Reports, Carnivale, Lunchy Munchees

 I was entirely wrong about when my reports were due in, which is a damn good thing as they've taken a lot longer than I'd hoped. They are actually due in this week, which has meant that I've been a lot less rushed. Still, it did mean that I slacked off until today, and am now facing a bunch of painful report writing at the last minute again.

The only good thing is that I've done most of my senior reports already, despite the fact that they're due in on Friday, while junior reports are due in on Thursday. I'm about 60% of the way through my junior reports, and about 70% of the way through my seniors. I'm aiming to get them all done, so I'm not stressed out tomorrow. Of course, this means that I should stop blogging and go do them, but I just did a solid half-hour in the computer lab, so a five minute break isn't too bad.

Carnivale is a damn good show. Debbie and I are up to episode 11 of the first series (which Scott very kindly loaned us), and it's a very creepy, compelling show. I'm not sure that enjoyable quite describes it, but very good. I suspect that I shall be seeking season 2 quite promptly once we're through season 1.

In food related flattery, I have now been asked by 2 students to be their nominated catering assessment recipient. Next week I'm getting lunch cooked for me by a former student as part of a Y12 catering assessment. He came and asked me on Friday last week. Yesterday another Y12 student (one who I teach this year) came and made me a 'proposition'. They're quite enjoying adding an element of double entendre to the whole affair. I politely said that I was already taken, but that I'd be prepared to eat 2 lunches if that was helpful.* The student was disappointed, but promptly set off in search of another teacher to feed.

And lastly, on a professional note, I was asked by my HOD to make some sort of a presentation / video type thing for the school's open night. I threw together a power point presentation to loop, got a colleague to look over and pretty it up, then set up a projector and laptop before leaving school yesterday. Apparently it was quite successful, with parents being entranced by the moving and shiny images. Some of the photos were quite funny, as I got my form class and Y9 extension class to pose lining up outside the library, delivering a (fake) speech, 'reading' books and so on. Quite fun.

Alas, the reports call to me. Sigh.

* Debbie referred to this as a culinary threesome

Surrounded by the hum of computers

 It's a chilly morning, but the gently humming computer lab is pleasantly warm - not hot, like my classroom, just a pleasant temperature somewhere between mild and cool.

The computers are humming away industriously, and my students are doing a very good impression of being industrious too.

I am finding the usage of one of those 'natural' split keyboards to be an interestihng experience, and it's revealing some irregularities in my typing. For the most part it's fine, but it turns out that I use my right index finger for the 'b' key, which is making certain words slightly awkward. And the 'y' key seems to be quite a stretch too. All in all, an interesting change, but not one I'm likely to fall in love with.

The weekend was lovely - really nice and relaxing. Debbie enjoyed Stage Challenge (though was very tired when she got home at 12:15am), Saturday featured some family visiting, followed by some chilling out at home. And Sunday, glorious Sunday, was awesome. We didn't go anywhere, except to the local Indian restaurant to get delicious dinner. We walked, we watched some of Carnivale, we had an afternoon nap, we did laundry.

It was super!

A Brief Conversation

 EXT. DAY. Cold, overcast.

A HUSBAND and WIFE are out for a walk. They have obviously been walking for some time, and conversation has been wandering.

HUSBAND
One day, I should like to own a hybrid car

WIFE
Indeed

HUSBAND
It'd be all good for the environment-y. And we could have a garden, and grow our own petrol

WIFE
Mmm, and ducks could come and visit our petrol pond

HUSBAND
Cute little ducklings, all covered in petrol…

I think that we may have crossed the line of taste

WIFE
No, crossing the line of taste would be actually talking about the ducks being set on fire

HUSBAND
Ah, so this leaves the setting on fire implied in the audience's mind, so they can feel guilty about having bad thoughts later. "They were just cute little ducklings, and I thought about setting them on fire!"

WIFE
Exactly, and then they'll have to go and see a therapist, and talk about their evil, twisted minds. Everything I do is aimed at getting more people into therapy

Mr, I'm on fire!

