The Strange Scotsman (Part the Last)

The whole sorry saga of the Strange Scotsman is winding down.

Spring Intermission

Sorry to be positive and light-hearted, but Spring has Sprung down here in this South pacific paradise.

View over Silverstream from our front deck

I'm an Official Kiwi.

ESCAPE

Today I left Nuova Lazio High School BEFORE the witching hour of 3:00pm.

We're going to be Kiwis

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!",

Spring is here

Luckily my Beloved didn't spot my previous blog on her addiction (almost female universal) to shoes of many colours, so I can enjoy the beautiful New Zealand Spring.

It's Good to be in New Zealand

Life sometimes just doesn't get better.

Too many people

I don't know if you've heard, but down here in (mostly) sunny New Zealand there is an event taking place; The Rugby World Cup®.

Go the mighty All Blacks.

 They'd better win this time or else...

Anthems

We, like most of New Zealand watched the first Rugby World Cup (RWC) games on Friday and Saturday

Back from Napier

We had a lovely break in Napier.

I'm going to the World Cup

This has been a very long and strange week.

We're OK

Such terrible news from Christchurch, and such terrible images of the dead, the dying and the trapped, crying for help.
Like Richard [of RBB], I was going to post something light, twisted and extremely cynical about our Sports Day Fiasco, but the news of the earthquake made me re-evaluate, and realise how trivial our complaints are compared to the real tragedy down South.

I'll try some humour tomorrow.

I'm just not in the mood today.

Writing as an atheist however, I was struck by quite a few comments about the earthquakes, referring to them as "An Act of God"

Bloody Hell, I wonder what they did to offend the Big Guy if he had to send two earthquakes in 6 months

Sports Day

It's all about Sports

No teaching today, just supervising our kids frolicking under the merciless New Zealand sun.  There's always a slight haze in the air in Nuova Lazio, I suppose it's the marijuana smoke gathering in some sort of temperature inversion in the volcanic bowl that we all live in.

Anyway, back to the sports.  Ringo gave his seminar on e-portfolios yesterday, I actually did want to go, but there was some errors with the relievers' pay, and I had to sort that out first.  Our erudite and grammatical guru went, so I'll get some feedback from him and from the others who went.  There's a rumour floating around that the HOFs had to cajole, browbeat, bribe and in at least one case, threaten members of their faculties to attend as their designated victim representative.  nobody denies that the concept of the e-portfolios is a bad idea, it's just that technically there are some serious issues, and socially, not many of our kids have easy access to computers and a broadband connection, so many will automatically be disadvantaged.  It's not right.

Anyway, back to the sports.  I'll be in my normal place, right up at the far end of the field, helping with the javelin.  It's not too bad, and once we get properly organised, we'll feed the kids through conveyor-belt style, and should be finished by lunch.  Most of our kids enter into the spirit of the day, with real Kiwi enthusiasm, painting themselves in house colours and wearing silly clothes. My only concession to the day is to come in wear shorts, sandals (not jandals and definitely no socks) a big floppy hat and sunnies.  Plus of course a slathering of factor 50 sunblock.  Any non-kiwis reading this should be aware that the sun in New Zealand can be really ferocious, much worse than in Aussie, and good protection is vital.

Blistering, Scorching Kiwi Sun

I remember, just after I had arrived in NZ, going to a used car lot to buy some form of transport (I couldn't afford to keep my hire car much longer)  I didn't have a hat, but only spent 30 minutes looking at cars and talking to the salesmen in the yard before going into the office, and in that time my balding pate got enough sun to cause extremely painful blistering that evening.

Anyway, back to the sports.  The finishing event is normally the student - staff relay race, but our HOF of PE seems to think that such a race may be too dangerous to allow.  He gave some sort of half hearted reasons like a fear of one of our older and out-of-shape teachers collapsing while have a myocardial infarction, or risk of extreme groin strain, but we could tell it was just an excuse.  He was frightened that the students would win (again) 

We should run events more in keeping with the general school ethos.

200 metre joint sprint:  Where students attempt to outrun a slavering police dog whilst finishing and then swallowing a 50g joint.  Extra house points are awarded for style, lack of brown trouser stains and levels of intelligibility after finishing.

Subaru Strip:  Where teams of 5 students strip a Subaru Impreza down to the chassis.  The school record is 25 minutes and 42 seconds.  The current record holder is tutoring advanced classes in Rimutaka Prison.  He was exceptionally skilled at removing parts, but exceptionally bad in character judgement after he tried to sell two front panels to an off-duty Senior Sergeant in the Firemans's Arms in Petone.

The Warehouse Nonchalant Stroll.  Only for senior students. Where individuals have to move without expressing tension, stress or dropping any of the 25 items of Warehouse stock secreted about their person over a 50 metre obstacle course.

The Teacher Pursuit.  Run in two heats.  The first leg is where 10 -15 of our younger athletic male teachers are each given a baseball bat and allowed to chase catch and thoroughly beat a group of our worst behaving male students.  The students being handicapped by a ball and chain and a sense of social inferiority.
  The second heat is where any (living) male teacher is allowed to chase a pack of our lady teachers.  Just for fun.

