(Me) ‘I need to write a Blog for the next Newsletter but I haven’t been provoked into purple prose by student decisions this week. So over the weekend, maybe something about gardening as a metaphor for tending children.’
(Editor of Newsletter) ‘There’s a great extended metaphor in ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Othello’ about gardening. Doesn’t Iago tell us if we plant weeds, we will reap weeds or something? It will be a great topic for a Blog.’
‘Yes and Ophelia witters on in her scary, pastoral way about, ‘There's rosemary, that's for remembrance…and there is pansies, that's for thoughts.’
‘Drippy Ophelia goes to DEFCON 5 when Hamlet has a little joke with her about a nunnery. The fact that she gets upset with loser Hamlet enough to drown herself tells you something about her inherent lack of nous.’
‘IMHO, some Shakespearean heroines just have no sense of humour – they go all feminist on you just when you are deciding on important male things like whether to kill your Royal Scottish Banker, burn the Turkish fleet, perform invasive surgery to reclaim 0.453592 kilos of flesh or divide your kingdom into three Kantons. But as Shakespeare could only write about flowers, toads and weeds and not, say, about garden strimmers going melt down I might have a small advantage.’
‘Contemplating strimmers is far more exciting than contemplating life and death.’
Ok, I’ll start with something like…
Cutting the grass was a job I had put off because it was so hot, around 34 degrees C at about 5.30 in the afternoon and it now seemed almost knee high to my English ‘lawn-as-liquid-emerald’ eye. I started to strim an area somehow full of ‘noisome weeds…things rank and gross in nature’ (but here young Will was, I’m afraid, talking about Denmark) ‘…which without profit suck The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.’ Until, that is, I noticed that the strimmer I had bought last year to suck the noisome weeds from our soil's fertility, on the advice of a professional I might add, had become totally ineffective. It was getting meltdown hot. It was starting to make odd noises. And it was issuing acrid, dark grey smoke. Like me last week in class. Let me explain…
An assessed assignment was due in to me at the start of class after a two week lead-in, and so, again, the owners of a chorus of waving hands (and some not bothering to do that traditional classroom semiotic cue) told me, with authoritative finality, that they couldn’t hand it in ‘because the school printer has jammed’/ ‘our printer ran out of ink’/ ‘the school’s email system bounces my mail’/ ‘the disc got wiped’/ ‘I can’t access my account’/ ‘there wasn’t a free computer at break time’/ ‘my computer crashed’/ ‘the document’s been corrupted’/ ‘it’s here on my memory stick’/ it's the browser'/'there’s a fault with Windows 7’ - all ending with ‘ok?’ stated not really as a question but a fact to be accepted, ok?
‘No!’ I replied. ‘It is not ‘ok’! It is definitely not ‘OK’! NOT!!! ... OK?!?? The IB, the ICS, I, the known universe, simply do not accept lame IT malfunction statements as excuses for failing to…etc.’’ Pretty loud this, odd noises crescendo con brio growing to fortississimo grandioso. And then melt down with acrid, dark grey smoke …’
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Number 49
Dean’s Blog Number 49.
Many of you have been generous enough to tell me you welcome the chance once a fortnight to peek through the window of ICS and see what your kids get up to during an average day, through the Dean’s Blog. You comment on the humour that the Dean seems to find when he talks to students about decisions made on a shaky basis. Was it the result of hyperbole? I was asked and the truthful answer is, No, it really happens – just as it says on the tin. But you have to listen. You have to signal very clearly, ‘I am listening with enormous interest and undivided attention and I will take what I hear very seriously indeed and reflect on it and join in a dialogue,’ even if you know the printer just destroyed your IB English A1 Standard Level criteria rubric for examination paper 1 commentary that you need to get over to a class in the DSC null comma ploetzlich as we Swiss like to say.
Do all critical nouns start with the Dean’s ‘D’?
I am constantly charmed (whilst simultaneously driven to distraction, dismay, despair, disappointment or mere disbelief – do all critical nouns start with the Dean’s ‘D’?) by a student’s confident expression of a candid point of view where a totally different take on the reality of a situation contradicts mine with something approaching the finality of a check mate. Of course they are right; it is their reality so it is their (cliché) truth. The charm almost always continues to the next stage when I introduce my reality which is the ICS’s truth, which nearly always has to take precedence as the one to be believed if a harmonious and safe society is to be enjoyed on (and off) campus. They listen wide eyed giving me the attention I gave them and neither of us is condescending nor patronising as we do this routine. They read the cues, offer the apology, look contrite, and accept their punishment like a woman (gender thing there). Of course, we do not speak of punishment, that is P.I.. Instead, it is what I call ‘a community act of restitution offering time for reflection’.
