"I broke a kid's arm in 7 places cause I threw the ball too hard"

It was Monday. For those of you unaware, that’s the day that follows those 2 days where you tell yourself you’re going to be really productive and finish the things you had been putting off during the week only to realize that it’s dinner and you haven’t even finished your witty facebook post about how unproductive the previous day was (this of course didn’t happen to us as pointed out in the previous post). It’s also the day associated with new things; in most cases, a new week. In our case, the daunting scenario of having 12 perplexed faces staring back at you as you try in vain to decide which bacteria is “good” and which is “bad” from the 15 random photos you blindly pulled off the internet.

We decided to re-arrange the classroom

Never seen Andrea this excited

That’s right; this was going to be the first day the Resolute teaching crew of Andrew and Andrea took teaching health to a whole new taxa (see, biology joke cause we were teaching about germs and hygiene as our first lesson to the kids)! Our lesson plan was packed full of fun activities such as using glitter to show how germs can spread through handshaking, interactive hand washing and a game of Simon says to show how to brush your teeth properly. We even had a game where we hid pictures of bacteria around the room for the kids to find to emphasize that germs can be everywhere. The point of the activity was totally missed however when the kids wanted to know whether the bacteria they found was good or bad (this was after we explained that not all bacteria are bad – cause diseases and that some are good – those found in our colon). None-the-less, we held strong and our first teaching day with the kids was spotless (another awesome pun)! The younger kids were really receptive and seemed to already know everything we were teaching. For the older kids, we decided to stray a bit from the lesson plan (we’re dare devils – we know) and go more in-depth behind the science of germs and bacteria to keep it interesting. After school we decided to raid the school’s kitchen in hopes of supplementing our secret weapon for teaching nutrition to the kids (this hopefully will blow them away – we just made another hygiene joke, this time referencing sneezing). 

The kids loved B-ball

The next day was spent at the community gym where the kids normally have their physical education class. Outfitted in our gym attire (QHO t-shirt and a pair of shorts), we were ready to run our fitness lesson (we sorry, we can’t stop). Travelling to and from the school, we managed to gather all the balls and sports equipment we’d need for that day’s sweat inducing lesson.  Note to self, no matter how short the distance, it is NEVER a good idea to go outside in -15 degree weather with t-shirts and shorts – even Andrew’s burly man thighs were buckling from the frigid temps.

From the sparkle in their eyes as they entered the gym, we knew that gym period was the holy grail of the school day for these kids. The lesson on fitness and the importance of exercise went smoothly and the games we played even more so. We taught the kids the game of hand ball (which all the kids loved) and in return they taught us “Game X” – a version of the popular game ‘fireball’. The kids were all so active and excited that we barely got a moments rest the whole day. This resulted in our body raising a white flag and our nose telling us that it probably wasn’t going to be a good idea to wear our beloved qho t-shirts again tomorrow. At the end of class we made a stop at the school to talk to Craig, the principal’s husband and also the school’s IT manager and counsellor about getting videos cameras for a possible video project and also a projector. Craig was amazing and managed to get us everything we asked for AND a printer before the day was out! Before we left though, Andrew and Craig got into some much needed 1337 speak (or geek speak as Andrea saw it) to help deal with Andrew’s withdrawal from technology (Andrew would like tell his beloved computer OverDriveBeastX that he misses her lots).

It's alive! Yes, the projector works

Besides teaching, we also managed to contact the local nurses Mary and Cathy as well as the RCMP officer Maria to set up a time to meet them and discuss our program. More exciting however was the fact that we got in contact with Ipelee, the person who ran the youth program in the community and received a stack of logs of all the meetings they’ve had! This will go a long way in helping us re-establish the initiative in the community.

Our day ended much like it started; uncontainable excitement at our next chance to meet the kids and teach! As our weary bodies rest from the copious amounts of exercise after a rather long period of being stagnant, we can only hope that our next lesson on nutrition will be as delicious as the meals we have been enjoying here in Resolute.

Germ free since ’83,

The Gym Class Heroes 

p.s - the title is actually a quote from an older female student. Apparently she's really good at Game X...