Reports, Debates and Lunch

It has been an interesting day so far. It started nicely, with a non-contact first period. A nice opportunity to catch my breath, get a bit of marking done, and make sure I was sorted for the day. It also turned out to be an opportunity for me to wander over to the main office and sign Appendix 2 of the English HOD's report. I'd talked about how cool it would be to get home theatre + projector set-ups for watching movies, and had demonstrated the fun of using the projector to the HOD. She asked for a proposal in writing to go into her end-of-year report, and I had to sign the bottom of the bit I wrote. Very nice. I will be surprised if it all goes ahead, but it will be a very pleasant kind of surprised.
After interval my class participated in round 2 of the interclass debates. They did OK - not as well as in round one - and lost by a narrow margin. Most of the kiddies were nice about it, but one or two got a little silly. I had to give them a stern word or two at the end of the period.

Sadly, I realised about 5 minutes after I arrived at school that I'd left my lunch at home. Fortunately, I had the period after lunch free, so was able to go home and visit the cat, and pick up my lunch. Now only 4 lessons stand between me and the holidays. It feels like 4 too many. I am on the horns of a dilemma - do I give my students quiet-make-busy work, which will result in lots of marking for me over the holidays, or do I give them noisy group work, which will yield very little actual output and thus, no marking. Hmmm, migraine or marking? A tough choice...

Friendship Books

A fairly popular phenomenon with the youngsters these days, I see increasing numbers of students passing around hardcover books, into which their friends write their details, a short letter to the owner, and add whatever else they see fit.
I got fairly sick of seeing them at the start of the term, as kids would spend whole periods furtively writing in them, with much more gusto than they'd ever apply to a lesson. I confiscated one four weeks ago, and the poor kid won't get it back until the end of this week. Still, it meant I didn't have to look at it, so I'm happy.

Then on Friday, one of my Y11 students approached me at the end of class. He passed me a book and asked me to draw him a picture. It wasn't until I opened it after class that I realised that it was his Friendship book. Needless to say, I was very flattered. He's a very nice kid, has played some of our card games in class, and liked the artwork. The drawing I did ended up being pretty weird - a humanoid bird (in a shirt and tie) with a briefcase full of beak cleaning brushes, a dog with a monacle and a pipe, and a student having his brain sucked out by aliens. Maybe I shouldn't have drawn it during period 5 on a hot Friday...

Anyways, today I confiscated a book from another student in the same class. I gave it back after class, with a stern warning, and she gave it back to me and asked me to sign it. I'm sure it's not helping my 'stern, serious teacher' stock to agree, but my 'crazy English teacher' stocks are going through the roof!

I even had a random kid from another class point through the window in my door and say "that teacher's crazy" during a class yesterday. I have no idea why.

Great Weekend

Just wrote a lengthy post about the coolness of the weekend, in much detail, which Blogger decided to eat. The annoying thing is, it ate the post whilst I was in the process of copying it, just in case it got eaten. Sigh...
In short:
* Cranium is a great game. Jenni and I made a very good team. I like to sculpt T-Rexs. I want to play as Debbie's partner next time.
*Svend cooks nice food.
*Singstar is fun, though I still can't get a good score for Ace of Spades, no matter how loud I sing it.
*Marking is painful, but goes a lot faster with 2 people.
*The Henry the 8th mini-series was very cool, creepy, and informative, as I know next to nothing about anything.

Imagine this post was written in a more interesting style, maybe with witticisms. While you're at it, why not imagine that there's a photo of the purple T-Rex I sculpted. It was awesome, incredibly lifelike, only about 10cm tall.

Good Vibes

I'm pretty happy right now. A number of pleasant events are converging to make me a happy Matt. The sun is shining, the week is mostly done, and I actually feel like I'm doing a good job at school. I have a relaxing afternoon with only one lesson, and that's in the computer lab. The weekend is looming, and is likely to contain costume sillyness, maybe some delicious alcoholic beverages, and time with my wonderful Debz.
Ahhh, the sigh of a happy man.

