CHAPTER 7: HOMEWORK, HOMEWORK, HOMEWORK

Every school day my mum work me up at 6 AM, but on this day, my second day of school, I had woken myself up, guessing I slept quite well plus was excited about my second day of school in third grade. I got up, cleaned up, got dressed, finished packing and went downstairs to have breakfast.

Diana: Good morning mum and dad (give me kisses and hugs)

Mum and Dad: Good morning Diana. You woke yourself up without mum waking you up today, said my dad?

Diana: Yup, guess I either slept quite well or was the excitement of going to school.

Mum and dad: laughing… (Puts the breakfast on the dining table, we sit down and have breakfast).

Our breakfast was always quite simple, cereal, juice, milk, coffee or tea, toast and eggs, bacon and sausages and pancakes for me (always loved it when mum made the pancakes). I always made sure to have a full healthy breakfast that would give me the energy needed for the morning classes before our first snack and recess time. For snacks, mum would either prepare a sandwich, some fruits or muffins (home baked) and yoghurt (again healthy snacks).

After finishing my breakfast, brushed my teeth, did my hair with my mum’s help and then prepared to leave for school. We would often leave at 7:15 AM taking about 30 minutes to get to school –mum always driving me to school.

Mum would drop me off at the elementary school office building, when I got off the car, we would kiss each other on the cheeks and wave to each other and then she would get in her car drive off while I entered the school building and went directly to my class. One thing my parents always made sure was that I would never be late to school and if I couldn’t make it for personal or other reasons would notify the school, otherwise would never miss school.

When I got to class pretty much most of my classmates had already arrived as I saw backpacks on the floor and folders on the desks. I put my backpack on the floor, took out the folder and went to find my classmates on the playground. We didn’t play for too long as the morning classes were about to begin-the bell rang and we started walking back to the classroom.

Mrs. Cooper welcomed us with “Good morning class”

All students: Good morning Mrs. Cooper.

We went over the agenda and schedule for the day, and then begun our first lesson. I must admit the information we were learning was quite interesting, fun and enjoyable. I loved the way Mrs. Cooper taught math, science, social studies and language, writing and literacy although it was a lot to process but was able to keep up with her teaching styles and methods.

Did we have homework? Yes, was unavoidable since we officially started learning the subject lessons today.

For our non mainstream classes, this week we had computer, art and music lessons which were all introductions and playing some very interesting games, of course all related to the lessons. And finally was the favorite lesson everyone loved P.E. class. We were introduced to some activities and fun and games which required running, jumping, moving our bodies’ left and right….although it was fun but by the end of the lesson when it was time to head home, I was tired….was such a long day but was quite enjoyable. These classes would alternate on a weekly basis in our schedule.

Oh yes, we also started our foreign language classes which I choose Spanish. Our teacher was indeed a Spanish teacher, quite strict I might add, but quite professional at what she does and the way she teaches her lessons, you will definitely not forget what you have learned for sure. I had always loved Spanish; don’t know why, guess have heard all the great and beautiful things about Spain so it was my hope that I would continue taking Spanish all the way until high school.

As the autumn season came to an end, we were now preparing for winter one of the longest seasons of the year, no more waking up to the bright sunny mornings, but rather waking up in darkness and going home when it was already dark including those winter days when you just don’t feel like getting out of bed at all! If there was one thing I learned about winter especially as a student is to ALWAYS dress warmly indoors or outdoors because getting a cold, flu or even just a fever was enough to keep you in the bed for a few weeks and that was something I avoided at all costs!!

Grade three had quite a large number of students, mostly each class having about twenty five students’. Some of the things that would take place in the first semester of grade three were the indoor classroom activities and competition activities with other third grade classes, the performing arts activities that were organized by the music teachers and finally the large list of after school activities we could choose to do after school.

The performing arts activities included singing, dancing and a bit of storytelling as well. Some of these performing arts activities or events would invite parents to come in the evening or in the late afternoon to watch the performances done by students in various grades. I took part in the singing event which was so cool but was also nerve wrecking as I had never sang in front of such a large crowd, however whenever I would perform I would try to find my parents in the audience to give me confidence and encouragement which always helped cool my nerves and I would just sing out loud with joy and excitement. As for the sports, we had indoor running, jumping, tag game, hula hoop competitions which were so exciting especially the hula hoop, was so funny watching third graders wiggling themselves from point A to Z on their hula hoops which was so much fun. That was something I was definitely not going to do, what I did participate in though was the tag game; basically we were divided into teams, and each team had five members, all we had to do was make sure that we were able to complete the activity from start to finish, tag your partner and they would continue running. The first team to complete all the given tasks without cheating was the winner. For our class, we divided ourselves into teams and we came in third place, the other two classes that beat us were just so fast, but that’s alright, we had fun which was the most important.

The “Weekly Star Awards” was one of the highlights of my third grade, because we would not be told in advance who would be getting the “Weekly Start Awards” it was quite difficult to know who got what star. We would have to always keep checking the “Start Chart” for the results and this is what everyone in my class was dying to know. We would only know the following day when we arrived to school and that was always the first thing I would go check when I entered the classroom. I would always have a smile on my face when I saw I had two to three stars next to my name, and then I would also check Jaime’s, Chris, Cynthia’s and Carl’s as they were my desk mates and we each got the same number of starts-the feeling of excitement was running on my face. When they walked in the classroom, I would motion them to the “Start Chart” with excitement for them to see how many stars they got, and they would jump up and down with excitement as well. I would always share this news with my parents and they were very happy and proud of all the good things I was doing at school.

To mention homework, pretty much every single day, and I mean every single day we had homework. The only classes we didn’t or rather never got homework was art, music, and computer, as all the work was given and completed in class and if not would be completed in the next class. P.E. was the GREATEST, NO HOMEWORK!! This was such a relief because I was not sure how I was going to handle or manage the huge load of homework moving forward. It would have meant giving up my after school activities just to make sure I was able to successfully complete and submit all my homework on time.

The subjects that gave quite a large amount of homework were math, language, writing and literacy, Spanish, social studies and science. When we were given homework we had to write it in our diary and Mrs. Cooper would check it just to make sure we wrote all the homework correctly. I would always look at Jaime and Chris and laugh just seeing how frustrated they were because they never and I mean NEVER loved homework, and this is not something that started in third grade but since first grade, but somehow they would always complete it and submit it on time. I guess they were avoiding trouble which I don’t blame them at all because I would do the same, less headaches and fewer problems with the teacher and parents.

When it came to completing our homework, Jaime, Chris and I would always do it together either at Jaime’s, Chris’s or my place. We would go to each other’s places weekly sit in the living room and work together to complete the given homework. If there were some parts of the homework we didn’t understand would work it out together, explain it to each other and if and ONLY IF it was understood we would move on to the next question. We would always make sure that every single question given whether in math, language, literacy, writing, social studies, science or Spanish was well understood before doing the homework. To be honest this was such a joy and relief to me and our parents’ because we supported each other, liked helping and encouraging each other which not only helped us be good in our studies but also helped us have great study habits, learning how to be responsible, organized and independent children. We not only tried to ensure that we did our best and gave our best from the beginning to the end but also didn’t want to have our parents worry about our studies. Of course an adult was around to supervise us while we were doing our homework and once we completed our homework we would show it to our parents, and they would sign it off with their signatures acknowledging the work was well done and each task completed successfully. This continued through the entire elementary school years. We made sure never to have issues completing or submitting our homework and never got into any trouble regarding uncompleted homework.