Zimpapers Logo

The honeymoon is over and it’s school time again!!! Schools open next week, putting an end to a hectic holiday that was characterised by lots of activities.  With only a few days before children go back to school, there is usually a lot of excitement, anxiety and sometimes anger as it dawns to pupils that they have to go back to school.

A lot of activities will take place during the weekend. Make sure you get a clean haircut from the barber or visit the salon for a nice hairdo that conforms school requirements.

Again, fresh new shirts and smart new shoes have been bought and holiday tans are already fading, signs that point only to one thing – it’s time to go back to school.

Some students feel nervous or a little scared on the first day of school because of all the new things, new teachers, new friends, and maybe even a new school.

Students enrolling for Form One and Grade One should make adequate preparations.

Here is a quick guide:

The First Day

Most teachers kick-off the school year by introducing themselves and talking about all the stuff you will be doing that year.

Some teachers give students a chance to say something about themselves to the rest of the class.

When teachers do the talking on the first day, they often go over classroom rules so you’ll know what is allowed and what is not.

Pay close attention so you will know if you need to raise your hand to ask a question and what the rules are about, when visiting the restroom.

You might already know a lot of students in your classes on the first day.

Again seeing friends you haven’t seen in a while can make the first day a good one.

Get oriented

The first day of school is your first chance to find your way around a new school, or learn the pathways to new classrooms in your old school. It’s a lot to learn in one day, so don’t be surprised if you need a reminder or two.

It might help to write a few notes for yourself, so you’ll remember the important stuff, like your locker combination and that lunch starts at 12.

Just know that you need to get enough sleep, eat a healthy breakfast and try your best.

Our movie of the week is “Hacksaw Ridge” which is currently showing at all Ster Kinekor theatres. It was directed by Mel Gibson and stars Andrew Garfield, Teresa Palmer, Vince Vaughn, Sam Worthington, Hugo Weaving and Rachel Griffiths among others.

“Hacksaw Ridge” is a fantastically moving and bruising war film that hits you like a raw topside of beef in the face – a kind of primary-coloured Guernica that flourishes on a big screen with a crowd.

It is Gibson’s first film as director since “Apocalypto” in 2006 – and, more pertinently, since a string of scandals and public disgraces toxified his career in the years that followed.

The movie, whose a story of an outcast finding redemption through superhuman levels of suffering, is pure Gibson – you could even call it the third part of an unofficial trilogy that also takes in “Apocalypto” and “The Passion of the Christ” (2004), except you sense Gibson will return in future to this story again and again, perhaps because of a deep-seated suspicion it may also be his.

It also owes a significant debt to “Gallipoli” (1981), the Peter Weir First World War epic in which Gibson won his first conventional leading man role.

In “Hacksaw Ridge”, that part is taken by Andrew Garfield, an actor who has never struck me as remotely Gibson-like before – but here, his pushed-up hair, goofily handsome features and high-strung physicality amount, deliberately or otherwise, to a likeness that’s too uncanny to ignore.

The main difference is the voice, which Garfield makes high and cautious, almost Forrest Gump-like.

In relation to the hard world around him, Desmond is a man askew – although the example of his sure-hearted faith will gradually bring others around to his angle.

According to time zone, the film begins in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains in 1929 and ends at the Battle of Okinawa 16 years later, and splits neatly into three parts.

First, along with Desmond’s sweetheart Dorothy (Teresa Palmer), we grow to love him. (And discover Gibson and his cinematographer, Simon Duggan, really know how to shoot a kiss.)

Next we cheer Desmond on in his struggle against the military establishment to be allowed to serve without a firearm.

Hope you catch the glimpse this season and by the way, the new term means business thus you have to start on good note.

You can go and watch movies but do not overdo it, let it for now be the job for those waiting for advanced and ordinary level result.

Till next week, happy school days.