A couple of things have contributed to my 'not feeling terribly hopeless at my job' sentiments. My junior classes performed admirably in the interclass debates - one class lost, the other won. The important thing was that neither class embarrassed me, by being unprepared or by being a poor audience. I was a little worried about that.

Secondly, my observed lesson went OK, and the 2 minute version of the feedback (I'm getting the full version tomorrow) was positive.

Add to this roleplaying tonight (w00t!), the arrival of Harsh Realm on DVD in the mail, and the proximity of the holi-holi-holidays, and smiles are inevitable.

PS: Stay tuned for the inevitable lesson from hell which destroys all this genki. Will it be a fistfight in the computer lab which destroys thousands of dollars worth of chairs (the PCs are probably very cheap to replace, cheaper than furniture)? Will it be a secret hidden piece of paperwork which I've missed, which prevents me from getting a pay rise? Will it be an attack of rabid year 9 metal tech students, with sharply lathed spears and crude shields? Who knows, only time will tell...

Helicopters, lesson observations and cheese

The computer network was down yesterday, so this is a delayed post...
The amount of noise that 6 low-flying helicopters make is rather impressive. On my way from the admin block to the English department today, I saw a group of helicopters flying over the school. There were 2 black, then 2 white, then 2 more black choppers. It looked like the black helicopters were acting as escort for the 2 white helicopters. It was interesting that I could hear the thumping of the chopper blades, and feel the disturbance in the air, before I could actually see them. By the time they were over the school, the noise had changed to a less bassy thrum, and the air disturbance seemed less. Very interesting, and fairly mesmerising too – I stopped and watched them fly past, and couldn’t help but think about how incredibly freaky it must be to be on the ground and hear that sound, knowing that the helicopters are coming to kill people. Makes Apocalypse Now seem all the more terrifying, let alone real life war type situations.

I had an observed lesson today, which I was kind of expecting. “Some time this week,” was as specific as my observer had been, but from looking at his timetable and mine I’d guessed that today was quite likely. In the end it was a different person who came in, so I shall probably have another observed lesson later in the week. Yay. I so love having someone come into the class with the specific purpose of critiquing my teaching. The kids were pretty good though, for which I am grateful. They were my nicer Year 9 class, and they behaved very well for them. Not that I’d get in trouble for having a poorly disciplined class, but I’d feel stink about it.

I’d sent 3 kids to the library to prepare for a debate, and they came back at interval to report on their progress. It was very nice of them to do so – I hadn’t asked them to, and it was their own time they were using up. They have done some excellent preparation, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they’ve prepared for the Affirmative, when they should be arguing the negative. Eep. The debate is on tomorrow, so they shall have to do some work tonight. I’ll try to get a note to them during period 3, let them know the error of their ways. One of the crazy things they’ve done is a very, very wide definition of children. It includes cheese. I’m not really sure of the link, but they are quite excited about their definition. I’m quite glad that they have to change to the negative (as my initial note specified), as they won’t be able to use this silly definition. Cheese…

Random pointless bribery

I'm about to head off to 2 different Pizza Hutt stores, to pick up food for my form class and a colleague's soccer team. My form class are a charming bunch of Y10 students, whom I only see for 25 minutes a day, most of which time they're chatting to each other or stuffing their gobs. I only agreed to a pizza day on the condition that one of them organised it - I'm happy to drive down and pick them up, but wasn't about to suggest it.
The soccer team coach is also having a pizza day today, and asked if I 'd mind picking up his pizzas as he has a class before lunch. I agreed, but sadly he'd ordered from a different Pizza Hutt. It is closer to school, but was more closed at lunch time yesterday than the one I visited, hence my order being placed 2 minutes drive away. They are both in a direct line from school, so it shouldn't take me more than an extra 5 minutes to pick up the second lot.

I may need to press gang some students into helping me carry them though - I think it's 28 pizzas in all!

