For anyone who might want to know a little more about the day-to-day life of a student at Sands, one of our Y1 (Year 7) students has kindly written an account of a “normal” day at school for them (before the current pandemic).
“Everyday I get out at around 8:50 to where Nathan (the maths teacher) stops in the school bus.
When we get to school we have about forty minutes to have breakfast in the school kitchen (if we forgot to have some at home), say good morning to everyone and play a couple of games if we feel up to it.
At 9:45 we go to whatever lesson we might have. On Mondays we usually start the day with half an hour of maths, followed by other lessons and then we might have some break. At break-times we’re free to go downtown if we put our name tags on the area marked ‘downtown.’ Then we can go to shops like Moor Chocolate or the Co-op to buy food if someone doesn’t want the school lunch. At the point the lesson is set to start we go back to the school and put our name tags on the area marked ‘at school.’
On Wednesdays we have the school meeting, where everyone talks about their views on different things in the school. For example, we sometimes vote on if we want to be a vegetarian or vegan school. We were a vegan school until we had another vote and changed back to a vegetarian school, which is okay because even though some people might want to do one thing, more people might want to do that thing differently. This is how it works because we are a democratic school, “where any two idiots can outvote a genius”. We also have a climate meeting every Tuesday afternoon where we talk about how we can help reduce plastic in the school, or arrange bus rides to bring students to the Fridays for Future marches.
At around one’o’clock in the afternoon we have lunch. The meals vary a lot except that Jasper (one of the science teachers) always makes his curry on a Friday (yum!). We have an hour lunch break where we might go to town or to the park, to play “Gang-Up”, or we might create a play in the drama room.
After lunch we will go to another lesson, for example drama, where we get to play games and rehearse plays with Heidi (the drama and english teacher). Then we might do sports in the sports court outside with Sean (the humanities teacher). There we would play games like hockey, bench ball or football. Around 4:00 is when we do our useful work, which is when we help out with tidying and cleaning the school.
Then it is officially the end of the school day.”