Here is an A-Z review of the school camp I have just returned from. Apologies in advance for any major typos or incoherent phrases. Sleep was at a premium, as was the availability of products containing adequate quantities of caffeine. Excuse me while I go and munch on some coffee beans….
OK, SO LET ME QUICKLY SET THE SCENE.
I’ve been on a mini-holiday in the glorious Gold Coast Hinterland for the past three days. The weather was fabulous, the sun was shining and the birds were chirping. I swam in rock pools, hiked through stunning rainforests and had pancakes for breakfast. How lovely does this sound??! Although that is not at all a lie, let me try and reword my three days in the Gold Coast Hinterland in a more accurate manner…..
SETTING THE SCENE, TAKE 2……
I’ve been in the mountains for the past three days, with a bunch of pre-adolescents who think that a 2km walk is a marathon and their legs are actually going to drop off. My “swimming” in rock pools resembled more of me playing the role of a slippery crazy-lady life saver in case a student decided they couldn’t swim, who when I did have to pull a kid out at the end he said “Can’t you just leave me in here, you’re hurting my arm. Ouch. Just stop". And I was the one serving up hundreds of pancakes to "starving" children and eating mine cold, whilst doing a billion other things at the same time, including teaching children how to clean up after themselves and drying the tears of children who miss their parents, even though it’s only been 14 hours without them…..
Don't get me wrong, it was a nice few days away from the classroom, however I feel like a debrief is required before I return to the classroom tomorrow. I've done a quick review in alphabetical order, to make sure I don’t miss any important details.
If you don't feel like reading, this image summarises how I feel after camp:
If you do feel like reading, here we go………THE A-Z OF SCHOOL CAMP!
A is for alcohol,
which I couldn’t wait to get my hands on, after three days with 210 11/12 year olds. Luckily for me my local bar has happy hour at 4pm on a Friday. Most delicious cocktails I have ever had, in my 28 years of living. Photo proof at the end of this post.
Whilst on the topic of alcohol, I was playing a “category” game with 4 students. The idea is we sit in a circle, choose a category (eg. Animals, colours, foods, drinks, countries…etc.) and you have 5 seconds to say a word in the category that nobody has said before. One of the kids chose “drinks” and I actually learnt some new types of alcohol. There was whisky, bourbon, Jack Daniels, vodka, vermouth, brandy, gin and rum. This kid knows his drinks. If only he took a similar interest in my maths lessons....
B is for bandaids and blood,
which were plentiful. Why must you trip over the only stick on the whole oval? And run into the only pole in a kilometre square radius? And run your hand over every rough surface, almost like you want the red water to drip out of you hand for me to mop up?
C is for caffeine withdrawal headache,
which I get every school camp, due to lack of caffeine available for me to consume. Mt Tamborine has numerous coffee plantations, yet no coffee on tap for teachers, who give up their time to camp with students……zero logic. A caffeinated teacher is a happy teacher, don’t they know?!
Just for the record, there is a container ship coffee shop which opens for about half an hour every day.....my issue is that my daily schedule consists of using coffee to wake myself up at 5am. Waiting for this coffee container ship to open at 10:30am to caffeinate me is a special kind of torture. Here it is:
D is dobbing.
Kids, what if I told you that I don’t care if Julie picked a leaf off a tree and threw it in the garden? What if I told you that I don’t care if Timothy’s hat fell off while he was running so his head was hatless for a whole 3 minutes? The only dobbing that was okay, was when you told me one of my students had packed their suitcase and was half way down the road “running away”. That was okay. Please learn the difference between OKAY and NOT OKAY. Not okay to tell me that Mary did not wear a bra on Thursday to the activities. Okay to tell me that Joshua stood on glass.
E is for early morning wake ups.
