What was I thinking?

On a day when I'm pretty damn tired from family stress, driving, and a week of teaching, I volunteered to cover half a class for another teacher. Maybe I was temporarily insane at the time. Whatever the case, I have to toodle off and mind a class of kids doing a test of some kind. They're an extension class, so I don't anticipate it being terribly hard. And it's the second half of the class, so they will have already been counted and settled by another teacher. I can just breeze in, do a little marking, collect the tests and breeze out.
That's the plan, anyway. I have some incident forms ready just in case I have to hand out detentions ;)

It has been a busy couple of days - updates will follow, when I get some time off. I'm mad keen to scan some pictures of mammoths I drew during Parent-Teacher interviews.

Cool random thing from today - a student gave me a picture of an elephant along with her homework today. Evidently her friend's mother reported that I was having trouble drawing elephants during P-T interviews. I was equal parts offended at the slight to my drawing skills, and pleased that the student had been thoughtful enough to draw me an elephant.

This was a senior student, too!

Surely I should be doing something, right?

 I feel slightly nervous.  I managed to conquer the massive pile of Term 2 marking, and now I'm pretty much all set for the rest of the week.  Still, I feel like there's something I should be doing.  Maybe it's just a hangover from being so crazy busy for the past week and a half - it feels decidedly strange to take a full 20 minute break.

I usually work through my lunch times (unless I'm on duty), and tend to work for at least half of interval.  Strangely, the longest down-time I take at school is during my non-contact periods.  I guess it's just a different pacing of the same amount of time.  Maybe it's because the place is quiet, and sometimes even empty, during class time.  Lunch times and intervals are noisy and busy, and I find that an encouraging factor in getting stuff done.

Shouldn 't you be working young mam?

Well, half the week has rolled by. Feels like a marathon. I suspect this term is going to be a pretty hefty test of endurance. Term 4 is close to the end of the year, and I only see my seniors for about 4 weeks, but Term 3 is a mighty foe. And he fights dirty - ganging up on me with Term 2 marking and random field trips during assessments.
Nonetheless, I'm in this for the long haul, and like a tired old prize-fighter I just have to keep my head down, swing the occasional sloppy punch, and hope to make it to the bell without too many broken ribs, lost brain cells or low-blows.

I am reminded of a quote I heard whilst watching trashy TV recently. Gene Simmons (of Kiss) was asked what he thought of the institution of marriage. Now, I'm very fond of the institution of marriage myself, but his answer seems kind of apt today if you think of a school as an institution. His response?

Man, you have to be crazy to want to be in an institution.

Then again, I don't so much want to come to work, as feel a financial and moral obligation to show up. The life of a sofa pirate sounds pretty darned good to me, and you can't get too much less institutional than that :)

Messing with Teenagers' Heads

I do rather enjoy catching students off guard. Today's random moment came in a class where I had my Y11 students in the library. Another teacher, also putting her class through the research wringer, was also in there with her 25 students. I was in the midst of telling my class, one group at a time, to take their books to the issues desk. A member of my class asked what the time was. My reply:

"There are but 5 minutes left in this period."

Nothing that unusual, but enough to make a member of the other class do a double-take. The simple act of talking in a formal register was enough to baffle students who weren't accustomed to it. I have been called 'posh' by students, and have been asked if I 'always talk in that posh accent'. It all stems from a careful regulation of speech patterns - nothing terribly fancy, but different enough from what they hear on a daily basis.

If only some of it rubbed off on them... I long for the day when I hear a student say to a class-mate:

"Please desist from your infernal racket. There are but 7 minutes remaining in the period, and our assessment is due in at the conclusion of today's lesson!"

Perhaps I need to start giving my class prompts, or script sections of the class so that they get used to using this manner of speech. That, or invent a time machine so that I might travel back and teach in the 'twenties.