Chase the lady teacher

Anyway, back to the sports.  I would really prefer to spend the day teaching my students.  They're really great kids who perform to the best of their abilities, and it's fun for all of us.  That's one of the secret advantages of being a teacher.  You can plan, prepare and present a topic or concept in such a way that the students don't really realise they're learning (the juniors anyway) and the teacher has a captive audience to try jokes, funny voices, practical jokes, trivia from life history etc.  Fun is had by one and all.

An example of a bad joke (but with an ICT teaching component)

Anyway, back to the sports.  The one major advantage from my perspective is the lack of relievers.  If one of our staff throws a sickie, I don't have to arrange a relieving teacher.  Who cares if there are 4 or 5 staff supervising the discus?

Hmmm.

Is that a migraine coming on, or just an acute attack of situational hypochondria?

The simple things are sometimes best

I got home about 6:30 last night, really knackered.

We continue to have computer network problems in Nuova Lazio High School, and even though I know that our Systems guy is working hard at it, it becomes very frustrating when you are losing 15 minutes out of every lesson to re-boot the computers and get the kids to log-on.



I've also been involved in fixing the timetable and setting up our SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) classes, plus teaching 4 classes, setting and marking assessments, taking my beloved's car into the garage and my own car into the body shop after some silly girl in a bright orange BMW reversed into me in Wellington. Her excuse of "I didn't see it" was a bit shaky. It's a big black Isuzu 4x4, how the hell do you miss a 2½ tonne truck?

So I was tired and a bit fed up.



After I had changed into my usual kit (mentioned on previous post, T-shirt and disreputable shorts) and my beloved had set out a nice big bowl of a meaty pasta dish, I began to feel better.

An ice-cold bottle of beer completed the process of making me feel almost human again.

Then I took our little doggie out for a walk. This is a Bichon-Frise, a small white fluffy bundle of mischief. My beloved wanted a dog, so she got one. Guess who takes it for most of it's walks? Yep, me.

Our outside thermometer, last night at 7:30 pm

But this evening I didn't mind. The temperature was a lovely 25°C, a balmy intermittent breeze was blowing, the sky was a brilliant, almost violet blue as the sun began to dip towards the Belmont Hills. I realised I was happy. Nothing special had occurred, no earth-shaking realisation or re-alignment, just the simple pleasure of walking under a perfect sky in comfortable clothes.

These are safety boots



These are not safety boots











I was wearing, in addition to the shorts and T-shirt mentioned above, a broad-brimmed hat and a pair of elastic-sided steel-toed working boots. These boots can be found in most kiwi homes, and are really useful. These boots have protected my little tootsies from dropped rocks, a carelessly swung pick-axe, a ladder dropped off of a roof an innumerable splashes of paint, concrete and on one memorable occasion, blood.

In addition to their protective qualities, they are very quick to slip on, which is why I was wearing them on my evening perambulation.

This is one of the things I really love about New Zealand. The casual approach to dress codes. I would not have dared to go out for a walk in the UK similarly attired. Apart from probably being too cold for just a T-shirt, walking in public in shorts and work boots would have been frowned upon. Decent clothes are expected, ties should be worn at most times, and some effort should be visible to being smartly co-ordinated. It's this cloying cloak of respectability, all but invisible and unremarked which makes life in the UK unexpectedly restrictive. You can't really do as you want, but must comply with the unwritten laws of public behaviour.

Kiwis mostly don't give a shit what you wear, do or say.

I love it.

Our front deck and swing.  (Note carefully placed G&T table)

After we got back home, I stretched out on the porch swing with another cold beer and just drifted to the sounds of the parakeets swooping up the driveway, the Morpork (a small owl) hooting in the reserve behind our house and the guttural, yet somehow reassuring snarl of a chainsaw drifting up the valley. The light had begun to take on that ethereal golden glow that warms without heat as the sunset approached.

View down the valley from the front deck

I was content.

I was happy.

I was sleepy.



Life was good.

Home

I'm back.
It is really so good to be back in godzone.
I don't care if it is raining.
I don't care if it's a bit on the cool side.
I'm home.
I'll try and catch up with Richard [of RBB] and The Curmudgeon et al, bit that's for later.
I couldn't get much computer access on my European trip, so no posts and few comments.
But it's so good to be back.
Listening to the immigration officers, the taxi drivers, the supermarket check-out people, listening to the soft Kiwi accent, listening to reasonable nice people.
It's so good to be back.
Being able to drink a flat white for less than $8,  being able to get a punnet of home-grown cherries or peaches, buying a Vogel loaf.
It's so good to be back.
Streets not packed with white-faced pasty cold people, no sleet in the face, no angry glares from rude insensitive slum-dwellers (I was in Dundee).
Smiles from passersby, grins from kids, warmth from the Sun.
It's so good to be back.

Unfortunately school beckons tomorrow.
But it's still good to be back.

Report Tuesday

This recording was discovered in the remains of the hall after the police had cleared the riot. It appears to have used a voice-activated microphone, but only one side of the conversation was actually recorded.



