Day 31 I wanted the results ABC!

I have been watching the program ‘Gareth Malone’s Extraordinary School For Boys’ on the ABC for the past few weeks. The general idea of the show is that Gareth (a choirmaster) has been engaged for 1 term to try to boost literacy levels in a group of year 5/6(?) boys. He only works with them 3 days a week and only works with the boys, not the girls (they work with their normal classroom teachers).

The goal set for him is to improve the boys’ reading ages by at least 6 months in 1 term. A hard task when you see what some of the boys are like.

I tuned in tonight to see the third part of the 3 part series, only to find that the ABC has cut the third part in two and the final is now next week! How am I meant to know if his methods work if I have to keep waiting?!? I want to get on with building my classroom in the woods, running through the local common and taking boys on the train to the nearest major centre to use the library’s budget in one afternoon buying books just to engage the boys!

I don’t think that his ideas won’t work, I just think that even if they do work they are impractical to be replicated especially in a normal school setting without large amounts of resources available. I will reserve final judgement until I see some results from the literacy assessment (hopefully) next week.

Day 30 Knees...the ongoing saga

For quite a few years now I have had problems with my knees. In December of 2005 I had surgery on my right knee and in December of 2006 I had surgery on my left knee. I had lateral releases on both knees to try and make them ‘track’ properly as my kneecaps don’t run in the grooves that they are meant to (kinda like a train that doesn’t quite fit on its tracks) and therefore the cartilage is being worn away. The surgery did a little bit of good but I also take a cocktail of drugs each day to enable me to function.

In about August of 2010, I spoke to my GP about increasing my medication as the medication was no longer keeping me pain free. She referred me to a specialist (as I had moved cities since my last knee surgery). I got in to see the specialist in May 2011.

In July 2011 the specialist suggested further surgery however when the hospital rang me with a date, it co-incided with my kidney surgery date! I asked them to hold off on surgery dates until this year as I had had a total of 4 anaesthetics last year and wanted to have a break before embarking on more surgery.

In December I called the hospital to find out if they could tell me when my surgery date was likely to be so that I could arrange work for 2012. They nominated 17 Feb as a tentative date for surgery.

Last week, I called and asked if that was still on the cards and was told that 17 Feb was out of the question and my date was more likely to be 16 March. I arranged work around this and started on Friday.

Today I got a call from the hospital saying they had had a cancellation and could I make the 17 Feb date for surgery. As I had already committed to work I had to refuse and stick with 16 March even though it drags the process out further.

The pic above is of what I use to strap up my knee on days when I feel I can’t get through the day without extra support. I use 2 tubular bandages (1 over the other) and some lovely skin glue called “it stays” which stops the bandage rolling down my leg as I walk. I have tried thermal knee supports but they don’t stay up and the “it stays” is not strong enough to support them.

Day 29 Holey shirts :(

A few months ago, I began noticing a larger than normal percentage of my clothes developing holes in the front of them. It is only MY shirts and always in the middle of the front below bust level.

At first I thought it was from my work keys as I wear them on a lanyard around my neck all day at work. Then came the holidays and a shirt I bought since school broke up developed holes.

Then I thought that it was maybe the washing baskets that I carry out to the line. So I bought new ones. However 2 other new shirts developed holes after that.

So I was thinking that it was the fabric that I was choosing shirts in (t-shirt style knit fabric) But today while we were at the supermarket, Illi told me that I had a hole in my shirt (I was most embarrassed as I usually throw things out when they are stained/damaged).

The biggest disappointment was that the shirt I had on was about 4 years old, bought from Myer and made of a fairly think cotton knit…and now It also has A HOLE.

I don’t know why they are developing (one of the new shirts had only been worn once before developing about 15 holes!) But I am sick of my shirts being damaged!

Day 28 Helping out.

Over the last few weeks we have been popping in and out of Rowena and Trevor’s new house helping out with their makeover type renovations. As their painter starts tomorrow, I asked Rowena if there were any last minute things that needed to be done before the painters arrive. In response we got a request to come over Saturday night, bring dessert and help out with the last few jobs. Hopefully sometime in the not too distant future Rowena and Trev’s house will be somewhere they can relax and enjoy as to this point the poor buggers have been doing the hard yards on it and not getting much time off at all! As it turned out, there were not many things left to do as they had done most of it. The above pic is of Trev and Sean carrying the single bed out to the garage and Declan carrying the old underlay out to the truck to go to the dump sometime in the future.

Day 27 Returning to the familiar.

Today was my first day back at school for the year. Despite making a decision to do casual work this year, I have locked in doing a block of 7 weeks as an Itinerant Hearing Support Teacher. I am still not totally sure exactly what I will be doing, it sounds like a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and liaising between students teachers and parents. I will be working with 7 children over 3 sites. The most comforting thing to me is that my “home base” is Queanbeyan West PS so my base is a familiar place. The above pic is of the front door of QWPS and where I need to go for ³/₇ of my work!

Day 26 What was that noise?

This morning at about 3am, we were woken by a loud noise. I personally was not too worried as to me it sounded like the cats had knocked the washing basket off the washing machine.

Sean being the cautious type went to investigate. He checked outside, he checked Illi’s room and Declan’s room and also the laundry but to no avail. So I got up and checked the laundry (where I thought the noise had come from) and concluded that the cats had knocked down a plastic jug which was on top of the fridge.

This morning when I was sitting in the lounge room talking to Chrissie (who had stayed the night), I turned around and noticed the mirror on the ground. I said “how come the mirror is on the ground, was it reflecting light into your eyes?” she replied that she hadn’t touched it and that THAT must have been the source of the noise in the night. I was sceptical as the mirror is quite large, the frame very heavy and it was hung about 1.5 metres from the ground and ended up on the tiled floor standing upright intact! Upon further investigation it seems it was indeed the mirror that crashed down, the wire on the back snapped, it hit the blanket box which must have broken its fall and then landed on the tiles! I would guess the mirror to be about 6 years old and as it is framed by reclaimed fence palings I am surprised that it suffered no apparent damage for its ordeal! Chrissie wanted to know, seeing the mirror didn’t break, does that mean we get 7 years GOOD luck??
The above pic is of the mirror, the wall it fell from and the blanket box that helped ‘save’ it.

Day 25 How to get a child out of the house pt 2

Today Illi had arranged to visit her friend Carlina’s house. I like that Illi and Carlina are with the same phone provider, because they get free texts to each other. This is especially important when they text random one word messages to each other like “meow” or “pineapple.”

I dropped Illi off at 10am and met Carlina’s mum. When I went back to pick Illi up at 5pm, the first thing I noticed was the chalk drawing on the road. There was more on the mailbox and also on the path as I walked up to the front door.

It seems that Illi and Carlina had been spreading their random-ness around! Not only had they named the street Pineapplopolus, but they had written it on the road, the gutter and the mailbox (luckily chalk is easily removed)! The other thing they did that had pretty much worn off by the time I got there, was they coloured themselves in with chalk too! The above pic is of the very large declaration on the road of Pineapplopolus and I must make mention of my guest photographer for today...Illi...Thanks!