Unfeigned enthusiasm
And so they wander around the Red Top for 20 minutes at lunchtime if it isn’t pouring cats n’dogs, after eating their lunch for the supplementary energy soon to be needed, collecting the community’s litter into a large black plastic refuse bag - with an admirable, reflective, penitent and unfeigned enthusiasm.
I am pretty sure about this last point… I think.
nickydarlington.blogspot.com
Many of you have been generous enough to tell me you welcome the chance once a fortnight to peek through the window of ICS and see what your kids get up to during an average day, through the Dean’s Blog. You comment on the humour that the Dean seems to find when he talks to students about decisions made on a shaky basis. Was it the result of hyperbole? I was asked and the truthful answer is, No, it really happens – just as it says on the tin. But you have to listen. You have to signal very clearly, ‘I am listening with enormous interest and undivided attention and I will take what I hear very seriously indeed and reflect on it and join in a dialogue,’ even if you know the printer just destroyed your IB English A1 Standard Level criteria rubric for examination paper 1 commentary that you need to get over to a class in the DSC null comma ploetzlich as we Swiss like to say.
Do all critical nouns start with the Dean’s ‘D’?
I am constantly charmed (whilst simultaneously driven to distraction, dismay, despair, disappointment or mere disbelief – do all critical nouns start with the Dean’s ‘D’?) by a student’s confident expression of a candid point of view where a totally different take on the reality of a situation contradicts mine with something approaching the finality of a check mate. Of course they are right; it is their reality so it is their (cliché) truth. The charm almost always continues to the next stage when I introduce my reality which is the ICS’s truth, which nearly always has to take precedence as the one to be believed if a harmonious and safe society is to be enjoyed on (and off) campus. They listen wide eyed giving me the attention I gave them and neither of us is condescending nor patronising as we do this routine. They read the cues, offer the apology, look contrite, and accept their punishment like a woman (gender thing there). Of course, we do not speak of punishment, that is P.I.. Instead, it is what I call ‘a community act of restitution offering time for reflection’.
Unfeigned enthusiasm
And so they wander around the Red Top for 20 minutes at lunchtime if it isn’t pouring cats n’dogs, after eating their lunch for the supplementary energy soon to be needed, collecting the community’s litter into a large black plastic refuse bag - with an admirable, reflective, penitent and unfeigned enthusiasm.
I am pretty sure about this last point… I think.
nickydarlington.blogspot.com
Higgs Particles
The Dean’s Blog
Welcome back – of course. Everyone here says this but everyone also really means it. And if all the kids think twice before doing something they have not been asked to do and all parents think twice before parking and leaving their car on the drop off zone then that small part of the ICS experience I work in will be quietly successful.
Over the vacation I reflected on Deanish experiences over the past year and selected one that catches for me the fascinating flavour of much of my job. Here it is:
There are days when nothing happens. Well, things do of course happen but they don’t bear relating. Not in a Deanish sense. Nor to a large readership. They’re not funny or serious or new, or proof that history repeats itself, that the universe is somehow curved, that Higgs particles do actually exist or that those the gods wish to destroy they first drive mad or have them decide to train as teachers. Just a small, apparently random selection of not severely poor but not optimal decision making continues about the timing of arriving to school or about paying attention in class or ‘borrowing’ another’s property or about milk or computer games or using the lift or personal entertainment centres or shorts that are a little too – that sort of a thing. Quotidian.
The Dean’s best customers
It cannot be because the G12 students have gone because they are never the Dean’s best customers. Nor because G10 have gone on their PDM - well, actually, maybe a little bit as they have been known to cross my threshold occasionally. But generally there is a spirit of cooperation as students get on with their studies inside in class or with their friends outside in free time. Wait. Outside. There! That’s it! It is not cold. There is no howling wind with ‘Sturmboen’ gusting at 115kph. It is not actually snowing here at 700 metres in the summer and nor is there hail. The rain and sleet and Scotch mist (so called because after an extended period that is the only possible remedy) have moved east. And so, in the absence of meteorological obstruction, the SUN IS OUT and it is warm and the kids can play outside, at lunchtime. These things so rarely coincide. It is a treat to be celebrated. So, obviously, the whole idea of a mass inter-grade water fight becomes the thing to decide to do.
