S is for Sunshine

 Yay for summery sunshine goodness.

I find that sunshine (especially after weeks of being sick and hating the cold, grey, miserable weather) produces two, slightly contradictory effects:

1. It makes be perky and hyper. I am kind of attempted to skip around the field and spread joy (OK, at least amusement and confusion) amongst the students

2. Find a nice, quiet spot in a sun beam, curl up like a cat and snooze in the sun.

In reality, I sit indoors behind a computer, knowing that I should being doing work but feeling a little too 'Summer vacationy' (Matt and I watched the Summer Vacation episode of Azumanga Daiyo last night. Man, I am _too_ much like the Yukari sensei character. It is scary.)

The sunshine seems to be producing a similarly amibivalent effect on the students. On the one hand they are most friendly and pleasant. They are bouncing around smiling and saying 'Hi' and basically behaving like nice, happy little humans for a change. *

However, sunshine should also equal not working in many students' minds. My year 12s wailed bitterly when I made them write notes and write an essay today. Oh, the whinging. They did the book but were very grudging about it** (which is weird when they have exams coming up soon and should actually being knuckling down to doing more work not less).

* I just saw the first 15 minutes of my form class' "Conflict Resolution" workshop. They had to start by introducing themselves with an "I feel ________ because ___________". Most of them said they were glad or pleased because they won their sports game or it was nearly the weekend or that it was mufti day tomorrow. Only 2 students said they were tired or grumpy. The counsellor told me they were the happiest Year 9 class she had had so far! Yay, my class are the happy and perky ones! We may not be winning Year 9 trophy and many of them are getting into trouble, but at least they are happy little smurfs.

** One even warned me that 'we'd better not be doing writing tomorrow'. I kind of wondered what they thought they are going to do about it, but I didn't wonder for long. Students have a bizarre sense of vengence (perhaps studying Hamlet has messed up their sense of justice and revenge). One boy unplugged and carried out my OHP as he left the class! Huh? I had my back turned for a second and then turned around to see him carrying it out. I yelled out but he took off with it! I don't know what he was thinking? I don't use the OHP now as the sun is so bad in my classroom I have to write all the notes on the whiteboard. I worried that he was going to smash it just out of spite but his friend brought it back, undamaged, 10 minutes later.

What did they do with the OHP for 10 minutes? What was the plan? To hold my OHP hostage until I stopped making them write essays for English? To take out their misdirected rage and anger out on a defenceless piece of audio-visual equipment?

Some Teenage boys confuse me. Their logic is not Earth logic.