Monday, December 17, 2007

Final Farewell

Today was the last day for me at Swanson school and it definitely was one that was filled with mixed emotions. Many of the same students who gave me the hardest time were asking me to stay another day and to come back and visit.

Over the weekend Jan, Cory, and I went to "Christmas at the Zoo." It was mainly for kids with face painting and Santa, but they also had bands and a parade...not to mention seeing all the animals.

Today was the "Leavers Assembly" for the Year 7/8's. It was great to see all the students who were recognized for their achievements this year. Getting ready for it during the day also lent itself to allow me to spend some last moments talking to the students in my class. As one of the teachers said when she saw me jumping rope with all the students at recess yesterday...I really have come along way...from the struggle of getting the students to listen to me...to getting to know them and befriending them such that I'm out playing with them. I guess it was just bittersweet. I hope that many do keep in contact as promised because I would like to know how they turned out in high school next year and beyond.

At the same time as my adventure at Swanson Primary comes to a conclusion... a new adventure starts tomorrow. I'm excited for the activities ahead. We are going to an island off Auckland for a wine tour this week, blackwater rafting at Wiatoma caves...and then my tour also starts this week. I'll be backpacking down to Queenstown (15 day tour). Then I fly to Sydney in Jan. and get to spend the week taking in the sights and hanging out with Brian before coming back home to the reality of job hunting. If I get time I'll try to post some pics from the tours...otherwise, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and look forward to seeing you all in 2008!

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Another great week!


Well the past weekend turned out to be a good one. Friday night was the staff Christmas party in Auckland. It was at this nice restaurant called "Wildfire." I think I did too much chatting though...because suddenly all the food was being brought back to the kitchen and I realized I hadn't had much of anything...but my dessert was delicious :). It was also a great opportunity to talk to some staff members I hadn't really met yet.


Me and Jane (one of the other Year 7/8 teachers)


Saturday was a full day...headed to the gym in the morning and Jan picked me up after my two hour sweat session. Then it was straight to the Lion Brewery tour. The tour was actually quite interesting as it went into to a brief history of beer and ended with this brewery and how it is the largest in New Zealand. It also talked about prohibition in New Zealand (pubs used to close at 6pm!-so they had a big problem as the people got off work at 5pm and had an hour in which they crammed as much alcohol into their bodies as they could) and showed some of their advertising. Very interesting and the free samples at the end were great too!



Slapping the bum on this statue was supposed to bring you good luck!

Afterwards, we took a short drive over to One Tree Hill. It was this hill in Auckland in which they had a tree planted, but someone chopped it down about 10 years ago (I called it None Tree Hill). They do have a monument there though and a great view of the city. Here's a blurb on it:


The remaining tree was later attacked twice with chainsaws by Māori protesters (partly because it was not a native New Zealand species and thus considered an insult). The first attack happened on 28 October 1994, the anniversary of the 1835 Declaration of Independence.[6] A second attack on the 5th of October 2000[7] left the tree unable to recover and so it was removed due to the risk of it dying and falling down. The chainsaw used in the first attack was placed on sale on popular New Zealand auction site, TradeMe in 2007[8] but later withdrawn by the website after complaints and a poll of users. It was later listed on eBay.[9]




Sunday was spent getting into the Christmas spirit with cookie making and tree decorating. Though in typical 6year old fashion, Cory split on the Christmas cookies after one sheet...but I still had fun rolling and making all the cut-outs. I still am having problems getting used to rain outside instead of snow in December though... He brought the cookies in for his class and they thanked me by all making me cards. I'm heading in their classroom today to thank them for taking the time to make those and also answering any questions they may have about life in America.





This school week has also whizzed by and it is hard to think as I write this I only have three more days in the classroom. We are still working to finish up all our units and this week we had a guy come from Family Planning. It was good to see the students finally acting more mature on the subject and also how much they had learned the previous week from our teaching. On Thursday we also had a Christmas concert at the school. All the classroom performed different songs and they school was selling sausages, snow cones, and drinks. It had quite a turn out. I was there for two reasons- to support my classroom and also to watch Cory perform in his class. It was funny to remember age 6 again-he spent half his performance turned around watching what was going on behind him.







