Meetings day

Wednesdays are meeting days classes went through without a problem , all grade 6 doing their Front Cover and Research for the Tangram project.

Tomorrow I get the first of my grade 8 classes for 3 days as they have been away all week, and I have a small mini modelling task set up for them to have a go at. A sort of precursor to building the school. I stuck up one of the maps today DAMN its big, seriously big. I have had to order 4 more sheets of plywood to act as the bases for the 5 projects, and then I have to work out where the hell we are going to store it.

Sadly today I did a check of the tables and drawing boards. 7 of the 25 Drawing boards had graffiti on them mostly minor mostly in pencil. But unacceptable. Though perhaps worse was the fact that on 7 of the 8 work benches there were 22 different instances of graffiti mostly in pen. Two boys made the mistake of using the same drawing styles they had used on their box project, and one boy put his name (which is much appreciated), one girl drew some beautiful love hearts again identical to her folio work.

I haven't decided how to play this yet, whether the screaming mad Scottish teacher ranting and raving would work, or whether I should be the devastated and disappointed teacher who stresses how much the classes have let him down.
Either way any one who owns up to doing it will be reported to the head of middle school, whose comment, when I said to him earlier today "that as soon as I find out who it was, I will send them to him" replied "just send me their heads..." I like the head of middle school, he is a straight talking no bull southern american and I sure as hell wouldn't like to cross him. So when he gets the kids (heads and bodies) I doubt I will get much of them back.
If it had been a one off, one work bench then ok but to have 7 of the benches defaced has really annoyed me, its not as if the kids don't have access to paper there is lots of it. So really no excuses.

I will have to produce some sort of punishment but its so widespread that I cannot just punish the guilty 3 or 4 I know of, though I could make an example of them. Or I could punish every class and let them sort it out amongst themselves. I kind of like that idea, though it wont improve my popularity rate. Not that I worry too much.

The final note tonight was the school have been making a promotional video for prospective parents (In the current climate this is a bit of a chicken before the egg thing since if the current problems are not worked out there may not be a school worth putting kids into), however we were shown the 8 minute video today. A variety of teachers are seen in 1 or 2 fleeting appearances. Diana has a beautiful close up and for once in a picture she looks as stunning as she actually is in real life, seriously I have never seen such a pretty girl whose photographs (Her school security badge is an example in point) constantly makes her look like a 65 year old drug abuser having a bad hair day !!!! (sorry D) but the highlight for me is that my class and kids appear 6 or 7 times and I appear in 4 seperate pieces, I should have asked for commission, it was almost a speaking part, and certainly enough to get the colombian equivalent of an equity card. (Now I need to get a copy from somewhere for posterity).

More tomorrow..