Last night was Orientation Night for my yoga teacher training and oh, you guys. You guys, I am so excited. I haven’t felt this way for YEARS. I remember picking up my university calendar to choose classes for each semester, and then I would go through the syllabus of each class and it never failed – NEVER FAILED – to thrill me. Everything about university was exciting for me; all the course outlines, all the new information, everything. Now I feel that same, beginning-of-the-school-year excitement, and I just can’t wait to get started. I’m taking it slow because, well, life, but for the next three months I’ll be studying anatomy, yoga spirituality, Ayurveda, and Sanskrit. YOU GUYS I AM SO EXCITED. It turns out I am the same keener nerd that I always was because even the thought of doing the pre-reading is thrilling to me.
I have to settle down a bit though, because I can feel my competitive, Type A nature coming out a teensy bit, in a I am going to CRUSH this kind of way, which is not a very yogic way of thinking. Hey, we are all works in progress, right? There’s nothing wrong with taking the course seriously since I really do want to teach afterwards. Not everyone who takes yoga teacher training actually wants to teach, which is cool. But teaching is in my ultimate plan, so I shall embrace my serious student nature.
Yesterday was an especially hectic day since I was on a field trip for the whole day with Mark’s class. We went to the Police Interpretive Centre and let me tell you, it was the best field trip I’ve ever been on by far. The leaders were engaging, the information was relevant and timely, and all of the displays were very interactive and interesting. I get to do it all over again next week with Jake’s class, and I am looking forward to it. Looking forward. To a field trip. That’s how good it was!
They also had this sign in the washroom, and all I can say is “Strongly Agree.”
The morning featured a forensics lab, where the children were shown how detectives solve crimes using fingerprints, footprints, lasers, blood splatters, maggots versus flies, and composite sketches. It sounds a bit morbid but it was extremely well done and sensitive. The children also got to learn about the K9 unit, and I found out that they choose puppies based on how much a puppy loves a ball. If the puppy won’t give up a ball, or won’t stop looking for a ball, that is the puppy that they want in training. Each dog on the K9 unit had its own profile, and I loved looking at the random facts: favourite snack, favourite place to be scratched, favourite TV show (how do they know?), how often the dog is bathed.
The afternoon was all about online safety, bullying, and healthy relationships. Grade 5/6 is the perfect age for these discussions, in my opinion. There was a lot of discussion around this and also about making good decisions. The bullying unit had me thinking about an incident that happened a few years back to a colleague of mine. She had a similar Twitter handle to another woman, and they both had a similar blogging niche. This other woman – who had many thousands of followers – took umbrage that my colleague had the gall to have a similar name to her, and started writing terrible things about her. Her thousands of followers/ sheep started tweeting equally awful things and some were really scary. A few people were particularly threatening, in a “I hope I see that bitch at x convention so I can cut her” kind of way. It was quite terrifying and also unbelievable, that a grown woman would act this way about someone else on the internet.
Unbelievable, and yet believable. The anonymity of the internet is a weird thing. Just yesterday, a friend posted on Facebook about her child bringing home a great report card. Yay for good report cards, right? Well, no. Because there was a strange string of commentary about how report cards have no meaning and the world is going to be ruined by these children and their useless report cards. Wait, what? At what point do we think it’s okay to take someone’s celebration and shit all over it? We talk so much about bullying and behaviour of our children, but some people apparently transcend these social conventions. There is ONE response to someone’s good news, and that is congratulations. I am happy for you. If you cannot say that, then do not say anything at all.
I’m a keener like you. When I went to school I was always so excited to learn, now I live through my son and his university courses. I so glad you have gotten over your field trip phobias, though I still don’t see the tutu?
As for the report card, that is just insane. I was just bullied and threatened in a group I had joined, so much so I left the group (the moderator did get back to me and said what happened was not okay, and I was welcomed back anytime). If you can’t say anything nice, certainly do NOT bring down someone else’s joy especially when it is a child’s report card. What if the child was reading the comments? Some people are pathetic.
Forensics lab? That’s cooler than all the field trips I’ve been on put together. And yay for being excited about studying. I was there for a while – now I’m in the ‘can I just be done and can someone give me a frikkin’ JOB already” part. And a hearty hear hear to the bullying thing – the first few comments on that post were unbelievable. Happily, the next few set them straight.
I remember that beginning-of-school excitement. I used to have it as a professor, too. Good luck with your studies.
I was half-relieved, half-disappointed to get an email today saying the 4th grade has enough chaperones for the St. Mary’s field trip (that’s the first settlement in Maryland, people doing colonial things in period costume sort of deal). But Beth and I are still on the list for the environmental studies trip to the Chesapeake Bay.
The summer before Oldest started 5th grade he did a camp through our local science museum where they investigated “crimes” with a crime lab and everything for a week. Hands down one of his favorite camps of all time. Heck I wanted to do to an adult version!
I am not on facebook due to my job and sometimes I am very thankful to miss a lot of things that go on there with our community. Oldest (13) is not permitted to be on any social media because he’s not ready and I wish I could prohibit him from getting on them for a long time because I feel like kids in particular are seldom ready for the effects of social media. He’s not bugging me to be on any social media but he probably will someday and I’m already preworried because it can be one tough place. Sigh.