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olorielI forgot to mention that this year, there were actually very few game and film lessons. Since the students have had five to seven school days since March 13, most teachers did real lessons until the very end. Because I am a big woobie and also because I have not yet found a way of motivating kids that know that their report cards are printed (and, in some cases, have actually received their report cards in the first lesson of the day), I went for a sort of compromise lesson. With the sixth graders, as I planned, I did a schoolyard letterboxing treasure hunt. Reactions varied. Some kids were happy, others whined that they had to walk. (Our schoolyard is not that large, although, thanks to its layout, it's possible to let three teams of children with different sets of directions walk around it without seeing each other for the most part.) In this heat! (The first half of the class started at around 8, at which time there were still plenty of shady spots.) With their masks on! (Yes, well.) But on the whole, it worked out OK.
The cheap keychain compasses that I had bought only worked if you held them exactly level, while being lucky enough for the sloppily suspended needle not to have got stuck. Only one group noticed. "That can't be right," I heard a voice from the bushes, "because it's pointing exactly where the sun is. The sun is never in the north!" Nobody believed him! They all learned this in geography in grade 5, and yet they wanted to trust a cheap plastic compass that they didn't even know how to use. Admittedly, this boy probably knew better not because he had paid better attention in geography (although he's an attentive student on the whole), but because he's a passionate boy scout and they still seem to learn things in the boy scouts in Dahl. "Trust the boy scout!" I shouted back at the bushes.
They remained unconvincced. "Well, we're not looking for north, we want to find south and then east."
"Yes," Boy Scout patiently said, "but a compass always points north. You sort of have to figure out the rest from there."
"The compass lies," I supplied, "think of it as Captain Jack Sparrow's compass, not a real one."
That worked better, and the boy scout managed to explain that the sun would be in the east at 8 am (south-east, technically, since it's midsummer and the damn thing rises at 3:30), which was good enough for their purpose.
But hey, they were outside, most of them managed to follow the English directions, and some of the stamps actually landed on the worksheet where they were supposed to land. I had written some directions in invisible ink and put UV pens in one of the letterboxes, which was (no pun intended) a highlight. They were also surprisingly excited about the magnifying glasses I had put in another box (for reading the small print); if I'd known that 12-year-olds are still enthused about cheap kindergarten-level magnifying glasses, I would've bought more of them.
For my 8th graders, I had prepared a geography crossword and grid, which was met with very little enthusiasm.
"We've had to actually learn things in all lessons today!" they told me. "No games or films at all!"
"Probably everybody thinks that all the other teachers are doing games or watching a film, so they want to do something else," I answered, because that had certainly been my reasoning behind doing something learning-related.
"You know what [Math Teacher] said when we asked if we could play games? 'How old do you think you are?' But then she made us do crafts! How old does she think we are?"
I was very much tempted to laugh now, both at their outrage and at [Math Teacher] not realising that they would associate crafts with preschool. (They had "crafted" a mini formulary.)
"So pleeeeease, can't we watch a movie now?"
"We only have 45 minutes. Besides, I don't have a movie with me."
Someone from the back row shouted, "YouTube is free!", while someone else sugested, "I'll give you my Netflix key!"
"No."
"Or my Disney+ key!"
"Tempting, but no."
"Are you watching The Mandalorian?"
"Only the first episode so far. Keeping the rest for the holidays."
"Let's start right now!" Big puppy eyes. "Don't you want to know what happens to Baby Yoda?"
"I do, but I also want you to learn earth geography. Come on, one last day."
Eventually, they did the quiz - with much grumbling. We went outside, though, so instead of their south-facing classroom (keep in mind that there's no air conditioning in German schools!), they could sit in whatever shady spots the school yard had to offer.
Yesterday, I got to teach one of the most challenging classes - during their very last lesson. After they'd already got their report cards. Initially, their class teacher had planned to hand out the report cards then, but then she decided he wanted to team-teach (or rather, team-hand out report cards) with the German teacher in an earlier lesson. So there I was, with a class that is hard to motivate at the best of times. Principles be damned; I watched a very old episode of The Simpsons with them. (In my defense, it was in English, it was at least tangentially related to next term's main focus in English, namely, Going To School In America, and it was about a situation they could relate to (we watched "Bart gets an F".) Even that was tough going. Only two or three of them were actually interested in watching; three more suffered in demonstrative boredom; the rest were acting up in more or less disruptive ways. Oh, and one girl declared that it was a "baby show" and beneath her dignity. -- Due to circumstances, I don't yet know what classes I'll teach next term, but since grades 5/6, 7/8 and 9/10 are generally treated as units, it's quite likely that I'll continue to teach this class next year. And like - I like these kids, individually. But getting them to learn something is like milking stones.