Now this is not an issue for me. I love early mornings. This is my time of the day (providing I get a coffee!!). But when I’m in charge of waking up 6 cabins of pre-teens at 6am, this is not a pretty sight. I feel sorry for their parents. I had to shake them, talk very loudly at them, pull off their blankets, turn the light on…..and they just grumbled and looked at me like I was Satan, coming in to escort them to hell.
F is for fibre,
or lack there of. Why can’t camp food cover all food groups? Why do I have to eat a kilogram of prunes when I return from camp, every time? I’m still as bloated as a pufferfish, 2 days post-camp.
G is for girls and guys that you work with.
(colleagues even – or co-workers, but I’d already used up C!)
One of the great things about being a teacher is getting to work with like minded people who enjoy having fun. School camp is an awesome time to strengthen those connections with people you work with every day.
Here is just some of my great co-workers:
Love you guys!
Kind of like an adult sleepover!
H is for headaches.
Why are children so loud? Why do they scream and squeal and shout?! Why do they sing in the bus? I had to take a dose of Panadol 12 minutes into the bus trip. No jokes. There was a “no singing rule” on the way home. That was a good rule.
I is for itchy,
which is what I am after sharing a cabin with 100 mosquitoes. But at least that is not gross; what is gross is when you see children scratching their hair like crazy. What is grosser is when they scratch their head and then flick foreign objects from their hair on to the ground. Either they are super itchy because they haven’t used a shower in 3 days, or they have bugs living in their hair…..I can do mosquitoes, I can do spiders, I can even do cockroaches but I cannot do nits. The moment I get nits, will be the moment I shave all of my hair off.
J is for jinxing.
Yes, kids these days still do this. I am sure everyone is familiar with this…..when two people say a word simultaneously, the first person to say “Jinx” places a “Jinx” on the other person. Someone who is Jinxed is not allowed to speak. Can all the students be jinxed at the same time please? #inourdreams
K is for kakidrosis.
What is this word you ask? Merriam-Webster defines this as: “secretion of sweat of a disagreeable odour”. Some of these children, have a) never heard of deodorant b) don’t own deodorant c) don’t care if they stink. I had to verbally force some kids to have a shower. They were smelly, sweaty and covered in dirt and still didn’t see the need to wash themselves…..some wore the same clothes every day.
L is for lost property.
Why can’t you look after your hat? And your bag? And your water bottle? I feel like looking after your belongings should be a skill that has been acquired by the age of 11. And if you do lose your water bottle or hat, and I lend you MINE and you LOSE IT, I will look at you like I gave you my heart and you ripped it out and jumped on it. Don’t lose my stuff.....
M is for melodramatic.
How most of the kids act when you ask them to do something simple such as: pick up that rubbish, go and get that ball, say sorry to Timmy, don’t speak like that, use your manners, wash your hands…..simple life skills that they haven’t quite learnt yet. The best one was when I asked a male student to pick up his banana peel, rather than discarding it on the ground, to which he made a big scene and said “You’ve got to be kidding me? It’ll break down!”…..righto….might be okay if you threw it in a garden mate, but you left it on the carpet in the middle of the room! I didn't even ask him if he would do that at home, because I was scared of the answer.
N is for nicknames.
Did you know, that when you’re an 11 year old girl, it’s super fun to give all of your friends a boys’ name as a nickname?! This may be fun and all, but when you’re a teacher and you call our for Damo, and a boy and a girl rock up…..this is confusing. Even more confusing when the girls explain their "fun game" to you.
O is for ozostomia.
Just another word for BAD BREATH. In one cabin alone, 50% of the girls didn’t pack a toothbush, then they rolled their eyes at me when I suggested they put some toothpaste on their finger. Nope, they’d rather breathe their foul breath on others…..next camp I’m packing a packet of cheap, homebrand toothbrushes. No excuses!
P is for puberty talks.
How do you make 11 year old girls giggle? Try these words: period, pads, tampons, vaginas.
How do you make 11 year old girls look like they want a little hole to appear and eat them up before they die of embarrassment? Try these words: penis, erection, wet dreams.
