Canada Goes For Gold on Friday

Well, the first day back at school after Christmas Break and the Canadian World Junior Team was facing the US in the early game at 11:30...talk about bad timing...right in the middle of class.

We attempted to have it streaming through the computer and lcd projector as students worked on various class projects..one which for today included celebrating Canadian Identity by watching some hockey. Unfortunately due to the large volume of traffic attempting to watch the game...it was choppy...intermittent....and more frustrating than anything else..but kudos to TSN for attempting to make the coverage available to those not in front of the tv.

Having a bunch of hockey fans and true patriotic Canadians in the class...we had to find some way to keep up with the hockey news. Frequent updates from TSN let us know that it was 0-0 at the end of the first period. Lunchtime was spent in the library watching the tv in the room with o]the school's only cable outlet. I think I now support cable in the classroom (CITC). The US scored in the second period and during the third it did not look great. The bell rings and lunch is over...back to class.

7th period of the day saw our class doing some spelling quizzes and in between words on the quiz we would look for updates...Canada had tied the game...cheers from the class. Then came overtime...and then a shootout....we had the audio for the game playing in between and updates on the screen...as shooters for both team scored...then missed...then scored. Finally Jonathan Toews scored the decisive winner in the shootout to advance Canada to the gold medal game against afternoon winner, Russia. You could hear cheers form many different classrooms as the news was announced.

It's amazing how hockey can unite a country, a school, a class for a moment in time. Many people would say that we shouldn't be paying attention to the World Jr. tournament in school but not only is it educational, it is a beautiful thing to see 30 students in a class united in patriotism. Go Canada Go!