 I just finished teaching for the week, which is awesome, and there was a most amusing moment at the end of class. I don't exactly remember why, but someone mentioned Spontaneous Human Combustion in passing (we were discussing the political system in 1984). One of the other students asked what it was, and her friends gleefully described the way that people catch fire for no reason, and burn from the inside. Apparently the girl in question is quite credulous.

The student asked me if they were telling the truth, and I said "Sure, but it's not very common. I've only seen about three..."

My brain made me pause there, while it looked for the words "cases written up in books..."

In the meantime, a couple of students (including some of the less credulous ones) freaked out at the idea that I'd seen three people spontaneously combust. I did confess that I'd seen 3 cases in books that looked genuine, but the panic had already started in the poor student. Her friends started winding her up, that she was going to spontaneously combust in the weekend. It didn't help that some student had burnt something in the cooking lab across the hall, so when the students went to leave they had another chance to torment her, "We can smell you combusting! That's totally coming from you!"

Hee hee. Mean, but hilarious from a bunch of Year 13s.

Back in Uniform

 The school is much less colourful today than it was yesterday. Seems a bit of a shame, really. It was especially nice seeing all the crazy Year 12 students around in a mix of costumes and 'personal fashion'.

I taught 54 Year 11 students last year, plus about 17 new Year 12 students this year, so I know quite a few of the Year 12 students. The costumes were awesome for obvious reasons - who doesn't like to see a 6'7" knight wandering around the school, or a sheik? But it was also nice to see that a number of the Year 12 students are grown up enough to make clothing choices based on a sense of style other than Glassons or Fake-Hip-Hop.

Not that there's anything wrong with Glassons or hip-hop gears, just that the younger kids seem to choose that sort of stuff as a default choice, either that or 'what my parents bought', which was the 'fashion choice' I made in third form. Well, in intermediate anyways. I wore some pretty awesome clothes in high school - big green German army coat, oversized black jersey (which ended up greyish and full of holes by the end of fourth form), ridiculous 'MC Hammer pants' as my friends dubbed them... Yeah, I was pretty stylee.

The MC hammer pants weren't actually that exciting. They were tapered at the bottom, and a little baggy in the legs. And they were a kind of dark purple colour. They weren't actually balloony, but most of my friends were wearing super-taper black jeans, so even slightly baggy pants were a cause for mocking.

So anyways, after this fun stroll down fashion-memory lane, onto modern times. I've been reading about some of the other entries in the Iron Game Chef challenge, and it sounds like there are some good entries. I've also been reading hix's blog, and really enjoying some of his thoughts about managing projects and writing. I've also been following links from hix's blog, and been thinking about Game Design. I think I have learned many valuable things, and will certainly try to apply some of them to next year's IGC, and possibly to this year's Kapcon Scenario Design Contest.

Speaking of the SDC, I haven't done any work on it for some time. I really should get my games finished and playtested before the end of Term 3. I'm going to be ambitious and maybe aim to finish the first one by the end of the holidays that are coming up. If I have one in the bank, then I can relax about the other. If it gets done, it gets done.

Lastly, I made a kick-ass worksheet for 1984 last night. My Year 13 class are reading it at the moment, and I decided to make a little worksheet to help them link the novel to the Theme Study (Y13 Wide Reading). It has a pretty border, and a clipart picture of a book, and it asks leading questions, and has a True/False section. It's not quite as cool as all the awesome Shawshank stuff Debbie made last night, but it's the best resource I've made in a couple of weeks.

Friday already?

 So, this week has been a tiring one, and yet it seems a bit of a surprise to me that I only have to teach 2 more lessons today. And when I say teach, I mean it in the loosest sense of the word.

My Year 13 class have been doing silent reading for 2 and a half lessons this week, and the other half a lesson consisted of me answering a few simple questions, and reading aloud a section of the book. It's lovely. I've been rereading 1984 with them, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Today we're looking at the section where Winston reads the Book of the Brotherhood, which is quite politics-y, so there may be more questions.

