We're almost out of ketchup so it's a good thing we are coming home!

Classroom Updates

Just a quick update on how things are shaping up in my classroom. It's December now and the end of the first term so my class is actually getting things done! The final world map is up in all of it's glory and the kids really like it. 

My class as started their final ecology project which involves researching a animal population in Canada and summarising that information into the colourful informative poster. They also need to complete a map that shows the range of that population, a food web, and complete a drawing. I'll post photos of the completed projects at the end of the month. We are making a Christmas corner out of cardboard... which is why my classroom has turned into cardboard central.

The pink monkey is Jojo. He is Ender's classroom mascot. He attends class, has his own desk and comes to school dressed in a shocking variety of doll outfits. I think he's even married to one of the students. Around the same time Jojo showed up my student Chloe (below) gave me this little guy. Now we both have classroom monkeys though mine is far more docile.

That's it for now. Christmas is fast approaching and we are getting into the busiest and yet least productive academically season of the school year. Wish us luck!

More snow and more face-painting

It's been a busy few weeks here in Garden Hill as far as teaching is concerned. Ender is working away at writing comments for his report cards which are due to be in at the Elementary school next week. My report cards don't need to be in until December so I have a bit more time to get my marking sorted out before I write comments.

A beard is like a wool sweater that's always on your face.

We are starting to have full school weeks again, and I'm appreciating my  weekends for the chance to cook, clean and sketch.

Serious painter face

One of Ender's students he convinced to be a cheetah.

Adorable

Lots of butterflies

The line was so long some didn't make it.

Mouse and monkey.

Space

Ender's favourite. He convinced her when she didn't know what to get.

The Elementary school also held another fundraiser. Ender signed us up for face-painting which we did for 4.5 hours straight (or the length of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi back to back which we had playing in the background).

The ice has finally formed and soon the winter roads will be opened. It's thick enough for us to walk to the Northern though and we made our first trek across the ice today to get some much needed groceries (oh butter how I have missed you). We had planned to walk, but once we got to the lake we were offered a free ride across on a snowmobile and then we decided to pay the taxi back to our house. Straight to your door at breakneck speeds in a plywood box for $5? Sign us up!

I've also been making progress with my classroom. The map is up and it is glorious. I also asked for the Industrial Arts students to make a bookcase for our classroom. Now we have a place to keep books for independent reading that's accessible by the students.

How great is this!

And finally, the most exciting development this week. I've decided to start a cartoon watching club that will take place once a week during the 2nd half of lunch. I already have two very excited students participating, so I asked them to make a poster for the club. They spent half the day working on it, all from memory of what the characters look like. The addition of "and other cartoons" was a compromise.

Worth Sharing:

- This is a fantastic idea for home aquaponics and I would consider using it in the classroom because it fits the grade 7 curriculum perfectly.

- I really enjoyed Bob Watts'  2012 Vancouver Human Rights Lecture and I think all Canadians should give it a listen.

- I check this website daily but the weather has been very cloudy (and cold!) lately.

Winter's Here

The view from our break site.

Last weekend Ender and I went on a short hike with Cindy, Felix and Lesley. They all bike and ski during the winter and it's important to maintain the trails. We hiked for about 3-4 hours  and removed fallen trees from the path as we walked. As the snow gets deeper we will need snowshoes if we want to venture outdoors. Last time I used snowshoes I was much younger and I remember spending equal amounts of time being vertical as I did horizontal.

Halloween leftovers 

Leftover scares

Small snowman

Collecting firewood

The lakes are freezing...

Halloween

Skull make up for the school day.

Ender and I have managed to recover since the fiasco that was last week. And just in time too, Halloween week proved to be incredibly busy.

Spider-man!

jack-o-lantern

Monday was the high school bizarre.  I signed up for face painting and was the only one manning the station until Ender came to assist me at the halfway point. We had close to 100 kids in 4 hours.

blue monsters

I felt like a zombie myself when it was all over.

one eyed monster

suit monster

devil

flaming skull

Last week I asked my students to make a design for our door for Halloween. They had three simple requirements:

1) It needed to be a monster.
2) That their designs consider the door as well as the space above the door and the lockers.
3) That some part of the window be left open so we can see in and out.

Door complete with zombie clowns.

