Sarumata

The Event is Finished!

Steph has posted the final part of The Event, bringing the story to a satisfying conclusion and further linking two of the protagonists. It's a very hopeful, upbeat ending to a story that waded through some grim territory. I'm looking forward to assembling, editing and printing a book of The Event and rereading it.

It was a writing experience that was deeply staisfying on a number of levels and though I'm not about to leap into another collaborative writing project without taking some breathing and reflection time, it's definitely something I'm keen to do more of in the future.

As I've said before it's pretty inspiring to read other people's writing in a world you're helping to create, it's exciting to see a story pushed in unexpected directions and know that you'll have topick up the threads and run with them, and it's pretty darn cool seeing 37,000+ words of fiction weave together, your own contribution reflecting, enhancing, building on and being enhanced by others'.

It was cool.

Wait, how old am I?

Today I took part in an interview of a teacher who's been at TCoL this year and is hoping to get a job at my school next year. Between school and uni she spent some time working, travelling, doing stuff other than racing through tertiary study.

She is a former student from this school.

Her final year here was my first year here.

I have been teaching long enough for people who were students when I started to disappear off into the wide blue yonder, spend a couple of years working, go to Uni and then get a teaching diploma. Yikes!

How long before I'm teaching the children of my students? Well, excepting Doogie Howser scenarios, that's probably a ways off...

Prizegiving'd!

As the end of the year for senior students nears, a few things happen. Some students get a little silly and start doing daft things like sticking my whiteboard eraser and markers to the ceiling in my classroom. It's a pretty harmless prank (not dissimilar to the 'put rubber gloves on everything, including stretching one over the clock' prank pulled in a colleague's class) EXCEPT that the evil children stole MY sellotape to do it, used half a roll, and left the remainder dumped in a box at the back of the class where it took me two sellotapeless days to find.

I also become very, very busy organising senior prizegiving. My school looooves the prizegivings, with hundreds of cups and prizes and engraved medals and pens and books and certificates. It's elaborate and time consuming and at times stressful.

It's also lovely to see students who've done well being recognised for their achievements :-) It's a highly satisfying project to work on. And this year the Y13 Barbershop Quartet (3 of whom I taught in the same Y9 English class) performed 'What a Wonderful World' - and they were awesome.

Prizegiving - a lot of work but definitely worthwhile!

Cream cheese horn

Dom decided a couple weeks ago to decorate himself with delicious cream cheese. He fashioned a small horn as well as some war paint. Then he smeared some cream cheese on his pants. As... part of his... costume. Yes, his cream cheese pre-Halloween unicorn costume. Of awesomeness.

Mmmm, delicious costume :-)

Finding the event

Search term "punchlines of event companies"

The Event (the Wellington gets munted by sea monsters story written by Jenni, Steph, Chris Debbie and Me) was on, like, the third page or something. Someone clicked through :-)

http://theeventwellington.blogspot.com - for all your punchlines of event companies needs!