On my November 14 blog I mentioned some memorable things the students in my one-room school had said. Last night at our jam, we were telling humorous Christmas stories, and I remembered another funny thing that happened in our isolated rural school in 1973.
It was my first year of teaching in the fly-in lumber camp and I was struggling to keep on top of things, in the start-up school that I ran in the camp’s recreation hall, because we didn’t even have a school building. As Christmas approached I was starting to get unwanted pressure from some of the parents who wanted the school (me) to put on some kind of Christmas program for the camp. I was not keen on creating another project and didn’t really know what to do, since our resources were pretty nonexistent.
Although I am not at all religious, all I could come up with for a Christmas program was some sort of nativity thing, featuring the kids. With the handful of students that made up our school, I figured that would probably give a part to everyone. I explained to the class what I was thinking. I told the kids that we would need a Joseph, a Mary, three Wise Men, and some shepherds. I told them to think about which part they would like to play.
At lunch time as I was standing by the door of the Rec Center as the kids filed out to go home to eat, Darwin, one of the kindergarten students stopped in front of me, looked me in the eye, and seriously told me, “I want to be a German shepherd.”
View my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
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