Original Drawing by Nicole McDougall

What I got back were some really great drawings with lots of detail. The students voted on their favourite and  I delegated parts of the design for individual students to make. They did a really great job and got a lot of compliments from the other grade 7 and 8 students.

graveyard

November 2nd is write your own epitaph day as well as Día de los Muertos. To celebrate this opportunity to remember those who have died and to reflect on our own eventual grim fates, my class wrote small poems based on this lesson plan. They are intended to be humorous and while writing the poems proved to be more difficult for my students then I would have though, we had enough of the class complete a tombstone that we were able to put together a pretty nice graveyard.

old man

werewolf

lights

art teacher as Nixon-bum

The high school also threw a Halloween dance and costume contest. It was a chance to take pictures of all the great costumes the students put together.

Haunted house

Ender and his grade six class transformed his classroom into a haunted house for Halloween night. The students made all of the decorations, hung the traps and some volunteers even gave up trick or treating to scare those brave enough to venture inside.  Once they made it through the haunted house the kids got candy and then made their way back through for more scares. 

Haunted house costumes

 There is now a thick blanket of snow outside and the temperature is steadily dropping. Before long the lake will freeze over and the winter roads will open. Garden Hill is transforming before our eyes and personally I quite like the change. At the very least the snow is covering up the garbage.

Until next year...

Str8 Up Krazies

It’s been a pretty busy few weeks with a lot of ups and downs. Ender and I have the day off from school because of a power outage (which has since been fixed at least for the teacher houses) and are trying to get the house back in order.  But let’s start this update with the positives shall we.

The Ups

 

The spoils.

 We got a mean amount of treat making done for a bake sale for the high school. Jenn is an amazing baker and gets pretty excited when experimenting with new recipes. She tried out pumpkin cinnamon rolls and they were pretty delicious. I stuck with my tried and tested banana bread for the bake sale. There is something comforting about being able to bake a cake from scratch without a recipe and have it turn out. I’m sure that over the winter months that will become true with a number of recipes.

Last week we attended Circles of Knowledge and Practices Conference in Winnipeg hosted by MFNERC, meant to provide resources for teaching Language Arts and Math to First Nations students as well as to promote partnerships in education. Some parts of the conference were very informative and it was nice to see other teachers from other communities across Manitoba. I really appreciated what the keynote speaker Sylvia McAdam Saysewahum has to say about Indigenous Nationhood and raising students to be lawful citizens for their respective Nations. However not being an Indigenous Canadian citizen it’s difficult to know how to approach that topic in school especially in a community like Garden Hill which in recent years has become resistant to their heritage and traditional cultural practices. 

photos by Chrissy Poitras of Spark Box Studio

The conference also gave us the opportunity to make a quick visit home to Picton to celebrate our friends Tamara and Adrian’s wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony and a pretty awesome reception and we spent the night dancing, sipping scotch and eating poutine. The following day we caught up with our friends Kyle, Chrissy , Morgan and Chris, and then later had dinner with the newlyweds. Unfortunately when you are on borrowed time, you miss out on some awesome things, including when your friends decide to celebrate birthdays by lighting pianos on fire.

The Downs

At least we got some decorations up!

Our time of good fortune pretty much ends there. On the way back into Belleville we received a text informing us our house back in Garden Hill had been broken into. We had been warned about break ins and made sure to pack up anything of value and stow it in less than obvious places but we did lose some food, drugs, toothpaste and Ender’s camera as well as general feelings of security. If it’s never happened to you it’s a pretty terrible feeling to have your home broken into.  Even if you haven’t lost much (they appear to have been in and out pretty quickly) your personal space has still been violated. We have since boarded up the door that was kicked in and added additional locks to the door we will continue to use.

Unfortunetly bad luck comes in threes. Halfway through the school day power went out due to a line breaking out at Oxford House and because of a storm they were unable to get someone flown in to repair it until this morning. Water was out too until the evening and when it came back on we all rushed inside to fill containers just in case it shut off again. At this time our water heater exploded and split down the back and we had a pretty frantic hour stopping and cleaning up the water while we tried to contact someone from Operations and Maintenance. We are now waiting for a replacement water heater which will hopefully get here before freezing pipes become a problem.

We are lucky to have good friends here to help us out when our lives fall apart. In the past few days we’ve been given cookies and coffee, lent mops and towels and have still managed to try and relax and play cards by LED night bug light through all of this. It’s been a rough week but if we can come out of this alive we should have a few good stories to laugh about over coffee when we’re fifty.