The flags flew at half mast at my school this week. First thing on Wednesday morning we heard that one of our Grade 7 girls who suffered from cyclic neutropenia, died shortly after being admitted to hospital when her blood count dropped. We were all affected by this and I can’t imagine how her parents must feel. Our Grade 7s were summoned to an assembly before lessons began and sobbed when the news was broken to them.  Our school counsellor as well as a grief counsellor were there to help them through the trauma.

At our school we have what we call Hoofies – the entire school is divided into family groups consisting of a Grade 7 as leader and then a child from each grade down to Grade 1.  They meed regularly and the idea is that the older children mentor the younger ones and the younger ones always have a big brother or sister in the school to turn to if they need to.  This minimises bullying and builds a camaraderie and culture of caring throughout the school.   The Grade 1s adore their Hoofie leaders. One of mine was in the late Grade 7s group and was devastated to hear of her passing.  Her Hoofie family was called to the counsellors office at break and she just couldn’t stop crying when the news was broken.  I spent some time holding her and letting her cry. “It’s not fair,” she said “Sarah was too young to die. I loved her so much.  I will never forget her.”

There were other girls in my class who knew her and they all shared their feelings in a care circle. Discussing it and crying together helped the mourning process. I told the girls that Sarah would not want them to be sad forever and that we should continue our day and dedicate it to her. They agreed and soon we were back into lessons, though in a more sombre mood than usual.

Being a new teacher to the school, I did not know Sarah personally.  But having heard from my girls, the other teachers who taught her, had her for sport or choir, it appears that she was a caring, friendly girl a popular with all who came into contact with her.   She will surely be missed.   Most of our Grade 7s went to her Memorial Service.  A friend of mine who knew the family went to and told me that it was beautiful and inspiring.   Rest in Peace Sarah – My school will always remember you.

I’ve said it before and I say it again.  I teach at a school that never sleeps.  Yes we had a very long weekend and it was great  – it gave me a chance to catch my breath and work on some new teaching material – but the 3 day week afterwards was a full one ending with a Pyjama Party for the little ones on Friday night.  The older kids had “Night Life” and “Teen Time” and the school vibrated with the sounds of kids having fun.

They were all storming the front doors and demanding to be let in at 7 o’clock.  I was ready to receive my charges and there were shrieks of laughter and cries of Ma’m you’re wearing pyjamas!  Well of course – what else do you wear to a pyjama party.   I thought I looked quite cute in my pink gown and slippers.

The four Grade 1 teachers organised ‘stations’ and the children rotated for a 20 minute slot at each.   My brief was to take them on a ‘night walk’ with torches. This caused great excitement as I lead them round the darkened quad and had them hunting for wild animals and mystical creatures that lurked behind every bush.  There were shrieks of excitement and terror as they ‘spotted’ goblins and tigers and a crocodile paddling in a deep puddle which they meticulously avoided stepping into.   A few of the little girls clung to my hand and said, Ma’m I’m scared, and giggled hysterically. “It’s just in our imagination, hey Ma’m” whispered one hopefully.

But the boys were brave and went forth into the jungle and slayed the dragons and monsters and wild creatures of the dark night.

There was a brief shower of rain that drove us back indoors but it was gone in time for the next group to have their turn at defeating the evil enemy.   The last hour of the evening we had our own classed back in the classroom where after a trip to the tuck shop to replenish supplies and increase the sugar-high, we turned off the lights, put on a DVD and encouraged the over excited little people to quieten down and maybe even sleep before their parents collected them …..  no, of course that didn’t happen!

All too soon the three hours were up and the parents arrived to collect their hyped up  offspring.   It was fun but the hi-jinks and hilarity wore me out big time – I slept very well on Friday night!

I left school on break-up day last term at 12:00 p.m. and at 12:10 I was on my way to The Kruger National Park.   After a wonderful  week there with my husband and 4 grandchildren, we returned on Holy Thursday and I had the Easter Weekend to prepare myself for the new term.  It was good to have those four days to sleep in a bit after a week of the necessary early rising for good game viewing:-)

My princesses were bright and eager on the first day and before we knew it we were into the full swing of the new term. The weather is still warm although the early mornings are darker and somewhat chillier now.    Our first day started with Assembly taken by our headmaster.   He spoke about the importance of being kind to each other and showed a lovely video of how one act of kindness led to another and came full circle when the person who helped a hurt child had an act of kindness shown to him too.   We sang a song about ‘filling each other’s buckets’ and the message really went home to the little people.   A great way to start the term and my girls have continued to refer to ‘filling buckets’ ever since.

