School's a Yawn

April 3, 2009
by Rodney Olsen
2 Comments

yawn.jpgThe first week of April is always an interesting time as stories of April Fools Day pranks start to filter through.

I remember many years ago trying to think of practical jokes on the 1st of April. Most of the time it was only ever thinking about it. I don’t remember carrying out too many pranks.

I read this morning that an Albanian high school class managed to execute a somewhat dangerous April Fools Day stunt on their teacher. It seems that they all took sedatives and fell asleep in class.

All 20 students of a class in a school in Saranda, on Albania’s southern Adriatic coast, swallowed one or two Diazepam pills. They obtained the drug, similar to Valium, in a pharmacy, reports said.

When the teacher saw his entire class had nodded off, he got a little bit frantic and had all his students taken to hospital, where the story behind the joke unravelled. The school director apparently described the prank as “collective idiocy”.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend any stunts like that. Mind you there were several classes I can recall from my student days where I wouldn’t have needed any kind of help to drift off to sleep.

Did you ever manage to pull off an April Fools Day prank at school? Did you get ‘stung’ this year?



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Back to School Sales

January 23, 2009
by Rodney Olsen
5 Comments

pencil_sharpeners.jpgI wish I was still at school.

Thirty years ago, when I was going to school, the Back to School Sales were all about exercise books, grey school clothes, crayons, Bata Scouts and pencil cases.

I always hated going shopping in the weeks before school returned because there would be ‘Back to School’ signs hanging everywhere, mocking me, reminding me that my freedom would soon be over.

How things have changed. I see there’s an advertisement in the newspaper today for Back to School Specials which include an eighteen hundred dollar high definition video camera, a laptop computer and widescreen televisions which cost anywhere from two thousand to nine thousand dollars.

I’m not quite sure what the connection to going back to school could possibly be but if that’s the kind of thing you need for school these days I might just have to re-enrol.



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Life is a risk

August 26, 2008
by Rodney Olsen
8 Comments

somersault.jpgAs a parent you like to know that your children are doing their best at school.

What you don’t want to hear is that your child has done something that may get them suspended. So imagine how a Townsville mum felt recently when she found that her daughter was in danger of suspension … for doing a cartwheel in the playground during recess.

According to this story from News.com.au, Belgian Gardens State School in Queensland, Australia, has banned all forms of gymnastics during breaks, including handstands and somersaults.

Kylie Buschgens was surprised to find that her 10 year old daughter, Cali, had been busted and punished for doing something that most of us would consider healthy.

Apparently two teachers took Cali upstairs and forced her to sit down for the rest of the day and not do anything. Principal Glenn Dickson said gymnastics activities were a “medium risk level 2” that posed a danger to children.

Glenn, let me enlighten you. Crossing the road is a risky activity but we can’t stay on one side of the road for the rest of our lives. Life is all about weighing up the risks and benefits of various activities. Yes, there is a risk that children will hurt themselves during physical activity but there’s an even greater risk that these children you’re trying to protect will die of heart disease in later life if you manage to teach them, through your policies, that physical activity is not worth the risk.

I suppose the question is who is being protected here. Is the school trying to protect the children from harm or are they more interested in saving themselves from any possible damages claim?

And we wonder why Australia has a problem with childhood obesity.

Of course it’s not just an Australian problem.

There was a similar case in the USA in 2004 when an 11 year old girl received a one week suspension for repeatedly refusing to stop cartwheeling on her playground at San Jose-Edison Academy.

Do you think we avoid too much risk? Are we playing it too safe with our children? Have you seen a change in the behaviours that parents or schools allow for their children? Are we creating more problems than we are solving?



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Smells like plasticine

July 17, 2008
by Rodney Olsen
7 Comments

plasticine.jpgI know it wasn’t plasticine but it sure smelled like it.

I was cycling through an intersection this morning and got a quick whiff of something that suddenly took me back almost forty years to my grade one class in room one at Wembley Downs Primary School with Miss van Kampen. It was a smell like plasticine. I was immediately six years old again and just starting my formal education.

I remember my first year of school being a relatively happy time. If I had the opportunity to go back there …. I’d say no thanks. Life was good then but with a beautiful wife and two enormously talented kids it’s so much better now.

Isn’t it amazing how smells can bring back such strong memories? I wonder what are the smells that bring back memories for you. Are there places you go that awaken memories simply by the odours you smell there? Do some smells bring back things you’d rather forget or are they generally happy memories?

Cycling to work each morning I head past the local drive through coffee place and take in the wonderful aroma of fresh coffee. That’s always a smell associated with good things for me.

I often smell fresh baked goods as I cycle past by the local shopping centre and as I get closer to work the smell of pies and sausage rolls wafts across from the nearby bakery.

I love the fact that I can take in so much more of the world on two wheels.



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Back to School

July 3, 2008
by Rodney Olsen
1 Comment

DR.jpgI went back to school yesterday.

Thankfully I wasn’t going back as a student but I was there to talk about the wonderful work of Compassion Australia.

I was invited to speak to the students at Beechboro Christian School about the trip I took to Haiti and Dominican Republic in April this year. While we had Compassion Day at 98.5 Sonshine FM back in May, they’ve got their very own Compassion Day tomorrow.

The staff and students will be doing all sorts of fun things to raise money for Yessica, the school’s sponsored child, as well as contributing to other Compassion projects.

It was such an honour to be able to tell them about how much their contribution will mean to boys and girls in other parts of the world who have so little. They all listened very well and hopefully they understand just a little bit more about the responsibility we all have to care for those in poverty.



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