Week 4 is done!!! Whoot Whoot Whoot!!! We did it!

It's kind of hard to believe it's all over - maybe a little anti-climactic.  It has been a very busy week, lots of late nights, not enough sleep - but I got it all done - finished all my assessments for, as and of learning - even squeezed in a community circle with each of my 5 classes.

So much has happened this week, I don't know where to start or end :)

We started off this week using the questions the students put up on the learning wall as our starting point.  They worked in small groups each with one of the questions and putting down whatever they knew about it (and of course I researched all of the questions and made sure I had found whatever I could to add to the discussion, if needed).  I am really impressed I have to say with how mature these kids are.  The books that we had dramatized the week before had a lot of heavy issues - substance abuse, aboriginal issues, racism, Rwanda, post traumatic stress disorder, ...

I also wanted to introduce the students to the four directions website (and also get my hands on some technology for once); and a website for an organization called "mindfulness without borders" that my friend, Gary Diggins, does work for - and through that goes to several African countries to work with youth who have experienced trauma and violence through war - Rwanda, Uganda, ...  They collaborate with another organization called "teachers without borders" and usually work with students.

In my grade 7/8 and grade 8 English classes, my friend - Gary - came to talk to them about his work in Rwanda.  We finished reading the book (sort of - they dramatized parts of the book for each other, so that together as a class, we "watched" the whole book) - "Shattered" by Eric Walters, that talks a lot about Rwanda.  For many of them, they had no idea about what happened there.  We had a pretty awesome community circle with him.  The kids were so into it.  Gary is a musician as well. and he infuses his music in this work.  He played a really cool instrument for the students called a "Hung" - and it's beautiful and relaxing and he led us through a meditation similar to what he does with high school students in Rwanda.  The students loved it, and he also played some African percussion and got me to improvise.  We passed around a beautiful rock from rwanda and talked about where we were at in that moment and then he told us stories of Rwanda, the history, what it is like now, and how the current president has created a very inclusive government with Hutus and Tutsis, and how it has the highest percentage women in government in the world.  It was truly inspiring.  I'm so glad that worked.

The other classes I have (my core 4/5 and 5/6 french classes) were preparing all week to do a performance for each other on Friday (today).  I barely talked to the principal until now, and I'm quite shy (believe it or not) so I wasn't sure how to approach her or how to see if she might come and watch me teach - and then I came up with a brilliant idea which worked perfectly, if I do say so myself.  The kids have these main lesson books where we wrote the poem that I have been teaching them (a winter poem - it was kind of crazy considering it got so warm for a while there - in hindsight, I would have picked a spring poem - but hindsight is 20/20, right?) and we write out the verbs we're working on, and we draw pictures that are related to whatever we wrote.  Anyway, as with any class, there are those kids who finish early, and those kids who take a very very long time to finish.  I wanted to make sure that everyone was able to finish by the end of practicum - so I didn't assign any more for the book at the end of last week - and I brought in some nice paper to get the kids who were already done everything to make posters for our plays that they learned; our poems; and our songs.  I also always had beautiful crayons and coloured pencils that the kids LOVED to use.  Anyway, my brilliant plan was to get some of my students to make an official invitation for the principal and vice principal inviting them to our show.  Some of the kids are incredibly artistic and they made very beautiful invitations.  Then I got the kids to hand deliver the invitations.  It worked - both the principal and vice principal came to the show.  I also put up all the beautiful posters that the kids had made.  We already had the costumes all planned out for both plays (grade 4/5 did "Le soleil et le vent - une fable d'Aesop" - and I fingerknitted their costumes - just cute little crowns for them to wear to identify which character they were - yellow for the suns, purply/blue for the wind, light blue for the people (and they also had scarves); and dark blue for the narrators).  They got to keep the fingerknitting as a gift from me after the play.  The grade 5/6 did a story about 3 little boys & 2 sorcerers (a boy and a girl) and several other characters including 3 dogs, 2 zebras, 2 sticks, 3 people playing fire and 3 people playing water - the play was called "Salem, Giancarlo, Nazarino et les sorciers".  All the kids had the poems, their lines and the songs memorized.  I have to say, it looked pretty impressive and I finally made some kind of a connection with the principal (yay!).

I'm so happy to be home now - just watched a movie with my kids - maybe I'll put another one on, make some popcorn, cuddle with my babies & evenutally fall asleep.

Hope whoever might read this had an AWESOME practicum.  Pat yourselves on the back for having finished!  Look forward to seeing y'all and catching up.

p.s. forgot to add that I stole Steven's m cubed sheet (actually he sent it to me) and got the kids to write the most memorable moment - and explained I wanted feedback from them on things I could improve as a teacher, or things I did well.  I haven't looked at any yet.  Maybe I'll do that tonight to unwind.  Oh and I gave all my kids a CD - they were really cute and happy that I did that - and they lined up to get me to autograph them.  Cuties!