Now that the little girls are in their second term and quite adjusted to big school, I have had no more separation anxiety.  They were all pleased to be back and have thrown themselves right into the school routine.   I was a little worried about beginning wide-lined books after only having used unlined books last term but they have surprised me.   Handwriting is a silent lesson, I have to remind them – listen and look and you will get it right – And they do!   I am so proud of their beautiful handwriting.   Every day they write the date and  their names and surnames, do a pattern and learn the correct way of writing a new letter.  Imagine all the concentration that takes when you’ve only just begun.  Where do I start the letter?  Does it touch the top and bottom line? Some small letters are actually quite tall – oh dear is it a whole space or only half?   At the same time I have to remember how to spell both my first name and surname and keep it all straight and neat!   Then there’s reading and sentence writing too! What a lot I am expected to do!

Another first for these little ones will be to present an Assembly.  At my school each grade is responsible for an item in Assembly.   We are busy preparing our classes for their very first one and the theme will be Blast off to Big School.   We’ve worked and worked on getting them to say rhymes and sentences. And next Tuesday will be their big day.  They are so excited – more about this next week.

Today we had what we call a Funscape.   This is kind of like a day off from regular school work.   In the second term the whole grade does a Funscape together – it can take the form of an outing or some sort of activity at school.   We decided to have four stations led by each class teacher.   We had indoor games, outdoor games, making musical instruments and making masks.  I was responsible for making masks. Each class had three quarters of an hour at each station and there was a half an hour break after the second session.   And wow did we have fun.   They used a template to trace their masks, cut them out and then decorated them with feathers and hearts and rhinestones of all shapes.    There was glitter glue and they could also draw designs on them if so desired.   I thought they’d be noisy and messy – but they were absorbed and quiet – they shared the resources beautifully and we had no behaviour problems at all. Yes there was a mess but we covered the tables with black plastic bags and it was all cleared up in a jiffy.  I had my own class last and we ended with a packet of chips and a story and they went off home with their masks and the musical instruments – a shaker made with a paper plate.

So yes the term has started off with lots of activity – a good blend of hard work and fun.   Winter sports have begun and the little ones are throwing themselves into learning these wonderful new skills.  Its a long day for small girls but they seem to be thriving on it.

The pace of my life has increased dramatically since I returned to full time teaching.  My head knows this but the rest of me has not quite caught up.  Now in my thirties and forties I operated at that frantic pace. There was always a sense of urgency in my manor. I walked with a spring in my step and I always had my ducks in a row and made sure that I was ahead.  I know I should get back to that mindset but somehow its just not happening!  My almost sixty self is not even aware when the deadlines are and desire to meet them a week ahead is just not there!   Two weeks ago my Grade Head casually mentioned – “I did half my reports last night.”   “But we’ve only just got back to school,” I replied incredulous.   “They’re due on Monday,” she warned.    Well Monday was six days away.  My thirty year old ex-self went into panic mode but my sixty year old present self refused to get into gear!   These days reports are done online – not by hand in a report book that has to be checked and re-checked before you finally write the final version which once again has to be checked and re-checked and some possibly re-written in ink by hand.   So what was the rush?  I had six days to get it all done and no problem with the checking and re-checking they’d be a cinch to correct.   What I didn’t bargain for was problems getting onto the programme – called “Staffroom” if you don’t mind!   When I finally got it right, it was Thursday.  The nerds and supermen and women were bragging on the dashboard about how many they’d done and who’d completed first.  Mine were finally done by Sunday afternoon – and really;  did it matter that they weren’t all wrapped up well before D-Day?  Not at all but secretly I would have loved to win the race – maybe next time!

My little girls have come up tops.  I am so proud of their progress.  It is so rewarding to see how much they have learned in just one term.   We had a little competition in which every child in the school had to recite a poem, tell a joke or read a story in front of their classmates.  The teachers then chose the best of them to compete against others in the same grade and from those the best four in the grade who competed against the best in the phase – in our case that was the Foundation Phase – Grade 1 to Grade 3.   What a delight to hear each one do their piece with such confidence and weren’t the Grade One teachers proud when one of our boys came up tops when he was chosen by impartial judges to be the best Speaker in our phase:-)   He told a joke with such confidence. He held his audience, stopped to let them laugh and carried on without losing his composure.  What a star!   Each of the finalists was fabulous.  And even those who didn’t go through got the opportunity at least to perform in front of their classmates – such good training for the future.

I was kind of in dream mode at our grade planning meeting last Tuesday.  “We should do something African for our creative lesson,” I heard my grade head say.  “How about patterns in Nature”   “I could do a slide show on animals,” I say “zebra stripe, leopard spots, bird feathers – you know.”   “Fantastic,” she said and then the kids could create animal print designs.”  More discussion went on among my colleagues and it was decided that we would give them an outline of an African pot on which they would create animal print patterns.

