My Feet They Finally Took Root In The Earth

I have been trying to write this post for 9 days.I have lost the whole thing, fallen asleep in front of the computer  and run out of time to do anything.....so now, here is what I have squeezed out 9 days later...
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Some time ago I wrote about this guy. I wrote about him more than once and in December 2010 I had the very great privilege of attending his graduation ball. Here we all are.

Gene has renamed himself on facebook so I will use that moniker now. That's him, 'Al', on the right. Can you see why I love him? I don't feel so bad about posting this photo now, given that all the lads are over 18 and a pretty regular presence on the internet anyway. The other two gentlemen are also amazing men, with their own stories, but today I want to talk about Al.

After his graduation I connected with him on facebook and found out that he was doing a course in mechanics and expected to have an apprenticeship soon.We messaged each other occasionally and left comments. Then he went quiet.

The week before last, out of the blue, he contacted me. In the past I had always reminded him that I would be happy to help him in any way I could: study, references, course applications etc.
To my complete surprise (and delight) he suddenly popped up and said:
      "Hey Mrs A, I need you' help!"
I lost no time in replying:
       "Hey Al! Wass up? What do you need help with?"
       "Maths Mrs A. I want to learn everything. I'm ready now, I want to learn the basics and be able
         to do calculations and use formulas and stuff...."

Now any of you who have tutored will know that there is a significant per hour price tag attached to the assistance I was willing to give but as I prepared my response I knew that wasn't even in the equation.

        "No worries! What kind of things do you want to cover and where shall I meet you?"

We agreed to meet in the central library on Thursday night. I have got to admit I was anxious. I mean, it has been three years. What would he think when his sprightly, energetic maths teacher from 2010 turned out to be a middle aged pudding? Would it put him off study for ever? Seriously though, would he be committed? Would he even turn up?????

I was late as usual and then I found that the labyrinth of the library defeated me so I had to text him to come and rescue me from the foyer.

He came around the corner and I knew his shape from a distance.  Gone was the backward facing cap, baggy pants around his crutch and sleeveless singlets. Even the dubious symbols previously carved into his tight dark curls had gone. In their place was an attractive, respectable looking young man in a plaid shirt and slim fitting jeans with a conservative haircut and an air of purpose.

We sat and talked for a while. He was off that evening to graduate from his TAFE Course in Business Management.
"So you don't really need my help after all?"
"No, Mrs A, I really DO need your help. I want to do this..."
and he flipped over a folder he was carrying.....
He wants to learn to fly.
"I can do it Mrs A. I believe in myself now.  I don't care what I have to do. If I have to, I will go back to the beginning......"
"You may have to Al..."

He told me where he'd 'been' and what he'd been through. He told me of bad trips and seeing things he never wanted to see again. He told me of holing up in his mum's house and refusing to see his 'friends'; he told me about needing to separate himself from the culture and how his mother helped him keep the toxic friends away....

He told me about how he had found God.
 I smiled broadly.
"Yeah Mrs A, I knew you would like that," he said.
"Cool," was all I could offer. :-)

He had to leave to get to his graduation ceremony but I was so pumped after seeing him  I didn't know what to do with myself, so I went to the pub.
It was completely empty.

I sat with myself and thought about a lot of things. I thought about the last time I had been in that pub, maybe thirty years ago. I thought about how much it (and I) had changed. I thought about what I had wanted to do with my life 30 years ago and I thought about how that had changed and what I had contributed to Al's life.

Life is such a convoluted thing. My own weird journey, my regrets, my disappointments, I looked at them all through the lens of Al. I sat in that empty pub and downed pint  with a quiet sense of euphoria. Maybe, for once, I had made a difference.

God bless you Al. I know our journey will not be predictable, after all you didn't turn up this week while I sat there and waited, but I know God put us  together for  reason. I don't even know if my level of maths will be sufficient for the road you have set ahead for you but if not I will find you an appropriate tutor. Don't you worry about that!

I can't tell you how excited I am to be on this journey with you.

Love ya Al. In a nice, 'not creepy' kind of way ;-)


Growin Up : Bruce Springsteen

Well Done Good and Faithful Servant

Thank you God for this, my favourite Christmas present, received as a message on Facebook this morning:

Hey mrs a
just thought id say goodbye since i didnt get to at presentation night because i didnt go...
Thanks for everything youve done for me and my maths class. I know it wouldve been hard to persist and i admire your patience and commitment. You are the most committed teacher i had this year and now that i think of it, youre one of the most committed teachers ive had at any highschool.
Thank you for your guidance, teaching, committment, patience, helpfulness and the passion and willingness to help us all.
All though a lot of the students in the class didnt recognise and appreciate what youve done this year, i do, and i thank you immensley for your help and teaching...i actually did well this year!
Maths is the subject i struggle most with and usually give up on easily but you helped me and taught me in a way i could understand and when i didnt (understand) you explained it further til i did.
You will be greatly missed next year and i hope you are given the respect you diserve where ever you go next year because i know you didnt get it from everyone this year.
So thank you goodbye and goodluck!:):):)
xoxo

Confused?