The nicest thing so far has been the student who came into class on Wednesday, having struggled with the book for 4 lessons, and said "I love this book - it's so good!"

You can't buy publicity like that in the classroom. Well, you probably could bribe students to say things like that, but an unbribed student declaring that she's enjoying Orwell was pretty morale boosting.

There was also some pressure from students to have story-time again, as I had said that I was going to read to them again. I read them the first 10 pages, then a little bit around page 40, and had promised to read some more from page 97. The students who had kept up with the reading were quite insistent that I should read to them, while the people who were behind didn't want spoilers. In the end we all went outside, and I read to the 'close group' while the people who were behind sat off by themselves and read. A brilliant plan, except for the chilling wind. Brrr!

So, Debbie is off at Stagechallenge today (having gotten very little sleep last night). She probably won't get home until about midnightish, which is pretty harsh given that she was at school at 7:30am. Poor hard working Debbie! It should be fun though, it's a pretty high-energy good-vibe activity.

L&S are coming up the coast to keep me company tonight, which should be much fun. There is Sin City to watch, as well as It's a Wonderful Library, which Norman was kind enough to make me a VCD of so I can get my very nice Y12 students off my back.

I am planning on having a go at editing as well, so I have the tapes from the 48. It will be very interesting to learn to use the Pinnacle editing software on Debbie's laptop, and I suspect it will be a rather satisfying process (though most likely irritating as hell at times, when I can't get the software to do what I want it to). I am planning on using some different takes to Norman, just for variety's sake. And there's every chance that I'll want to record more silly music for it too :)

Bring on the weekend I say!

PS: A Year 12 student just delivered an invitation for me to go to a free lunch assessment, where he will cook me a meal. Awesome. I don't even teach him this year - he was in my Y11 class last year. He was one of the 'Officer and a Gentleman' sailors on Mufti day.

302 Posts, and all's well

 Although the lying counter thingy my account has still says 119, I think this is my 302nd post. Who'd have thunk it.

So this morning I saw my school's Stage Challenge performance. It was pretty cool - there are some very talented dancers at my school. I was also very pleased to see that in amongst the goblins and prisoners and grannies and lollypop girls, there was one single ninja.

Over one hundred dancers, one ninja. I thought that was pretty damn cool.

In other news, it is now Wednesday, which means my reports are due... today? Tomorrow? I'm not really sure, but I sure as hell know that I'm behind. I have completed a mighty one class out of 4. Still, they don't take too long really, it's just a matter of slogging through. I might abscond with this here English Department laptop at lunchtime and try to write some during lunch-time detention. I can at least write comments, then cut-and-paste them in this afternoon.

Reports make me a sad panda.

Mufti day, on the other hand, has the potential to be hilarious! Despite stern notices about appropriate clothes, I have seen Y12 students dressed in: Head to toe camo-gear, including camo hats; one-piece polar fleece romper suits with fairy wings; Arabian style head scarves and robes; chainmail and plate armour, carrying a steel helment and non-sharp steel practice sword. It's pretty cool as a once-in-a-while thing, though it is frowned upon by Management.

Uncledom!

 It's a pretty cool thing that the next generation of my family has arrived - a nephew by the name of Elisha. He was born a couple of days ago (the wee hours of Sunday morning), and mother (my sister), son and father are doing well.

Debbie and I are very keen to go a-visiting, but we're thinking it might be best to leave it until the end-of-term-3 holidays, rather than the ones coming up in 3 weeks. Best to let the little nipper grow a little, get used to the whole breathing-eating thing, and let the new parents get a little recovered from pregnancy into parenthood.

So cool! No photos yet, but I'm sure we'll see some soon...

