Welcome Back, Year 8s
You know by now that school life contains many spaces: the obvious one is the classroom, but how students arrive and leave that space is also worth considering—the road to school, the ‘play areas’, the canteen and other specialist spaces. You would have heard the leaders remind students often about protocols for arriving, using, and departing different spaces around the school.
So, let’s ‘play’ with the metaphors around classroom doors and other gateways and thresholds you face at school. It is no coincidence that the issues around such movements in schools (and in life) are related to self-management and other socially valued practices.
Facing Another Classroom Door
You’ve experienced a year of secondary school. So, you’ve already learned about attending school daily, including the attitudes, beliefs, values and expectations that influence your behaviour. However, you may not have explored how they can be like those life-changing journeys that are full of excitement or fear. Furthermore, you may not have played with the attitudes, beliefs, values, and expectations as to why you took the journey to school in the first place. So, what do you know about how moving between home and and school can influence you for the rest of your life?
Exit, Pursued By A Bear
You may know by now that stopping a particular activity or holding back from an action can be a good thing. As a year older, you know how some things have a ‘given’ length of time, such as a game of sport and the ending of the school day. At other times, you may have learned how time needs to be ‘beaten’ so that you make the most out of a situation. Still, in different situations, you may only have your judgment to know how to finish well. You might be stranded in a lesson, feeling bored to death, but you must still do your work. How do you manage?
Making Sense?
Other themes related to making an entrance or exiting a particular location bring you closer to understanding the values and customs of a place. For instance, it can make you aware of whether or not you’re in a public or private space. Consequently, you have to be then choose to use appropriate behaviours to suit the occasion. You might also have to judge whether the situation is formal or informal. All this complexity is a mark of your growing maturity
What Nonsense!
Another aspect of making an entrance or exit is that it puts you in touch with the many possibilities for mistakes that arise because you’re only human! Misreading situations, overlooking things and tripping up on what you should say or do is, in fact, an inevitable part of belonging to a vast, socially complex world. Consequently, it’s a good idea to understand how humour and laughter allow you to handle the foolishness in yourself and others. Can you laugh at yourself? Can you feel a bit of empathy when someone else makes mistakes?