Scene: Maths room at lunchtime, trying to finish off overdue projects for Year10 Numeracy so that they won't have to do Maths next year. The BA is sitting in the background having finished an exam and caught the train over to my school.

Me: So if she gets $30,000 a year, how much will that be a month?

Year 10 Girl: Ummmmm. I don't know (sweet vacant smile)

Me: Come on, you can do this...what operation do we need to use to find out?

Y10G: (looking desperately at my face for clues) Addition? No. Subtraction?No...division?

Me: Yes, well done (relieved smile from her). Now, what are you going to divide by?

Y10G: ummmmmmmm?

Me: here is a year (indicates with outstretched arms) and the $30,000 is spread all the way over that year. Now I need to cut that up into little month sized pieces. What do I divide by?

Y10G: 4...no? .....5?.....no........I'm not very good with months.......

Later the BA (who had been looking over the girl's head, rolling her eyes at me) shook her head in disbelief.
"Was she putting it on mum? And where did the FIVE come from????"
I dunno BA. Random neuron firing I think. I am so looking forward to my new job next year. Mind you, as I'm still working with Special Needs I am sure I will still have plenty of blog fodder!
Trouble is, the guys I'm working with now are not officially Special Needs.
Sadly.

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Of Paper and Pills

I managed to write this on Thursday but didn't finish it until tonight:
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Ducking in this morning because Himself has done something nasty to his knee/leg and has asked me to take him to the doctors (It MUST be bad!). So I've had to bunk off work for a few lessons which has given me an opportunity to look st some blogs and to tell you quickly about my Year 10 lesson the other day.

I have given up on my Year 10s
(Exam Question: Here is some data on the number of fish eaten by Selma the Seal each day over a 60 day period. Is this data discrete or continuous?
Answer: continuous. Cos she just keeps eating.)

After 50% of them failed their mid year exam outright,
("let's look at this positively," said a colleague,"50% of them passed."
"No," I replied,"...48% passed and the other 2 % were borderline!")
I have decided to run a Stage 1 SACE Numeracy unit for this semester. It is a very practical series of tasks based on real life situations such as renting a house, running a car and paying off a loan.

The first task involves creating a spreadsheet to model the repaying of a loan. Once the formulae are entered you can change the interest rate, size and number of repayments in order to see what effect it has on the overall cost of the loan. The class have actually been pretty engaged in the task. I have no idea how much they have learned but they have been industriously entering numbers into the speadsheet so......fingers crossed!

Anyway, on Wednesday we reached the end of the lesson and I decided I would like to see the results of their efforts. With 5 minutes to go I said,
"OK everyone, put your name onto the spreadsheet and print it out for me."

There are 23 people in the class. There were 4 pages to each spreadsheet. There was one printer.

I cannot begin to describe the chaos which ensued.

I don't think I really understood the magnitude of my mistake until one of the girls came to me with three sheets of paper.
"Mrs A, this is all I can find of my assignment."
"But what happened to the other sheet? Can you not find it?
"Mrs A have you SEEN the mess over there?"

Note to self: create a system drop folder for electronic collection of future assignments;
pay for a tree to be planted to replace the ream of paper we wasted in multiple print outs of random pages of unidentifiable spreadsheets.

Live and learn.

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Update: Himself has a torn cartilage in his knee. I suspect this was sustained during the climb to take these photos, although the symptoms did not set in for a few days.

In the usual way of men he has been dealing poorly with pain. He has been instructed to take 50mg of Voltarin (anti-inflammatory) every 8 hours as well as 500mg of paracetamol, a task which he is somehow finding difficult to manage. On Friday night he came to bed at his usual time of 2am and very quickly began to thrash about, moaning.

Me: What's the matter?
Him: Auurgh. The pain! It's really full tilt. I can't lie any way that's comfortable.
Me: How long since you took your last painkillers?
Him: Ummmmmmmmmm (sheepishly)......I had one at 2pm this afternoon.......
Me: WHAT? You should have had one hours ago!
Him: I know, but it wasn't hurting before.
Me: I don't suppose you thought to bring the tablets to bed with you?
Him: Ummmmmmmmmm
Me: (flings herself out of bed into the 2 degree air temperature, gets dressing gown and stomps off down the relatively long hallway to find the tablets, snorting impatiently.)

We had a discussion the next morning about the timing of his tablets. It was agreed that he needed to take them well before he came to bed in order to give them time to 'kick in' and enable him to rest comfortably.

Last night circa 2am:
Him: Moan, aarrrgh, moan, can't get comfortable etc etc
Me: You took your tablets didn't you?
Him: Yes, I took them 15 minutes ago.
Me: FIFTEEN MINUTES???? I thought we agreed you would take them 8 hourly and give them time to take effect before you came to bed???
Him: Well it wasn't hurting and I wanted to leave it as long as possible so I could get some sleep.
Me: fumes silently
Him: Moan, aarrrgh, moan, can't get comfortable etc etc Moan, aarrrgh, moan, can't get comfortable etc etc Moan, aarrrgh, moan, can't get comfortable etc etc
Him: (after another 5 minutes of this) I think I might need another tablet.
Me: What? How many did you take?
Him: Er, well, one.
Me: WHAT???????? The doctor TOLD you to take two!
Him: Well, yes but I am trying not to take too many and.....
Me: Please tell me that you brought the tablets to the bedroom, just in case.
Him: Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Me:ARGH!(flings herself out of bed into the -2 degree air temperature, gets dressing gown etcetcetc)

Honestly. Exactly what had changed about his condition which would have lead him to believe he required less medication?? The knee is swollen for pete's sake! There are now pills stashed in the bedside drawers >:-(

I swear if men had babies, epidurals would be a sacrament.

