> Mrs. O'Neill's Blog: Really High School

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Really High School





This morning’s speech class was supposed to focus on the speeches of Franklin D Roosevelt. We did manage to cover one of the speeches. Personally I found it really interesting to see the longevity of political rhetoric. I’m pretty sure my enthusiasm for the subject was a mystery to my class. Possibly this was because they were the most excited and distracted they have ever been. Rather strange at eight o’clock in the morning. Six of the class (just over 25 percent) were sitting in their American football gear –as is normal here, on a game day. The rest of the class (including me on school directive!) were dressed in the school colours of red and white… Husband kept calling me ‘Sweeney Todd’.

Tonight’s game is a bit of a milestone – if we win it, the school moves forward to the state championships. This will be the first time we have progressed this far in ten years –a long time in the life of a school.

What with Halloween just over, and the school still swilling in candy and pumpkins, today’s pre-game excitement seethed and boiled like a saucepan of raspberry jam…

I lurched through my classes (‘How Homer creates tension in the Odyssey’, ‘Understanding the characterization of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman’ and ‘Appreciating the language techniques in The Great Gatsby’) to a good-natured but frankly uninterested student body. During final hour - the school day finished with another assembly or ‘pep rally’ to give the football team a big send off.

Emotionally exhausted I returned to the blessed silence of my classroom to finish ‘doing my grades’ for the quarter. Next week we have parents’ conferences. Why does that sound more ominous than parents’ night? Never mind –we have a full day off, following the conferences. Before you start getting jealous –this will be my second day off school since it started back in August.

The late news –just posted on a local tv station website is that our football team have been well and truly trounced. Oh well, the dream is over (until next year).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

After reading the article, I'm sort of gutted that they didn't win.

Why? Why have I formed a bizarre loyalty to a small High School Football Team in a different continent? Am I sliding down the slope into cretinous sentimentality? Is all lost?

So I've started mobile-picture-blogging (I bet there's an oh so clever acronym/short way to say that) you can find the picture feed here.

Liz O'Neill said...

Yes, it was disappointing -sort of ;) What about mopicblogging? Sounds like something from ikea.

Jemma said...

That's deffinately the funniest mental image of the day: a class sitting fidgetting distractedly whilst dressed partially in football gear and decorated highly in red and white. ;)

Seems parents' nights are cropping up everywhere, have fun with your one!

Liz O'Neill said...

Thank jemma - I will let you know how it goes ;)