If one awards ceremony wasn’t enough, the school I was at today had its own awards show.  Knowing that elementary students are far more impatient than older ones, this ceremony was much shorter fortunately.  And I got to sit down…  Actually, the entire thing was one hour, but the presentations were only about 20 minutes.  The rest of the time was raffling off various prizes.  The entire event was based on reading.  The class I subbed for, a fifth grade class, actually came out on top with more than 1600 books read.  At least I think it was the number of books.  But they also mentioned last month, and that is a huge number for just one month, even among 25 students.  If it was for the entire year, then yes, 1600+ books.  Anyway, the kids also received raffle tickets based on the number of “miles” they went.  Come to think of it, it would have to be books, and therefore over the entire year.  Or, if in a month, then I would guess a book carries a certain number of points like in the accelerated reader program found at many schools.  Yes, that could be it.  Anyway, each student in my class had anywhere from 50 to over a hundred of these miles, earning them two to four tickets.  There were a lot of prizes, so that means a lot of chances to win.  Some kids won more than once.  I was holding a ticket for an absent student.  Unfortunately, she didn’t win at all.

After the assembly, the weather which had been rainy with a tornado watch all day had cleared up and the sun came out and dried the blacktop, so there was a 5th grade versus teachers kickball game.  Yes, I got to play…  🙂   After missing an easy catch, I did manage to score a few runs on our turns up to bat.  So, it was a fun end of the day.

What?  You want to know about the rest of the day, before the awards?  Well, it was supposed to be a field day, meaning play time outside with special events.  Remember the weather I mentioned above?  Yeah, no field day.   🙁   So, they did PE and music at the start of the day (yes! breaktime…) followed by some writing, and finally math games in the computer lab.  I got a chance to try a game they loved called Lemonade Stand.  I used to play a game by this name back when I was in school, only that game was for the Apple ][ instead of Java in the web browser.  Oops, did I just date myself?   😀   So, after that came lunch and free pizza.  Not the best, but I doubt the kids cared.   🙂   Yes, I had some too.  This was supposed to be a part of the field day, but unlike field day they couldn’t postpone the pizzas, so when they have their field day next Monday they will have to do their lunches the ordinary way.

Crazy days at the end of the year, I’ll tell ya.  If I manage to find work next week I’m sure I’ll have some more interesting tales.

EDIT:  Why don’t all the smileys/emoticons render?  Oh, well.  Editing once got one of the four to work in any event.

I am very tired so I will make this one quick.  Besides, it was PE again, at the same school as Friday, so there isn’t much to say about it.  Kickball again.  The only real difference was I had 8th grade health instead of 6th, so I had the 6th graders for PE instead of the 8th graders.  I had to show a video in health class about abstinence.  They did some good object lessons on the video involving cups of water contaminated with spit and food and then sharing the cups.  Also, using clear packing tape as a lesson by sticking it first to one person’s arm, then another, and another, then finally sticking two of these together and comparing it to two pieces of tape never used stuck together.  I actually had to show this for only one class as there was an assembly during the other one.  Outside.  But that was okay even if the temperature was in the mid 50s.  It wasn’t all that bad.  It was about a new solar panel that was installed at the school that they said could provide energy to light one of the rooms 24/7 I think they said.  Not much, but apparently worth it.  Our village president was there along with the superintendent and even our local US House representative.  Each of them, along with a student and the principal, gave a little speech about it.  My role?  Not much since the entire school was out there which of course included all the regular teachers to keep the kids in line.

Well I’m going to leave the post with that.  Hopefully I will be less tired tomorrow when it comes time to blog.

I keep meaning to mention this bit of info.  Or maybe I already did but don’t remember.  In any event, I was at a middle school doing PE, but you already knew that.  Unlike Thursday’s PE, we actually got to go outside.  Well, there were two periods of sixth grade health, but that’s why I specified PE, didn’t I? 🙂  So, for PE 8th grade played kickball and 7th grade played soccer.  We used the baseball diamonds to play kickball.  The first class went fairly well.  They chose to play boys versus girls which worked out about as well as you would expect, being the girls at that age are more, well, feminine than a few years ago.  This of course is not meant to be sexist as there are many female athletes, most, if not all, of which can wipe the floor with me as I am a non-sports guy.  However, when talking about eighteen girls, most of them react to sports like kickball as one might expect.  It should be noted that they wanted to do boys versus girls.  I was skeptical about it, but if even the girls wanted it than I wasn’t going to stand in the way.  They outnumbered the boys too, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt.  Except the boys still issued the girls a major defeat.  The second class I didn’t even let get to the point of suggesting boys vs girls.  As soon as we were on the field I randomly picked two students as captains and had them pick teams, alternating boys and girls as long as possible.  This class was the goofiest of the day, though not matching the two classes I mentioned Thursday.  They just didn’t take the game seriously.  Well, I guess if I was going to be in high school in just a few weeks I might take advantage of a nice day outside with a sub too.  I didn’t let it bother me- I just wrote it down for the gym teacher to read when he gets back.

But where does the title come in?  Well, it has to do with 7th grade soccer, which went quite well by the way, excepting the fact that the goals were not placed across from each other which I only noticed after a student informed me that the point I was about to place the ball wasn’t center.  I looked back at the goal I was using to center the ball and it was centered as best as I could tell.  I looked at the other goal and I was putting the ball at a point that wasn’t even between the two goal cones.  What the…?  Unfortunately I couldn’t move the goal because the teacher this morning had drawn goalie boxes .  Oh well.  There were no sidelines anyway so no big deal.  The second 7th grade class is where the title finally comes into play.  How often is it one finds two students at the same school, in the same grade, and on the same team with the same name?  And by this I mean first and last name.  I actually noticed this issue weeks ago.  It was when in one class I noticed there was a boy named Peter who sounded like a student I knew from church.  Once class started I looked at him and he wasn’t the one.  Another day I noticed the name again, and found it was attached to a different boy.  Huh?  This boy did look familiar.  It took another couple times subbing for this grade before I realized the two were on the same team though rarely in the same class for some reason.  At least the classes I subbed in.  My guess is they were purposely given different schedules to aid the teachers.  However, when it came to PE, there was only one time available per team so both Peters were in the same gym class, though different teachers.  Well, for soccer the two classes combined and I took the boys out on one field while she took the girls out on another field.  So, you guessed it: Peter vs Peter.  They aren’t really two of a kind other than their name.  They look different, and in soccer one defended while the other played on offense.

Oh, and only one was the Peter I knew.  He goes to a different church now, but he did attend mine a few years ago. 🙂