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That's Another Swimming Carnival Off The Blocks

For some reason, every school in Adelaide seems to have held their annual swimming carnival yesterday!
Here's the setting for ours.

Swimming carnivals in Australian schools are not the 'Baywatch' events you might imagine them to be. A remarkable number of teenagers seem unable to swim; unable at least with any degree of confidence. Getting kids to nominate for events is a continual trial and even those who put their names down are frequently incapacitated on the day for any number of reasons.
"Miss, I pulled my hamstring at footy training."
"I can't swim miss, I feel sick."
"Miss...it's ladies things...you know!"

Humph. Ladies things indeed. Have modern youth never heard of tampons????? Apparently, or should I say conveniently, not! I remarked to one of my colleagues that it was amazing how 80% of the House seemed to have a period today.....and that included the boys!!!!!

My Care Group were no exception. They readily embraced the opportunity to wear casual clothes, some of them even managing to stretch to some House colour! (green of course)
But of this little group, gathered in our home room for roll call, only two actually got in the pool!

Mind you, there were those who entered totally into the spirit of the thing.
That's our House captain in the body paint! But even out of this enthusiastic group, only one was a swimmer! She was a pretty good one though.

You may have seen a picture of this before:
it's our House banner, taken at last year's sports day. On the first day back at school this year, they called for the banner, to be used in assembly as we presented badges to the new House officials. It had last been used in a similar assembly on the final day of 2009 although I had been reluctant to part with it as, on many occasions previously, it had not been returned. Well, surprise surprise, as I looked around my office on the first day back I realised.....the banner had not be returned. A quick email to the staff brought me no joy. No one was willing to take responsibility for the whereabouts of our banner! Grrrrrr. I set the new House Seniors onto the task. They had to search the basement sports store room and the offices of any likely sport related staff who may have inadvertently packed the banner away with other equipment at the end of the year. As the swimming carnival approached and our fruitless searches left us empty handed, I faced the realisation that I would have to make a new banner.

Which I did on the night before the carnival.

I finished at 3am.
Now, admittedly it is not as showy as the original, but it is bigger! It is also not perfect...but did I mention it was 3am?

Why did such a simple thing take so long? Well, first I had to go shopping for materials, home at 8pm, cook dinner, then start planning and sewing. I started off with a cheap, queen sized satin fitted sheet from The Reject Store ($25.00) and cut it down to a rectangle. The fiddly bit was the letters. Himself generated some letters for me to print out in tile formation. I then had to tape them all together and use them as patterns. I backed them all in iron on interfacing and carefully ironed over the edges to create neat letters for appliqueing. I had originally intended to put some yellow lightening bolts onto it but Himself and I couldn't agree on the design principles and it was getting late at that stage so I left that for another day. I hope to embellish the thing before the Sports day in week 5 or 6.

Oh and guess what? You've guessed haven't you. On the morning of the Swimming Carnival I went into the basement sports store to look for some random item and looked up on the top shelf. Yup. There was the old banner.

Still, we used the big one. >:-( I wasn't sitting up all night sewing for nothing!!!!! The kids seemed happy enough.

Speaking of the kids, the swimming carnival is always a great revealer of character. Usually this is a good thing; kids rising to the occasion, filling in at the last minute; setting themselves a challenge, even if it is only to make it to the end of the pool; but yesterday I had more of an ugly reveal. One of our year 12 girls is an accomplished swimmer and has always done well for the House, even though in the last few years she has become less inclined to compete and more inclined to lounge about in a revealing bikini displaying her other talents. Yesterday she just didn't show up at all. I couldn't believe the selfishness of that act. To have a gift and keep it when your House needs you? Sorry. I just don't get it.

BUT.... on the other hand.....

A while ago I wrote about this guy.....

that's him up there on the blocks! And what is significant about this is that he IS up there on the blocks. Now, as you may be aware, the African race are not known for their swimming prowess. A few years back one of the African girls jumped in during the swimming carnival and had to be rescued! No joke!

In the past, Gene has been very reluctant to participate in anything House related. He and another three African lads wander the school looking like some sort of Liberian Mafia gang and generally being 'too cool for school'. Gene turned up to the swimming carnival wearing very sharp clothes, with plenty of 'bling' and looking like there was no WAY he would go anywhere near that pool. Now, I would love to say that I talked him into giving it a go, but in truth it is an even greater joy to me that I didn't. I simply looked around at one point and there he was sitting in a chair waiting for the next race. I guess he feels like he belongs now.

I love the House system.

Crafty Tuesday: Remember What It Was Like When You Couldn't Sew?

