Mish Week 2: Unfortunate Names and Playground Games

We’re happy to announce that as of Monday, we have officially started our lessons with the children at Missabay Community School in Mishkeegogamang. We’ve decided to change it up a little bit this year and begin with the leadership, goal-setting, and responsibility component of our curriculum. We think this will allow us to get to know the kids a little better and also hopefully foster attitudes of leadership and motivation within the classroom. This year we are trying to teach practical leadership to the Grade 7/8s by allowing them to brainstorm and plan their own community event that they will facilitate. Planning started for this today and the kids are most interested in holding an intercommunity ball hockey game with students from Crolancia facing students from Missabay. This will be followed by a barbeque that the students will help to organize. Yesterday we helped to hold the first of many “Boys Clubs” at Crolancia Public School. This is a weekly event that allows us to combine fun and active games with important life lessons; for example, yesterday we played floor hockey and talked about resiliency. Some of the high-school students have volunteered to help us run activities for the younger students. Also, we’re super excited about holding our first “Girls Night” this Thursday night at Missabay. We’ll bring Grade 1-4 girls from both the Pickle Lake and Mishkeegogamang communities together for a night of nail painting, cup-cake decorating and other outrageous things. Community members from both Pickle and Mish have expressed a lot of enthusiasm about events that allow for interaction between the two communities. We’re having a blast here teaching at Missabay, the kids are all awesome. On Monday we had the chance to run our first after-school activity in Mish which basically just consisted of us all playing on the playground for about an hour and a half. It was great. We’re finding that even in our short time here, we’ve already gotten to know many of the kids and we’re too pumped for the next four weeks!Alright, now its time for our your favorite part of the blog.Five Things We’ve Learned About Teaching1)    You have to be prepared to be called by many different names- Heather is now endearingly referred to as Hedder and Nick has since adopted nicknames such as Nicky, or the less desirable, Nicki Minaj.2)    Never bring a ball into the class unless you’re prepared to use it.-…never3)    Hot Dog Day is still thoroughly enjoyable4)    Kids never cease to surprise you with their ingenuity, compassion and untarnished honesty- the honesty thing can really go either way…5)    Everyone gets a little self-conscious when they start writing on a whiteboard- Even after four years of university both spelling and penmanship prove to be a little shaky.Check ya later!