I will get to try a hot'n'spicy pizza with a satay swirl as a result of all this chaos, so it may prove worth it in the end ;)

Sorry, but your brain is out of service

Debbie and I had planned to go to WARGs last night, to catch up with friends, hang out, maybe play in a game. Our regular Thursday game being put on hold this week made for quite an enthusiastic Matt and Debbie. Sadly, school went on just a little too long for my brain to survive. An after-school meeting on how best to study did me in. It was quite a good session, with some very interesting material and enthusiastic presentation. The problem was my blood sugar levels, not the meeting itself.
When I was a lad, I used to have to eat glucose type supplements to stave off migraines. Well, being a skinny boy I was often given chocolate too, which did the trick. As an adult, I tend to look after myself, and have learned to recognise the start of a migraine and stave it off. For a long time, I took extreme precautionary measures, and ate bucket-loads of chocolate any time I had to do anything unpleasant like work.

I have moved on from that plan, to a more healthy one. Sadly, when you're trapped without food in an hour long meeting at the end of a long day, the best laid plans of mice and men aft gan aglay. Or something.

So I went to bed last night and had a very sore head, instead of going out and being social. Nurofen and junk food and sleep combined to overpower the headache, but I'm wary now - it might return at any time, and incapacitate me, or just make my day at work extremely miserable.

I feel the urge to pack my bag with chocolate, as an immunizing precaution...

Story-time was AWESOME!

Debbie and I had a great weekend, filled with many hours of niceness. Friday was pretty chilled out, with delicious cocktails and at home warm hibernation.
Saturday was also great, with High and Low (Frank’s anime flavoured SF game featuring angels and aliens in a pyramid in the Australian desert) followed by yummy Thai food with Debbie’s parents followed by chilling out with L&S and watching A Touch of Evil, with the grottiest imaginable Orson Welles. So creepy! The film itself was pretty cool – entertaining, with some great lines like:

“1400 miles of border without a single machine-gun emplacement!” – Charlton Heston (a swarthy Mexican cop) laments the ease with which filth can move between Mexico and the States.

Sunday featured chores and sunshine and coldness, but its best feature was storytime. At Jenni and Lee’s, several excellent kids books were read to us by a super-librarian (she even knew some of the words off by heart!). And there was cake, and strawberry milk and cookies. Sigh….

We all kind of wished we could emulate the cat in one of the stories – choose not to work, and just lie in the sun all day. I particularly enjoyed Olivia Saves the Circus (I think that was the name), for its great realistic dialogue and excellent artwork.

So nice. And now I’m back at work and have actually done a whole hour and three quarters of marking and marking related activity. So a 5 minute blogging break was pretty much mandatory.

ONLY 3 WEEKS UNTIL THE HOLIDAYS! W00t!

PPTA Meeting

Yesterday I attended my first ever PPTA meeting. It was a big shin-dig in Wellington at the Queen's Wharf Event Centre. There were lots of PPTA members, from many schools in the Wellington region. It was to discuss and vote on the new collective agreement - mostly just to vote on it. The meeting was a couple of hours long, with some confused milling around at the start for my school's teachers due to a problem with the bus. I am sworn to union secrecy, but I can leak the following document, created by me, during the course of the meeting. I trust it will not fall into the wrong hands, or bring me into ill favour with my hard working and upstanding union comrades.

I can only hope that the more private details of my record of the meeting do not expose any secrets to the mainstream media ;)

Note: The date of the page on which the record was written does not match the date of the meeting - a most cunning ruse on my part.

Those crazy kids...

I had the great pleasure today of having a couple of students get upset with me for getting them into trouble. Me getting them into trouble.
Apparently I used some kind of mind control ray to make one of them pull a lighter out in class and try to set fire to another kid’s jersey, then used hypnotic suggestion to force the 2 of them to attempt to forge a uniform pass in class-time, using the window for tracing purposes. I am a very bad man, and it is my fault that they will be in trouble with the deans.

I was well pleased with their advanced understanding of action and consequence, and their skill at apportioning blame. I am sure they both have a promising career in politics ahead of them ;)

Here we are again

That was a very pleasant weekend, followed by a tiring, but good Monday. And now I’m back at school, in the midst of yet another week of classes. The term is whizzing by, and classes are ticking over nicely, for the most part. If I didn’t have a headache, I’d probably be quite content.
Friday night was a lot of fun – delicious curry, fine company, and anime about psychoactive mushrooms, followed by hot drinks and conversation with family. A nice way to start the weekend – packing 2 social engagements into the one evening.