I'm cheating a bit with Crafty Tuesday as I haven't really got anything to show as yet....
See that pile of coffee coloured fabric? Well it's two shoulder seams and two side seams towards becoming 12 orphans' pinafores!

One of our generous and incredibly patient Home Ec teachers at school decided to let her Year 9 Sewing class loose on the construction of the orphans pinnies. As they are fairly straight forward, all straight seams and zig zag finishing, she figured it was a suitable exercise for them to practise upon.

Last Friday I went down to the Home Ec room with her to lend a practical hand in the sewing lesson. Unfortunately she had forgotten her timetable and instead of a nice class of eager and moderately competant year nines we got a ferral class of rowdy and incompetant year tens.
Now these kids have used the machines annually since year 7 or 8 and theoretically should have been able to get stuck right in. There were more than adequate numbers for them to do one each and our hope was that they would have got at least the shoulders and side seams done by the end of the lesson.

*sigh*

There was one young lady who took over half an hour, and a quarter of a spool of thread, just to get her machine threaded! There was one of my ex Maths pupils from last year, who does Home Ec for the cooking, and who needs watching like a toddler lest he empty a container full of fabric scraps all over the floor....for no apparent reason. Some of them used 45 pins per garment and drew their seamlines on with tailors chalk. And then ignored them.

It was hilarious .

I had forgotten what it was like not to know really basic things in sewing; like ensuring the bobbin tension is above 0. There were broken needles, tangled bobbin threads, seams whose line resembled the course of the Murray River....

At the end of the lesson, many of the pupils were feeling incredibly proud of themselves having completed a set of shoulder seams. After they left I finished off the shoulder and side seams in 6 garments in about 20 minutes.

I suspect the pinafores will be a long time coming! Never mind; I have bigger fish to fry. Tonight I cut out a couple of the orphan's dresses ready to give to some parent volunteers. I am fiddling the patterns a bit and I really hope these willing ladies will be able to interpret what I have in mind.

Wish us luck on this as the performance dates march ever onwards :-(

For some more 'together' craft, I recommend you check out Barely Controlled Chaos for Crafty Tuesday! Come back next week and I may have more to show for myself

Hallelujah! A Classroom Miracle

I had a good lesson with Year 10.

This is itself is a miracle but add into the mix the fact that it was a Monday AFTERNOON lesson and the ridiculously unlikely nature of the event becomes more apparent.

Further add the fact that the topic was Trigonometry and that one week ago I knew next to nothing about the subject and it becomes obvious that there has been Divine Intervention.

Oh, and I made them follow a seating plan.

Actually, maybe that was the key?

Many of you who know me in real life will recall that of all my academic strengths, Maths was actually the most problematic. Well, maybe it was Physics...although it was Chemistry that I bombed out in at the exams....

Whatever.

That fact is that I was a 'problem maths student' all the way through school and only focused on the sciences at matric at the suggestion/insistence of my father. I drove my maths teacher mad. I asked questions ALL the time. "What do you mean imaginary numbers?"I exclaimed," we don't have enough numbers already but you go and have to make some more up?????"
She called me 'PigPen' because she said I spread my mess all around me. When I didn't understand, I doodled. Eyes mostly. With long lashes. I still have the folders with the evidence.
Every time I look at those folders and think..."they've got to go"......I look inside at the pages and pages of equations which, in 2009, mean absolutely. nothing. to. me. and I can't bear to throw them out. I mean, I used to know that stuff! Look at that clever stuff I did!!!!

That was 30 years ago. This year, teaching mainstream Y10 maths for the first time, I knew Trig was coming up and only vaguely remembered the words sin, cos and tan. "But it will come back to me," I thought, "after all, algebra did." Last Sunday night however, I experienced severe panic as I read through the next chapter of the text book and realised that I had no clue on earth what the authors were talking about. Himself thought it was hilarious.

But never fear, oh ye of little faith! I did do this stuff once and I'm sure all I need do is ask my Maths teacher guru boss when I get in to school. Just give me a brief history of Trig please mate......

Are you beginning to see why Monday afternoon was such a miracle?

So why, I hear you ask, is such an incompetent being allowed to teach maths to our preshus chiddlers?????? Well that's easy. No one else wants to take the bottom classes.

However I am happy to report that it is all coming back to me, thankfully at a slightly faster rate than it is coming to my class. We must be doing ok because Monday afternoon was a remarkable work-fest with minimal incidence of arguing, ipod fiddling or 'what do we need this for'ness. I do have to admit though, that two of my main protagonists were away :-(

Wish me luck for tomorrow. With a bit of luck they'll all bring a scientific calculator.
*cynical grimace*



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Merry Christmas Year 10

My babies left me today.

My little band of lovable, incompetent, trying teens completed their last assignment and are on their way to year 11 and five different mainstream teachers. But that is another story. Tonight I want to talk about today.

At the end of last semester, I accosted our Principal on the futility of making these kids sit exams. Being the wise man he is, he agreed to let me organise something else for them and so it was that I found myself meeting the gang at the appointed time today, to head off for our 'practical maths' assignment/exam.

