maS

I have a kid in my class, his name is Sam. Sam can't spell his name. That is just so tragically sad I think it’s past funny. I have tried freakin everything to get this kid to spell his name, but nothing, nada, zip. There is some major miswiring in his brain. I mean that in the most respectful way. Sam writes his name like this:

He starts with the ‘s’ and then goes backwards. I have made him trace cards, given him fat pens, skinny pens, heavy pens, light pens, glittery pens to write with, put stars, stickers, dots, arrows where he needs to start writing his name, held his hand while he writes, given him individual trace cards of the letters, and I make him do all of these things about 683 times a day. And he still writes his name like this:
The other day we were moving into small groups to do some patterning and sorting stuff (seriously, there is nothing that can describe the pain of such a brain numbingly empty void of time that is 'little kid maths'), and I was putting out different stuff around the room and calling over small groups of kids to each pile of goodies. Anyway, I turn back to grab the next pile of stuff for the next group of kids only to find maS sitting at his desk. I asked him why he was there...he had no idea. Went something like this:
Me: "maS, how come you're at your desk mate?"
maS: " "
Me: "maS, is anyone else at their desk sweetie?"
maS: " "
Me: "maS do you think you are in the right place?"
maS: " "
Me: "maS can you see what everyone else is doing?"
Sam: " "


At this stage one of my darling angels comes to save me by grabbing his hand and telling him "maS, she didn't say your name yet, come back to the floor". At which point I didn't know whether to cry out of frustration, cry cause I really do teach the sweetest most caring kids ever, cry cause maS just doesn't get 'it' or go across the road to the pub. In the end I gave maS the dinosaurs, which he loves, and told him to play. Sorting them by colour was beyond him after that exceptionally strenuous conversation.

Hot Water. Please.

This has nothing to do with school. Well it does in that it is a pain in the arse to get ready to get to school at the moment.

Our hot water system shit itself. Just gave up the ghost, kicked the bucket, just stopped making hot water. We live in the tropics. You would think this is not a problem. But it is. Apparently, rumour has it, that if you live in a certain climate for 5 years or something similar, your body adjusts and either thins or thickens your blood as necessary. As such I can quite happily roast, swelter and gain unattractive and equally unladylike sweat stains and feel nothing more than mere discomfort. But don't make me have a cold shower. I swear it is like preparing my body for cryogenic freezing or whatever the hell John Wayne had done to come back from the dead one day when they can fix whatever it was that he died from.

Now that's established what to do about no hot water? Although my House Pet is in a trade of some description, plumbing is not it and I think we all know, universally, that tradesmen are Not Reliable. In either actually arriving or the quality of work once arrived. So realising that this may need a somewhat long term (anything more than 1 cold shower requires a long term solution as far as I’m concerned), HP went looking for solutions. And found the camp shower. The camp shower is a complicated bag of tricks comprising of a battery pack - as in car battery - alligator clips, what I can only assume is a pump, a couple of cords, wires and a shower head. So all of that, combined with a bucket, and the 2L kettle of hot water boiled and emptied into said bucket twice then filled with cold water, and we are ready to get clean. Needless to say getting clean has been a rather traumatic experience, now add to that getting clean AND being on time? Well lets just say that teaching is a trade. And like all good tradesmen, I am sticking true to form and am having difficulty arriving on time to anything and when I'm there I may or may not do what I'm meant to and will probably send a bill home with my kids stamped with “Payment required before any work to commence”.

Who's the Boss?

So I like to be the ruler of my universe. What I say goes. Even the people who are my boss people know that and within reason are happy for me to be the ruler of my own universe. I actually have a role within my school that lets me, to a very very very small extent, be the ruler of other people's universe, not just mine and that is super. The more stuff I can be the boss of the happier I am. This is perhaps the only reason I became a teacher. I get to be the boss, ruler, commander, president, king, prime minister, dictator, emperor, monarch, overlord, controller, governor, leader, choose what you will, of 25 little people all day long. Don't get me wrong, I wield my powers wisely. I treat the little people fairly, listen to their side of the story and feel guilty most of the time I send them off to order my lunch for me. They are after all not my slaves. Or so I've been told.

Anyway today I had to go to a meeting. It was all day long and it was with people from other schools who have the same role as me. I.e., like to rule other people's universes although we have no real power or authority to do so. I am a big fat bossy boots and I know it, but because I am aware of it I tone it down when I'm in someone else's universe and Behave Myself. But holy flippin snake crap, there was this other arseclown there today who beats me hands down. I was foolish enough to sit beside her and she was so full of her own self importance, being rightness and so certain that her way is the only way that I swear to god I thought she was going to explode icky green goop all over me. She argued with the boss of us, argued with all of us both individually and collectively, tried to upshow, upsmart and uparse all of us to make herself feel better. She made generalised sweeping statements about what kids can and can’t do, forgetting that she comes from an uptight rich middle class twat of a school with more money then they know what to do with while the rest of us are shit kicking down the bottom of the ladder with our small poppets who have mummies or daddies in jail, drunk, on crack or at the very least the dole who all believe that education is how you spell Free Babysitting.