Beautiful Images

Having watched a fair bit of anime recently, I feel that I have had a feast of beautiful images. That, plus the wonderfully animated Final Fantasy movie on a living-room-wall sized screen, makes me feel like a spoiled viewer.
One aspect of the images used in anime that I particularly enjoy is the act of putting familiar images and symbols into new contexts. Haibane Renmei was a good example of this, taking images of wings and haloes and blood, and throwing them together into a fantasy setting where they evoke feeling without specific meaning. It's quite a beautiful process, and one I greatly enjoy. The familiar, seen in an unfamiliar setting, or stripped of part of its baggage. Evocation and allusion without there necessarily being a specific purpose or meaning behind it. Very nice, and most enjoyable. RahXephon looks to be shaping up to have some similar elements, and is very, very pretty.

Final Fantasy played with similar ideas, presenting a strange version of ghosts. Mostly I enjoyed its projected goodness for sheer epic spectacle and prettiness. The direction was fantastic too - the use of camera movement leapt out at me in a most impressive fashion. Entirely lovely to look at. And Hellboy should be arriving this week on DVD, so I'm well keen on feasting my eyes on that when it arrives.

Now I want a projector of my own to watch movies with. Or at least, I want to figure out how one books a school projector for the weekend.

Fat people deserve to die

I can't help but shudder at some of the charming things Y9 students say. Of course, I remember being a teenager and saying some pretty insensitive things myself, but as a mostly growed-up adult I find some comments hard to take. Young teenagers have such a black-and-white view of the world, of morality, of right and wrong. We were reading a newspaper article about a 362 kilo man being evicted, and having to have a forklift drag his bed up onto a flat-bed lorry, since the man couldn't walk (or fit into an ambulance, presumably). The general attitude seemed to be one of condemntation - that it was all the man's fault, and that he brought it on himself by eating too much. Which may be true, but I still think it's a bit rough to say that he ought to have been dumped on the footpath, rather than taken to hospital. Most students had zero sympathy, and zero desire to understand the situation (beyond a curiousity about how much the man ate to get that big).
There were of course several students whose response was more sophisticated - and surprise surprise they were the better behaved students in class. I'm not sure that the average Y9 student really understands that teachers and people on TV are people, outside of the role they are portrayed in. Those cogs just aren't turning yet for some of them.

It did all lead to an interesting discussion about liposuction, which captivated a little more interest than yesterday's chat about hydrocephalus.

Sarcasm and the right to have fun

I am, by nature, a slightly sarcastic person. Not bitingly sarcastic, just gently and occasionally sarc-y. I like to make off-hand comments and retorts, and to take the piss out of myself and others from time to time.
In a professional capacity, I have been controlling my sarcastic urges. Fragile young minds cannot be exposed to ridicule, no matter how good natured. At least, that's the current theory. Teachers were pretty polite to me back in my day, but I've heard tales of cruel, sharp-tongued teachers 'ripping the shit' out of classes and individuals. Occasionally, I wonder if that approach had some merit (along with its obvious flaws).

I heard a comment recently that as teachers, we are there to 'build students up, not break them down'. A lofty goal, and one that I can buy into. There are some students, however, who have very misguided world views when they reach the classroom. They have virtually no idea of how to behave, what consequences are, or their place in the world. For those students, there may well come a point when they need to have their dangerously ego-centric view of the world challenged, fought, and destroyed. If they are to function in the world as good citizens, they are probably going to need to have some awareness of consequence and empathy, even if it comes from an external source. So I wonder, would war movie army-style training, where the individual is subsumed into the group, where the will is taken apart and reconstructed around a common goal, where people are broken and then rebuilt, be helpful for some of these youngsters.

A little scary, a little Orwellian perhaps, but if it keeps people out of jail, and allows them to function in society, is it really a bad thing?

Note: I haven't had any particular problems with students to initiate this - it's mere idle fancy. The comment about not breaking down kids merely started me on a line of thought.

I do allow myself to express my sense of humour in the classroom more often now than when I started. It is seldom at the expense of students (much more often at my own expense), and if I ever do let slip a glib reply or silly comment, I apologise to the student involved. I have no desire to make my students suffer - and it's very nice to see them smile. I do worry about students who have no conception that the rest of their life is coming, and that there won't always be time to catch up, or people to help them out, or limitless patience for their incompetence.