The idea was this. Visit the local Foodland with a 'task' to replace the exam, have a coffee together at the local cafe and head back to school in time for the final assembly. They were all delighted with the idea of forgoing a formal exam, but of course during the lead up to the week they all informed me that they just wouldn't bother coming in for the final excursion! I worked really hard to convince them to come and finish the term off in a positive way. I was delighted today when 7 out of 8 met me at the office after recess (the 8th was on her way to Tasmania and so could be forgiven :-)

Of course, only two had organised themselves well enough to have their signed permission notes with them!

After 20 minutes of phoning parents to get oral permission for the excursion (made all the more entertaining by the non-english speaking nature of most of the parents!) and another 5 minutes of bickering because, well...because they do that, we were off. We missed the bus of course so we hoofed it 15 minutes down the road to the local supermarket and gathered out the front to announce the task.

In pairs, they were required to 'purchase' a list of 5 items and have the total come out as close to $50.00 as possible. The items were generic and sometimes specified a size/amount and sometimes didn't, which gave a bit of flexibility. Each pair had a different list, which meant they couldn't simply copy and of course I supplied calculators.

We entered the store.

I wish I could have taken photos and put them up here today folks. Not in the least because they're all pretty good lookin' kids! But seriously, they were so funny. And so serious. And so wonderful. They took to the task with gusto. Two worked alone, there was one pair and a particularly dysfunctional trio but they all hooked into it. They were in the meat department counting sausages, in the milk cabinet comparing the cost of 2 x 2 litres or one 4 litre container, incompetently of course but they were doing it!

But you're wondering about the beans. Up the top there. Had you forgotten them?
Let me tell you about the beans.

The dysfunctional trio had to 'buy' 3 kg of green beans. Now the idea was that they might compare the price of frozen versus fresh, prepacked versus loose etc and of course the magic '3 kg' meant there would have to be some multiplication. You would think.

I came upon the 'gang' as they were hefting an overly stuffed plastic bag full of green beans onto the fruit and veg dept scales.

Me: What are you doing?
Them: We're finding 3kg of beans.
Me; Uh-huh, why don't you just look at the price and...
Them: no hush, hush Mrs A, we are in control. We know what we're doing...

Therein followed much umming and ahhing (in the text books they call this 'discussion' and claim it to be a valid teaching tool. I hope they're right) as they discovered that they had 6kg of beans and had to start tipping them back onto the display. :-) *sigh* At least they had a valid lesson in 'weights and measures'!

Finally they had 3kg of beans in the scale.
Me: So, well done for measuring out 3kg of beans how much will these beans cost?

silence.....as they realise the scales do not give them a price........

Them : (suddenly cheerful again.) Don't worry Mrs A, it's ok. We can just multiply! How much
for one kilo?

If it wasn't me in stitches it was the rest of the bemused customers in the f&v section!

All in all though they did really well. One got within 4c of the $50.00 and the worst result was 99c over...so not too bad really! But it was fascinating to realise what they didn't know. They didn't know what 'margarine' was. They didn't know how to find the 'size' of an object ie they didn't recognise the significance of kg and gs on packaging. As usual they had trouble filling in the worksheet and keeping a running total.

We followed it all up with lunch at the cafe across the road ( we'd taken longer than I'd thought to do the task of course). It cost me a fortune but it was worth it. After initial bickering they all sat begrudgingly at the same table, they all had a soft drink and some chips or wedges and they all chatted amicably for about half an hour. Remarkable.

I found out more about some of the kids and heard a little more of their amazing stories. One lad, from Liberia, was telling me how his parents were 'lost' on the Ivory Coast. Of 4 siblings, he and his sister escaped to Australia and members of the family have been joining them here, as they have been found, ever since. His mother was located this year and has rejoined the family out here (tricky after 5 years...) but dad is still missing.

As I said goodbye to them at the end of the day, they thanked me, genuinely, and wished me a Merry Christmas.

"Be the Best you can be," I urged them, "Don't let anyone take you down the wrong road. I have great faith in you all!"

They laughed and waved cheerfully at me as they went off to assembly.

"Sure thing Mrs A, Merry Christmas"

Merry Christmas indeed Year 10. Thank you for one of the most entertaining and frustrating years of my life.



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Marking Reports Marking Reports More Marking...

Well now I have officially blown NaBloPoMo. I skipped a day.

To tell the truth it hasn't been going as well as I'd hoped. There seems to be so much else going on and so little time to construct well thought out posts like so many of the bloggers I admire. I guess I will just have to face the fact that I am not a well thought out person anymore, if I ever was.

Yesterday we had the last of the History oral presentations on Vietnam. The marking criteria had pointed out that reading huge slabs of notes off Powerpoint presentation did not constitute an 'oral' so most of them ditched Powerpoint and read huge slabs of notes off cue cards instead. They did not seem to see the problem with this.

"But Miss....they were on CUE cards!!!!!"

One fellow produced a speech suspiciously similar to that of a girl we'd heard the day before. Hello, I thought to my clever self. It sounds like they have downloaded this directly off the same website, but no. He had merely pinched her cue cards out of her locker.

Zero for that then.

At least he was honest when challenged. Well, he could hardly lie. The cue cards were constructed of pale pink paper beautifully mounted onto flowery card.

