Surviving the ultimate week of endurance teaching

Well despite my fears I have made it to the weekend end of this week more-or-less intact and not too exhausted. This week was the uber-week of the term and I seriously feared that it might beat me within an inch of my sanity/fatigue threshold. Strenuous levels of teaching were required and I think it would not be an exaggeration to say I spent more hours at school (and doing school related activities) than at home this week. Monday had a meeting that went until after my stomach wanted its dinner and it was getting dark outside. A long day but not exactly the stuff of legends I grant you. However, that was just the start of the week. Tuesday was a long teaching day followed by film club writers meeting. This meeting went for 2 hours and my growling stomach's wrath was only slightly abated by fruit bursts and chocolate-coated Girl Guide biscuits*.

Wednesday was my class Noho. This meant that at the end of the school day I went straight to the school marae to spend the next 24 hours with my beloved students. I arrived a little after 4 O'clock to find my Year 9 running around outside the Wharenui with a rugby ball screaming and laughing. I braced myself for the time to come. Last year I had naively encouraged as much running around during the afternoon as possible. I wanted the students to exhaust themselves so that they would fall asleep at a reasonable hour in the evening. I discovered that students take about 22-23 hours to get tired enough to be quiet and fall asleep. Midnight jogs and busy evenings don't stop the talking and giggling until 4 am. They fall asleep on the bus ride home at the end of the camp - not during the night. I realised that the noise and hyper activity was just a taste of what was to come.

The afternoon and evening was pretty full on and I snapped many a photo of their activities. They played trust games and Fruitbowl (kind of like Midnight but in pairs) and then had a talk from the school Kaumatua about tikanga and the history of the school marae. After dinner they went in groups and designed wearable arts clothes out of newspaper and had a fashion parade. As usual, it resulted in several boys wearing skimpy, over-the-top dresses and strutting their stuff. One lad was subjected to a makeover by the girls in his group and had heavy eyeliner, foundation and pink lipstick which he then couldn't get off completely.

They then had a presentation on astronomy and went star gazing on the field led by the school astronomy club. Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy so we couldn't see as much as usual but they still enjoyed it and asked a lot of questions.

They then had to make supper, clean up, set up their beds in the wharenui and make their lunches for the following day. They were in duty groups and the only ones getting off lightly were the breakfast crew who had to get up at 5.30am the following morning. It is always fascinating to watch groups of young teens doing chores. Some have obviously never made their sandwiches for themselves or done vacuuming. They have no clue but then seem to really enjoy it and appear quite chuffed with themselves when they complete something to an acceptable standard. I guess a lot of kids have their parent doing everything for them and it must be quite empowering for them to know they are able to do these things themselves. It reminded me of the Celia Lashley book "He'll be OK" about teen boys and how they need to learn how to take care of themselves as part of growing up. Several of the boys seemed really proud of their sandwiches and that they made their own bed.

After all the chores and supper, they had about 30 minutes of free time before going to bed. What is interesting about a Noho is that it is everyone sleeping in the same place - boys, girls, teacher all on mattresses in the Wharenui. It is different from camp in that it isn't just one group of people in a tent or cabin - if one person snores or a couple of people talk noisily it affects everyone who isn't a heavy sleeper. Many of the kids seemed quite freaked out at the idea of sleeping in the same place as the opposite sex and with their teacher. I find the whole experience interesting having now been to 3 nohos in my life. I'm a light sleeper and often don't sleep well with noises and snoring around but there is something quite nice about a noho. It does create a real sense of being like a family when you all sleep in the same place. I think the students start thinking of you more as a human than a teacher too when they see you in pyjamas and a sleeping bag. I think there are also many protocols that are a real boon from managing kids point of view. Pillow fights are culturally forbidden and they know the wharenui is a place of peace so they aren't allowed run or jump and food/drink is prohibited. They were pretty good at settling and most people got some sleep - except those next to the snorers. I brought earplugs but even so only snatched a few hours sleep before it was 5am and time for me to get up.

Last year I found that getting through all the packing and cleaning up after breakfast was very time consuming and we nearly weren't ready by the time the bus arrived. This year I was far more organised and inflicted military-like precision on all the duty groups. They worked well (except for a couple that who tried to sneak off and avoid helping out - they were made to clean the toilets) and we were packed and ready to go with 30 minutes to spare. I got them posing for photos and then we played some touch rugby until the bus arrived. Then we were off to our activity day. The morning was spent abseiling and rock climbing and was pretty fun. Unfortunately several kids starting getting hungry early and started smuggling food up to places they weren't supposed to. I wouldn't have really objected except that they were littering so I had to tell kids off which wasn't fun. The other thing that wasn't so good was that the place where our school usually goes was a public facility that had changing rooms, toilets, an abseiling wall and amazing bush walks. Last year it was sold to private owners. The rock where they do the rock climbing was still available but nothing else. The kids had to use a port-a-loo and in spite of being told it was only for 'number ones', one boy loudly announced that he "forgot and had taken a big dump" in it. The only students who braved the port-a-loo after that were the ones wanting to see if 'it' was still in there. 'It' was and most of the boys opted for going in the bush and the most girls stopped drinking fluid. After a quick lunch we headed for the river where rafting, swimming and jumping off the big rock into the river took place for a couple of hours. The guys who were running it had a cute dog that swam about with the kids and jumped in the rafts - though it always bailed before they hit the rapids.

It was nice seeing them all have such a good time and I was happy with how well my photos came out. I have several ones of some posy jumps and dives that look very impressive.

As one girl said, "it was the most fun in one day she had ever had." By the time we were in the bus everyone was pretty exhausted and I have some cute photos of the back row on the bus being four boys asleep leaning on each other like dominos.

Unfortunately when I got back to school I couldn't just go home and to bed. I had Parent Teacher interviews starting at 6pm. I had to rush home and have a shower and guzzle a steak sandwich. When I finally did get home I was actually shaking from tiredness or possibly too much caffeine. My hands would stop trembling. It was a nice reunion with Matt though - it felt like we hadn't seen each other for ages.

Morally, my week should have ended there. But there was still Friday to survive. The day itself was OK and most of my classes were enjoyable enough but I found the tiredness was producing clumsiness. I kept forgetting what I was saying mid-sentence and walking into things. However, the end of the day came quickly and my last period was with my form class so I told them that I'd show a data show of all my 200 photos if they worked well for the first 40 minutes. They did in spite of being very tired and watching the photos was really lovely. A nice way to end the day.

I am glad it is now the weekend and that next week is a short week. I would like to finally get around to writing the Part 2 post to the Kapiti Roleplaying Weekend. Maybe after a sleepy my mind won't be so fuzzy.

* Which surprisingly I like less than the regular non-chocolate Girl Guide biscuit. About the only biscuit I can think of that isn't better for having a slap of chocky on the underbelly. Maybe if they made chocolate-coated gingernuts I would feel similarly towards them. Some biscuits suit the plain, honest no fuss exterior. Simple, dunking cookies whose straightforward flavour is best when not competing for attention with the pretension of an additional taste**.

** Wine club has increased my ability to waffle on about the flavours. It's all about adjectives and ideally a personification or two.