They've probably just got some growing up to do.

Back to the Future

Ah, well, they couldn't last forever. The holidays are now over, and I'm back in front of classes. They have 'upgraded' the servers here also, over the holiday period. This means that many, many things on the network don't work anymore. We are living in a glorious future where the network is much more powerful, modern, and non-functional. I am very happy about this. I enjoy not being able to print anything out, having to search for a way to get my email to work (the web-based email seems fine, it's just the regular network mail that doesn't like me), and where students in ICT classes get to sit in front of computers that would communicate with the servers way faster, if the students could log in.
The future sure is an exciting place.

DVD players are pretty cool, though. I brought one in to show Hitch Hiker's to my seniors, and the result was coolies. I like having a remote control, and decent quality sound and picture. It's a luxury well worth the effort of lugging the old DVD player in from home.

Writing Like Crazy

Whew. The past couple of days have been busy ones. Much clattering of keyboards. Debbie and I just delivered our batch of Kapcon LARP characters (20 or so) to Mike, I wrote an article for the next WARGs newsletter, and I've been working on one of my SDC entries. Add to this some other collaborative writing I've been doing with Debbie and it adds up to a busy and productive time. I always enjoy being productive - makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. I'm currently aiming to have at least one SDC entry finished by CONfusion, and the other 2 done by the end of Term 3. One is a joint effort by Debz and myself, the other 2 I'm working on pretty much solo. I'm currently about 4000 words into the SDC entries - I'd anticipate each one being around 4000-7000 words long when finished, so I've got a ways to go.
In other news, the holidays are rapidly drawing to a close. I have to start thinking about work again, which doesn't make my brain happy. Our exciting Saturday night plan is to do marking and planning...*shudder*. Still, if it means that Sunday is free for LARP meeting, seeing horsey, and actually chilling out on the last night of the holiday, I suspect it will be worth it.

Too cool for school

These results are ridiculous, but fun. Did I break the test, or are the values supposed to go over 100?
Wackiness: 102/100
Rationality: 76/100
Constructiveness: 146/100
Leadership: 104/100


You are a WRCL--Wacky Rational Constructive Leader. This makes you a golden god. People gravitate to you, and you make them feel good. You are smart, charismatic, and interesting. You may be too sensitive to others reactions, especially criticism. Your self-opinion and mood depends greatly on those around you.

You think fast and have a smart mouth, is a hoot to your friends and razorwire to your enemies. You hold a grudge like a brass ring. You crackle.

Although you have a leader's personality, you often choose not to lead, as leaders stray too far from their audience. You probably weren't very popular in high school--the joke's on them!

You may be a rock star.

See if you too are a golden god:
http://hokev.brinkster.net/quiz/default.asp?quiz=Better+Personality&page=1

Tee hEe

you are [nandaba naota]. mostly thought of asapathetic, you care only for those extremely
close to you. you can act quite strange at
times.


Which FLCL Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Domesticated Man

A few years back, when I was living in Japan, I had a conversation with a couple of friends about sewing. A friend of mine mentioned that he’d just lost a button off his shirt. This is a big deal when you’re a gaijin living in Japan – most of the clothes there are too small for foreigners of an above average size (even average is pushing it). You need to take good care of the clothes you take with you, or you end up looking mighty scruffy (or wearing ill-fitting clothing). These particular friends were both Canadian, and were taller and bigger than me.
So this friend of mine said something along the lines of, “Aw shoot, I just lost a button of my shirt, eh? I’ll have to get the wife to sew it back on tonight.”

I asked why he didn’t do it himself, and he half-smirked and said that he couldn’t sew. The other guy nodded in agreement - neither of them could pilot a needle. They had both always turned to their girlfriends, mothers or wives to do the needlework. They asked if I could sew.

"Sure. I mean, my sewing isn't pretty, but it holds together pretty well. It's kinda ugly, but pretty tough."

