Day 22 at St. Florence: The End

and so ends my official tenure as student teacher at St. Florence. it was awesome.

little kids in grade 1 are arguably the best age for kids to be. they know how to pee and poo and wipe on their own, they say really cute things, they still look really cute and they hug you and hold your hand just to say hello. by now they know how to read and write the most common words, so they laugh at your jokes for the right reasons. their personalities are starting to flesh out but they're not at the stage of grudges and cut-eyes and backstabbery that plagues grade 5 and up. even when they're hurt and crying they can be cheered up with a hug and a funny noise or face. the best part about teaching grade 1 students is seeing how they've improved from the beginning of the year. the fruits of the teacher's labour are clearly evident in spelling tests and carpet-time questions.

we had a brief 8-word spelling test today, on less tricky words than last time because these could be sounded out (rich, chest, shed, club, land, ring, etc). i was given the task of marking while the teacher carried on with the next lesson. i thought checking eight words per student was a little bit too easy, so i set up a chart with eight boxes per student to track which words they had the most trouble with. then i totalled the scores and calculated an average. there are no calculators in a grade 1 classroom, so i had to do it manually for 20 students. to make it easier for myself, i plotted the marks in a histogram first (1 zero, 2 threes, 2 fives, 4 sixes, 4 sevens and 7 perfects). then i dotted all the boxes that indicated errors with a red marker so they'd stand out. most kids had trouble getting 'club' correct on account of mucking up their 'b' and 'd'. it was so nerdy; i wish i had taken a photograph of it.

can you tell i was playing with Excel the other day, tallying my university marks? i finished with a cumulative grade point average of pi (rounded to two decimal places) by the way. i was quite pleased since i had been on 2.9ish for the longest time. and then i found out i missed out on a Distinction by 0.06 and i felt like a loser; it was great.

anyway, there was a lot of hugging and hand holding and begging today from kids asking me not to leave; i already told them i would be in tomorrow. and now i will likely be in every monday, wednesday and friday for June as well (because i have no life and i like the attention they give me and because the teachers suckered me into it). now that i'm technically off the clock, i can be a bit more bold in building relationships with the kids and staff and subtly ministering to them. i should bring a camera some time.

Day 21 at St. Florence: "What are you still doing here?"

at long last: lunchtime talk turned to pregnancies.

we went through 8 cm dilations, not-false pregnancies, icky-placental guck, 34-36 wk births (4 pounders that fit in the palm of your hand), hospital policy, sleepless husbands (troopers!) and this story:

"when my mom's water broke for her fourth child, my dad said he was hungry and asked her to make a sandwich. she made it and he ate it. when they got to the hospital, the nurses asked, 'what took so long?'"

until kindergarten teacher asked, "Herman, what are you still doing here?"

it was late into the lunch hour and the only people left in the staff room were mothers, soon to be mothers and one male volunteer doing his elementary school teaching placement.

i shrugged. "gotta be prepared for this some time, right?"

kindergarten teacher: aren't you grossed out?

me: [shrugs again]

kindergarten teacher: that's your reaction to everything! i love Herman; [to the principal] can we keep him?

principal: yes, we should! can you come to our play date on June 25th? we're having games and hot dogs!

grade 5 teacher: and you can help set up...

principal: oh, and you can come to the bowling trip. [to grade 5 teacher] there, now you have one adult volunteer. you'll just need two more.

me: i'll come whenever i'm needed.

grade 5 teacher: oh, just come from June 2nd to the 27th...

by the end of the day, i had been suckered into spending at least half of June volunteering at St. Florence, which is great since i have steadfastedly refused to look for a summer job, even though this is the big year that i really need to.

Day 20 at St. Florence: Powerless

for the first half of the day we operated without power. this was scheduled electrical maintenance; some switches needed to be replaced and for some reason this couldn't be done on the weekend. the replacement procedure required a complete shutdown of the power in the area, and it took a few hours to reboot. this makes for a crazy day for kids because they need routine, or else their wires get all crossed up. most of the older students were off to Track and Field today, making for a further break from routine.

the one advantage of power outages is that everyone naturally becomes quieter with the lights off (on top of cutting out the white noise of air intakes, etc). and it was a gorgeous day. not overbearingly hot, with a gentle breeze and almost no humidity.

the rest of the afternoon after recess was spent enjoying the lovely weather at the playground with three other classes. while the teachers were busy chatting, i tried to supervise about 60 kids. fortunately two of the classes were grade 5 and 3 respectively; they didn't need too much monitoring, and they took care of their younger siblings.

