Best Shot Monday: The Turtle, or is it a Tortoise?

This is the best I have to offer from last week. It's the only photo I can post from our trip to the zoo with year 9! I must say I love the striking green of the pond weed and who can resist a turtle anyway?

The zoo trip was relatively painfree I am relieved to report after last year when we had to send someone back to school in a taxi for deliberately throwing a small hard object at another student's face! No, this year the most trying part was the amount of walking we had to do from one end of town to the other as we took in a tourism walk, a walk through the Rainforest Conservatory of the Botanic Gardens and finally the Rainforest Immersion Display at the zoo.

As on most school excursions, the students had a booklet to fill in which required them answering questions along the route. Well, typically, I lost count of the number of times I had to suggest to a pupil that they get their booklet out of their bag and fill in the answers which I was in the process of supplying! Yes, you read right. Students nowadays do not FIND the answers to questions on a field trip, they are given them by the teacher and the only challenging thing they have to do is write them down quickly enough to be ready when the teacher goes on to the next question! It's pathetic but if you didn't do it they wouldn't write a thing down!!!! I sometimes wonder, even with all the amazing quality 'sights' we have to experience nowadays, whether we should bother leaving the classroom. After our 'set' walks the kids were given 40 minutes free time to wander the zoo and get the answers to some 'bonus' questions. This enabled them to look at some of the other 'non' rainforest animals such as the ever popular meerkats. We teachers headed to the central cafe rendezvous point to await their return for lunch only to find the tables full of our pupils after 15 minutes. Apparently that's all the zoo you need to see at 14. :-)

This week I have the dubious privilege of 'volunteering' for the Year 10 Geography 'Coastal' excursion to wonderful places like Hallett Cove just south of the city. This group are the hideous year nines from last year and as the dread day approaches I find myself wondering if the terrible gastric bug reputedly lurking in Adelaide's environs at present, is not currently incubating in my lower digestive tract. I feel sure it must be. Surely.

What could be so bad about a day trip to the beach I hear you ask? You do not know these students. These are the group involved in the notorious 'Water Bomb' outing last year. The group who, on their camp earlier this year managed 2 broken ankles, a sprained wrist and to shut down the swimming pool by throwing cow 'pats' in the water. The group who walked away from the dining hall leaving more food on the floor and walls than either in their bellies or on their plates. The group who argued blind with me that a single Wikipedia reference was a sufficient bibliography for a research essay and that there was no need to reference 'books' as the teacher wouldn't be able to 'check up' on them!!!!!!!

Wish me luck. I am sure it will be an eventful day. I only pray we don't have to fill in any police reports afterwards.

Click over to 'Mother May I' where the gang will be sharing some inspirational photography with, hopefully, minimal police presence.