I am not going to be judgemental. I will express no opinion. I will hint no subtext. No implication at all is there to be inferred. Just facts observed over the last two weeks as Spring starts to send fresh optimism into the air. Ok? Good! Then read on…
At 8.20 a.m. the problem is only perceived by the 30 or 40 drivers still queuing to get into the school drive, maybe all the way down Strubenacher, even round the corner past Rinspeed, and up the hill and round that corner, too…
It is not perceived by the driver who waits in the drive blocking the said 30 to 40 cars for the first space to become free regardless of what happens behind and the fact that there is a car in the first space by the Red Top gates anyway and that there are three or four spaces free at the far end of the Red Top…
and not by the driver who pulls into a clearly too small space leaving a couple of metres of metal sticking out into the driveway that others will just have to negotiate as best they can…
and not by the driver who pulls into the first of the three freed up spaces and then parks in half the second one as well…
and not by the driver who is relieved to find a space having dropped off offspring and so gets out of vehicle to chat to other drivers…
and not the driver who starts texting instead of above…
and not by the driver who should have been in the car park as he waits for his companion to return from the primary school…
and not by the driver who does not let in a colleague who is indicating a wish to exit the drop off because this driver is in too much of a hurry and doesn’t need the space anyway…
and not by the driver who tries to pull out into the mainstream but unfortunately owns one of these cars where the indicator option was deleted so it is all down to bluff and guesswork…
and not by the few, the very few drivers when they give the four members of staff concerned with ICS students’ safety at around 8.15a.m., aggressive looks and gestures and sometimes even hostile comments.
But the four do see simple solutions, though, which if adopted by the few would alleviate some of the stress of the many …
such as pulling into the furthest available space even if it is on the far side of the Red Top because it frees up the driveway and it is a medically proven good thing if offspring walks the extra 30 metres...
such as child already having coat, lunch and bag in cabin so lengthy leave-taking involving driver having to decamp from cabin (so another large car door is left open to be circumvented by the pedestrians walking up to school on the narrow path) is cut to the ideal 30 seconds or less…
such as using indicators to pull in and to pull out…
such as leaving home five minutes earlier to avoid the rush (the school is open and so is the playground)…
such as always letting the driver who wishes to exit the drop off and thus leave a space, have precedence…
such as moving forward as much as is possible so another driver can pull in behind as this is so much quicker for them…
such as not parking on our neighbours’ property (at the DSC that’s Stahl or Ruegg just because it is more convenient than the stipulated options and there happens to be space – it is still called trespass)…
and…
such as realising that the said four teachers and all the drivers are united by one single aim to have all children safely out of cars and away from cars and into the safety of school as quickly as possible, with as little irritation to our long suffering neighbours and members of the ICS community as possible.
Actually the philosophy is all there in the IB Learner Profile.
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
Monday, 28 February 2011
The Dean’s Blog: ‘I have an iWife’
Since Christmas I have an iWife. She bought an iPhone and an iMac and has managed with my iSon’s help to get them to talk to each other and to his iPhone and to his iStation in his Architektburo. It was his iDea. Personally I saw nothing wrong with her carrier pigeons and our eyeball-to-eyeball (or is that iBall?) conversation. I am in danger of becoming an App that has yet to be downloaded. On the plus side family conversations have become a little easier in that when they are together they always speak in Schwiitzertuuetsch (sp?) but now when discussing iLife it’s all in English with ‘ge’ in front of the verbs and bad vowel sounds.
But the enthusiasm and sense of cult is palpable, even to a non worshipper at the altar of i like me who owns a smartphone of a different iLk. There is a common set of rituals and a common technical lexis that binds these people to their machines and to each other in an almost Masonic way that offsides remarks like, ‘Yeah, well, my GL Arena 900 transmits My Music direct to the car’s Bose 12 speaker system, you know, wireless…’ And the silence and dropped eyes tell me all I don’t want to know about extra facilities not buying membership to the iElite. It’s the phone equivalent of Nespresso capsules; ‘what else?’ encapsulates the attitude. Ask Denner. ‘Was suscht?’