The Completely Awesome Works of Shakespeare

 As Debbie has already mentioned on her blog, we saw the Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged) on Saturday. It was hilarious and wonderful. I am now sorely tempted to see it again, though at $50 a ticket that'd be an expensive second viewing. Maybe I'll have to content myself with seeing it next time it's performed in a city I'm in, possibly with a different cast or in a different theatre.

It was incredibly fun, and very impressive. I thought that the humour in Romeo and Juliet was outstanding, as was the beat-box version of Othello. I just wish I had a more accurate memory, and was able to absorb comedy at the breakneck pace of the show. It was a little like Eddie Izzard in that respect - so much mad-cap fast paced comedy that it kind of overwhelms your brain after a while. I'm sure that there were great jokes that I missed or can't remember, due to laughing too hard.

Celebratory birthday curry was also excellent, with a smallish group of close friends and family. It was nice to have an inclusive group of people at dinner, but be sitting in the 'family section'. It sounded like everyone was having fun, so I say huzzah!

I have also now listened to all of the Quandary Phase on CD. It is very, very good, and I greatly enjoyed it, but the last sequence with Marvin was perhaps a little too sad for me. Poor Marvin! I don't remember it being quite that sad in the book, though I don't think they changed anything much.

A Whole New Style

 Debbie and I saw Sin City a couple of days ago, and I've gotta say that I was well impressed. Visually awesome, and pretty full-on, I found it to be a really interesting film to watch.

I saw some comments about the film on a behind the scenes thing and one of them stuck with me, and is pretty on the money. To paraphrase Robert Rodreiguez:

For their time, Film Noir films were right on the edge, were shocking... that's what we wanted to do with this film, to recreate that sense of something that hasn't been seen before, is pushing the boundaries...

Words to that effect anyway. I'd say they succeeded. The content is very film noir, but is brutal and violent and stylised enough to be, for me, genuinely eyebrow raising. It really was a case of "man, I can't believe they showed that".

So, visually very cool, some great performances, and a lot of fun. And styleeee!

The white blood probably helped them to get away with some of the more graphic violence.

Don't make me angry...

 Obnoxious children have made my day less than good. The first 2 classes of the day were pretty good, but my form class were bad and now I’m all grumpy. Well… partly grumpy. Well… I’m not as happy as I was at interval (maybe the milo helped?).

I really enjoyed introducing my brand-new Year 13 class to 1984. It’s got quite a catchy opening, with some rather shocking material in there. I’m also enjoying the momentum of telling them that they have to read 20 pages a day, and that we aren’t studying it, merely reading it for Wide Reading, so while we will do a little bit of work based on it, we’ll be spending most of the time reading, then writing a reading log and moving on. There’s something pleasantly simple about that – we needn’t do any more work than look at how the novel connects with the theme study (hope and the human spirit), and read and enjoy the book. There’s a greater feeling of purity to the exercise than a novel study for exam purposes. It actually feels (on day one at least) like we’re reading the novel because it’s good for us.

This may all change when none of them have done the homework reading, and the noisy absentee students return and whine about being behind… We shall see.

So, in closing, the most important part of the post (and something I missed out on doing yesterday because of all the marking I had to do):

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FOR YESTERDAY DEBZ!!!!!!!

Shiny New Cds

 I recently acquired a bunch of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy cds from amazon.uk, which is a very cool thing. It makes me a happy Matt for many reasons:

1. I already had copies of the Primary and Tertiary Phases (the original radio series), but now my conscience can be eased as I have paid good money for the products, into the coffers of the beeb.

2. The Tertiary Phase is cool. It's the first of the new series, and it's well acted and fun to listen to. I had recorded it when it was broadcast from the bbc radio station over the internet, but the cds have 2 huge bonuses:
1. Massively better sound quality (we have a dial-up modem)
2. Extra bits - an extra 20 minutes spread across the 6 episodes

3. The Quandary Phase is also cool. It does have the same subtle change in tone that I remember from the books, but is evidently going to follow a path that takes into account all of the Hitchhikers material, including stuff Douglas Adams said about the books after he wrote them. I'm only part way through, but so far it's very cool.