"Well hello."
"Sit down, sit down."
"So you're Report Evening's Dad?"
"Oh, sorry, Report Evening's Uncle then, how do you do Mr. Evening?"
"Oh, you prefer to be called Drunk and Disorderly?"
"No worries, let's get started Drunk."
"I take it you've seen Reppy's Report Card?"
"No?"
"Let me check the address we've got on file"
"Hmmm, a bit different from what we've got."
"So you don't live in KeriKeri then?"
"That's OK, I'll get it updated."
"Now then about Reppy."
"She means well, and is normally good natured, but she talks far to much, and often doesn't pay attention"
"She hasn't achieved any of her major milestones this Term, and her attendance is way down, less than 25%."
"She really doesn't know what she's supposed to be doing."
"No." "I agree." "It's not good enough, and we're going to have to make some changes."
"First we need to see her attendance go way up."
"She often seems hungry and thisty, so perhaps you can ensure that she has access to snacks and tea/coffee/juice."
"Some people work better with some light background music, so perhaps we can try that."
"Oh." "I agree." "No Double Bass music, it's far to moody and depressing for Reppy."
"One area I'm worried about is the quality of work taking place."
"It's no good just covering things she already knows, we'll have to go into new areas, see things she doesn't know about, discuss things outside of her comfort zone."
"I'm glad you agree."
"Sorry, what was that again?."
"Do I know Reppy's cousin, Learning Conferences?"
"Yes I know LC, sometimes I think she's more trouble than she's worth, but we get good results, so I can't complain."
"I see."
"You prefer LC to Reppy?"
"Well we'll see what we can do, but I can make no promises."
"What do you mean typical teacher, never listens?"
"I'll have you know I'm the best teacher here, and I know considerably more about Education than you do."
"Don't call me an opinionated Irish bastard, you colonial oik, I'm Scottish"

Saturday and Survived

Well we made it through a pretty fraught week. All kind of things were happening.
First Richard (of RBB) got the New Professional Award. Wow, we all bow before his magnificence.



Then the walking disaster area that is Ringo decided that as he has left early on Thursday (while everyone else stayed behind to get things correct and finished)he would get his stuff done on Friday, ignoring his allocated responsibilities.
You know, minor things; kids with knives, kids swearing at teachers, kids with dying relatives, kids stealing form the staffroom. It doesn't matter, Ringo remains inviolate. And arrogant. And a bully.

I'm not going to give too many details (to protect the innocent) but he just pushes people about as he sees fit, regardless if it's his job to do so, regardless of the greater benefit to the school.
I know that these (and previous comments) may sound a little bitter and twisted (check my name for goodness sakes), and I have tried to be as objective as possible, due to a previous competition which I lost, but this man is almost singlehandedly destroying the fantastic collegial atmosphere which was the main saving grace of Nuova Lazio High.
The previous Führer, now with the Afrika Corps in the scorching desert sands, made many improvements to this Stalag, and some mistakes, and I believe his biggest mistake was appointing Oberstürmbahnführer von Ringo to the General Staff of Stalag Luft Nuova Lazio.
Finally after I had sorted out various mistakes and re-printed the junior reports, I began to print out the seniors.
Picture the situation.
I don't have any time off.
I'm teaching senior and junior classes, who need constant teaching, supervision and encouragement.
I'm trying to print to the main printer in the main office. 200 meters away.
I'm using an advanced printer configuration setup to produce booklet type reports.
I get a phone call (in my classroom while I'm teaching)that the main printer has made a funny kind of grinding/crunching noise and has stopped.
After 10 minutes I get the message that it's restarted.
Repeat the entire sequence 3 times. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Stop.
Every time it stops, we're not sure what has been missed, and what has actually printed.
While I'm trying to sort this out, my Year 10 class arrives. A strange mix of bright hyperactive, evil hyperactive, clever, dumb, super-hardworking, insecure, defiant, resistant, forward, precocious, mongrel-mob prospective, talkative, loud, gossipy, bad-tempered, and generally nice kids. In other words a normal class.
Non-teachers may find this strange, but no matter what you hear, the vast majority of the kids we teach in schools are nice kids. Reasonably well behaved. A bit more argumentative than you will remember from your school days, but basically nice, decent kids who want to learn and to progress.
It's the scum of the difficult 5% who stuff it up for everybody else.
In these days of complete educational inclusion, you cannot just throw these buggers out.
Even though they probably account for 25% of teacher time in trying to create a safe working environment for your classes, and severely reduce the attainment levels of the majority of the kids, we are no longer allowed to remove the sods. The MOE gets really upset if we fling them away.
If they acted the way they do in adult life, they would end up "as a guest of Her Majesty".
But not as a juvenile.
They're safe, and they know it. We can do very little to them as long as they don't actually thump/knife/shoot anyone.
However,back to reports. The end result was chaos. I wasn't sure what had been printed or not printed. When I tried to get back into the print room to check, it was locked. Everyone had gone home.
At 3:30 there was no one left in the Stalag from the Reichsgruppe.
Sod it.
We can sort it out on Monday.
Laphroig (thanks Peter) beckons.
New horizons next week. Onward is better.