My First Teaching Practicum - What I Learned From Grade 6's

The following is something I wrote at the end of my first teaching practicum.  It was a note to the students and their parents, who endured AND survived my first feeble attempts as an educator.

October 25, 2006

Dear Parents and Students:

Thank you for the privilege of allowing me to be a small part of your child's educational career.  Over the course of eight weeks, I have grown very fond of this class, and have learned a lot about the teaching profession and myself, in the process.  Some of the things I have discovered are:

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• If you listen closely, you can hear a grade six girl rolling her eyes.
• You don't even have to listen closely at all, to hear grade six boys
• Grade sixes love to chatter. (a simple sentence) Grade sixes love to chatter loudly. (a simple sentence with an adverb)  Lively grade sixes love to chatter.  (a simple sentence with an adjective)  Grade sixes love to chatter about the following: sports, last night's TV, boys, girls, makeup and many other things. (a simple sentence, using a colon)  Grade sixes love to chatter all day long. (a stereotype, but the TRUTH!)
• Screwdrivers and pliers have plastic or rubber handles because if they were wooden you might get splinters in your fingers.  (An actual answer on a test, after an eight week Science unit on Electricity).
• 31 recorders make a very loud noise
• "I don't get it." is the most annoying phrase a teacher will ever hear.  "Ya, but I still don't get it." is only slightly more annoying.
• Most grade sixes cannot write a sentence without multiple spelling mistakes, BUT they can spot a teacher spelling a word incorrectly, in the next classroom.
• "Line up and walk quietly to the gym," translated roughly means the same as "CHARGE!"
• Wall-sits bring the concept of creative cheating to a new level
• Cheating is acceptable in sports, as long as it is your team doing it.  Cheating is completely and utterly unacceptable and must be pointed out, at all costs, to the teacher, if it involves the other team.  From this analysis, we can conclude that the teacher either is, should be, or will be deemed to be blind.
• The first season snow is severe competition to teaching a lesson.
• Grade sixes are decent, caring, responsible individuals if given the encouragement and opportunity.

In three years time, should we meet in the mall, and you are a foot taller, and I don't recognize you, or your name evades me, please come over and say hello and tell me what is going on in your life.
                                
                                                                                       Yours truly,

                                                                                       Mr. H.

And that is about all I have to say for today.

Musings and meanderings from the Musical Gardener