Day 9 at St. Florence: Road Trip

hitch up the wagon, ma! we goin' ta Wal-Mart!

first thing we did Friday morning after the Daily Physical Activity (DPA) of dancing to Peanut Butter Jelly Time, was saddle up the caravan and walk on over to Wal-Mart. i got to tow the Play-Skool wagon to carry the plants we were going to pick up.

elementary school classes rarely go out on group walks like this, and it shows. the discipline of the students is easily surpassed by the kids at day care because day care kids walk together all the time. the walk to Wal-Mart was short, but it was not that fun. inside Wal-Mart was actually better than i thought it would be. kids love to touch things, but nothing got knocked over or grievously soiled.

i spent the rest of the day helping the kids plant flower seeds and beans into jiffy pots. some extra seeds were planted outside into the ugly ground. i have no gardening skills so it was a fun and messy time.

apart from that, marvelously quiet and boring day.

Day 8 at St. Florence: The Friend Zone

awww man -- back in the Friend Zone again.

there is another student volunteering with the teacher i'm working with; she's really friendly, nice, and actually attended the school from kindergarten and graduated in '99.

the teacher made the boo-boo of introducing her to the kids by her first name, thus making her equal with the kids: a friend, if you will. she corrected that mistake by introducing me by my formal address, Mr. Chan, elevating me as an authority figure in the eyes of the children. This, of course, also leads to various pronunciations by the non-Chinese (everyone else): Mr. Chang, Mr. Chen, etc. the other student volunteer calls me Dr. Chan because she thought someone called me that on the first day.

anyways, if you're nice enough to the kids and not a very good disciplinarian, the kids will bring you back down to the Friend Zone and basically never listen to you unless you're saying something they want to hear. so now i'm having a lot of trouble getting them to listen to me when i tell them to sit at the their desks or walk a bit faster after playground time. it's like day care all over again, especially with the girls. i'm like a toy now.

littlest and cutest girl (LCG) in the class - "Mr. Chan? Do you have a girlfriend?"
me - "Nope."
LCG - "Why not?"
me - [shrug]
LCG - "Are you a teenager or an adult?"
me - "Adult."
LCG - "So you should have a girlfriend! ... It's easy. Just find a girl that you like, and then ask her out on a date! Oh, but what if the girl rejects you?"
me - [shrug] "Find someone else?"
LCG [to the other girls] - "I asked Mr. Chan, 'Do you have a girlfriend?' and he said, 'No.'" [giggles]

Day 7 at St. Florence: Relationships

when doing these writeups i like to take a look back at what went on during the day in all disparate episodes and try to weave the most important funny ones with a common thread. y'all had better appreciate this extraneous effort at post quality.

as you can tell by the title, today was a slow day.

staff room chatter was about bras and fake boobs. someone bought this months copy of [insert celebrity gossip magazine name] and the younger teachers pored over it. a moment of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was brought up (when Will gets locked in with a girl he'd been trying to impress during a party and he finds out all her attractive features were essentially fake -- nails, lashes, hair, etc -- "is ANYTHING real?!"). so for about 6 minutes i was the only guy in the staff room with a bunch of women as they talked about that sort of thing. good thing i do that on a regular basis or else i might've been embarassed.

anyways, our resident grade 1 couple hit a bit of a rough patch today. the teacher does not seem to care much for this sort of thing, but i live vicariously through them, so i felt the pain. they're both really cute; she gave him her phone number (which he nearly lost), invited him to her birthday party last weekend and gave him a paper mache star she made at day care; the boy is a big time trouble maker, the same kid at the water fountain and with the cool pyromaniacal quote on day 1. they got into some sort of kerfuffle at lunch and he gave her the finger, which hurt her feelings terribly. my grade 1 relationship was hardly this dramatic.

Day 6 at St. Florence: "You, shake your junk."

teachers are people, just like students. everyone can have good days and bad days. the fun part is getting bunches of people together on their good, medium, bad, neurotic days and having them try to cooperate and interact together on a daily basis.

my teacher shared about one of her past experiences at a school she'd like to forget. the staff there was cliquey -- "you can't sit there! that's mr. so-and-so's seat." St. Florence, small and quaint, is very much not like that. most of the students attending the school have been there since the beginning, and all their brothers and sisters went or still attend. though the neighbourhood is not the safest and the family backgrounds are not the most ideal situations, everyone at the school genuinely cares. little grade 1 kids will share their stuff like family. most kids don't have erasers; anytime someone asks to borrow one, two or three hands shoot up to volunteer and the erasers borrowed are always returned.

the teachers are as friendly with each other as the students are with their friends. for half the day we sat through a dry run of the thursday concert (more like classroom presentations). some classes did songs, some did dances, some did narrated scenes. the grade 6/7 class was easily the most impressive. they coordinated an elaborate 'stomp' routine that was simple, organized and quite delightful. grade 4s did dance routines, but dancing is hard for people on the cusp of puberty and feeling awkward about their limbs.

one of the highlights, especially for the teachers, was the segments of ballroom dancing done by the grade 8s. i don't know about you, but dancing in a public setting at the wallflower age for me would have been mortifying (tack on a cheesy mountie costume and i've got some lovely memories coming back to me now). the awkwardness showed in the people set in the background, with tentative touches of the hand; one brave hand actually ventured a bit south of the waist, but i'm not sure anyone else noticed. these guys did 4 different dances in different styles, to varying degrees of success of course. front and centre was the tallest man-child the school had to offer. relatively speaking, he is mature in manner and form. they got him to dance with 3 different girls (the pretties who could dance better than the awkwards). he moved with deliberation, poise, grace and at times a daintiness that belied his size. it sounds like i'm gushing, but i am merely quoting the teachers from their lunchtime schoolgirl gabfest about how graceful and elegant he was. one of the teachers said that he looked older than me; i took that as a compliment.

Day 5 at St. Florence: Getting into the Flow of Things

today i got to work with the special ed. teacher instead of the usual grade 1s. she is in charge of the spring concert this Thursday so much of today was spent decorating the gym with all the art projects each class made to display for their parents, putting up posters and signs and generally using up rolls of tape. there were some very creative pieces. the grade 4 class made crayon/pastel tshirts (cut out from paper) with Earth Day slogans and pictures on them. i put them up on the wall with some fishing line and clothes pins, and from a distance, it looks really cool. i can't imagine how some of this stuff gets done without student teachers and assistants year round. elementary teachers have so much to do in hardly any time. high school teachers get one period free for prep, on top of lunch -- the teachers here talk about such prep periods with a mixture of awe and envy. the only time these teachers seem to have is before class, recesses, lunch and when the students are in music or french.

anyways, today was also my first lesson. i was drafted into teaching a special ed. class science. we did flight, so for the last ten minutes of the day, we made paper airplanes and helicopters; tomfoolery was had by all.

working with a different teacher is quite the experience. the grade 1 teacher (wife of my program coordinator) has been teaching 30 years, so most of her stuff is routine and organized. this teacher, though statuesque, was confused by the new student teacher today as being a student. she is the type to say, "do whatever you want, you'll be fine," which is sort of the way i am. she's very nice and encouraging and puts the radio on during class. she tried to find Flow 93.5 this morning but got Barry White instead; i think Barry White (listen) for breakfast is a great way to start the day.

i got a pretty good dose of routine and organization last week and last year, so putting up decorations and throwing stuff around the room was a welcome reprieve.