Saturday was also highly enjoyable. I wrestled with a sewing machine in the morning, and was defeated. I don’t have a good track-record with sewing machines. It seems that this time I had indeed done everything right, it just didn’t like me. Luckily my good wife returned from horse feeding in time to fix everything, and my mother-in-law ironed and sewed the hem I was adjusting for me, so the tale has a happy ending. In the evening we watched more anime with friends – the excellent Escaflowne movie – ate pizza, and watched The Third Man. Once again, projectors are good.

Escaflowne was very cool – a rollicking film, with excellent animation and a good pace, and more than a few things which reminded me of Luke’s Exalted game. Very nice.

The Third Man was hilarious, and very cool. The crazy mandolin soundtrack, random appearances of small dogs and small children, and the fantastic cast of NPCs… er… supporting actors, made it a fun movie. I’m sure there’s a Kapcon scenario in there somewhere.

Sunday was a more sedate kind of fun, very pleasant and relaxing and good. A mountain of laundry was reduced to a smallish hill, groceries were fetched, shopping was conducted (including the purchasing of some very comfy and slightly less slobby than skate shoes type boots), and Tekken Tag was played. And Singstar. And we watched Beyond Borders, a film about relief work. A student had recommended it to Debbie as they had been studying Cambodia, and a section of the movie is set there. It was a very beautiful movie, lots of stunning locations, some moving moments, some quite horrific scenes, and a nice tone. I enjoyed it, though I felt the need for some light relief afterwards, as it was quite depressing.

Luckily, Debbie and I are reading The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett at the moment, so that was very light and entirely reliefy.

Then Monday rolled around with tedious inevitability, and the working week started. I adjudicated a debate yesterday, on whether athletes with criminal records should be allowed to attend the Olympics. The debate was very good, some incredibly well spoken participants, and some pretty good arguments put forward. Enjoyable indeed, though the venue got mighty cold after 5pm, and it didn’t finish until quarter to six, so a long day for Matty.

Then further Singstar, delicious Satay, Tekken, and other enjoyable pursuits filled my evening, and I was a happy bear.

Weekend

Weekends are Good!
I do happy weekend dance. It is enthusiastic, but with little energy (batteries drained, need to recharge). Getting away from this building will no doubt boost my energy levels.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, just be grateful that it's the last one of the day. WEEKEND! w00t!

Glad to be leaving

It has been a stressful (and long) week, so I’m very glad to be going out tonight. My weekly RPG session is a pretty fantastic time – a chance to play in some excellent games, catch up with friends, talk, and a chance to get 45 minutes drive away from school. Going out of town is very nice – seeing the lights get smaller in the rear-view mirror is a relaxing thing…
Debbie and I saw The Triplets of Belleville yesterday, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Quite a charming old school style animated film – it made me think that Karl Wills would greatly enjoy it (though whether that’s true I don’t know). It was certainly a bonus to have it projected onto a wall, as the very stylish animation was pretty much the point of the whole shebang. I can see what Luke meant when he said that it didn’t really matter if you saw it in French or English.

So, onwards and upwards! More than half the term gone, this week drawing closer to a finish, and an enormous pile of marking awaiting in the English department.

Sigh…

What goes around...

Hmmm, suddenly I don't feel so bad about being a bludger in my youth. I spent a few years (my University days, and those that followed) absorbing various kinds of benefits from the Welfare State. I wasn't exactly living in the lap of luxury, but I was happy enough with my slacker lifestyle. In total, I imagine I must have received at least $15,000 of tax-payer money (in dribs and drabs), if last year's student allowance is included.
I am now a hard-working member of the community (have been for a number of years). When I was a poorly paid cinema monkey, my weekly tax tended to be less than $100. At times, the amount of supplemental income WINZ provided me with was pretty much equal to my tax deductions. This week, my tax reached a new high.

I have never, in my life, seen more than $1000 go from my pay check to tax. Until yesterday.

Now, I know that lots of people pay that much tax every paycheck, and that in order to be paying lots of tax, you have to be earning lots of money, so there's no reason to complain. It just made my eyes bulge slightly - $1000 being more than I used to earn in a fortnight, let alone pay in tax.