"Dude, you sew like a caveman!"

We all contemplated this statement, and were all pretty happy with it. A well turned phrase, and a label I have kept to this day. I sew like a caveman, and I'm damned happy about it.

Kitset Addiction

I have assembled furniture. 2 bookshelves today, 5 tier and almost as tall as me. They were heavy blighters too, somewhere in the vicinity of 25 kilos each. I hammered in dowels, screwed in screws (with an allen key), and lo and behold it all worked.
I didn't even have any bits left over.

But now I must not mention kitset furniture for a couple of days. Let the air clear, let life get back to normal. Debbie was a kitset-widow all morning, and I was all crazy excited and wanting to buy 2 more bookshelves as soon as I finished.

I wonder if I'll dream about assembling furniture tonight?

Must See Films

Having played ‘Absolute Balderdash’ on Saturday night, I now have a list of films I’d love to see. I am also convinced that a quick round of Balderdash would be an excellent planning tool for the 48 hour film competition. In short, the game involves making up definitions for words (eg. hodad = a father who is known to sleep around, especially with his friend ‘the ho’), words for acronyms (eg: TMA = The Mosquito Association), events for dates (eg. March 18, 1989 = Russian Premiere Michael Gorbeckev wins control of the Russian parliament), reasons why a person is famous (eg. John Dee = a Victorian doctor famous for inventing the hypodermic needle), or finally a synopsis for a film, based on the title (eg. The Yum Yum Girls = a group of Chinese grandmothers look back on their lives).
One of the above examples is the right answer (the one from the card), the others are false.

There were some absolute gems from the film category. The titles of the three films were:
The Suitors
The Yum Yum Girls
The Bedsitting Room

People came up with some brilliant (and bizarre) ideas for what these films were about, but in one case nobody topped the real plot. It went something like this: Following a Nuclear Apocalypse, people start turning into strange objects. The father turns into a parrot, and the mother turns into a piece of furniture.

I must see The Bedsitting Room.

Hot and Cold

The days are getting frostier and Matt is craving the hot food. Actually, Matt is craving the food full stop. But hot food is best on cold days. I find myself wanting to cook hot meals for breakfast, and having to restrain myself. You can only have so many dinners in one day – I think 2 is a sensible maximum.
It was particularly cold up on the hills where Debbie’s horse lives. We went and fed him (and another horse who shares a paddock with him – wow, I believe that’s the first time I’ve written the word paddock in many a month. Paddock. Seems a somehow odd word now that I focus on it), and made sure he wasn’t too hot or too cold. Not much danger of the former up there! I was begloved, behatted, bescarved and bejacketted, but I was still bechillied. (mmmm, chilli...)

Debbie and I had lovely Malaysian food last night from KKs in Wellington – the Kung Po Chicken was particularly good (I’m very glad I ordered medium, and not hot. It was spicyyy!). We then wandered down to the Regent to see Spiderman 2. The décor and atmosphere there are so much nicer than in my day. The small number of patrons probably helps – there were about 20 or so people in the 6:15 session of Spidey. I enjoyed the movie – it was a very solid, if unsurprising, outing for Mr Raimi. I did enjoy Bruce Campbell’s cameo, the gleeful hospital scene (which reminded me more than a little of the Evil Dead movies), and Spidey in the elevator was fun. Very much a continuation of the first film, but cool. And Doctor Octopus was awesome – like a hotdog.

Half the holidays have slid by already. When did that happen? They have been greatly enjoyable, and rather busy, so far. I’m looking forward to the next week, though I probably have to do a couple of days’ work in there somewhere.

We have the technology, we can rebuild him...

