Yesterday was a landmark day for Trixie: her first school football
match. Initially, for some reason, I
thought that it was an away game meaning lots of complicated journeys to
support The Girl Lawrence (TGL) and her fellow players but, in spite of the
school’s transport department arranging coaches, it was a home fixture. Just before 3.30pm I took my place in the
stands to watch a very particular version of the beautiful game along with
various other parents and siblings of the players.
Trixie and eleven other small year three and four girls dashed onto a carefully marked out half-sized pitch and warmed-up by busily bouncing around their teacher-coaches. One of the team decided that the best way to get into the zone by doing a series of cartwheels while others checked their shin-pads and pony tails before the game kicked off.
Trixie did not make the starting line-up, but was eagerly waiting for her big introduction, as one of the many rolling substitutions. However disaster struck before TGL could make her first entrance: the opposition scored a goal! It wasn’t a classic, but it did rather sum up the way the game was played. Somehow the ball got kicked towards the home goal and 10 of the 14 players on the pitch all charged towards it. When they arrived some jumped up and down with excitement, others looked at the ball, the goal or the supporters and some swung various feet in the direction of the ball. A foot connected with the ball, the home goalkeeper looked up, grinned broadly and the ball trickled across the line. There was an outbreak of cheering and jumping up and down.
Soon after Trixie made her enthusiastic entrance. Easily recognized as the only girl wearing running shoes instead of football boots and grey and pink socks with hearts on she quickly applied the get-stuck-in approach to the game. There was going to be none of this dribbling and skills stuff where she was concerned. She charged off towards the ball, quickly joined by almost all the other players and swung her legs furiously, occasionally making contact with the ball. Wherever the ball went, she went. Rushing around she quickly became even more identifiable thanks to her bright pink face.
The match lasted four periods of ten minutes and by the end of the time 24 sweating and smiling small girls shook hands with each other, all having had a great time. Ok one team scored three goals and the other one didn’t, but who cares about the scores really? They all seemed to have loved it. There may be a long way to go before the team gets really competitive, but by the looks of the first match it will a great fun journey getting there.
Before the match I helped out by being a zoo-keeper, as you do when you are a Drama teacher. A few weeks ago I ran a training session about how to use role-play when questioning students in lessons. One of the attendees was a teacher at the Early Years Centre who, when I asked how they might use the techniques I was championing, suggested that I should be the resource. What? I was soon, and quite willingly, roped in to playing the part of a zoo-keeper to help kick off the nursery and receptions classes’ project about looking after animals.
Naturally I researched my role carefully, the night before, by typing “zoo keeper” into google images. All the pictures showed khaki clad officials wearing sturdy boots, with various beasts draped over them (the zoo=keepers, not the boots.) I looked carefully in my wardrobe and found no khaki at all. Sadly none of the keepers wore purple checked shirts and ties. The best I could find was a grey t-shirt, green fleece, dark green shorts, brown hat and flip-flops. Thus sweating freely in tropical heat I arrived in the early years centre doing my best not to look like a Drama teacher in disguise and trying to work out a story to explain my footwear. I arrived in the first classroom with my first box and introduced myself as a zoo-keeper form KL Zoo, promising to let the children keep the animal in the box if they could guess what it was from listening to some clues. To add to the story I explained that I was a little late because of the naughty penguins at the zoo, quickly hoping that there were penguins at KL Zoo. And then the reason my flip-flops, instead of zoo-keeper’s boots, came to me. Flip flops would be exactly the thing to wear when cleaning out the penguins wouldn’t they? That then gave me the opportunity to go into great detail about how cheeky the penguins were while also explaining just how smelly penguin poo was. The rest of the story then fell into place and the children bought into the fiction. Marvellous. I visited six classes and delivered six parcels and even managed to get children to sign for the deliveries, while mentioning my stickler for paperwork boss at the zoo. The only moment of worry came when one teacher said to her class “We are going to the zoo this week, aren’t we children? Will we see you there, Mr Zookeeper?” Without thinking I asked what day they were going, Thursday apparently, which I quickly decided was my zoo-keeper’s day off. Phew. All went well.
Back at the football match and sitting next to me in the crowd one small crisp-munching boy turned to his Mum who was watching her daughter play football. The small boy said, “We had a zoo keeper come in to our class today. He brought a baby elephant in.” Mum’s response of “That’s nice, love” clearly showed that she was not listening. The boy’s attention was soon back on his bag of crisps, conveniently failing to notice me sitting next to him wearing dark green shorts and flip flops.