I woke up this morning tired. I have been awake in the
middle of the night with what I call work brain. It’s baaaacckk. Anyway, I was
scheduled to go to the grade 4 classroom for Harmony Day. I contemplated for a
couple minutes that I might just feign sickness, or as they say here “chuck a
sickie.” But, I really did want to see the boys do their Aboriginal dancing at
the all school assembly at 9 am, so I hauled myself out of bed and went out
into the rain.
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| I wish for no cancer (please) |
Normally I’m just an extra pair of hands that hangs out in
the back of the room, but today Jacqui was busy getting the assembly
participants ready and as I got there, she said to me on her way out of the
room, “Can you line them up and bring them over in 5 minutes?” Uh, okay, time
to be a 4th grade teacher! So I used my handy dandy attention
getting devices that I teach my students (“if you can hear my voice, clap
once…”) and told them they had to be really good on the way over because I only
had this one job and I wanted everyone to think I could pull it off. We dodged
the raindrops on the way to the gymnasium and they lined up on the floor. Jacqui
gave me a thumbs-up.
They have student-led school assemblies every Friday where
they give out individual “good choice awards” and whole classes are awarded for
good behavior at specials (PE, Japanese, Music). Students were all lined up and
waiting for presentations to begin. In front of me I observed a pair of girls doing the patty cake clapping game, impressively quickly and quietly. And right behind them were two boys
playing can-you-move-your-hands-away-before-I-slap-them game. Classic gendered behavior. Today grade 6 students put on a skit
to teach Prep and Year 1 students what rubbish to put in which bin. The 5-year-olds got a real surprise from seeing a hand with a thumbs-up come out of the bin flap, indicating that the boy had chosen the correct bin for recyclables.
In honor of Harmony Day and the valuing of many cultures,
a group of Aboriginal boys and a local Koorie leader performed three dances for the
school. The boys looked nervous and proud, all at the same time.
I volunteered to take the class back by myself, seeing as
how I was so successful getting them there. When we sat down in the classroom,
one student said some kids were laughing at the dancers. It was my golden
opportunity to lead a discussion like those I had been teaching student
teachers to lead. We talked about all the reasons why people might have been
laughing. Someone suggested maybe the dancing made them happy. I said, “That could be.
What if they were laughing in a way that didn’t feel good?” Someone said they
might laugh because it was different and they weren’t sure how to act. Then Jacqui came in and students told her some kids were laughing, and she said, “Well, I’m disappointed in those few
people, but I think there were 600 people in there who really enjoyed the
dancing. The boys did a beautiful job and I think on Harmony Day I’d like to
focus on the people who enjoyed it.”
Jacqui showed an animated video called If the World Was a Village
which depicted a village of 100 people representative of the world’s
demographics. Students were surprised that Australia was only 1% of the world’s
population. The video also touched on how many languages would be spoken and
the proportions of people who experienced poverty, air and water pollution, and food shortage. After the
video, the teacher asked the students to use their iPads to type out two things
that stuck out to them in the video and the class discussed them.
As recess time approached, the intercom lady announced it
would be an inside recess and the kids cheered. One of the girls who had moved
from Scotland the year before had brought a sugary treat from her culture
called “tablet” to share during recess. It was made from sugar, condensed milk, and butter. Teachers gathered in the center common room and
enjoyed pumpkin soup and bread supplied by a parent group I think. At the end
of the half hour recess, we returned to the room and two of the girls played
their iMovie for me. They made a 2-minute movie, complete with a plot,
subtitles, and credits – all during this one recess! It was essentially about two girls (one of them Scottish) who save the world from evil tablet. After recess students used
their computer devices to create graphs that demonstrated the percentages of
population on different continents. All of this youthful techno-competency made me feel a little
like a luddite.
