Worn out yet thrilled
There's a thing called "Indian Time". I've thought about it and it's really not a racist thing. It's real. I've heard the kids here use that term a lot and I've been hesitant to use it but it keeps coming up. Here are few examples of it.
Since fishing season is wrapping up, now is when families go on vacation. As a teacher and someone use to the city, I find this very frustrating. I've now had three kids miss at least a week of school and it's difficult to keep them on top of their work normally. It's an even bigger challenge to catch them up. Of course they ask for a list of work they'll miss, but they don't actually do it on vacation. In the city, it is very frowned upon to pull your kid out of school for a week vacation. In fact, my practicum school made kids and parents sign contracts when this happened so that the kids wouldn't fall behind. Here, everyone just wishes the family a good trip.
Another example is the bells. The bell clock is five minutes slow, on average. But it gets slower and slower as time goes by. Every once in a while, it's gets reset so it's only about three minutes slow. And then it gets slower and the cycle continues. This is frustrating enough, but sometimes the bells don't ring at all. The kids know the bells are screwy. So they are always saying that the bell won't ring to try to get me to let them out early so they can socialize in the hall. I have been very firm about this and I synchronize the clock in my room to the bell clock every few days. But there have been some times that I've kept my kids in and they were late for their next class because the bell didn't ring.
The final example is the Terry Fox Run.
All over the world, the run was last Friday. We, on the other hand, had the run today. It was lots of fun. I was one of the only people in the entire school to run the entire run though. No matter, we still had fun. Lots of parents showed up and most of the group walked the primary route. We all had Kool-Aid after. The school raised just over $1500. To celebrate some of the students and one teacher jumped off the dock. That was pretty fun.
To top off the day of physical activity, the teachers wanted to do something for the high school students on Friday nights to have a fun, safe night. So we opened the gym and played games. We played students versus teachers and we played dodgeball, basketball, and soccer. We all had lots of fun. I did land on my ass twice and managed to skin my knee, but all in all I had fun. I even scored for the teachers in soccer.
The only problem we had was that there was a scuffle outside and one of the kids came in to get an adult. Kids can smell a fight and two thirds of the kids emptied the gym to watch the fight. We got everyone to come back in and we had a discussion that this is exactly what we were talking about in the assembly yesterday. We praised the kids who didn't leave the gym. We reiterated that people should just walk away. That is the courageous thing to do. We also praised the kids who sought to get adult help.
But we lightened the mood again by playing more dodgeball. As the teacher got more tired, some of the students volunteered to play for our team. All in all the night was fun. I'm now going to bed to sleep off my jello shooters ... a nice little way that a couple of us teachers wound our night down with.
Since fishing season is wrapping up, now is when families go on vacation. As a teacher and someone use to the city, I find this very frustrating. I've now had three kids miss at least a week of school and it's difficult to keep them on top of their work normally. It's an even bigger challenge to catch them up. Of course they ask for a list of work they'll miss, but they don't actually do it on vacation. In the city, it is very frowned upon to pull your kid out of school for a week vacation. In fact, my practicum school made kids and parents sign contracts when this happened so that the kids wouldn't fall behind. Here, everyone just wishes the family a good trip.
Another example is the bells. The bell clock is five minutes slow, on average. But it gets slower and slower as time goes by. Every once in a while, it's gets reset so it's only about three minutes slow. And then it gets slower and the cycle continues. This is frustrating enough, but sometimes the bells don't ring at all. The kids know the bells are screwy. So they are always saying that the bell won't ring to try to get me to let them out early so they can socialize in the hall. I have been very firm about this and I synchronize the clock in my room to the bell clock every few days. But there have been some times that I've kept my kids in and they were late for their next class because the bell didn't ring.
The final example is the Terry Fox Run.
All over the world, the run was last Friday. We, on the other hand, had the run today. It was lots of fun. I was one of the only people in the entire school to run the entire run though. No matter, we still had fun. Lots of parents showed up and most of the group walked the primary route. We all had Kool-Aid after. The school raised just over $1500. To celebrate some of the students and one teacher jumped off the dock. That was pretty fun.
To top off the day of physical activity, the teachers wanted to do something for the high school students on Friday nights to have a fun, safe night. So we opened the gym and played games. We played students versus teachers and we played dodgeball, basketball, and soccer. We all had lots of fun. I did land on my ass twice and managed to skin my knee, but all in all I had fun. I even scored for the teachers in soccer.
The only problem we had was that there was a scuffle outside and one of the kids came in to get an adult. Kids can smell a fight and two thirds of the kids emptied the gym to watch the fight. We got everyone to come back in and we had a discussion that this is exactly what we were talking about in the assembly yesterday. We praised the kids who didn't leave the gym. We reiterated that people should just walk away. That is the courageous thing to do. We also praised the kids who sought to get adult help.
But we lightened the mood again by playing more dodgeball. As the teacher got more tired, some of the students volunteered to play for our team. All in all the night was fun. I'm now going to bed to sleep off my jello shooters ... a nice little way that a couple of us teachers wound our night down with.
posted by Small Town Teacher @ 11:48 PM
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