I subjected myself to a haircut yesterday. I’d been looking increasingly shaggy, and while I want to grow my hair long again, it is going to take some time. Last time I grew my hair I accomplished the deed by not letting scissors anywhere near my head for about 2 and a half years. This lead to some awful hair moments, including psuedo mullets, mop-tops (with mulletage), and all manner of scruffiness. This time around I’m going to take the extra 6 months to grow my hair, and try to look vaguely human throughout the process. I am resigned to having a lame haircut for most of the next year or so, but there are ways to minimise that lameness. Professional hairdressers seem to understand these ways, as my mop of hair is distinctly less bouffant today, though not substantially shorter.
In unrelated news, InSpectres, run by Mike at WARGS last night, was extremely cool. Ballet Funk, Scott, Debbie and myself formed an elite team of spook-busters, defeating The Case of the Haunted Shell Station and Gerard the Destroyer and the Case of the Waste. I had a fantastic time, summarised thusly:

*sleaze from our boss, played by Scott. My favourite moment was when the Mayor was suspected of foul play, as a contractor who had been sleeping with his wife was missing. Scott’s plan? “I want to sleep with the mayor’s wife!” Getting right to the source of the information. This was after his cunning plan to infiltrate the Shell station dressed as a drunken bum. For authenticity, his character spent most of the day leading up to the infiltration visiting bars, and drinking heavily, chalking it all up to ‘expenses’.

*psychotic tendencies from our ‘competent’ librarian (as opposed to the skinny white hip-hop freak librarian), who reshelved Jazzy B’s sandwich just to see his face turn purple.

*Cassie Chance, the office’s ex-coffee shop worker / unemployed actor, attempting to buy water pistols with which to squirt chilli sauce at Gerard the Destroyer (a vengeance demon who liked children, disembowelling and warm caves, and disliked priests, spicy food and litter) and being distracted by Neopets. And leaving the credit card behind in the toystore.

*Cassie Chance’s audition to be in a Wellington play called ‘Stick it to the Man’. Classic lines such as:
“Yo, whassup? You heard about this new bypass, man?”
“Yeah, that's totally whack!”
“Yeah boy, that bypass is all for the man.”
“Yeah, the man, man. Stick it to the man, man.”
“I say, are you youngsters discussing the new bypass?”
“Yo, who are you whitey?”
“Why, I’m a businessman. That bypass will be fabulous for my company in the central business district.”
“That’s crazy, man. That’s whack!”
“Young man, don’t talk to me like that! I am a businessman, the backbone of our economy!”
stage directions say ‘they take the man down’

For some reason the director gave Cassie the job, and quit right after that.

Crazy-go-nuts fun, huge thanks to all involved.

Awesomeversary

Four years ago, Debbie and I had a sugoi romantic wedding, with a few friends and a lot of relatives in attendance. There was much celebration, more than a little inebriation, girls in beautiful gowns, dashingly handsome men in suits, and of course a stunning bride. It all went swimmingly, and is one of my fondest memories.
A year to the day after that, and we were in Japan. We were working at NOVA, teaching English to small groups of non-English speakers (almost all Japanese, though there were occasional Chinese or Korean students too). We’d had a mighty 3 days of training, it was the hottest Summer on record, and we were shell-shocked. We’d been in the country for about a week and a half, having left NZ on the 27th of June.

A year to the day after that, we were still in Japan. We’d just taken time off work to show my folks around Tokyo (and Nikko and Kamakura). We’d in fact taken more time off than we had holidays, so we’d had to swap shifts with people at work to get enough time off. As a result, once again we worked on our anniversary.

Last year was a little nicer – we had the day off! In fact, our anniversary last year (and this year) fell in the holidays, so we had a whole week off. Our first NZ anniversary, and it was niiiiiice!

Which brings us to this year – our fourth anniversary. A day off, waiting to be filled with fun and frivolity. We have already slept in, received 3 seasons of Angel DVD’s in the mail from Amazon, and eaten a delicious bacon, eggs and baked beans breakfast (with a hint of chilli sauce). Now we have a day to play with, Exalted gaming tonight, and more than a week left of our holidays! Anniversaries in New Zealand are so much cooler than Japanese workiversaries.

Ahhhh, holidays...

