Christmas without snow or Santa?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... Which I don't really love quite yet. I love Christmas time and putting up the decorations, but my birthday is a late November one, so when decorations start appearing even in October I am not impressed.

This is my first Christmas after getting married, so I am giving in early and beginning to plan excitedly. Decorations are being hand-made to save the dollars, but there are so many options I figured I'd remind myself of my personal boundaries - no snow or Santa or anything snow-related or Santa-related. That's right. No snow globes, icicles, reindeer, or elves. The only exception is a fireplace 'theme' where I am planning on hanging the stockings.

And I'm thinking I will be treating my in-class activities the same. Sorry kids!

Why?

Well, let's start with the snow. If you are in certain parts of the world, snow is a perfectly natural, unavoidable part of the season. It isn't in Australia and here in QLD it will be hot. Snow is simply not natural here at this time of year. It is not a part of our Christmas experience. It simply makes more sense to be relevant for our season - ice cold drinks instead of hot chocolate, fans instead of blankets, and the only snowman decoration that makes any kind of sense here is the half-melted ones.

Moving onto Santa. For many, he is the magical part of Christmas for children. For me, he can be a bit of a disappointing fairy tale. There will be students whose families will not be able to pull off a magical Santa fulfilling all their dreams and ticking items from their wishlist. There will be students whose families do not encourage Santa beliefs, such as my own. There will be students with such high expectations of Santa that they will cry if their ipad is the wrong colour (or their car). There will be students who don't celebrate Christmas at all. As a Christian, I have no interest in lying to my children about Santa's existence and placing doubt on my other beliefs. I also place a different emphasis on Christmas and don't want to emphasis the gifts. Christmas can have greater meaning and joy than celebrating Santa's visit and receiving gifts.

So what is my alternative?

The 'true meaning of Christmas' is the simplest answer. In a Christian school, it is easy to emphasis the Christian symbolism and remembrance. In a public school, there are still other Christmas truths to emphasize and these can even be done with those who don't celebrate Christmas.

Broader Christmas themes can include:

• Giving: not receiving and maybe not even gifts. Think of giving to the poor, donating time to a cause, acts of random kindness, etc.
• Love and community: similarly to above, this could also include writing letters, spending time with community members, and working on relationships.
• Joy, peace and blessings: just having fun and celebrating life in general. Incorporate games, talk about having joy and peace even in hard times, go on a treasure hunt for things that make us feel blessed or at peace, learn how to calm down, journal blessings.
• Salvation: not just the amazing gift from Jesus, but also safety during the holidays. Let's not forget it can also be a dangerous season with drownings, road accidents, and fires.
• Pleasant surprises: don't you love it when loved ones visit unexpectedly, an ordinary day turns into some random fun, or you enter a room to find it transformed since you left? There's no reason this can't happen at school without it being about Christmas, though it can easily be linked in. Can you imagine how much your students would love it? It could even become an advent calendar themed event with one little pleasant surprise a day or a week. We had one teacher at my primary school who used to prank another class - why not even work on a pleasant surprise for another class or teacher?

These can be linked into class learning such as:

• Who is poor? How do they live?
• How can we help others?
• How can we control our feelings?
• How do different cultures celebrate?
• Family history.
• Who do I love and why? How can I show them?
• How can I stay safe?

If you are now wondering about the beloved decorations and class displays, you could consider going with a somewhat traditional Christmas still or a more subtle Christmas theme. You can exclude Santa and snow and still be left with stars, angels, candy canes, trees, pictures portraying peace or joy, a 'present' which is lifted up to reveal a 'giving' scene which isn't your usual present, family portraits, baby portraits, safety posters. Specific examples of how these crafts would work will be following in a separate post soon.

Gift ideas are quite a bit easier, even without snow or santa. These will be presented in a separate post soon.

How do you feel about booting out snow for a local reality and replacing a Santa emphasis with a 'meaning of Christmas' emphasis? Will this make the season unnecessarily challenging for you?

The Dream Class for a Relief Teacher

I have moved interstate and resumed the role of housewife as I wait on my registration to be
approved. Now that things have calmed down, I can resume the blogging. As my reflections are somewhat limited without teaching time, the next sequel of posts will be based on reflections on my teaching inspired by my reading.

Today's post is focused on lesson one in 'Create Your Dream Classroom' by Linda Kardamis. She finishes her first chapter asking the reader to describe their dream classroom and list what would be the same or different in comparison to their present classroom. While not having read any further, I would imagine that this is to be used as a 'goal' to reflect upon in future lessons.

At this stage, I plan on remaining as a casual teacher for a while. As such, my dream class is often changing. While I love organised, minimalist classrooms where I can pick up the planning and enable the children to continue with their present learning paths, this isn't within my control. As such, I will focus on classroom environment, culture and lessons, which I can more easily influence, especially when returning to classes repeatedly.

While in a class, I would like to see the children engaged in their learning and develop a hunger for more learning. The children are curious and self-motivated due to the intrinsic desire to their interest in their learning. When lessons conclude, the children tell me that it was fun and they want to know more. Children persevere through challenges, because they perceive the learning goal as worthwhile and are invested in the learning. Children are prepared to take learning risks, because they know that they are safe to do so within the environment and culture of the classroom.

The culture within a classroom is one of respect. Children support each other in both their strengths and weaknesses, recognising that everyone has them. Children who are experts within a subject area take on a teaching role, rather than a proud mocking one. I am respected as a teacher and the children feel respected by me. We are able to communicate openly with each other and problem solve due to the trust that is developed between us. Behaviour issues are recognised as a weakness, just as children who struggle with maths. Both myself and students support the 'misbehaving' student, discussing the cause of problems and enabling them to behave appropriately.

Lessons are interactive and inquiry-based whenever possible. Students use the library and ICT to research, experiment with manipulatives, re-enact, and create. Their learning is demonstrated in a variety of ways.

Assessment is varied, authentic and naturally integrated into the lesson. Children don't label assessments as tests or stressful, because it is a natural outworking of their discoveries. Assessments may take the form of a presentation, creation of a text, a piece of art, teacher notes following a conversation, interviews, movie files, or yet another form as appropriate to the lesson and outcomes. These assessments will be recorded in a clear manner in order to be presented to their regular teacher. Rather than simply piling assessments, they will be clipped together in order to retain the order and present the material in the neatest way possible for the teacher.

Marking will also take multiple forms. In cases where students are either independently marking or assisting, they will be reminded of the focus (i.e. spelling, sentence structure or ideas). Whenever possible, students will reflect upon their own work and note what they like about the work and how they could further strengthen such work in the future. Peer assessments may also play a role and guidelines will be in place to ensure feedback is constructive and respectful. In the case of worksheets (as sometimes left by teachers to complete), we will mark these together as a class whenever possible and discuss the most difficult problems together.

While I could continue to dream, I am afraid I would end up with a very detailed book. As such, I will leave it for now on these major points to reflect upon and implement. At this stage, I see that I have made a good start in many of these areas and improvement will be focused on providing more variety and becoming familiar with my new students once settling into the new schools in QLD. However, my plans are still quite lacking in real student-guided inquiry lessons due to the difficult time restraints of a one-day placement. As such, it will be a major goal to expand upon these and find ways to work around the time restraints.

This has all got me quite excited and motivated, so excuse me while I go expand my lesson repertoire.

What are your dreams for your classroom? What can you change or improve to help you achieve these dreams?