What I failed to take in was that this lesson would be open to the public!  This only sank in the next week – yes – We’re having an “Expo Day – a creative explosion”  Oh great – and I would have the whole grade in the big classroom together for the slide show while people wandered in and out scrutinizing what we were doing.  That will teach me for not paying attention!   Well the day arrived, and I wore my zebra stripe braces with a white shirt and black pants, got a most helpful gap student to set up my digital projector and screen and did my little things on why animals have stripes, spots and other patterns.   The pots turned out magnificently and we had streams of people popping in all morning to see what we were doing.  We thought it was great and I hope the visitors did too!

There are more deadlines to meet before the term ends and more importantly more delights to be experienced.  One thing is sure – Life at my school is never boring – even if I haven’t yet caught up with the pace.

One cannot survive as a dinosaur at my school.  If you want to do things the old way – the way that was good enough for me, my mother and my grandmother – forget it – you will soon become extinct.   We are teaching 21st Century children with 21st Century mindsets and so if we want to get through to them we have to move with the times – and rapidly!   I have mentioned before on my blog that our motto for the year is Make a Digital Difference.   And I’ve mentioned before that I just can’t wait – but I am in Grade 1 and all the new digital stuff is happening in the higher grades – I am desperate for an interactive board or at least a HD Television. And I’m specially impatient now after attending the weekend staff development programme.

On Thursday afternoon I was inspired by a visiting American teacher to teach children to ‘infer’ in their reading.   Of course I have done this for years but she gave a new emphasis to this skill and ways in which to teach them to children.   Even in my grade this will be something I will pay more attention  to when teaching my children to read.

Then on Friday, at the last minute due to our planned speaker taking ill, we had a dynamic young man, an I.T. nerd, who will be bringing all the new technology to our school, come an give us a stirring workshop on how to implement digital learning in the classroom.  We all have our phobias regarding crashing into this newness but I found out that I am an “Ambitious Alice”   I, along with all my colleagues in Grade 1, can’t wait to get digitally going.   Our speaker looked concerned – “You’re going to be exhausted by the end of the year,” he said.  But aren’t I always?   Isn’t that the nature of the teaching profession?   Go go go all year and then collapse in a heap at the end and enjoy a well earned long summer holiday!

After inspiring us with stories of children both in privileged environments as well as street children who only had access to a computer in a hole in the wall learning through playing with digital equipment available to them, our speaker exhorted us to prepare a lesson using the internet and any digital device at our disposal.   And what fun we all had and what diverse things we came up with.  I am going to like this new style of teaching – But when oh when am I going to get my interactive board!

I am an old school teacher teaching 21st century kids and I’m loving it.  My old self sometimes cringes at the new methods I’m using and screeches out, “this is not going to work – my Grade 1s will never cope with this.”  Then I take a deep breath go into the classroom and get with the programme.   The little princesses knock the socks off me by getting it right in spite of my fears.  Trust the process, is now my daily mantra.  We don’t really understand how children learn – so be it phonics, look and say, Thrass or whatever – if its presented in the right way they catch on a drink it all in like little sponges.   I don’t know why the doubts still lurk. In my checkered career I have done the Old Maths, The New Maths, The Own Method Maths. I’ve taught “Break Through” and Longman’s Book Project and thoroughly taught phonics along with them too.  And it all worked a what I am doing now is working too.   Its keeping learning fun and interesting that does it in the end.

We have just ended another fun-filled week.  On Monday the girls came to school dressed in red and white – Valentine’s Day being our theme for the day.   After a few regular lessons in Reading and Maths we igot on with our Valentine’s Funscape.   First we discussed the meaning of this romantic day and then sat down to make cards for those special people in our lives.  Then we visited a touch farm and expressed our love to the cute little bunnies, the comical goats, fat little pigs and the docile ponies.  All this was followed by a picnic on the lawn before we returned to school at home time.

Ah yes – Valentine’s Day – it is indeed a romantic time.  A little lad from the boys’ class approached me shyly and asked, “Please give this to Paris, in your class.” and he handed me a beautifully wrapped parcel and a card.  “Don’t you want to give it to her yourself?” I asked.  But no he was too shy for that.  (Please bear in mind that no real names are used here – all my girls are named Paris).
I handed to gift to Paris and she looked all coy and giggled a thank you.    Later her suitor approached me again, “What did Paris say?” he asked – I told him she giggled a thank you.  Then I told her to go and thank him too which she did.   It was ever so sweet!

My own Valentine’s day was sweet too.  I arrived home exhausted and in a fog of school thoughts and right past a vase of red roses and a card.  This was not to be tolerated by my 14 year old grandson -“Gran,” he said, “You’ve walked right past an enormous card and a vase of flours from your Valentine!’  Oops!   And there they were plonked in an empty olive jar for a vase and in the heart on the card a picture of my hero with a 10kg yellow-tail! Was the heart for me or the fish?   Well at least the roses were for me!

We celebrated with friends at a Wasabi in Constantia – the sushi was to die for the company stimulating and we all wore red and white.   Life is good!