids, and they don't chase them.  THEIR PARENTS tell them that they could be dangerous if they are mangy or hungry, and to stay away from them.  Heaven forbid that urban parents tell their kids this.  Instead we will focus on the five coyotes who killed a woman in Ontario.....last year?  Or the year before?  Anyway, that's all the staff talked about in the staff room was how dangerous they are and why there are sooooooooo many in the city.  I asked about the ON. woman and they said they heard the 'yotes were mangy and hungry....but why do they hunt in packs there they asked.  I said that they can hunt in packs if there is plentiful big game and sometimes they will live in groups.  IF there is only little animals available they will live on their own.  Holy crap.  The people in this school have ZERO common sense.  And they think the parents are helicopter parents.  We have helicopter teachers.  Frick.  I suggested the school invest in a rifle to shoot them and everyone just stared at me....that's what we do if the come to the house.  At least if you shot them we could go out for recess.

Day Twenty Nine and Thirty: Nothing to Report

The last two days were pretty boring and standard.  I have nothing to say about them.....tune in next week for some exciting things(hopefully).

Day Twenty Eight: I Teach...By Myself!!

I got to teach a whole social studies lesson today on my own!! It was awesome.  Of course, the partner teacher ran the Smartboard, because I haven't had time to figure it out yet.  Maybe I will ask if I can play around with it one day after school.  So as for the lesson, I got to talk to the kids about the flag of Nunavut and asked them what the red object was in the middle.  They told me it was an inukshuk and they even knew what it was for!  I gave them the whole spiel about making your map as big as your page and making the colouring wonderful and beautiful and such and then asked of there were any questions....one little boy raised his hand and said, don't forget tot put your name on the back!! Of course! Duh.  How could I forget!?  So they all went off and worked and I even got to help solve some disagreements.  It was a good afternoon, except when I read them Superfudge by Judy Blume.  They laughed like crazy and then they got out of control..they were testingme and I failed.  The partner teacher had to come in and tell them to smarten up.  I could feel myself loosing control, but I did not know what to say to get them back.  Anyway, it was a good learning thing for me.  Now I know what to do next time, which will be next Tuesday!

Day Twenty Seven: Halloween Aftermath

Halloween was yesterday.  The kids had fun...I think.  We didn't talk about it.  No one asked the kids what they dressed up like or what they got.  All they did was write in their journals about it.  I went to the staff room for lunch as always, and all I heard there was how the day after Halloween should be a PD day, because the kids are crazy.  Yes, I agree.  The kids were crazy, but it is one day in a whole year where they are a little wonky.  Also in the staff room I heard about a teacher (who is also a mom) talking about how she would prefer that her kids not get candy and that they only get half of what they gathered.  The other half goes to the Halloween fairy and she takes it home and uses it for something, and in return she leaves a toy.  So Halloween is now Christoween.  Another teacher says one of her kids gets money for half his stash, but then he has to donate that money.  Some of the teachers were going to go through their student's lunch bags to see if they brought candy to school...since they aren't supposed to apparently.  They can't have it at nutrition break, they have to have good food.  Now, I am not a parent, but if someone told me that they were going to go throught my kids stuff, I would tell them where to go and it wouldn't be a good place.  Also, if someone tried to tell me what my kid could and could not eat, I would probably tell them to go to that same place.  AND if I was a parent, I WOULD NOT take away my kids candy.  When I was a kid, my candy went into a big bowl on the kitchen counter and my mom monitored it.  We were allowed two pieces a day.  My brother and I would have competitions to see who could make their's last the longest.  And if you don't want your kids eating candy, why are you sending them out?  Is it harder to keep them at home than to take away their candy? Or by taking it away are you hoping for the path of least resistance in that eventual they won't go anymore, because their loot is confiscated?  At what point did school become such a police state?  Is it the place of the school to tell the parents what they can feed their kids?  What are the legal implications of rifling through backpacks?  And why are these parent's ok with this?  Or do I just like to rock the boat?  I don't know why this bothers me, but maybe it is because I see this as another way of controlling everything that walks in that door.  They are kids.. fun is what they do.  Or have we all forgotten what it is like to be a kid?  I hope I never get to that point....
On another note, I was with the kids in the hall today, getting them ready to go outside and the principal walked by.  She did not say one word to me, or to the kids.  She even stood in the hallway and watched us get ready, and did not even say anything. It was like we were invisible. I remember my principal in elementary talking to us all and knowing us by name.  I felt uncomfortable when she was around like I was being scrutinized.  I felt like there is HER and then the rest of us.  It's not very community like.
Tomorrow I get to teach a social studies lesson all by myself. Wish me luck.
PS: If any parents read my blog and want to comment on the Halloween issue, feel free.  Like I said, I am not parent, so maybe I don't understand.