Teaching has not become an incredibly lucrative profession, by the way. The final part of my Subject Allowance for training as an English teacher came through this week, inflating my paycheck by $2500. Sadly, this final payment was liable for tax (the previous 2 weren't), so a chunk of it went straight back to the government.

It was still a very nice paycheck, and I am very glad to have the extra moolah.

Do I hear a projector calling...?

A busy weekend!

FridayI borrowed a projector from school, and set it up in the lounge at home. Very nice picture, a decent size, and through the use of an ironing board and an RCA cable extension lead, managed to get the picture up onto a big white wall space. We watched Angel, a bit of Rah-Xephon, and a few other bits and pieces, but didn't have time to watch a whole movie as I had characters to write up for Confusion.

I had decided to run The Villain Wore Black at Confusion, a Penny Dreadful scenario I had previously run for my Thursday gaming group. The first time I ran it I had Debbie there as co-pilot: playing female NPCs, co-writing the scenario, and helping out with explanations. I knew that Debbie wasn't going to be around, and that we'd made a few changes since the playtest, so I knew I had to get those onto the character sheets.

After a couple of hours of typing things up (and adding a 6th character), I had things pretty much in shape.

Saturday
An early start, which got us down to Wellington by 9:10am. I had all the materials clutched in my hot little hands, and was rearing to go. Well, tired and a little hungry and a little nervous about the game. I like to be ultra-prepared, and whilst the scenario was in good order and had been run once before, I was still nervous. I only ended up getting 4 players, so had to do some last minute alterations to the love quadrangle (changing it back to a more conventional triangle). The 4 players I had were all brilliant, and the game went swimingly. It was a fairly brisk 2 hour game, which left a goodly amount of time for socialising between rounds.

Debbie had gone to tend to her horse, so she didn't arrive until round 2. The choices for round 2 games didn't look all that appealing (I always seem to end up running at the same time as games I want to play in), and the game Debbie and I ended up in - well, not the best roleplaying experience of our lives. There were 2 other excellent players in the game, and the occasional very funny moment (deciding what we'd all have on our signet rings, for example).

With newly acquired headaches (and empty stomachs), we left Confusion early, and did not return. We did have a nice dinner, drive back up to Kapiti, and watch Bulletproof Monk on the projector, so it was a nice day all in all.

Sunday
Got up reasonably early, did some laundry, then headed into Wellington for shopping and movie-going. Met up with friends and saw The Chronicles of Riddick, which I thought was pretty damn cool. I'd heard mixed reviews, some very negative, so was looking for the bits that weren't good. One or 2 of the action sequences were long, and one seemed just a little silly, but the movie as a whole was very, very good. Nice epic space action film, Vin Diesel was very cool in a comic-book character kind of way, and the look of the film was superb. I was impressed, very impressed.

After tea and much discussion of movies and conventions and other sundry items, we headed back home. I did some caveman style sewing, we watched some more Angel and a little of Lost in Translation (it made me want to go on a holiday to Japan!), then eventually surrended to the lateness of the hour and slept.

Monday
First period was a lot of fun. I put up an OHT of some notes, got my Y11 students settled and in a work frame of mind, then pulled out a bag of Matador games and got the kids to play those for the rest of the period. It was a reward for the kids who had worked hard and handed their assignments in on time. One or two kids sat out and finished their work, which was OK by me as there is no reassessment, and these kids need as many opportunities for literacy credits as they can get their hands on.

And so the working week begins...

You never can tell by looking

I just had a colleague ask me what me weekend plans were. When I mentioned that I was going to a roleplaying convention, her first question was "like theatresports?".
I replied that it was similar, but with funny shaped dice. She then made a sound of recognition, and proceeded to tell me about the character she played in a D&D game when she lived in a squat in London, and how fondly she remembered the experience. A very positive reaction indeed!

