Thursday, February 14, 2008 - Stop Work, Valentine's Day, 2008
 Well, the stop work went ahead today and only three of the sixteen grades were operating at school today. Ours was one of them, and of the twenty four kids who were technically supposed to be there, nineteen arrived at the start of the day. Last year I had twenty four of twenty five on the stop work day, and that missing kid gave me a note the next day explaining how he had the gastro, but nineteen was a decent turn out. Especially as several had younger brothers and sisters at home for the day as well.
Which I thought was encouraging, as the parents seem to be backing the stop work action by keeping their children home on the day, yet also agreeing that the education offered to their other children is still important even on an interrupted day such as today. We followed our set program for the day and the kids still worked as they would have, so it wasn't just a baby-sitting event.
Of the three grades operating, ours was the largest, but the other two still had eighteen and twelve kids working all the same, but it certainly made yard duty a breeze. Just about all of them were swinging on the monkey bars through recess, and a half dozen were hitting a ball around with a plastic cricket bat on the oval. It was nice to be out there with them.
Funny how with a such a smaller, most intimate yard duty you can spend time talking to the kids more than you usually would and get to know them much better in such a small amount of time. When lunchtime rolled around, I just wandered out for the sake of it and joined in the cricket game out the back.
Unfortunately I haven't been home long enough to hear much of the news on the telly or radio, so I don't know how well the Melbourne rally was attended or whether any immediate gains seem to have been made, but tomorrow's paper will tell some sort of story. My prediction is that the Union will claim a huge number turned up, the government will claim half that number, and the true number will be somewhere in the magic middle.
Whether it makes much difference in the long run is still to be seen, so I'm expecting a few more of these throughout the year. Undecided at the moment though whether I'd take part later on. Depends on whether the Union still claims money as the number one reason.
If that's the case I'll probably stick around and teach for the day instead.
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Saturday, February 16, 2008 - walkouts & work stoppages |
| Posted by Anonymous |
Glad that you had a good day at school.
I have usually had the experience that kids act really well during any sort of really unusual situation. Of course, my experience has been with kids who were going through a natural disaster (tornadoes are frequent in this part of our country).
~Cindy |
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This is an offspring of the School Spirit Webcomic site. Where that site features the comic strip itself, this site focuses more on the real life minor adventures of teaching in semi-rural Victoria.
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