Q is for quiet,
something I didn’t get for 3 whole days and am embracing this weekend.
R is for Riddles.
See if you can get this one……I’ll give you some clues/examples……
Riddle Name: Green Glass Door
Side note: When googled, it says “Green Glass Door” is frequently played as a drinking game…..now that would have been better!
It goes like this: I am going to bring some things through my Green Glass Door.
I can bring a tree, but I can’t bring a branch.
I can bring a door, but I can’t bring a window.
I can bring a yellow pen, but I can’t bring a red pen.
I can bring Molly, but I can’t bring Sam.
I can bring a bee, but not a flower.
I can bring glasses, but not eyes.
I can bring a sleeping bag, but not a bed.
I can bring a hoodie, but not a jumper.
Any ideas???
If you don’t want to know the answer, scroll down……….fast!
If you do, keep reading……
ANSWER: You can bring things that have double letters in them, and can’t bring things that don’t!
The kids loved it!!!
S is for silent games.
Whoever invented these deserves a John Scott Award. The 10 minutes that my ears enjoyed the most during my time at camp was when students had to get themselves in birthday order, silently. Bliss.
T is for thermostat.
I’m sure that some of the kid’s thermostats are broken! There were kids wearing hoodies when it was 28 degrees……still complaining they are cold…..what the?!
U is for ulcers,
which is exactly what my mouth is covered in after 3 days of camp food. Sure the food tasted fine, but was not my regular diet. Soooooo many carbs. One night it was literally a plate of carbs: Chicken schnitzel, wedges and dinner rolls!
V is for vacuum cleaners.
I am 100% sure that some of the students had NEVER seen a vacuum cleaner before. They didn’t know how to get the cord out, and what to do once they had finally plugged it into the wall. I thought they were joking….. at least a little…..but they weren’t. I had to give an impromptu vacuuming lesson. But then turns out the girls LOVED vacuuming, and volunteered to vacuum other people's cabins. You're welcome mums and dads!
W is for witches.
One of my students decided to share a “secret” with me that she was a witch. What she said was so hilarious, it took all of my willpower not to burst out laughing, but instead be very understanding that she has these magical powers and sometimes she can’t control them. She said (while sitting next to me on the bus, so the story went for around 38 minutes….not kidding) “Miss, I just want you to know I’m a witch. My family know I’m a witch so I wanted my teachers to know. Everything I dream comes true. I dreamt there was a cyclone, and there is a cyclone right now. I dreamt my chicken died and it died two days later. Everything I dream comes true.” I said, “Thank you for sharing. It would be nice if you dreamt nice things and then they came true” to which she replied “Yeah I know. Well something good did happen in my dream. The cyclone turned into Chinese containers. So that was cool”. Ummmm righto?! Kids are so random.
X is for eXhausted.
Every part of a teacher on school camp is exhausted, and today is 2 days post-camp and I’m still exhausted, despite sleeping soundly for the past 2 nights.
Y is for yelling.
Why don’t kids have inside voices? Why don’t they even know what an inside voice is when you ask them? Why can’t they use an inside voice, outside too?
Z is for zoo keeper.
By Day 3 of school camp, this better sums up my profession than "teacher". There are some clingy monkeys, some stubborn mules, some moody cats, some energetic meerkats……you get the picture!
I hope you were able to visualise a little of my three days on school camp. It's not all toasting marshmallows around the campfire singing Kumbaya.
As I said above, I couldn't wait until $10 cocktails at my local bar during happy hour, after 3 days in the mountains with 210 Year 7 students. This cocktail tasted like heaven. The bar tender asked me if I wasn't feeling well, to which I replied "I am well, but this is the face of a teacher who has just returned from 3 days of school camp". (I think he added extra alcohol, just for medicinal purposes).
Happy Week 5 fellow teachers. Nearly half way through Term 1!
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