A memorable tale

Talk of stick insects over on Jenni's blog got me thinking about giant bugs, which is never a bad thing, and about a particular scene from a novel that I wanted to re-read. The book is H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, which I greatly enjoyed both in novel form and in cheesy 60's SF film form. The more recent, flashier film version was not quite as enjoyable, though it was pretty.
The section of the novel in question is the far future, when the narrator has pushed the machine into taking him well beyond humanity's span, into Earth's latter days. The image of giant, monstrous creatures moving about on a dying earth, scraping their living off the rock and algae under a baleful red sky, with one lone, vulnerable Victorian suddenly in their midst - fantastic. And courtesy of Project Guttenberg, here's the section of the novel I was thinking of:

`I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round. The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black, and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and south-eastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun,red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of life that I could see at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting point on their south-eastern face. It was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss or on the lichen in caves: plantswhich like these grow in a perpetual twilight.

`The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away to the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wan sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living. And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick incrustation of salt--pink under the lurid sky. There was a sense of oppressionin my head, and I noticed that I was breathing very fast. The sensation reminded me of my only experience of mountaineering,and from that I judged the air to be more rarefied than it is now.

`Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting and flittering up into the sky and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The sound of its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself more firmly upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw that, quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legsmoving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennae, like carters' whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it moved.

`As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I felt a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught something threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a frightful qualm, I turned, and I saw that I had grasped the antenna of another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed amonth between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense green.

Beautiful!

Hate Crimes and mob mentalities

I had an interesting morning today. I decided to show my rowdy Y9 class a video of last night's news, specifically the lead story on channel 1. The police wanted to interview a certain National Front member in connection to an assault on some Somali chaps, and they were interested to see if he knows anyting about the desecration of the Makara cemetery. The article covered the suspect, the Makara crime, and a Holocaust denier who wants to come to NZ. This stirred up some interesting comments from the class.
Probably the best thing was that I prepared them for viewing the article by going over (in inredibly broad strokes) WW2, the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, left-wing and right-wing thinking, and the concept of consecration and desecration. I think it was unusual enough, and current enough, to spark some interest.

The Holocaust denier who was featured later in the item did not receive a warm reaction from the class, though of course several of them were lost by this point, having had more information crammed into their brains in 4 and a half minutes of news than they'd encountered in weeks. They were, however, aware enough to pick up on who they were 'supposed' to like and dislike, from the programme and from classmates, and there were some pretty strong comments made about racism and people being liers. Much fun, on a rainy Wednesday morning...

The leftover screw

Imagine, if you will, a desert. Or a dessert, it really isn't that important. Now imagine an object - any kind of object, slowly descending from on high, into the centre of that desert. Or dessert. And imagine the sound that object makes as it plops down, the shadow it casts, and the tiny ripples of consequence that spread out through the desert (or dessert) as a result of its impact.
Today, I am a confiscating machine. I am a creature of simple logic, who takes items and does not return them for 6 weeks. This will antagonise, and upset, and that is irrelevant. It is outside the parameters of the confiscation machine's programming. I am also a detentionising machine, and a castigation fountain, and many other things. I am a punishment and censure broadcaster. I am a uniform nagging device. I am a humourless automaton, dealing consequences to the uncomprehending masses.

At some point, I may also be an instructional unit, though this seems far from important under the weight of all this discipline.

The things we do...

Do you ever stop, take a look around at your life, and wonder how things got to be the way they are? It's not that often that I think about the ways in which I've changed over the course of my life, but there are some things that cause me to smile and shake my head in wonder.
First up, I now regularly get up in front of 25-30 kids and tell them what to do. This is something I avoided for a long time - my mother and many other relatives being teachers, it was always a job I was aware of, though it was not one which I felt I wanted to do. Mostly, I was scared of the job. It involves being a grown-up, for a start, and is not exactly ideal for shy-types, and is somewhat high pressure, and is perhaps not as glamorous as other fantasy jobs (like famous novelist, movie star, musician, jet-setting millionaire etc.). When I was younger, I didn't want any kind of a job, but teaching was a job I particularly didnt feel capable of.

And now I do it every day, and half the time I feel like I'm doing a reasonable job of it. Go figure.

