A day in the life of an island schoolroom

Population 40-ish

I've been back on the island for a couple of weeks and have slipped right back into the daily routine.  School starts at 9 o’clock but I usually get in at 8:30 to prepare the lessons for the day.  The boys pop their heads in, grab clothes from the chest of draw and ask “how many minutes to school time.”  Their toddler sister and the new puppy usually come to visit.  There is a kiddies gate to keep them both out during the day, but in the morning I let them wander in and out.

I have a musical triangle that I use as a school bell.  Strangely, the boys respond instantly to the “bell” but you can barely get them moving if you just find them and say “school time boys!”.  I let the toddler ring the bell even though she doesn’t quite have the hang of it.  She puts her hand all the way through and tries to bang the triangle with her forearm.

Lessons come straight out of the “School of Isolated and Distance Education” packs that are sent to us once a term.  The boys also do “Air Lessons” once a day for about 45 minutes.  These lessons used to be over CB radio.  Now it’s all on the internet, but they retained the “Air Lesson” label.

An “Air Lesson”  is conducted by the teacher at the School of the Air.  The school only has 30 students spread across the stations and tourist camps along the coast.  Each class has about 5 students who log onto the lesson.  There are buttons to press to put your hand up.  These are numbered so you can tell who put their hand up first.  Then an “applause” button and a “laugh” button that flash little clapping or laughing icons next to your name if you find something amusing.  There is usually a powerpoint type presentation and students are able to write on the screen with the mouse or point to things with their cursors.  Of course they are also able to talk using a headset with a microphone.

There is a constant battle for the “comfy chair”.  It’s my office chair and it has padding, goes up and down and twirls around.  So of course everyone wants it but little boys whose feet can’t touch the ground tend to fall off spectacularly when bending down to write on the little student work desks.  I find if I just stand behind them and keep poking them with my finger and repeating “I need my comfy chair“, they eventually get off.  It’s all part of the game.  I can’t stand up for two seconds without one of them nabbing it.

If we get all our lessons done before lunch, then we do art after lunch.  This doesn’t happen too often.  The lessons are pretty time consuming and the teachers expect the sets to be completed in two weeks.

The little puppy likes to come into the classroom whenever the kiddies gate is left open.  Unfortunately he hasn’t quite got control of his bladder yet, and whenever you grab his collar to lead him out of the room, he pees.  After cleaning up quite a bit of puppy pee, I now have a method of herding him out of the room.

School ends at 3:30 with reading time.  Sometime we let the toddler and the puppy in for reading time too but that usually dissolved into chaos.