But, and there is a ‘but’ here, the whole withering experience has given me clearer insight into why a smartphone is the first piece of clothing our students put on in the morning. I see the fascination, I appreciate the dizzying range of colours, the spinning, morphing world of widgets, the expanding universal choice of ring tones for arrival and dispatch of sms, msn, phone call comment or connection. There’s a tailor made world of sensory delight for each of them masquerading as important communication and technical innovation and each kid is the master tailor, or indeed the Master of this universe. Every day there are a dozen new ideas, apps, sounds, tricks, games, facilities, clips to show and tell and swap.
It is no surprise, then, that they want to pull out their phone in class or just before the bell or keep on communication and downloading after the teacher has come in and indicated the class is starting. No wonder but no excuse, of course. Some things are even more important in school in the classroom, in the lab, in the gym however dull our world of talk may seem.
In G10 English we are doing a poetry unit and we had read and analysed a couple of poems by Taylor Mali. There was a small computer problem in the classroom when I wanted the G10 students to watch him rap four of his more famous poems on Youtube at an ECIS conference I attended. Three boys immediately offered to access the clips on their smartphones and suddenly interest levels and involvement shot up 2000% as they huddled around the small screens shushing each other if someone spoke. Electric! They were in charge – it was their world and for a moment a teacher’s, too. Everyone who gets a smartphone (and has someone to pick up the horrendous costs) can join this world, feel they belong and interact. It is a social leveller, all users are equal.
But iSome are more equal than others.
But the enthusiasm and sense of cult is palpable, even to a non worshipper at the altar of i like me who owns a smartphone of a different iLk. There is a common set of rituals and a common technical lexis that binds these people to their machines and to each other in an almost Masonic way that offsides remarks like, ‘Yeah, well, my GL Arena 900 transmits My Music direct to the car’s Bose 12 speaker system, you know, wireless…’ And the silence and dropped eyes tell me all I don’t want to know about extra facilities not buying membership to the iElite. It’s the phone equivalent of Nespresso capsules; ‘what else?’ encapsulates the attitude. Ask Denner. ‘Was suscht?’
But, and there is a ‘but’ here, the whole withering experience has given me clearer insight into why a smartphone is the first piece of clothing our students put on in the morning. I see the fascination, I appreciate the dizzying range of colours, the spinning, morphing world of widgets, the expanding universal choice of ring tones for arrival and dispatch of sms, msn, phone call comment or connection. There’s a tailor made world of sensory delight for each of them masquerading as important communication and technical innovation and each kid is the master tailor, or indeed the Master of this universe. Every day there are a dozen new ideas, apps, sounds, tricks, games, facilities, clips to show and tell and swap.
It is no surprise, then, that they want to pull out their phone in class or just before the bell or keep on communication and downloading after the teacher has come in and indicated the class is starting. No wonder but no excuse, of course. Some things are even more important in school in the classroom, in the lab, in the gym however dull our world of talk may seem.
In G10 English we are doing a poetry unit and we had read and analysed a couple of poems by Taylor Mali. There was a small computer problem in the classroom when I wanted the G10 students to watch him rap four of his more famous poems on Youtube at an ECIS conference I attended. Three boys immediately offered to access the clips on their smartphones and suddenly interest levels and involvement shot up 2000% as they huddled around the small screens shushing each other if someone spoke. Electric! They were in charge – it was their world and for a moment a teacher’s, too. Everyone who gets a smartphone (and has someone to pick up the horrendous costs) can join this world, feel they belong and interact. It is a social leveller, all users are equal.
But iSome are more equal than others.