Right, off to write more perceptive and meaningful report comments which start with

'X is a delightful, enthusiastic pupil.....'

move onto

'however, X would benefit from.....'

and finish with

'I wish X every success for Year 11.'

Last time, my scintillating vocabulary had them all lining up to see me after the holidays.

"Miss, what does flippant mean? You wrote it on my report."
"Penchant.....what did you mean I have a penchant for loud humour...?"

Hell. Look at the time. These things are due at 9am.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeee

No Woman Is an Island....Although Some Of Us Regularly Experience Shipwrecks.

So don't laugh at my island drawing. It's tricky to get worksheets of this nature and it's sometimes easier just to throw one together.

Now, apart from the obvious lack of style, talent and CAD software, my Year 10s took to this quite well considering they had struggled significantly with the original task.

The questions asked them to summarise a trip around the island keeping a running total of the distance travelled. After a few more factual questions they were presented with the last, somewhat creative exercise.

"If you were planning to build a road on the island, where would you build it"

This sent several of the pupils in the group into a state of near tail spin but it is only my favourite response that we shall examine here.

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M: Mrs A Mrs A, I don't know what to do here.

Me: Have you read the instructions?

M: No

Me: (sighs) well, lets read.

"Where would you build a road on the island?"

M: What do you mean by 'build a' road?

Me: On your map. Draw where you think a road would go.

(panic sets in)

M: (quivering hysterically, voice rising to a shriek) But I don't KNOW where the road would go.

Mrs A: Hush, its not that hard. You could put a shortcut in or you could look and see where there are no roads.

M :(finding and indicating an area on the map.)

Mrs A: Well done.

M: but what do I WRITE???????????

Mrs A: Let's draw the road in first and then it's easier to write about whatever you do.

At this point M picked up her pencil and drew this.

One of the other pupils was walking past at this point and upon seeing the road he burst into hysterical laughter and hooted,
"Girl! What kind of a lame road is THAT?????"


Me: (attempting to stifle more hysterical laughter) M, it is customary for a road to start somewhere and go somewhere else.

She did see the funny side in the end but really, I ask you!? We make a lot of assumptions about our pupil's knowledge don't we?

Out of the Mouths of Babes

This morning I woke up after a terrible nightmare in which the pupils had ganged up on me.

I have been feeling very demoralised with student attitudes of late. There is this constant power struggle going on in the classroom and I for one don't even want to play the game.

Some of the bright lads in my History class wage this constant war of oneupmanship; the 'Get One Over On The Teacher' game. This involves; jumping on me if I accidentally trip over a word, loudly pointing out typos or inconsistencies in worksheet questions; challenging me over pedantic definitions (is a pilot a soldier since he kills people and goes to war? is Scotland a country?) etc etc etc

So it was with a dark heart, still brushing the cobwebs of the dream off my shoulders that I fronted my Year 10 Maths class today. Adding inconvenience to my black mood was the fact that we have classroom changes due to Year 11 exams. This means I have to cart all my equipment, calculators, tables folders, whiteboard markers, OHPs etc across the school to another room where I find I have brought the wrong set of folders or forgotten to bring the rulers and pencils. (after all, why would the kids bring them????)

For some reason, I think because only a few made it to school on time today and the classroom was comfortingly empty, we started having a discussion about life, exams, future study options and the like. The conversation got around to hating school and of course hating teachers. Teachers are stupid/mean/unreasonable etc. Names were named.

One particular colleague came in for a bit of a hammering with descriptions of her inflexibility and hardline manner. This is always difficult and I in no way encourage this kind of discussion of the staff but they were most insistent in this case and in the midst of my protests and attempts to change the subject, one of my most problematic pupils announced..

"No, but Mrs A, she's not like you. We know you care about us. With you, even when we've had a big argument or something, you go home over the weekend and calm down and when we see you again it's like a fresh start. You don't hold it against us. But with her, she doesn't forget and next time you see her she's still mad with you...."

Now, if the Lord could have sent me any gift today, any assurance that something I was doing was getting through to them, it could not have been any more perfect than this statement from this pupil.

I managed to steer the topic off my unfortunate colleague and onto the power of prayer and how much of it is needed to wipe the slate clean every weekend and bring me back to these kids, optimistic and accepting. We went on to do some revision on the Virtual Road Trip which some of them remembered and could almost complete independently. All in all it was a most satisfactory and tranquil lesson. The answer to prayer really.

Of course, the year 9s after lunch were revolting and it was back to reality but for a brief moment there it was all worthwhile.

How Is The Road Trip Going?

Hello
This is me.
I am lying in the middle of the road and Year 10 are systematically driving over me.
And reversing.

Update On Pain

Firstly, thank you for all your well wishes. I am overwhelmed!

I took Friday off. That always sounds like it was a bit gratuitous like, 'oh, I don't think I'll go in today' whereas I could no more have gone to work than flown. Lying on the sofa was an effort. Everything was an effort. There was nowhere to lie that didn't cause pain.

I have meds in the house so I took anti-inflammatories and pandeine forte, which enabled me to lie still with a dull ache rather than the blinding pain, and I phoned the doctor.

