Have you ever wondering what the week in the life of a teacher resembles?! From majestic manageable Mondays, to tolerant Tuesdays, wild Wednesdays, tremendously torturous Thursdays, finishing finally with Funday Friday. Here is a snapshot into my week as a middle year’s teacher. Saturday and Sundays are for sleep, sanity, solitude, sunshine and sadly, schoolwork.
Let’s imagine this scenario: It’s Monday morning. You’re uber refreshed after a weekend full of leisurely HOT coffee, going to the bathroom when you please, enjoying probably more than the recommended amount of screen time and having plenty of sunshine. You’re excited about the lessons you have planned for the week ahead. You’ve planned them well, made fun resources, laminated and cut out everything you need for your lessons to run smoothly. You’re feeling good, and certain that your students will love what you’ve prepared. You lay everything out that they need on their desks ahead of time. You put on some music and wait at the door to greet each of your students individually and make sure they know that they matter, and that you are glad to see them. Your clothes are ironed and match really well. You even accessorised and straightened your hair. Heck, your nails were even painted. Your shoes are the epitome of fashion. Black, shiny, with little gold bows. Today, you rock.
And then, you have to do it all over again tomorrow. And Wednesday. And Thursday.
By Thursday you’re barely hanging on. You pressed snooze an extra two times, skipped having a shower and eating breakfast, and got dressed in the dark. You spilled coffee all over the kitchen when you are preparing the only thing that you think will get you through the next few hours. You don’t have time to clean it; that can be an after-school problem. You get to school and realise that you have on one black shoe and one navy shoe. Close enough right? You wonder if anyone will remember that you wore this same shirt, complete with it’s coffee stains, on Monday. Too late to care now. You finish morning duty at 8:28am, and quickly must choose between going to the bathroom or printing the worksheets you need for Period 1. You have a 2 minute timeframe. You choose the worksheets because you don’t have enough brain power to think of an alternative lesson starter, and have to then wait at least 1 hour and 22 minutes before you’ll get the change to relieve your bladder again. You’ve had 2.5 coffees (with .5 of a coffee ending up on your desk and clothes. You’re used to being sticky and smelling like coffee), so it’s proving to be a struggle, but you don’t regret trying to energise yourself for what Thursday brings. Period 1 ends, and a student who wasted a whole lot of time during the lesson stays behind to ask about the assignment. You missed your toilet opportunity yet again. Oh well, surely those coffees can stay put for another hour and 12 minutes. You suddenly don't remember if you brushed your hair or your teeth before leaving the house. You have a headache. You stop to think when the last time you had a sip of water was. Oh, right, 4 hours and 33 minutes ago. That might be the issue. You regret planning group work in Period 4, with a throbbing headache. You have some Panadol, skull some water and finally find a spare moment to go to the bathroom. Just as you thought, your classroom resembles a zoo, so you aptly change your table group names from “blue group”, “red group”, “yellow group” and “green group” to “The Gorillas”, “The Lions, “The Chimpanzees” and “The Rattle Snakes”. The students think it’s fun to mix it up a little; not knowing that I’m picturing them in zoo cages as untameable, wild animals. It’s finally 3pm. That headache is worse. What a Thursday. At least I can go home and relax, right? Oh no, wait, I have a meeting. A waste of my time given my brain stops adequately functioning at 3:05pm.
T.G.I.F. For some reason on Fridays, the students demand to have fun. “Miss, it’s Funday Friday today”. I’m still unsure of whether this was developed by the students, or they did this in their primary schools. For Term 1 and 2, I laughed it off and continued with whatever I had planned. But it’s Term 3. It’s Week 6. And it’s Friday. After the Thursday that just happened, whereby I wasn’t sure if my profession was a zookeeper or a teacher, I thought – today’s the day I embrace this Funday Friday business. It’s the weekend tomorrow after all, so surely I can use every ounce of energy I have left to not have to play zookeeper to my mixed bag of energetics animals…...I mean students ;-)
So, Funday Friday. How did it go? Did I survive? What did I do? After some googling while watching the new season of 13 Reasons Why on Nexflix the previous night, where my search history resembles something along the lines of “No preparation fun, meaningful middle school activities for a Friday”. Ok, so I’m not sure the last three words were essential, but hey…..you’d be surprised what I found. Turns out Funday Friday is not just beautiful use of alliteration, but a real thing – not invented by my students. Which was a relief a little; it wasn’t a subtle hint that my Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Fridays were NOT FUN and they were begging for at least one day of fun a week. I mean, what isn’t fun about standing in a circle, having to answer a question when the teacher throws a ball at you?! When they resembled a whinging choir yesterday during this activity, I found myself saying “You will do this activity and you will enjoy it”…..forcing fun. How evil am I. How dare I don’t just let them sit behind their computer for 70 minutes with no human interaction.
Turns out even Winnie the Pooh knew about Funday Friday. Unbelievable.
Funday Friday. How did it go?! So, imagine your student’s reactions when you whip out some brand new boardgames that have actually been sitting on your desk gathering dust since Term 1, Week 1. Imagine your students’ reactions when you tell them to turn their worksheet into a paper plane and throw it at the target on the board, or give them permission to dance across the classroom and act like the monkeys they so naturally acted like on Thursday. Imagine how they would respond when you turned the class into a UNO tournament, or played a whole class game of rock, paper, scissors. It wasn't just any game of rock, paper, scissors played on this fateful Friday, however. If you lose, you have to stand behind the winner, holding their hips, forming a conga line and follow them around. The person in the front of the lines are the only ones who can play rock, paper, scissors. Eventually there are two massive lines of students and the battle is on for the class winner. “What do we even win Miss? Chocolates? Lollies?”. Because it’s Funday Friday, the winner can choose from a list of “sugar-free prizes”. Today’s winner chose “Be the class DJ”, which turned workbook time into a lot more fun than usual. Just when I thought I couldn’t provide any more fun, just when I thought I was all "funned out".....we played “Trashket Ball”. How American of me, I know. But my goodness, how fun! If you’ve never played this in your classroom – next Friday is the day to start. Get amongst it. The rules are simple. You put the students into teams and ask the students a review question one at a time. If the student answers correctly they get a point, and they shoot a crumpled up sheet of paper into a bin for bonus points. (also an environmentally friendly game which promotes recycling of scrap paper - so educational!). PE and Maths all in one. Win-win! Was Funday Friday a success?! Yes, I believe it was.
Now to recover from the week that was and prepare for the week ahead, and then repeat this all over again for 13 more weeks. On a happy note, we are 26 school weeks into the year; two-thirds of the way to the summer holiday. Whoever says teachers don’t need so many holidays, you’re absolutely wrong. Wrong on so many levels. So wrong, that I have no words to express your wrongness. I’m not even sure that 6 weeks is a sufficient amount of time to recover from the 39 full on weeks in the classroom. What I do know at this point in time, is that for the remaining 13 Fridays this year, I’m fully embracing Funday Friday and I’m actually looking forward to next Friday to see what fun I can conjure up.
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