Sara Sickels

Today started with the realization of EXACTLY why you’re supposed to laundry in the morning so it can hang dry all day. I threw a few loads in yesterday after I got back from school (which wasn’t until about 5) so my clothes had FROST on them this morning. So much for the outfit I had planned. Luke stayed home again today from school, and Ben is continuously coughing. I better stay healthy out here. Losing my voice last week was bad enough.

Interesting mornings lead to interesting days. Today was no exception. After the oral language part of the morning, I started right in with reading groups. The green group I had today was wonderful. They got a bit chatty when I started handing out their new activities but I was able to rope them back in. Because of the tight schedule, and teaching weakness of going over time allowed, I had wanted to wrap up the group after going around the circle one time. Surprisingly, the kids wanted to continue reading aloud. I had planned to send them back to their desks to continue working since I had about half of the remaining students come up to me with a question during small group. After they were actually sent back, I walked around the class to make sure everyone else was on the right track with their work. Never had I heard “Ms. Sickels!!” more times in a half hour. It seemed like every student had a question/problem/something amazing to show me. That was kind of cool actually :) Makes me feel more like a teacher! Once we were able to round up our farel little children (farel means wild) they started on their rough copy of their celebration report. Being that some chose Halloween, it was kind of neat seeing their interpretation of it. “Kids ask for lollies and scare people.” That being one sentence from a report! I had a laugh at some of them. During the work hour, a boy from another class came in to finish a few projects since his class was going to Special. One of the naughty boys was “coughing” but saying “loser” under his breath. I told him to knock it off since it’s not appropriate whatsoever and extremely rude. Not only did he not listen to me, but he said it RIGHT in front of that boy’s face. So I gave him a pink ticket which was my first one ever! Getting a pink ticket = detention. He walked out of the room with a smirk on his face but that was quickly wiped off after I gave him the run down. I was mean, which surprised me. But I finally got to use my mean teacher voice for a good reason!

After morning tea, the students got to work on a few math tests. One of them had a section devoted to chance/probability and another one for bar graphs, which were two of the lessons I taught the previous week! It was a true test for me to see if my teaching is up to par. I was supposed to teach a small health lesson during the last half hour of the middle session but the testing is more important, so it’s postponed for another few days! I corrected all 26 of one test and slowly started the other ones. Phew. Correcting is a pain. After a nice break at lunch with our strawberries (including wonderful conversation and enlightening details about Australia), the Year Fours headed out to the oval for our Cricket competition! The same two boys I had mentioned in a previous blog were acting up yet again and started pushing each other before the games had started. I was already on a ‘mean teacher’ roll so I quickly separated them and had them sit out the rest of the game. I had a chat with each of the boys to get their side of the story and how it escalated to the almost fight. They, not surprisingly enough, told different stories so Amanda said she would handle it in the morning. I ended up sitting with one of the boys for the remaining time and it turned out to be quite enjoyable. I had asked him questions about nothing, just to lighten the mood a bit. We ended up talking about a lot of really random things which kind of made me smile to be having this conversation with a 9-yr-old. I learned that his dad is a doctor (or at least used to be), he’s quite the dare-devil and has broken a lot of bones including his collar bone and leg, and he APPARENTLY knows Cary Hart. I think he was pulling my leg on that one. He was telling me all about how he rides his FMX bike and one time he went with a “really good” FMX biker to some track. He said something like “and his name is… Cary… Cary something…. Oh yeah: Cary Hart” At this point I had to do a double take because Hart is fairly well known in the States for his crazy bike riding. And this boy was telling me this story with a complete straight face. I don’t know what to believe! I told him I would need to see a picture of him WITH Hart to take him seriously. And he replied that the one he “does have” is in a frame at home and his dad wouldn’t let him take it. Ha. But the day quickly came to an end and I really did enjoy the time spent one-on-one with this boy. That’s one thing I LOOOVVVVEEE about teaching: you can be absolutely hated and the worst teacher ever one second, but by the end of the day you are their best friend. Once the bell rang he even turned around to say “Goodbye Ms. Sickels!” when he was already a couple strides away. Pure awesome.

Tonight at the Kerber house was fairly normal. After getting my dry clothes off the line, I did a little research in my Australia travel book for when we do our week in Cairns/Sydney. I think I found something up my alley: BUNGEE JUMPING. About 20 minutes north of Cairns, there is a bungee jumping spot where they have 16 DIFFERENT WAYS OF JUMPING!! Forget jumping in New Zealand; this is perfect. Now my mission is to convince the 3 others to go with. Otherwise I can go alone and just make the full day out of it… which you can do since they offer a package of unlimited jumps :) Otherwise, we did pizza for dinner and I finally got a plain pepperoni for myself. The pizza here is weird. They use barbeque sauce for some pizzas and the toppings are just bizarre. Now off to correct more math tests!