Teacher's Pet

6 year old Jacob's class workbook, with his spontaneously written sentences:
"La flor es linda como la seño Carla."
"The flower is beautiful like Miss Carla."

And the teacher, Miss Carla, responds:
"Hermosas tus oraciones."
"What beautiful sentences."

Is he going for teacher's pet, or just developing a Latin approach to women?

Posted by a bemused mother

No classes today in Cordoba for 1000 students... because the janitor was sick

Most students have fantasised about arriving at school to find it closed, either to avoid a test, go home for more sleep, or simply to earn a day off midweek. The dream materialised today for more than 1,000 students in a traditional public school of Cordoba, who had no classes because the janitor, who alone had the keys, did not arrive for work.

The unusual incident occurred this morning at the school Alejandro Carbó. Teachers and students crowded outside the door of the institution waiting for the janitor to open the doors. But that never happened. The man was sick and no one could communicate with him ... he was the only one with keys.

As a result, all morning school students were sent home.

To make matters worse, the headmistress was also sick, so the authorities of the Directorate of Secondary Education authorized to force the doors of the school, that occupies an entire city block and is home to nearly two thousand students.

Posted by Julie (with the unhelpful help of a badly written newspaper article and google translator!)

Primary School P & C

Being part of the local primary school Cooperadora (P & C group) is a real eye opener. I have the privelege of drinking mate (Argentine tea) with the principal and contributing to the functioning of the school in a real way. I learn all sorts of things in these meetings!

I remember how in Oz the various P & C groups we observed would raise enormous amounts of funds for luxuries like sporting equipment and musical instruments.

Sadly, in this country government assistance is so slow in coming that principals rely heavily on parental involvement to keep the school functioning. Last year our group funded the absolute basic necessities .... putting glass back in broken classroom windows, fixing faulty plumbing in the kids´toilets, restoring the heaters to good health for the cold winter to come. The Cooperadora even pays for the replacement teachers, and if there aren´t enough to go around, the kids are sent home.

Sometimes I forget the differences between the school systems here and in Oz, but the other day I was reminded of one difference ... our 7 year old effortlessly completed a Maths paper from Oz, but came to a halt when she read 'how many pencils fit in a lunchbox ... 5 or 90?' She stopped, and said 'Mummy, what's a lunchbox?'
For a kid who's only ever known a 4 hour morning class primary school routine, who's home for lunch each day, that's a fair question!

Posted by Julie

school memories

Its funny isn't it what we remember of school days. I had to write about some of my school day memories for my Spanish classes (in Spanish of course). I remember that on one of my first days of school I ate a meat pie that I took out of the garbage bin. That's right! I had seen a kid throw a nearly whole meat pie into the bin in our classroom, and for a kid who had boring sandwiches, that was just an incredible waste. So I did some recycling before it had become fashionable. (This was kindergarten by the way, not the first day of high school!)

Unfortunately, I was an honest kid. So when my Mum asked me how my lunch was, I told her all. And of course it became the family story forever after. My brothers and sister never let me forget it. It has now been etched in my memory forever!

Why is it that the memories of the difficult times at school- embarassing moments, times of fear, etc, are etched so vivdly in our memories whereas the successes are so vague and almost not there?

Schools back

Well school is back this week and we are trying to get ourselves back into the rhythm. The three older kids all start at 8am, so its back to early rises. And the kids have started back at their sports as well. The girls are playing volleyball, and the boys basketball (first time for Jacob who is 5).

So the routine of life is underway for the year ... and that certain feeling of tiredness that comes with it. And the downside of having a long summer break is that the kids don't have more holidays until their 2 weeks in July. Then they go through until December. It's a long slog! Thankfully Argentina likes public holidays even more than Australia.