Driving to the docs was fun. NOT. Actually, before that, getting dressed was fun! This is a new doctor so I wasn't quite sure how I should feel about him helping me UNdress but it was relatively amusing between the tears.

He gave me a shot in the shoulder which has helped immensely (see how I type now?) but feels there is more to it than bursitis as the pain down the arm is atypical. The top of my bicep is extremely tender to touch and a lot of the discomfort now involves bending the elbow. I'm ok when the arm is straight and relatively ok when its bent at 90 degrees but the process of getting it to either of these positions is painful and leaves me with a nasty ache in my forearm or bicep, or both. I find lifting the right arm with the left is the best method.

Possible prognosis include a partially torn bicep ligament or some neck involvement which is pinching a nerve down the arm. Although some of the excruciating pain I felt before reminded me of nerve pain, this dull ache is more like someone has kicked me in the arm so I suspect there's some muscle or ligament damage. I have to go for X rays and ultra sound on Monday at 8.30am. Meanwhile I'm popping pills and it does seem relatively 'easier'. The arm I mean, not the pills.

So what has caused this untimely 'lay-off' is the $1,000 question. Well, I did go to the gym on Tuesday and do a light weights class which involved a lot of pumping and rowing movements. I wasn't sore on Weds though, which I thought I would be. I remember having a slight twinge in the biceps on Weds night but it was Thursday morning when I woke up and thought, Miss Clavell style, 'something is not right'.

The most frustrating thing is having enforced leisure time and insufficient limbs to do much with it. There is so much to be done around the house and any amount of school work to be prepared but I am coming to the end of my typing tolerance now.

I have started a webquest sort of thing for year 10 as we kept running into problems with the school's firewall blocking sites. I also needed to steer them towards user friendly sites as they get overwhelmed by the amount of text on some sites. It's a work in progress but I'd be interested in feedback and ideas.

http://year10roadtrip.wordpress.com
(yes, I've gone over to the opposition as they have 'pages' with top tabs. Maybe blogger has pages but I haven't worked out how to add them)
Please bear in mind that I was just getting going on this when my arm started playing up so it is nowhere near finished. Also I imported the word docs so the formatting is not right and there are colours where I didn't mean for there to be colours etc...

Anyway, you get the general idea.

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The End of a Long Week

Well thanks for the maths ideas folks and keep 'em coming. I'm still considering a prize for an idea I end up using and whilst I have a few ideas for the ladies, I am a little more stuck if any of you scientific type gentlemen come up with a winning project. I don't suppose you fancy a stylish knitted cushion cover do you? Naaaah. But don't despair! I will come up with something!!

I am happy to report that we have made it through the first week and my new classroom is almost feeling like home now. As is to be expected, the usual suspects of a 'room move' have gone missing: my set of scissors, a DVD, my set of glue sticks. Do you realise that glue sticks are like currency in the school setting? I had a boss in the UK who used to bribe us with glue sticks. I'm not kidding.
"Anyone who volunteers for this extra duty gets a free gluestick!" (hands fly up all over the room)

There have been no major meltdowns amongst the kids unless you count the VIQ (Vocational interest Questionnaire) which was an adventure in itself. Basically the kids have to fill in an online questionnaire which endeavours, through tricky questionnaire-type techniques like asking you the same thing twice, to determine which career interests you. Now this exercise sounds relatively simple but is, in reality, fraught with skill levels to challenge even a native english speaker of tender years. For example, how would your 15 year old self respond to the idea of

"consulting, analysing, planning and implementing strategy for the introduction and marketing of innovative products with production clients and prospective retailers."
Very appealing/ Like/Indifferent or Dislike?

Where was the button for 'Fail to Comprehend'?

There were many traps for young players, especially those with english as a second language and limited comprehension at the best of times. Consider for example, this question:

"Maintain and care for laboratory animals in a research facility."

Now most of the kids immediately saw the word 'animals', thought "I like animals" and hit the Very Appealing button. Another example was

"Organise finance and administration for sports and the arts."

You guessed it. Every prospective football or soccer player saw 'sports' and hit the Very Appealing button. As a result of this I spent a double lesson going through the quiz, question by question, trying to explain what each item was really about. There were 140 questions.

Any of you who are familiar with my Year 10s and their inability to follow directions will understand how harrowing a task this was. Firstly, some of them resented the suggestion that they didn't understand the questions so they were resistant to the whole exercise. Then came the inevitable chorus of 'where are we up to?' and 'I LIKE that one/That's ME /NO WAY that job SUCKS' which followed every explanation and which required precious seconds to settle before we continued on. Of course from time to time I would look across to one of the girls to see that she had replaced her questionnaire screen with MSN or a picture gallery of some rapper.....but apparently that was alright because she was 'ahead of us'. *sigh*

By the end of the lesson I was hoarse from explaining financial management and engineering 40 times and customer service and the printing industry 35 times. Hopefully, there is enough relevant detail in their answers to help the careers counsellor point them towards the right subjects next year. That's what the whole thing is actually about.


