Kindles, reading and teacher appreciation

Right - so what happened to make me set my blogging aside for almost three years? Truth be told, I became worried that parents would "find" me and wanted to retain anonymity, plus generally, I have been overworked and ... well, let's forget the excuses, and just refocus on getting back to this.

Great discoveries in my personal life has been the purchase of a Kindle, which has made the purchase of books affordable for me - printed books are so expensive in South Africa. Every day we have a ten minute silent reading period after first break and that is a lovely quiet time in the school - at least, it should be, except for some teachers who seem to arrive late at their classrooms or don't read themselves. I have enjoyed reading my Kindle in class and, much to my interest, while in years gone by, no pupils showed much interest in what I have been reading, they do now. The technology definitely "grabs" them and many have brought their Kindles to school to show me what they are reading. Others have more openly talked about the books they are are reading and still others have even asked me to recommend books to them. Does owing a Kindle somehow make me more modern in their eyes. Whatever, it is, I have been delighted by their response to my own reading.

Another new "discovery" for me has been The Teachers Pay Teachers site http://www.teacherspayteachers.com and I have been slowly purchasing a variety of excellent materials for teaching. Being able to download digital copies and no longer having to worry about the slowness of shipping items to South Africa is a great joy. I am now even considering starting to sell my own materials on this website - if only, of course, I had more time than I do right now! Still, it's definitely enticing me to think of earning dollars. The competitions that I have connected with through this and other sources has been good too, like this one which offers a variety of autographed books and digital downloads: http://www.kleinspiration.com/2012/07/biggest-give-away-yet-thank-you-readers.html

 

I am loving all the new things that are available for teachers, all of which go a long way to making up for the occasional times of feeling overworked! Teachers appreciating each other is a great way for us to feel good about the work we do.

Covering the costs of camp

I wanted to take my small class of twenty four children to camp, but no campsite would accept us unless we paid for a minimum of fifty children. I spoke to my kids and they decided (with the help of their parents who generously donated lovely prizes) to raise the money we needed by running a raffle. I am so proud of them. It became an opportunity to learn a little about the legalities of raffle competitions and they took such a pride in selling their tickets to their families, friends and neighbours. Well done to them and thanks to their supportive parents. We were able to go on camp and they felt proud of helping to pay for it. What a great bunch of young people they are!

New kids in the computer room

It has been great having the Grade 1s come to the computer room for their first lessons. As always they can't wait to get into the room, which I suspect represents a place of mysterious delights to them - a kind of technological Ali Baba's cave. No matter how boring the first lessons are, they enjoy being there and are enthusiastic about everything. Going over the rules in the computer room about clean hands, not touching screens, and not taking things in the room out with them had them enraptured and clamouring to tell me stories of what happened when Uncle Max used his computer after eating a peanut butter sandwich! Half an hour of learning how to logon and logoff - they turned into into a competition and asked for house points as a rewards for remembering this step. When we played their first game "Find the Dot" which helps them to learn how to hand the mouse and click more precisely, you would have thought they had found their pots of gold - they chattered excitedly, whooped rapturously and laughed when they met their goals. It leaves me feeling certain that there is absolutely no career as wonderful as one in education. The children have no idea how much they bless me; and I am grateful to God for giving me this gift of teaching.