Above: Students from my classroom


Below: Cory and his classroom (Year 1)




Outside of school, on Wednesday night, Jan, Sonya, Robb, and I went into Auckland to see Rhy Darby perform stand up comedy. For those of you whom that name doesn't ring a bell, he is the manager in the show, "Flight of the Concords." He was hysterical and I walked out of there with my cheeks hurting from laughing so hard. I've been watching the show here weekly and so during his break I had to get my picture taken with him. He was really nice about it (I'm sure in his head he thought, "nice stalker"...but I got my photo!!)






This week has also been an exciting time as Brian flew down to Australia on Thursday/Friday. I'm definately getting excited to start my backpacking trip next weekend. But it is bittersweet because I seemed to finally be getting in the swing of things here and enjoying the classroom and my routine here. It sunk in when I said goodbye to Robb on Thursday as well. He was leaving for a 6 week trip to Europe so I said my first of many goodbyes in the upcoming week.



















































































































































Monday, December 3, 2007

The school year is coming to an end...

Things have been very busy here at school, as we have only two weeks left and it seems are trying to quickly fit in everything. Today we took the students who help the school in some way (PE Monitors, Road Patrolers, Librarians, etc) to Rainbow's End. Rainbow's End is New Zealand's largest theme park. Many of the students in my class give up their time for these jobs, so Mrs. Thompson and I were able to also go. This was nice because we didn't have to chaperone, but were allowed to just wander from group to group. The theme park wasn't very big (about 1/3 the size of Great America), but we still were running from ride to ride and didn't get them all in.

During class, we are trying to quickly finish up all of our units. In English they were assigned their big advertising project and all the students in the class have taken off with it. They had to create a product and then two print ads and a radio advertisement for it-then they will present it to me next week. It really proved that when the students are able to do something of interest they will work. We've got Fergie perfume, muffins, the kid who normally sits and reads car magazines is now designing a car ad, and even the two boys who sit and graffiti their notebooks are now making ads for some product they designed that will make graffititing easier :). I'm hoping to still squeeze in looking at some commercials from Super Bowl next week and also looking at this Front Line video called "Merchants of Cool," which talks about how companies such as MTV and Sprite market to teens. I thought that would be an entertaining way to wrap up this unit. Also, I really lucked out here because we happen to also be teaching a new unit starting this week on none other than ....puberty. We have to do six lessons on it and one of the lessons is going to be on media stereotyping and effects on self-esteem...so we will look once again at magazines and tie this and the "Merchants of Cool" together. Luckily, the difficult lessons on puberty (or the ones that result in all the giggling) are being conducted by a lady coming in from Family Planning-so I could wipe the sweat off my forehead on that one.


Finally, the students are taking questions they generated about different parts of the world and researching one question this week. Next week they will need to present their findings to the class. We also just started up a quick unit on fractions, decimals, and percents in math. Add into these plans singing practices for our Leaver's Assembly (this is for the Year 8's-a graduation for them as they leave to go to high school) and art, fitness, spelling, a Christmas concert, etc...and I don't know how we are going to get it all in. The students have also been helping take down the classroom and the last day of school will be spent moving Mrs. Thompson's things to her new classroom.

In life outside the classroom, I'm also trying to get in some last minute activities before my three weeks of backpacking begin and at the same time do some relaxing. Last weekend I spent relaxing as Jan and her boyfriend were away in Wellington seeing Beckham play. This weekend is looking like it will get me into the Christmas spirit (something that has been unusually hard and I think it is because I am still in shorts)-Friday we have the staff Christmas party in Auckland. Then Saturday I think Jan and I are doing some Christmas shopping and/or the Lion Brewery Tour, and Sunday Cory and I are planning on making Christmas cookies (he already told the class that we are making them all cookies!!). Overall, the time is just going to fly by these next two weeks!