LCG pulled me aside and told me she needed to talk to me in private. this struck me as a little bit weird for a 6 y.o. girl to ask of me, but it turns out she only wanted to ask me some personal questions.

LCG: how old are you?
me: i told you two weeks ago.
LCG: fifty-two?
me: yep.
LCG: are you hairy?
me: [points to head] yep.
LCG: and on your legs?
me: very.
...
LCG: do you have hair on your nipples?
me: no... [LCG], what do you talk about at home? these are some weird questions.
LCG: whaaaat? do you have hair on your bum?
me: yes. it's like a carpet.
some random grade 3 girl listening in: EEEEEWWWWWW
...
LCG: do you have a girlfriend?
me: no. why do you keep asking me that? do you want me to have one?
LCG: if you don't get a girlfriend, you can stay a kid forever!

Day 19 at St. Florence: Moving On

and so begins my last week at St. Florence. the cute little boy did an awesome dance this morning for o canada as he sang along (he was mostly behind). but he dances and sings every morning, so that's not really anything special. this is on top of the singing and dancing he does for Peanut Butter Jelly Time.

i had my first gym class with them today and i was assigned to lead them in some locomotion exercises for grading (report card season is nigh). so i lined them up and had them walk around like horses, prowl like cats, leap like frogs and waddle like pigs/bears/crocodiles. i have to do it again on thursday because it was so good today (like wha?). now i need to come up with a few more animals with distinctive attributes (elephant?).

lunch time conversation was interesting too. kindergarten teacher and i were reading the paper about the dreadful daycares around the GTA. it depressed her so we pulled out the Life and Entertainment section (formerly Arts & Entertainment and Life) to cheer her up with more brainless reads. apparently, couples in China set up appointments for sex. i had to remind myself a few times that kindergarten teacher was not Hannah.

Herman and the Fox

there's no hate. i respect the huge headway Firefox has made for alternative browsers into IE's marketshare. back in 2003, only a small bastion of early Opera users and Netscape holdouts were using browsers other than IE on Windows.

i liked it when i first tried it. there's something every attractive about animals on fire. foxes are naturally associated with fire due to their flame-red coats and wilyness (vulpix and ninetales anyone?). also, Samson tying torches to the tails of foxes to raze a Philistine village after they insulted him. what Firefox really has going for it is the coolness factor, due in most part to the image it conjures in your mind. a literal fox on fire is really not that cool, but we're talking mythical fire here.

Firefox is also attractive because it empowers the user. the extensions API (advanced programming interface) gives users countless options in terms of feature, performance, graphical experience, etc. if you are a Firefox user and you haven't dabbled into extensions yet, you'd be better off with another browser.

The Fox is marketed as being better, faster, safer than IE6 or anything else out there. as far as marketing goes, Firefox gets an A+. unfortunately most of Firefox's claims are not true, but most users don't care too much and hold on to what they've grown to like. that's alright, Firefox is a capable browser with a very helpful user-base that continues to make improvements.

i originally did not intend to switch to anything when i tested out Opera. Firefox was in its heyday, having just released 2.0 with great features like in-line spell check and... that's all i remember. i had just gotten the hang of tweaking the program to do my bidding, streamlining the interface and setting up shortcuts through keywords and tinkering with the cascading style sheets (userChrome).

after spending a bit of time on Opera, overcoming the slight learning curve with the rather intricate interface and list of options, i began to notice Firefox's shortcomings, specifically in the start-up time and rendering speed. i don't know how it works on your computers, but on mine, Firefox takes like 10 to 20 seconds to fire up. that's like a lifetime compared to IE6's instant activation. to be fair though, IE6 is coded into Windows, so it is technically always on, even when it looks closed. Firefox, however, has no excuse in comparison to Opera's 2.47 s mark. clearly, good coding can achieve times similar to IE6's 1.77 s, even in third-party applications. start up times and rendering times can be found here.

i will not go into how the feature set of Opera compares to Firefox. using basic installations, Opera blows Firefox out of the water, but Firefox has nearly limitless potential through extensions. users beware though, as not all extensions are equal in quality or security. they are made by users like you (with lots of time on their hands), so there is the possibility of incompetance and/or malice. also worthy of passing mention is how a good chunk of the really good FF extensions are copied (not always cleanly) of Opera features.

so, in conclusion, i thank Firefox for opening my eyes to the wonderful world of browser tweaking and showing me that it is okay to expect more than the status quo.