The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat - or, more accurately, the delight of smooth success and the discomfort of chaos - was my "Forest of Reading Week". For the first time ever, the Red Maple Marketing Event AND the Festival of Trees AND the Silver Birch Quiz Bowl were all held during the same week. What were we thinking? I can tell you what I was thinking when we were first trying to select days for the local events - boy, are May and June busy!
The sticky notes indicate a day that one of the schools involved said was already filled with something important. June wasn't much better and we also tried to avoid Ramadan (which would impede the pleasure of the ice cream truck for some of our students), so the Marketing Campaign was Monday May 15, the Festival of Trees at Harbourfront (for Silver Birch) was Wednesday, May 17, and Quiz Bowl was Friday, May 19. It was challenging for me to be involved with all of these events and not have my regular program suffer (and teachers' prep times disappear) so I spoke to my administrator and decided that I'd do prep payback for the 19th so I wouldn't need a supply and classes didn't miss their time with me. We obtained a supply teacher for May 15. For the first time ever, I had to stay at school instead of attend the Festival of Trees. I had three competent teachers taking their students, and I volunteered to keep their students who weren't going.
Red Maple Marketing Campaign
The Red Maple Marketing Campaign was FANTASTIC. I have to say that it was even better than last year. In 2016, it took the student teams excessively long to set up for their five-minute presentation and it negatively impacted our schedule. I think the improvement came because of a combination of factors - the teacher-librarians that were there last year really hit home the message to their students that things had to speed up with transitions, and we told students in advance what the order of their presentations were (by drawing random numbers). We also moved the author talk to the afternoon, so that all the presentations and judging were done in the morning. Our judges, Hart and Victoria from If Manifest, arrived on time and gave excellent feedback in person to all students. There is something wonderful about being a bit hesitant about the execution of a project and having it exceed your expectations.
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| "Glass" cookies from my students' "Shattered Glass" campaign |
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| Hart, Analisa (TPL liaison) & Victoria |
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| Our judges with our teacher-librarians |
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| From Mackin PS - the winning campaign! |
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| From Alexander Stirling PS - their first year at the event! |
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| From David Lewis PS - including bannock! |
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| From Milliken PS - the runner up! |
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| Another Milliken PS entry! |
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| The second David Lewis PS campaign entry |
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| Brookside PS made a splash! |
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| Agnes Macphail PS represented Shattered Glass |
What was just as delightful was the reaction by authors to tweets about the representation of their Red Maple nominated books. Some of the authors that took the time to like, retweet, or reply to the Red Maple Marketing tweets were:
- Kevin Sylvester (@kevinarts)
- Karen Bass (@karenbassYA)
- Frank Viva (@VIVAandCO)
- Teresa Toten (@TTotenAuthor)
- Caroline Pignat (@CarolinePignat)
- Stephanie Tromly (@stephanietromly)
- Kelley Armstrong (@kelleyarmstrong)
- Richard Scrimger (@richardscrimger)
(In other words, every single author that had a book marketed at the event made some sort of acknowledgement or recognition! Sorry Arthur Slade @arthurslade and Lorna Schultz Nicholson @lornasn - the only reason your books weren't represented was that we didn't have ten teams enter this year.)
Silver Birch Quiz Bowl
The Silver Birch Quiz Bowl was just as AMAZING. Last year, our ice cream truck vendor did not show up, disappointing many children. This year, he came, and made a lot of money from the participants. We started to worry when the lunch hour was nearly over and the line still stretched past the truck; however, my absolutely creative and ingenious fellow teacher-librarians came up with a plan - we brought the line inside and therefore, students could still watch the competition while still receiving their frozen treats! Brilliant! This was the second year that Percy Williams Junior Public School hosted the event and Jacqueline Burrell is a wonderful host. Tables were set in the library for students to place their lunch bags and coats. The gym was decorated. Her office administrator handled the payment for the guest author (- every school contributes, but organizing the transfer of funds was so smooth). Our author, Kira Vermond, was delighted to be with us and she entertained the students with her interactive presentation. I really appreciated how the parents of Percy Williams Jr. P.S. helped out with the book sales, counting Kira's float, tracking her sales, and keeping the purchase line calm. The Quiz Bowl itself was enjoyable. There were some questions that had no guesses, an unusual new trend, and we had to watch for reports of unlawful assistance from the audience, but it felt like a team effort paid off. Congratulations to Berner Trail Junior Public School for winning the non-fiction Quiz Bowl, and C. D. Farquharson Junior Public School for winning the fiction Quiz Bowl.
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| TLs from 9 schools + author Kira Vermond! |
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| Me with our "host with the most" Jacqueline Burrell and ICE CREAM! |
Missing the Festival of Trees
It's no big deal if I miss the festival, I told myself. I've been so many times before. I didn't realize how much I *would* miss it, how much I'd be missed by others, and how stressful it could be to keep 17 extra students (in the morning, about 21 in the afternoon - long story) from three separate classes occupied and properly supervised while *still* teaching my regular classes.
At one point, when I had a Grade 1 class in the library, who were equally as distracted by the extra bodies, I had children acting up and others screaming because of the noise from those misbehaving at the carpet.
"STOP. IT." I practically hissed, with a lot of venom in my voice.
Their classroom teacher happened to pass through at that moment, and she said something like, "Use your strategies. It looks like Mrs. Mali is looking disregulated too. Help her."
She hit the nail right on the head. Students are not the only ones to become disregulated. It was harder for me to use self-regulation strategies I might prefer (like getting away from the situation!) because as a teacher, I'm supposed to be the one in charge. I had to remind myself that the mess, or noise level, or lack of focus was not meant to make me upset. It was not as productive a day as I might have liked it to be, but we survived.
The students that went on the trip had a wonderful time. The weather was ideal and I saw some marvelous photos of their experiences thanks to the teachers that went. It's always a lot of work to organize the trip, but their happy faces indicate that it's not something they want to miss.
I really enjoyed all of this post, but it was the last section that really had me nodding along. Adults can also become dysregulated, and often our reactions can also trigger more reactions in kids. As I read this section of your post, I thought about Stuart Shanker's important questions of "why" and "why now?" You really highlighted so many reasons that you might have been dysregulated at this moment, and it was actually the prompt from the other teacher and the students in the library that helped co-regulate you. What a great moment to share here!
ReplyDeleteAviva
Aviva, I thought of you as I wrote that last part. There were a ton of reasons why I could have been "in the yellow zone and moving to the red zone" (to use the Zones of Regulation language our primary division class teachers use) and some went beyond just that single day. The wonderful thing about the teacher's comment was that it was completely non-judgmental - there was no "why are you losing your temper? it's not that bad" or "stop rolling around on the floor and screaming" statements. That made it easier to take a step back, press the "reset" button in my head and try again!
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