300 screaming with fun teenagers drenched to the skin
So why, you might ask if you haven’t moved on to read about the new updates to the terminology of MYP assessment procedures as a more lively option, did I not write about that? Because, you see, the kids are canny and they took my advice and, so, took the trouble to check with me if it was ok to do this before they started. I wish they hadn’t. ‘No’ is so grumpy-old-man, spoiling as it does in one’s apparent out-of-touch and even out-to-lunch way the innocent play of many, many children with the natural green elements in a safe environment. ‘Yes’, on the other hand conjures up the image of three hundred screaming with fun teenagers drenched to the skin, deliriously happy wasting said precious green element and arriving to period 6 unfit to be taught or to learn from every conceivable point of view saying triumphantly in the face of a couple of dozen disbelieving and disapproving teachers, ‘Mr. D said we could!’
The best Hollywood Federal interrogators
Boy, did I choose my words carefully…and slowly. The three boys scrutinised me from my door way like the best Hollywood Federal interrogators, hanging onto my every word. The International Diplomatic Corps could have learned a thing or two from me, though. No room for double-entendres or sub text here. No space for misinterpretation or implication. Nuance was banished and so were connotation, puns, asides and irony. Body language and facial expression needed to be locked down as even the raising of a single eyebrow could be interpreted as hinting at a wry affirmation. And so, finally, at last, by my desk clock there were only four minutes to go to the end-of-lunch-time bell and the situation had solved itself. This time.
I hope it rains tomorrow.
nickydarlington.blogspot.com
Welcome back – of course. Everyone here says this but everyone also really means it. And if all the kids think twice before doing something they have not been asked to do and all parents think twice before parking and leaving their car on the drop off zone then that small part of the ICS experience I work in will be quietly successful.
Over the vacation I reflected on Deanish experiences over the past year and selected one that catches for me the fascinating flavour of much of my job. Here it is:
There are days when nothing happens. Well, things do of course happen but they don’t bear relating. Not in a Deanish sense. Nor to a large readership. They’re not funny or serious or new, or proof that history repeats itself, that the universe is somehow curved, that Higgs particles do actually exist or that those the gods wish to destroy they first drive mad or have them decide to train as teachers. Just a small, apparently random selection of not severely poor but not optimal decision making continues about the timing of arriving to school or about paying attention in class or ‘borrowing’ another’s property or about milk or computer games or using the lift or personal entertainment centres or shorts that are a little too – that sort of a thing. Quotidian.
The Dean’s best customers
It cannot be because the G12 students have gone because they are never the Dean’s best customers. Nor because G10 have gone on their PDM - well, actually, maybe a little bit as they have been known to cross my threshold occasionally. But generally there is a spirit of cooperation as students get on with their studies inside in class or with their friends outside in free time. Wait. Outside. There! That’s it! It is not cold. There is no howling wind with ‘Sturmboen’ gusting at 115kph. It is not actually snowing here at 700 metres in the summer and nor is there hail. The rain and sleet and Scotch mist (so called because after an extended period that is the only possible remedy) have moved east. And so, in the absence of meteorological obstruction, the SUN IS OUT and it is warm and the kids can play outside, at lunchtime. These things so rarely coincide. It is a treat to be celebrated. So, obviously, the whole idea of a mass inter-grade water fight becomes the thing to decide to do.
300 screaming with fun teenagers drenched to the skin
So why, you might ask if you haven’t moved on to read about the new updates to the terminology of MYP assessment procedures as a more lively option, did I not write about that? Because, you see, the kids are canny and they took my advice and, so, took the trouble to check with me if it was ok to do this before they started. I wish they hadn’t. ‘No’ is so grumpy-old-man, spoiling as it does in one’s apparent out-of-touch and even out-to-lunch way the innocent play of many, many children with the natural green elements in a safe environment. ‘Yes’, on the other hand conjures up the image of three hundred screaming with fun teenagers drenched to the skin, deliriously happy wasting said precious green element and arriving to period 6 unfit to be taught or to learn from every conceivable point of view saying triumphantly in the face of a couple of dozen disbelieving and disapproving teachers, ‘Mr. D said we could!’
The best Hollywood Federal interrogators
Boy, did I choose my words carefully…and slowly. The three boys scrutinised me from my door way like the best Hollywood Federal interrogators, hanging onto my every word. The International Diplomatic Corps could have learned a thing or two from me, though. No room for double-entendres or sub text here. No space for misinterpretation or implication. Nuance was banished and so were connotation, puns, asides and irony. Body language and facial expression needed to be locked down as even the raising of a single eyebrow could be interpreted as hinting at a wry affirmation. And so, finally, at last, by my desk clock there were only four minutes to go to the end-of-lunch-time bell and the situation had solved itself. This time.
I hope it rains tomorrow.
nickydarlington.blogspot.com
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