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
The Dean’s Blog ‘Civic Responsibility’
Hot on the heels of tirades about senior students not clearing up their own mess and harangues about the same age group spreading coffee like rumours, comes a moment of calm explanation. I was asked recently to write up the new prototype grade nine Civic Responsibility Scheme (‘CRS’ - see last blog of year 09/10) for ELMLE’s (European League of Middle Level Education) Tips for Teachers ( target audience is Middle School teachers) for their forthcoming conference in Amsterdam.
The questions to be addressed were:
1. What essential understandings do you think students should have about service in their schools?
2. Could you briefly explain the idea behind the programme of allocating students to spend time with teachers who are on duty?
3. What changes do you hope to see with this programme?
4. Could you write 5 simple steps for middle school teachers to get a programme like this up and running in their school?
The answers follow but I prefaced them with the statement that our beginning is not ambitious; I don’t want it to be seen as a bigger social intervention training than it currently is (mighty oaks from mini acorns…). Here’s the acorn, then:
1. The selection of role-plays I wrote, from both Deanish and from the teaching of English experience, outline the specific situations I hope the grade can begin to help obviate by developing their understanding of the possible causes and issues within these specific areas. The role plays were:
1. Kid A is told by kid B, ‘You can’t sit there. It’s for our friend. Go away!’ (This was to be modelled in English 9 classes to kick off CRS, being relevant to the theme of The Outsider for our study of William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’)
2. A kid is sitting on the stairs up to the Science floor eating lunch all alone and this is not the first time.
3. Two kids claim another boy took their football and then kicked it into the car park and won’t go and get it back and they can’t find it anyway.
4. A bunch of grade 6 boys say that they had the goal on the Red Top first and then another bunch of grade 9s told them to go away and when they didn’t they kicked their ball away (probably into the car park again.)
5. The Librarians report that some grade 8 students, boys and girls both, are being ridiculously noisy and chasing around in the library.
6. A girl is crying because she can’t find her bag and it has her PE things and all her books and her phone in it.
7. Some girls say there is absolutely nowhere for them to play without being run over by shouting boys.
8. A student reports that several kids are playing games on the computers in the computer lab and eating food there.
These – all real situations from the past year - were sent to all secondary staff in a document explaining the scheme.
2. The role-plays and the discussions that prefaced and that follow in the Personal Development Programme prepare the students actively to patrol with a member of the secondary teaching staff in and around the Main Building. It is hoped that they will now be more able to notice isolation or other forms of unhappiness and have ideas and possible strategies ready to discuss or even implement. They will also be able to exchange views with the teacher more effectively as they have some prior knowledge. Thus they can also ask pertinent questions about what the adults do and think, and why.
3. The change being sought is a less isolated and egocentric set of behaviours by the senior grade at lunchtime as they recognise conflict and take active steps to combat it even if it is to ask an adult for help, rather than belong to that large and dangerous group of called onlookers who by their presence and numbers imply support for that behaviour.
4. step 1 define the problems
step 2 discuss with tutors/PDP coordinator to get them on board and get their ideas
step 3 write role plays; the first - must be a common experience witnessed or suffered or understood by the grade - directed by the English teachers as a demo. Tutors/PDP team role play the others.
step 4 student feedback/discussion
step 5 set up the duty tours with the staff and students with a tutor/PDP debrief before the second tour and then an evaluation.
And parents, you can join in, too, with a vital role here and get a conversation going about their experience and thoughts, and indeed the whole issue, around the dinner table at home. I would be delighted to read your further comments and suggestions. Just go to nickydarlington.blogspot.com and click on the reply button.
The questions to be addressed were:
1. What essential understandings do you think students should have about service in their schools?
2. Could you briefly explain the idea behind the programme of allocating students to spend time with teachers who are on duty?
3. What changes do you hope to see with this programme?
4. Could you write 5 simple steps for middle school teachers to get a programme like this up and running in their school?