And there's more to come! The final series (the Quintessential Phase) comes out next month on CD, and I shall be buying it rather promptly. All up, I expect it will cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of $170, which is a small price to pay for the hours of enjoyment it brings.

As an indication of value for me specifically, I've been listening to Hithchikers most nights for the last 7 years or so, with a year off whilst in Japan. At one episode a night, I'd estimate that I've heard the original series about 100 times?

Vindaloo III

 Hmm, three meals in a row of beef vindaloo. Spicy and delicious, and very filling, but I'm starting to suspect that a non-vindaloo option might be desirable for dinner. My students asked me lots of questions about my lunch today - apparently bringing in leftovers makes students curious (moreso than boring looking sandwiches).

Ugh - I have to go supervise an exam for the next hour and a half. Wah. If I'd lucked out and got period 5 exam supervision, I'd be a much happier camper. Sure, on paper it looks better to supervise period 4, and have period 5 free, since you get to go home early, right? But because of the length of the exam, my period 4 supervision is actually half of lunch-time plus an hour, while the period 5 supervision is just the last 10 minutes. So all those people with period 5 supervisions get to just swan in and collect up the papers.

Grumble grumble.

Still, on a silver lining front, I don't have to teach this afternoon, just supervise exams, and I may get some marking done during the next hour and a half.

Weekend soon! Woohah!

Enough marking to choke a camel

 Yes, it is Senior exam week and there is a great, great deal of marking to do. So sad.

But, on the other hand, there are fewer classes to teach, hence more 'free' time to do the marking in. Hmm.

The rough thing with English marking is that you have to wade through each piece of writing, and measure it against criteria like ideas and stlye and accuracy and structure. The fun thing is that there aren't any concrete guidelines, such as more than 8 errors per page = Not Achieved. Instead, we get to play with uses writing conventions without intrusive errors, which is defined in the notes as writing is expected to be free of distracting errors in the writing conventions that are characteristic of a draft.

So, nice and precise :)

Actually, it gets very easy to mark short stories when you stop worrying about the language of the achievement standard, and decide whether the story is OK, Good or Great. There are quite a few OK (or even Good or Great) stories that fall over because the student can't spell, or punctuate speech, or whatever. They end up with a big fat Not Achieved, regardless of how good their storytelling skills are, because they lack mechanical accuracy. Hm.

So, now I have 2 hours to do marking in, and a headache which is subtly suggesting that I go home, have a bite to eat, and go to bed. I shall probably compromise, and do an hour of marking before shuffling off a little early. Silly sore head.

I got reviewed!

 My Gamechef entry was peer-reviewed, which is very cool. Mostly nice stuff was said, with some obvious omissions being pointed out.

Unfortunately my 'humour' offended the reviewer a little. This was something I didn't even think about when I was writing the game and drawing the characters - well, it did occur to me when I drew one of the German henchmen doing a NAZI style salute, but he was the 8th henchperson I drew and I wanted to incorporate some variety in the poses, so I thought 'what the hell'.

I also noted that the horny monkey style quote for the Chinese-monk-gone-bad got an incredulous reaction from Idiot, which made me think about how someone from outside my regular gaming group might react. Sometimes I forget that my sense of humour, though not that different to many gamers', is occasionally a little odd.

The review lives on the forums of one thousand monkeys, one thousand typewriters, under Game Chef 2005, here.

I mock you with my monkeypants

 Been watching Season Two Buffy again. Introducing the character Oz, they had a scene with animal crackers. Evidently, it is only the monkey who gets to wear pants in late nineties American animal crackers. Hence the awesome line of dialogue I have snarfled as today's title.

My juniors wrote essays today. I tried to trick them into doing it, and was partly successful. I told them that they had to do some 'active note-taking', where I give them sentence starters and they fill in the gaps and find quotes. I was going to break the notes into paragraphs for them to make it clearer, and I'd give them a question to focus the work.