I wish I could end this tale of woe with a recount of how she fell down the stairs on her way out or had a parking ticket waiting for her or choked on a peanut, but alas I can't. Some shits just cruise through life being a pain in everyone's headspace.

But some good has come of it though. I have decided that even though I know I am bossing and try and turn it down perhaps I need to boss less and listen more. Except to show and tell. I refuse to listen to that punk arse shit.

Autism much?

So I taught this autistic kid right. He was diagnosed as having a mild dose (they are my words, not the doctor's - clearly) and is able to function normally but it is obvious he doesn't not operate the same as the rest of us. You had to trick him into everything or force things into being habits. Like when he came to my class he used to eat sandwiches for lunch every day. Every day, he'd take half of his sandwich and take a bite out of the middle, then to the left, then to the right. So it looked like this:

and then that would be all he would eat. It pissed me off. Don't know why. Maybe I just forget how truly frustrating he was to deal with. Maybe it was just one of those things. But maybe I'm just cruel. I decided I'd make him eat the whole thing. After a few weeks of tears, tantrums and lunches that lasted 2 hours, he just gave in and suddenly eating the whole thing was What Was Done with sandwiches.

It was about now that I realised that with a little bit of persistence I could 'train' him. Much like Pavlov's dog really. And holy shit! This was a kid who could do NOTHING as far as school was concerned but by the end of the year, after many many tantrums, tears and thrown books, pencils, pencil cases, (all of which I am pleased to report were his), he was as capable as the rest of the class and was a successful student.

That is the lasting memory of this kid in my head. So yesterday when I saw him in the playground and he came to tell me for about the 36th time that someone was annoying him and now they had hit him I jokingly (I think, but maybe I wanted to see what would happen...) said "well why don't you go hit him back?"....

Yeah so he still thinks, acts and responds literally, I didn't fix that and I spent the rest of lunch time trying to bust up the fight I managed to start...

10 things I hate about you

I have had a fucktastically annoying week. Here is a brief yet not exclusive list of things that pissed me off this week.

1. The evil little bastard child son of a fellow teacher.
2. The kid who still doesn't know that the two letters 'n' and 'o' together makes the word 'no'.
3. The evil little bastard child son of a fellow teacher.
4. Working with people who believe it is healthy to compete. About everything. Ranging from who has the smartest kids to who has the dumbest and needing to win both cases. Like are you a moron? You just don't get to win both of those.
5. The evil little bastard child son of a fellow teacher.
6. The handful of kids who still don't know the alphabet even though I have done everything short of tattooing it onto their retinas.
7. The evil little bastard child son of a fellow teacher.
8. The few kids in my class who still can't write their name. Just a tip you are going to need to know at least that even to be a dole bludging blight on society. Dickhead.
9. The evil little bastard child son of a fellow teacher.
10. The fact that it is illegal to headbutt children.

8

A quick bit of background... Even though I live in an English speaking part of the big blue thing commonly known as Earth, the kids I teach, not a single one of them, speak English as their first language. However most of them speak a language that is so close to the English language that they don't know that they are not speaking English and as such have great difficulty in all areas of literacy. Which funnily enough can be found in all aspects of schooling.

Part 2 of the bit of background is that this particular bunch of joys I choose to spend my day with are somewhere between the ages of 6 and 7, and depending on what part of the planet you reside on, are in Grade 2, Year 2, Second Grade or whatever you call it in your neck of the woods.

By this stage in development students should be not far off reading and writing, again, depending on your neck of the woods. Lets just say that the peer group of my wonders of the world would be up to those things.

You are prepared for the fact that these rays of sunshine will be lower than where you would expect kids of that age to be. Even so there are always a few who stun you with how ridiculously little they know. The other day I had a group of these stunners and we were learning the alphabet. To start with, how the hell do you get to be 6 or 7 and not know the alphabet?! Seriously! Anyway, they don't, so I thought we'd see just how much (see, hear the optimism there? I said how much, not how little!) they knew. So in a group we sat down with some alphabet cards spread out between us and we worked together to put them in order.

Oooooooo the pain!!! Shit fire they couldn't even find me the letter a! Then after a particularly gruelling round of "Who can find me the letter b? No sweetie b. No, not d. No not p. No not v. Yep b. That's what I'm after. No that is the letter x..." at which point I grabbed the b and shoved it at the closest kid all but screeching "It's this one!" The letters c, d, e, f and g weren't much better. The kicker though was the next letter. Still foolishly full of optimism I asked, "a, b, c, d, e, f, g, who can tell me the next letter!?" Only 1 answered. Her answer?

"8!"

That was the end of learning the alphabet that day.