School

In the Southern Hemisphere, and in Australia, including New Zealand, Fiji Islands and most of the scattered British and French colonies in the South Pacific, the school year has begun in earnest.

In our school, the fresh-faced, Year Seven’s walk the halls wide-eyed, curious and enthusiastic about being in high school. This enthusiasm, unfortunately, lasts almost a few weeks to a month, to then plummet at first, waning considerably over a short time, as the reality of their current plight sets in to their awareness and their last holiday break, after Primary School, was a great time, but has become a long forgotten memory.

On the other side of the coin, the Year twelves have a ‘hunted look’, walking the halls with their books held close to their chests, sitting quietly in the classroom, hanging on the instructors every word. The realty of their predicament, having to work extremely hard to even achieve adequate results, is all too real for these young people.

The rest of the student body, appear glad to be back at school, because suddenly their social life has quadrupled in size, old friends met, new friends to be made. Their school work, however, the reason their here, in their new minds, is not as high on the priority scale as it should be: friends, relationships are the priority and will be that, and have been this, since, really, the beginning of time.

A senior teacher pointed out a true and all too true observation. This morning he observed our Year 9 boys’, now Year Ten, have all shot-up in size, resembling a professional basketball team.

Only a few years back, all these students had to look up to make contact with my eyes. Now the circumstance has literally reversed – now they look down to see my eyes, and nailing them, well, telling them that baseball hats are against the rules, as I look up, the relationship has not changed despite their physical growth…mutual respect… they are still boys and look to me to learn something…and have and will.

Letting the secret out, which is really not a secret, is that teachers, good and great teachers, care about their students; they are interested and are sometimes too involved. However, the true care is the day to day, and some of these poor kids have shocking home lives, and school is the only safe place they have.

A new school year, a few poor little one’s, more than a few, and making sure that school will be a safe haven, someplace to go when everything else is unsafe is our first priority, then actual learning, academically, can start in earnest.