I have learnt many things so far these holidays, and have been reminded of some things I already knew. Number one, holidays are good. Very, very good. Number two, tax returns are not fun to fill in, especially if you don't have a calculator handy and you try to force your brain to do tricky addition, mulitplication and subtraction tasks. I used to be quite good at maths, but due to lack of use my skills have atrophied incredibly. A sad, sad thing...
I have also learned how to fit medium sized bookshelves onto the back seat of a medium sized car (having moved one from Lower Hutt to home). It requires patience, a little trial and error, and just a teeny bit of brute force. I don't think I hurt anything non-organic in the process, and scrapes and cuts heal pretty fast on humans.

I was also reminded of how much better books look when in a book-case, rather than in piles on the floor. I seem to be very keen on buying bookcases at the moment, which is not a bad thing when one considers how many books Debbie and I have lying around the house. Must get special bookcase for RPG books. And make more room for DVDs, as there are films headed this way from America and Canada.

Mmmmmm, spending money and not working. What a great combination!

Strength of Will

I just made my Y11 kids start work on a new essay during 4th period of the last day of term. They were not impressed. I guess they were already in holiday mode, and had expected to be able to chill out, maybe play games or something.
It took some stern words to get them settled, and they strayed a few times, but I managed to get them quietly working on an essay. I partly did it because it was the next logical step in the work we've been doing, partly because I couldn't book a TV to watch the next episode of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and partly just to see if I could get them to do it. A lunch-time discussion with a colleague produced a surprised reaction - he didn't think I'd be likely to get them to settle. I gave them 'Angry-Teacher', and played it with a straight face, and they performed.

As a reward I let them do a vocabulary exercise with the last 20 minutes - find as many words as possible using the letters 'precocious', using each only as many times as it appears in the word. No plurals, no proper nouns, no abbreviations. The best student group managed 42 words. My group got to 46.

Juries and Verdicts

I read recently an interesting post over on The Grey Shade, about NZ's current jury system, and some proposed changes. I just wanted to echo a couple of points made, and add an anecdote of my own.
First up, I don't think NZ juries get a particularly good briefing as to their job and responsibilities. It's actually pretty simple, you just have to listen to everything and say whether you think the defendant is guilty or not. Nonetheless, there is this thing called 'reasonable doubt' that you hear about in cop shows and courtroom dramas, and that's not really all that well covered. That's part of what Greyshade was talking about. Also, you don't get given a lot of guidance as to how you operate as a group. You have to have a foreman (foreperson? chair?) in your jury, who does the talking for the group in the courtroom, but are they the 'boss'? Are they responsible for anything other than reporting back to the court? I don't remember being told, for what it's worth. And do you have to discuss each and every charge, or can you just say 'hands up who thinks guilty' and get it done in 5 minutes flat? That was my suggestion the one time I did jury duty, but some stuffy arse who had nominated himself foreman wanted to bleat on about every charge before we made up our minds.

It may have been my youthful optimism, but I thought there was a simpler way forward. I also thought that it was the prosecution and defence lawyers' job to convince us of the defendant's innocence or guilt - not the other members of the jury...

Also, I think that Greyshade's idea of a 3 verdict system would be a good thing. Shade suggests a possible verdict of 'not proven', to sit between guilty and not guilty in one form or another. I like the distinction between saying someone didn't commit a crime (on the balance of evidence) and saying that it wasn't proven beyond reasonable doubt. This would allow reasonable doubt to be entertained, without having to totally acquit someone. Or, to represent Grey Shade's argument a little more accurately, retrials for those found 'not proven' would be easier to obtain than for those found 'not guilty', making other law changes connected to double jeopardy simpler.

Hmmm, heavy stuff. In short: Not Proven is a cool sounding verdict; juries get very little info about their role to go on (in a minor trial), but their job is fairly simple; self-important pompous arses can make even the simplest task into an aggravating shambles that revolves around them; stenographers at Wellington High Court were really quite slow in the nineties, and put witnesses off by asking them to slow down every 5 minutes.

And 'crack-smoking' is apparently more commonly used than 'whack'. I shall start slipping it into conversation and gauge the reaction over the next couple of days.