school days by mia

mia is home sick today so i am going to interview her for her take on a typical school day for her.  mia is in year four at westburn school, housing ages 5-13.  her teacher is miss walker, a first time teacher who was a gymnast and an office assistant in her former life.  mia wears a uniform of dark green culottes shorts, a light blue polo and a dark green cardigan sweater with a blue "W".  the school day starts at 9am with everyone around the campus playing soccer in the grass or playing on the various playground equipment areas.  the school is constructed of several pods of brick buildings separated by pathways and canopies for shade.   when the morning bell rings they disperse to their classrooms and mia joins her class on the rug with her teacher.  every day they have fitness, running games or tag.    when they have PE, music or art it is the class teacher who conducta the lesson, either in the room or outside.  once a week they go to the library, and can check out a couple books for the week for home and their class, but there aren't library lessons like at home.  miss walker reads a book to the class everyday, right now they are reading "Blart" about dragons and knights.  a few days a week they have maori lessons, and at first mia felt at a huge disadvantage , not having had any knowledge of the language before now!  Maori is a simple language with eight  consanants k,m,n,t,p,r,w,h, and ng;  and all our vowels that get pronounced individually.  phrases she has learned so far are: how are you-kitay pai akay, i am good-kiti pai, hello-kia ora, new zealand-aotearoa (which means island of the long white cloud).  the national anthem of new zealand has a first verse in maori, and building and municipal signs are often dual language.

morning tea (snack!) is taken around 11, and is eaten outside on benches if not raining, then kids can run around for a recess time.   a couple hours later there is lunch in the same spots on outside benches, again with recess after they have eaten (kogen is in heaven- he went from no recess to two!).  there is no cafeteria, but twice a week kids can order sandwiches, baked goods and meat pies from a local bakery owned by one of the parents at the school.   there are 24 students in her class, and the kids say the teachers are strict.  there is very little homework, but all subjects are taught everyday. on mia's first spelling test, she got half of them wrong, which is surprising since mia is usually a good speller, but after checking in with mia and the teacher, we figured out that she was being graded on the 'new zealand' spellings: colour, flavour, centre, etc...her teacher is being more lenient with mia's words and mia has been getting better grades on her spelling now!

 once a week her teacher has a release day to work on lesson plans or further development, all first year teachers get this per ministry of education in NZ.  on those days mrs brown is a sub for the day, who is the daughter in law of the principal, and she teaches art to the class.  a new phrase learned from the teachers is "sort yourselves out" -seems synonymous with the hand clap rhythm learned at home to stop and listen.   mia has made some friends in her class-yasmine who is from malaysia and caitlyn from aukland.  daniel is from britain, and other students are from india, australia, middle east countries (just not sure which) and europe.  the student body is split into four houses : hillary, rutherford, te kanawa and sheppard named after important founders and contributing alumni (i know!  just like hogwarts!)  and there is a running count of house points, but it is unclear how they are earned!  kogen and mia are both in te kanawa (named after either maori chiefs from over a hundred years ago, or a famous maori opera singer.) and i am told families are put in the same house to avoid squabbles at home-good idea!

mia and kogen scooter to and from school, i join them in the scootering, the only scootering mom i have seen yet, but maybe i will start a new trend.  at the end of a day a kid said to kogen, "cheerio old chum!"

activities offered at the school are: chorus, orchestra, kapa haka (the maori chant dance), karate, religion, there are swimming, rugby and cricket teams as well.  mia is looking forward to netball- a version of basketball which involves passing and no dribbling, and the net has no backboard!

that is it from miss mia, and fear not, she is not too sick-as it is this took me a week to gather up and post so she is fine and dandy again!!  (the cold did sweep through the whole fam excluding me, knock on wood)