One smart kid noticed that we were writing an essay right off the bat, but I bluffed and said that it was nothing like an essay, and there was nothing to see here.

I fessed up pretty quickly, but luckily the slackers who would give up as soon as they heard the word essay are the same slackers who don't listen when I'm not standing over them threatening to repeatedly call their name until they listen. So in the end, when I told them all to put their essays on my desk before they left, at least two students said "Are we writing essays!?!" in an incredulous manner. Lowest mark so far - 20 out of 50, although 3 kids failed to hand anything in (despite having done at least some of the work).

Best opening line?

In the novel Holes, by Louis Sachar, an important decision made by the character Zero was that he has learned to stand up for himself through violence, by hitting Mr Pendanski across the face with a shovel and sprinting for his life.

That really sums up the heart of that novel for me.

Random Task

 Is the name of a henchman in Austin Powers? It is also an apt description of a piece of work I gave my Year 9 students today. Yesterday I asked them to copy down a simple, stick figure style comic strip about a man and his wife arguing over who should take the trash out. They then had to write out the scene in prose form, focussing on correct punctuation of speech. This is a task that another teacher suggested, though she photocopies Calvin and Hobbes strips for the kids to use.

Today, I decided to do the reverse - I write correctly punctuated dialogue, they have to make it into a comic strip. An entirely sound and non-random task, except for the dialogue I ended up writing (on-the-fly):

"Hi Jane. Man, those are big shoes," said Simon.

"Thanks, I made them from old car parts," replied Jane sweetly.

"They're not... dangerous, are they?" asked Simon timidly.

"Only if I kick you with them... like this!" screamed Jane as she jokingly mimed a roundhouse kick at Simon's head.

The task became more random, as some kids added dialogue, Tekken moves, and a character called Turkeyman to their stories (I think Turkeyman was a replacement Jane?).

I like that class. Their Star Wars debate went really well too. It was about whether Star Wars geeks should form the government. The negative won, but the affirmative did a damn good job (especially since none of them were particularly into Star Wars).

Acts of Genius

 Working as a teacher, you get to see human beings doing silly things quite frequently. Sometimes they're intentional, other times entirely accidental. Mostly it's the students doing or saying daft things. I suspect this is solely because they outnumber the teachers by 30 to 1.

I gave my class a revision task for Macbeth yesterday, and some of the answers they put down were unexpected. For example, I got them to work in groups, and gave each group a sheet with a word such as setting or theme written at the top. They had to work in groups, and move from station to station, adding to the list of details about the topic. Of the four groups, only two actually wrote anything about the setting, and what they wrote was:

Group One
Ye ole' english days (style) setting
Scottland setting
mediaevil setting
castle setting (Dunsinane setting)
English setting
Supernatural setting (ghosts setting, vision setting, witchcraft setting)
war setting

Group Two (or Three or Four, whichever one actually added something)
Ye ole' gangster setting with a hint of the prehistoric era sexy witch setting.

Pretty impressive stuff for a Year 12 class. Especially the prehistoric element, that I had somehow missed in my previous readings of the play.

This also lead to an interesting conversation with Debbie, where she revealed that Ye Olde was in fact a misreading of the thorn character. The word 'ye' has, evidently, never been used to mean 'the'. It is, however, a misconception that has permeated mock olde language. The thorn character as a T-H sound, making the word 'the'. So it should be The Olde Shoppe, as a modern speaker would expect. It still leaves the usage I avoided yesterday as being a potentially embarrassing slip:

I gave my students a spelling test of Shakespearian words, and considered changing the title Spelling Test to a more Olde Fashioned style. Ye Spelling Teste is both gramatically wrong, but also very, very dangerous to write in front of students. Luckily I avoided the blunder*.

So now I have about 6 more short stories to mark, and a desk to tidy, then I'm pretty much free of marking and planning until tomorrow. Yay!

*I also avoided using The Old Pub as my example in this blog post.