\u201cThe sun with loving light, makes bright for me each day\u2026\u201d The verse to start the day in class 1. Remembering the day I stood before these wide eyed beings! A new teacher, a young teacher, an excited teacher. Wondering what the next 7 years would hold and how the curriculum, would magically unfold before my eyes.
\nThrough fairy tales and the first introduction of numbers in class 1 to the fables and saints stories in class 2-what a journey! The beauty of language unfolding through storytelling, poems, verses, songs, dances, artistic activities and especially silence: what a gift! Building houses in class 3, working in the garden, telling of Hebrew stories, expanding numbers in every which way-what a journey! The curriculum continued to give, to fill us to the brim. We overflowed! We grew! <\/p>\n
Encountering the Norse tales in class 4 while learning how a whole has so many different parts through the wonder of fractions-we were challenged indeed! The ancient civilizations in class 5 gave us the opportunity to find a deep respect and reverence for cultures of the world while entering a new life of decimals where suddenly numbers came to mean something so different from what they started out as in class 1. We took it all in!
\nIn class 6 we met each other head on-literally and figuratively! We battled, we debated, we questioned. We now started to turn over every new idea a thousand times before we found some way to chew on it, to digest it. Yet still we questioned! Entering the Roman world helped us to find the structure, the discipline, the form that we needed to soldier on through this year. We conquered! <\/p>\n
\u201cI look into the world, wherein there shines the sun\u2026\u201d
\nWe now, in class 7, begin our day with this verse. Although we have been saying this verse since class 5, suddenly WE ARE looking into the world. Our world. Their world. A world. One filled with wonder, one filled with questions, one filled with uncertainty. Yet we continue to look. As we explore integers, as we map out our world (literally), as we celebrate the middle ages, as we take our language to a level of emotion: emotions of joy, sorrow, gratitude, pain, healing! As we discover that the word \u2018math\u2019 has many meanings and can be used in most areas of our lives. We see ourselves for the first time and we realise that this journey has been so much more than just arriving in class 7; rather it has been about what has supported us each and every year. We are here! <\/p>\n
With gratitude, with joy, I end this editorial with words from our end of day poem: \u201cIt matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. We are the masters of our fate we are the captains of our souls.\u201d
\n (adapted from Invictus by William Ernest Henley) <\/p>\n
With gratitude and joy
\nJoy Dreyer (class 7 teacher)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThe sun with loving light, makes bright for me each day\u2026\u201d The verse to start the day in class 1. Remembering the day I stood before these wide eyed beings! A new teacher, a young teacher, an excited teacher. Wondering what the next 7 years would hold and how the curriculum, would magically unfold before …<\/p>\n