I've been burned

This has been a great week for me at Swanson Primary. On Tuesday, I participated in Athletics day for the Henderson area school district. I ran the marshaling for the track meet, which involved me getting all of the schools runners ready for the race and give them their lane assignments. The Athletics day was for children 8-11, and they participated in a variety of events extremely similar to a track meet for Middle or Intermediate Schools in the States. I spent most of the day out of the cover of a classroom, and even though I have taken to putting on sunblock as a part of my morning ritual, I still fell victim to the NZ sun. I have had a first hand experience that has helped me to understand why the students at Swanson are required to wear a hat whenever they are outside. The sun ate through my sunblock, even though it was SPF 45. I definitely am glad that towards the end of the meet the clouds blocked most of the sun. 

Because of my role in the Athletics day, I was able to get an intimate understanding of how differently sports are run between the US and NZ. For example, this entire Athletics day was run by teachers even though it was held at Trusts Stadium (a major stadium in the area). I am used to my Catholic school way of running events where parents run a majority of the sports activities through a school sponsorship. Here in NZ to get the same type of experience the students would need to join a club team that has no affiliation with their school. I was able to understand just how much influence sports have on Americans in general, and I was excited to see how involved the teachers of NZ get with sports and physical activity. For example, I started running a unit of ultimate Frisbee with my students. I am expected to join in with my students, and in fact they quite enjoy both beating me or winning along side of me. It was quite an interesting experience for me to walk into my classroom today and be greeted by four students with the same question, almost like it was rehearsed, "Can we play ultimate Frisbee, again?" I was excited that they had enjoyed this sport since not many of them had never heard of it. 

Unfortunately for my students, today was a testing day for the Algebra unit. I do not have all of my Rm 34 students in my Algebra class because of grouping, but I was able to input the scores for the students who were in my Algebra class, and most of my students improved drastically. My students started in my maths (math for those in the states) at or below the NZ mean for their age. Once I was able to input all of their scores most of my students are now well above the NZ mean, with some students scoring as being proficient for freshman or sophomores in high school. I cannot wait to tell these students how proud I am of their achievements, and how glad I am that their hard work has paid off. I told the students that every one of them could improve and every single student did.

For next week, week 9 of 10 at Swanson, I have many different projects to finish: claymation movies (one more lab day should do it), inquiry into communication (to be finished by Wednesday), and a written narrative to add to and explain their visual claymation narrative (due on Thursday). My students are also excited about our Christmas concert on Tuesday of next week. I have two songs planned for them, "Christmas Time" a parody of "Kryptonite" (3 Doors Down) with my lyrics, and "Walkie Talkie Man" (Steriogram) where we have a Santa being chased by three kids around the audience with three dramatic air guitarists playing the solos on the stage while the rest of the students sing. I have had such a fun time planning for this Christmas concert and my teacher has been so excited that I have taken over the practicing, songwriting, and choreography for our two numbers. I can now see the benefit of all those years of show choir in high school. I have really enjoyed the excitement my students display at the fact that they get to go last, sing a song that is not tradition, and rock out on stage. I am looking forward to showing off what my class can do.