The social things I do also surprise me at times - I have moments of anxiety before running RPG games, when I doubt not my skill, but rather my luck as a GM. There are so many things that make a game good, and only a limited number of them come from the GM. And yet, I haven't had any really bad experiences with GMing lately. Old anxiety sneaking back, from a Matt that only exists as a shadow now, a Matt who is lost in time.

And then there's getting up in front of 100 or so people and telling them stuff at Kapcon. One of the more supportive environments for such activity, but somehow out-of-character for the Matt that once was.

And yet, in large social groups, I still don't talk much. Hmmm...

Somewhere In Time

I didn't wear a watch on Wednesday, due to forgetting-ness. I found it really disorienting, especially when we were in a computer lab with no clock, and were all forced to log out by network problems. No time keeping device! Aaagggghhh!

Aslan

Let's end the week with a picture, shall we?

A feline of some friends', decked out for adventure...

CSI science lab

CSI comes to the Science Lab
I heard a great story recently. A kid had been given a detention in science, and the incident had been written up and forwarded to the form teacher. The form teacher read out the incident sheet, and I could not help but smile. It went something like this (names changed to protect the ridiculous):

"Jim got into trouble for squirting acid at another student today. At first, he protested that he had merely splashed water on Mark, but when we tested Mark's pants with litmus paper, Jim confessed."

A victory of science over childish imbecility! Hoorah!

On another note, I yelled at one of my classes today. Really yelled - hairline tingling, blood rushing to the brain type yelling. More than one kid said "whoa, scary". What I yelled was fairly polite, something like 'ladies and gentlemen that is an unacceptable level of noise!", but it got the message across well and good. Silence ensued, though the little whippersnappers weren't able to keep it up for long. I did enjoy the silence afterwards, and being able to use my gentlest voice to tell them off ;)

Parenting skills, empathy, year 9's

I saw the end of an excellent documentary last night. It was presented by Lord Robert Winston, and was all about how 2-year-olds learn self control, empathy, and develop a sense of identity. I enjoy a well made science documentary, and this one was especially good as it seemed so relevant.
Most of the 2-year-olds behaved like my Y9 students. Self-centred, no concept that other people have feelings, no idea that rules ought to be obeyed whether someone was watching or not. I found it fascinating, and felt that it gave a little insight into how my wee students were built, so to speak.

I gave my rowdiest class a wee pep talk today, explaining that their actions had consequences on other people. Those who wanted to learn were disappointed and frustrated by disruptive students, and it made me unhappy when students disrespected each other, the classroom, or me. I then started asking students to "stop talking - you're making me sad." It was surprisingly successful, and even more fun when applied to Y11 students who, for the most part, have a pretty reasonable sense of empathy. It raised eyebrows, but also elicited apologies.

Maybe I should watch more documentaries about parenting, and how to mould personalities or shunt kids along to a higher stage of development.

A Beautiful Dream, with Laundry

Sometimes I am amazed by my own brain. This is merely a case of me being easily startled, but I shall attempt to furnish an example. I occasionally hear talk of 'left-brain' versus 'right-brain' people, where one kind is artistic and imaginative, and the other is analytical and logical.
My brain did both at the same time last night, and while it didn't hurt, it was certainly a strange phenomenon to observe from a detached third brain position (also known as navel-gazing). It happened like this: I was talking to Debbie about writing scenarios, and drawing illustrations, and the fact that I really want to get a nicely bound copy of all the SDC entries to throw on the shelf (and carry around at WARGS and Kapcon and similar events), and that I'd actually quite like to take a night-class in book-binding (hardback books are just so pretty). My brain then wandered in its usual way, into realms of fantasy. There was a montage of images, Debbie and I with scissors and glue and little tools, binding books, a hand placing a hardback of scenarios onto a shelf alongside other RPG books, Debbie and I in a log cabin in front of a fire drinking red wine (possibly with snow outside).

And then there were towels in the washing machine downstairs, and I knew that they needed to be moved into the drier. And there were 2 montages, intercut, one with books and wine and lauging and the warm fuzzy sense of achievement that arts and crafts can bring, and the other with soft focus and warm light and fluffy towels coming out of the drier.

I obssess about laundry way too much.

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.