To celebrate surviving the first week back, Himself and I attended the Roosters' Gala Ball on Friday night where we had this rather nice (I think) picture taken. My husband actually brushes up ok in a suit I think!

(warning: girl's paragraph)
Unfortunately I am forced to report that I no longer fit into my ball gown. Well, I do fit but it is not a good look. As a result I wore the black baby doll we bought at Harbour Town Mum but because I am self conscious about my footballer's shoulders I also wore a jacket. Himself convinced me to take it off while we were dancing (yes, I actually got him onto the dance floor) and of course told me I was 'the most beautiful girl there' which was kind on one count and a downright lie on the other and I will leave you to figure out which is which! :-D

Finally, because we have been a bit short on pictures of the Baby Angel lately, here she is with both cats, yes, you read right, BOTH cats in the same room. And although Morticia seems relatively calm and ready for a cuddle here, I can assure you that she has once again simply taken the highest ground and is eye-ing Pippin off, awaiting her opportunity to attack.


Hasn't she grown though?













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Highway To ????

Year 10 and I are goin' on a road trip!!!!!!!! Not literally of course. That would be a virtual road trip in order to........er..........funnily enough Himself asked me the same question this evening.

HS: So what are you actually trying to teach them through
this virtual road trip?
Me: Nothing! I am simply trying to engage them in a meaningful activity which involves them having some sort of opportunity to use maths in a meaningful way! If they happen to learn anything along the way I will be
giving mighty thanks I can tell you!!

Of course, Year 10 asked me if we were actually going on the trip. Of course they did. Bless them. So did my Head of Maths. "Are you taking them away for the term?" he asked straight faced. He is very amusing for a mathematician.

To backtrack a bit. Do you remember I mentioned that I'd made a step towards engaging the kids a bit more? Well it turns out that the mother of one of Small Boy's 'Street Mates' (yes, the four that are always at our house) is a maths teacher at quite a prestigious school here in Adelaide. I did know this but like many maths teachers, I had failed to put two and two together and realise that she just may be a great resource for me!

On the middle weekend of the holidays we were taking the boys to the football and she called in to drop her son J off.
"You're a maths teacher," I stated. (duh!) "Do you have any good ideas for projects to motivate failing learners?"
"Funny you should ask! I won a prize last year for 'Motivating Middle school Maths'."
(Chorus of angels start singing "Won't you come home Bill Bailey.....")

Generously, she gave up her Sunday afternoon to sit with me and share units of work, bounce around ideas and generally commiserate over the poor skills of my Year 10 class. As I had suspected, every idea she shared would have to be modified mightily before my babies had a snowball's chance of grasping it but some of those ideas were so creative she got ME excited!

For example, she worked with a Year 10 group, one year, to produce a Murder Mystery Film involving a whole lot of crime scene investigation maths: measuring handprints and heights and developing a generalisation about ratios between the two; measuring the drop in temperature in a cup of coffee over time in order to pinpoint the time of the crime; analysing the shape of fake blood splatters in order to determine direction and height of impact etc etc. How brilliant is that?

Unfortunately, most of the activities she had planned assumed prior knowledge waaaaaaay above the level of my Year 10s. Nevertheless, she had other great ideas and we were able to bounce modifications off each other. For example, I mentioned that I'd thought of trying a 'World Trip' with the kids where they had to : look up the cost and availability of flights, book accommodation within a budget, read a timetable enough to get around a foreign town etc etc.
She had done an 'Around Australia' trip with a group of kids at another college and suggested I start with this. Thinking more carefully about my own group I realised I would probably be better off starting with an 'Around SOUTH Australia' trip. Hell, we probably shouldn't even consider leaving Adelaide!!! :-D

We also came up with a few ideas for other projects which I may try with Year 9 who have a better skill level.

And so I bravely introduced the idea to the students today (well, half of them anyway. As usual many of the class were absent) and guess what? They seem enthused by the idea! We had some terrific discussion around the question of which car would be best to take. Fuel economy/efficiency was a hot topic and, interestingly, many of the boys had not heard the expression although they certainly understood the concept once I demonstrated it. Some were amazed to learn that loading up a car with luggage and passengers would increase the fuel consumption. Some were amazed to learn the word 'consumption'!

We had a whole discussion around accommodation. Would the initial cost of hiring a caravan be offset by savings on hotel rooms? What about sleeping the in back of your car? Do pubs in the country offer accommodation? What do caravan parks charge for electricity?

In their typically chaotic style, the question of 'where to go' did not come up until the end of the lesson.

Even with this level of interest and engagement I had to stop them 15 minutes from the end of the lesson to do a few aerobics on the spot. They just couldn't quite sustain concentration for the whole double. This aside it was a promising start. We now have to suspend activities for a few lessons while we complete some Vocational Interest Questionnaire which will assist the staff in steering the kids toward subject choices next year. I have opted to do this over two lessons to try and keep up the inertia we have developed through today's lesson by devoting half the double to work on the project.

So wish me luck. So far it's been ok although I stayed back until after 6pm tonight sorting out my 'new' room :-( cos I didn't do it in the holidays. I hate not knowing where everything is.

Have a great week everyone and I'll check back in when I've got all these exams marked!

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