SORRY!

I am alive! I am sorry that I have not posted very much this past week! The classroom has been a little consuming….but I LOVE it :)

I am teaching Grade 12 Chemistry, Grade 12 Environment and Resource Management (aka Geography – YIKES!) and Grade 11 Chemistry. So far, the students have been angels - chatty ones - but still……..ANGELS :) We had fun last week sharing our life maps and quotes and they are now posted all over the room as colourful reminders of classroom expectations! We also had a blast doing team-building games last Thursday. Knuckle buckle (shout out to SHAD VALLEY!), the human knot, “horses, knights and cavaliers”, cows and ducks, and a competitive game of human sculpture can do wonders to your level of happiness :) My students didn’t believe that we were going to play any of these games at first and laughed the entire time. (Please note: games MAY have included making cow and duck noises to locate each other with eyes closed, lifting classmates into the air like heroic knights, sitting on a classmate’s back as if they were a horse, transforming 8 bodies into a ferris wheel in two minutes, and touching your nose to someone else’s foot!). At the end of the lesson, one student said “Miss Lindsay, we are going to be graduating soon!”. My response, “Oh EXCELLENT, you will be FROSH WEEK champions this time next year!”. What better way to get to know your classmates?! I feel like I have created a fun and positive classroom environment already :)

This week we have started into the actual curriculum…..

Initial reactions: whiteboards are EQUALLY as messy as chalkboards, my “university level” courses are “general level” courses in disguise, everything revolves around “football” (it is the pre-school activity, the classroom conversation, the lunch-time game, and the chemistry analogy), end of the day bus duty is kind of like cow herding, and lastly, sunshine is the Caramilk secret of happy students.

Questions I have so far: What are my students saying when they speak in Arabic (this is the language they use most often in conversations with each other)?! How do I teach a grade 12 university level course to students who should be back in grade 10 science? Can I survive the three story jump from my office window to the swimming pool below? Seriously…….it is almost UNFAIR that there is a pool there!

As far as getting along with the other teachers goes, mostly everyone is AWESOME :) I am certainly known as the smiley one and I passed along my team-building games to the primary teachers who witnessed the BIG EVENT! In fact, my students were looking out the window the other day and yelled “Miss! Miss! Those little kids are playing KNUCKLE BUCKLE!!!” It was the grade 2’s……

My students can now add “Neverland” to their LONG, LONG lists of travel experiences! Whether they like it or not….they will be visiting AT LEAST once a day :)