But that's a problem for next term.
The cheap keychain compasses that I had bought only worked if you held them exactly level, while being lucky enough for the sloppily suspended needle not to have got stuck. Only one group noticed. "That can't be right," I heard a voice from the bushes, "because it's pointing exactly where the sun is. The sun is never in the north!" Nobody believed him! They all learned this in geography in grade 5, and yet they wanted to trust a cheap plastic compass that they didn't even know how to use. Admittedly, this boy probably knew better not because he had paid better attention in geography (although he's an attentive student on the whole), but because he's a passionate boy scout and they still seem to learn things in the boy scouts in Dahl. "Trust the boy scout!" I shouted back at the bushes.
They remained unconvincced. "Well, we're not looking for north, we want to find south and then east."
"Yes," Boy Scout patiently said, "but a compass always points north. You sort of have to figure out the rest from there."
"The compass lies," I supplied, "think of it as Captain Jack Sparrow's compass, not a real one."
That worked better, and the boy scout managed to explain that the sun would be in the east at 8 am (south-east, technically, since it's midsummer and the damn thing rises at 3:30), which was good enough for their purpose.
But hey, they were outside, most of them managed to follow the English directions, and some of the stamps actually landed on the worksheet where they were supposed to land. I had written some directions in invisible ink and put UV pens in one of the letterboxes, which was (no pun intended) a highlight. They were also surprisingly excited about the magnifying glasses I had put in another box (for reading the small print); if I'd known that 12-year-olds are still enthused about cheap kindergarten-level magnifying glasses, I would've bought more of them.
For my 8th graders, I had prepared a geography crossword and grid, which was met with very little enthusiasm.
"We've had to actually learn things in all lessons today!" they told me. "No games or films at all!"
"Probably everybody thinks that all the other teachers are doing games or watching a film, so they want to do something else," I answered, because that had certainly been my reasoning behind doing something learning-related.
"You know what [Math Teacher] said when we asked if we could play games? 'How old do you think you are?' But then she made us do crafts! How old does she think we are?"
I was very much tempted to laugh now, both at their outrage and at [Math Teacher] not realising that they would associate crafts with preschool. (They had "crafted" a mini formulary.)
"So pleeeeease, can't we watch a movie now?"
"We only have 45 minutes. Besides, I don't have a movie with me."
Someone from the back row shouted, "YouTube is free!", while someone else sugested, "I'll give you my Netflix key!"
"No."
"Or my Disney+ key!"
"Tempting, but no."
"Are you watching The Mandalorian?"
"Only the first episode so far. Keeping the rest for the holidays."
"Let's start right now!" Big puppy eyes. "Don't you want to know what happens to Baby Yoda?"
"I do, but I also want you to learn earth geography. Come on, one last day."
Eventually, they did the quiz - with much grumbling. We went outside, though, so instead of their south-facing classroom (keep in mind that there's no air conditioning in German schools!), they could sit in whatever shady spots the school yard had to offer.
Yesterday, I got to teach one of the most challenging classes - during their very last lesson. After they'd already got their report cards. Initially, their class teacher had planned to hand out the report cards then, but then she decided he wanted to team-teach (or rather, team-hand out report cards) with the German teacher in an earlier lesson. So there I was, with a class that is hard to motivate at the best of times. Principles be damned; I watched a very old episode of The Simpsons with them. (In my defense, it was in English, it was at least tangentially related to next term's main focus in English, namely, Going To School In America, and it was about a situation they could relate to (we watched "Bart gets an F".) Even that was tough going. Only two or three of them were actually interested in watching; three more suffered in demonstrative boredom; the rest were acting up in more or less disruptive ways. Oh, and one girl declared that it was a "baby show" and beneath her dignity. -- Due to circumstances, I don't yet know what classes I'll teach next term, but since grades 5/6, 7/8 and 9/10 are generally treated as units, it's quite likely that I'll continue to teach this class next year. And like - I like these kids, individually. But getting them to learn something is like milking stones.
But that's a problem for next term.
