a new name, a brilliant idea and an indoor recess

First, the new name. I thought it should be added to this blog that I was called "Mrs. Sherkoch" (pronounced sure-coke) the other day. My teaching partner was away and I was in for her (on a day I don't normally teach) and so the poor confused students decided to call me a combined version of our two names...

Second, the brilliant idea. Whenever I need the kids to stop what they're doing, I count down. Rather than asking them to stop immediately, this gives them a chance to finish up. One time, I was counting down and they obviously didn't want to stop what they were working on. One smarty-pants said "I know guys! We can slow her down if we put up our hands and ask lots of questions!" Ha ha. It's true. If someone asks me a question I usually lose track of the count, or at the very least there is a long pause between numbers. Good thinking.

Lastly, the indoor recess. You might not know that when the temperature gets below a certain level, the kids stay inside for recess. This, I believe, is a board policy. Last week was awfully cold and therefore awfully crazy. Indoor recess is never fun - it only leads to way too much unused energy in the classroom. One of these days I had outdoor duty for first break. I knew the temperature was low, and asked the principal what the plan was. She said they would go out for 10 minutes of recess and then come in for the second 10 minutes and spend it in the gym. Apparently this is what we do for indoor recess - the entire school is in the gym. Sounds crazy, I thought, but okay. I hadn't yet experienced an indoor recess.

So after 10 minutes outside the bell rang and I told the students to line up as usual. Suddenly, a bunch of students started moving towards the other door and everyone started going in. Since that door was closer to the gym, I assumed there was a teacher there directing them in, so I didn't argue. Soon, the entire school was attempting to cram into one door. I made my way over to the door and decided to wait and let the other teacher direct the mob. Since nothing seemed to be happening, I slowly started wading my way through the students, into the tiny lobby and towards the gym. No one seemed to actually be going anywhere, although mysteriously there were less and less people outside. The mob was compressing - a process accompanied by lots of screaming, yelling, pushing and shoving. I used my unnaturally loud (and now useful) clap to get their attention. Since I had again assumed there was a teacher at the gym not letting them in for some reason, I told them they needed to be quiet and patient and stop all this nonsense. They did. But we kept waiting.

It slowly occurred to me that there were no other teachers anywhere to be seen. No one had let them in these doors, and no one was directing them to the gym. It was just two little students, trying to do the right thing, who were preventing everyone from going into the gym. They were waiting for me to let them in! Of course this was unbeknownst to me, and I had, in the mean time, been waiting around, deferring to a non-existent other teacher! So eventually I made my way through the masses to the gym and let them all in. And in they poured. Before long, it was me and a gym full of 180 crazy kids (give or take), bundled from head to toe sitting on the floor or wandering aimlessly with nothing to do. A recipe for disaster. I made a quick dash to the staff room and asked "Sooooo, in the gym, do they all just sit on the floor? Are they supposed to do anything?" Confirmed, everything was the way it was supposed to be. This was it.

Since we had wasted so much time coming in, we really only had about 5 minutes to spend in the gym. Then everyone went back to class and back to normal. But for a while there, things were pretty ridiculous. Can I just say that had there been an emergency of any kind, we would all have died. As it was, little people were nearly being trampled, there was screaming and yelling and pushing of all kinds...It was a complete debacle. Let's hope it doesn't happen again.

back to the "real" world

Well, after a long and lovely Christmas break, I've successfully handled one week back to school. Before the break, my teaching partner and I shuffled things around a bit. So I am now teaching all of math (rather than half), art, drama/dance, gym, and computers. To be honest, I am thrilled about these new arrangements, since I LOVE art. However, with this shuffling, our schedule has also been rearranged, resulting in a full block (80 minutes) of math each day that I teach. If you have ever spent more than 10 minutes with a 7 year old, you know that that's about as long as you can get them to focus on one thing. So 80 minutes of math is slightly over the top. Thus, I must re-work my planning to include a wide range and variety of activities that are actually math, but don't usually seem like math. The key to working with little kids is tricking them into learning by disguising the learning as just having fun. That's the real challenge.

Anyways, things are going pretty well, and everyone has been really flexible. And I am getting better at two things: a) not having 40 minutes of extra time at the end of my math lesson, b) making up random math activities for the kids to do when I have 40 minutes of extra time at the end of my math lesson... :)

Here are two stories from this week. The day before school started someone asked me if I missed my students. I confidently said no - I had really enjoyed the two weeks off. But, as it turns out, I missed them more than I thought once I actually saw them again.

On Tuesday I went around the room and asked the kids what their favourite part of Christmas was. After hearing about Wii after Wii after iPod after Xbox, one girl, an absolute darling and an only child, said her favourite thing was getting her new kitten, Frost. I was pleased to see that some parents have the wear-with-all to buy something other than expensive, eye-popping, electronics. Later, the french teacher was asking the kids what they had done over the holidays. She asked them whether or not they had played with their families. The same girl asked "Does your cat count as your family?" She's so cute.

Later that day two students came up to me while we were working on art and looked like they had something very important to tell me.

Chris: "Mrs. Sherwood?"
me: "Yes?"
Chris: "James, Ashley, David and me are going to the centre of the earth".
me: "Really?"
Chris: "Yes, when we get older we are going to go to the centre of the earth because it's what we all want to be - I want to be a paleantologist, and Ashley wants to be an archeologist, and - "
David: "But the annoying thing is that I have to carry all the supplies. Because once you go down there you can't get anything, so we have to bring everything we need."
Ashley: "Like big chunks of meat."
me: "Why do you need big chunks of meat?"
David: "Well we don't know what's down there. There might be meat-eating animals so we will just throw huge chunks of meat at them when they try to get us."
me: "I see, that sounds like a good strategy."
Ashley: "And there's hot lava down there."
me: "Mmmhmm....Alright well, I think we've done enough planning for that, and now it's time to get back to work..."

Afterwords I overheard Chris telling another student that he had wanted to tell his dad about this plan but he didn't because he knew his dad wouldn't believe him. I suppose I ought to count myself lucky as one of the trusted few who get to hear about about these wonderfully ambitious, future plans...

Their creativity and curiousity never ceases to amaze me.