Thursday, July 27, 2006

Not at school

Where I probably should be, it being the dreaded Parent Teacher Interview night. But I had no interviews between 4 and 5, and it only takes 5 minutes to get home (including the time to walk to the car), so I thought I may as well pop home on the off chance Debbie was here (she isn't, sadly) and spend some time not being at school. My evening is much busier after the dinner break. Sigh. I did get to say one of the more unusual things I've ever said to a parent earlier today: "It's kinda like Days of Our Lives, only with giant man-eating plants, and a world filled with blind people." I'm showing my class the BBC Triffids series. Because I can. It came up as a topic when I was writing an example personal timeline on the board, and I got to about 1982, and wrote "saw TV show The Triffids. Became afraid of plants." The kids got quite curious about it (more curious than they were about "1981 Won cycle race while dressed as Spiderman"). It just so happened that a neighbouring teacher had recorded the show back in the day (which probably means it was on later than 1982, but I'm too lazy to go check the dates), and had it sitting on the shelf next to my classroom. I planned to just show the class a minute or two to show them what the Triffids looked like, but they begged me to show them more, and I love that show to bits. So I showed them the first episode, and may end up showing them an episode a day for the next week or so. 'Cos it's cool. I have to be back at school in about 20 minutes for dinner (they give us snacky dinner to make up for the interviews running from 3pm to 8pm). I aim to get a bunch of marking done during the dinner break, and between interviews. So far I've managed to get about 20 pieces of work marked (before I snuck out). Right, back to the coal face!


8 comments:

Anonymous said...

How did they handle:

- the creepy sounds?
- the goofy Triffids?
- the postapocalyptic going blind dilemma?

Matt said...

So far so good. The low-attention-span kiddies are, understandably, fidgety.

One thing that was really cool is that the projetor takes a minute to warm up, so they heard the credits music/sound effects before there was any picture playing. It was creepy enough to get several of them saying "eww, what's that noise!"

Anonymous said...

I don't know if I would consider triffids to be zombies in disguise. DotT was written in 1951 which is before zombies (at least as we know them now in the survival horror genre) really started to appear in movies.

I would call them kissing cousins ;)

Anonymous said...

Sweet! We actually studied the book while I was at school.

Anonymous said...

and I deeply apologise for the "baby triffids outside the back door" story that freaked you and older boether for a period of time. It wasn't my fault, they did look like Arum lilies........and on another note...the House photos are very cool. And the word verification is wuldgyve - which feels olde, strange Anglish for? I would give (!)an answer if I could think of one.....

Matt said...

wuldgyve - The gifts of the clouds.

Anonymous said...

or the gift of the sheep?

Anonymous said...

I don't think Triffids are all about societal conformity, though... they seem more like the consequences of hubris.

Big, green hubris.