The answers follow but I prefaced them with the statement that our beginning is not ambitious; I don’t want it to be seen as a bigger social intervention training than it currently is (mighty oaks from mini acorns…). Here’s the acorn, then:
1. The selection of role-plays I wrote, from both Deanish and from the teaching of English experience, outline the specific situations I hope the grade can begin to help obviate by developing their understanding of the possible causes and issues within these specific areas. The role plays were:
1. Kid A is told by kid B, ‘You can’t sit there. It’s for our friend. Go away!’ (This was to be modelled in English 9 classes to kick off CRS, being relevant to the theme of The Outsider for our study of William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’)
2. A kid is sitting on the stairs up to the Science floor eating lunch all alone and this is not the first time.
3. Two kids claim another boy took their football and then kicked it into the car park and won’t go and get it back and they can’t find it anyway.
4. A bunch of grade 6 boys say that they had the goal on the Red Top first and then another bunch of grade 9s told them to go away and when they didn’t they kicked their ball away (probably into the car park again.)
5. The Librarians report that some grade 8 students, boys and girls both, are being ridiculously noisy and chasing around in the library.
6. A girl is crying because she can’t find her bag and it has her PE things and all her books and her phone in it.
7. Some girls say there is absolutely nowhere for them to play without being run over by shouting boys.
8. A student reports that several kids are playing games on the computers in the computer lab and eating food there.
These – all real situations from the past year - were sent to all secondary staff in a document explaining the scheme.
2. The role-plays and the discussions that prefaced and that follow in the Personal Development Programme prepare the students actively to patrol with a member of the secondary teaching staff in and around the Main Building. It is hoped that they will now be more able to notice isolation or other forms of unhappiness and have ideas and possible strategies ready to discuss or even implement. They will also be able to exchange views with the teacher more effectively as they have some prior knowledge. Thus they can also ask pertinent questions about what the adults do and think, and why.
3. The change being sought is a less isolated and egocentric set of behaviours by the senior grade at lunchtime as they recognise conflict and take active steps to combat it even if it is to ask an adult for help, rather than belong to that large and dangerous group of called onlookers who by their presence and numbers imply support for that behaviour.
4. step 1 define the problems
step 2 discuss with tutors/PDP coordinator to get them on board and get their ideas
step 3 write role plays; the first - must be a common experience witnessed or suffered or understood by the grade - directed by the English teachers as a demo. Tutors/PDP team role play the others.
step 4 student feedback/discussion
step 5 set up the duty tours with the staff and students with a tutor/PDP debrief before the second tour and then an evaluation.
And parents, you can join in, too, with a vital role here and get a conversation going about their experience and thoughts, and indeed the whole issue, around the dinner table at home. I would be delighted to read your further comments and suggestions. Just go to nickydarlington.blogspot.com and click on the reply button.
The Dean’s ‘Number 50 Jubilee’ Blog – ‘Kaffipause!’
23, 24, 25, 26, 27…31, 32…“STOP! KEEP TO THE SIDE! CAN’T YOU SEE THE COFFEE? YOU’RE STEPPING IN IT! WHY DOESN’T ANYONE AT LEAST PICK UP THE CUP?” Pretty loud this, odd noises crescendo con brio growing to fortississimo grandioso. As I remarked in my last blog.
The maths was me counting the senior students walking up and down the stairs at lesson change through a dripping lake of cafe latte that was making its own independent way down the narrow stair case in the DSC. It was still warm. It was a full plastic cup, well had been a full one. Now it was on its side, a bit stepped on, with the lid on the next step down.
Of course, they looked at me as if I was from a parallel and frankly far less developed universe. Get off the stairs they did not. Walk to one side they tried but as there were four classes of our gigantic teenagers on the deck above out of sight (out of earshot I do not entirely think) they kept turning the corner and pushed from behind came down into the mess.
A teacher had discovered this event a minute or two earlier and grumbled, rightly, about the lack of clearing up responsibility by the coffee dropper. So I went to see. I was actually rather shocked (see a previous blog at the end of last year on nickydarlington.blogspot.com, again about senior kids busy not clearing up their lunch mess as it was not their job, and again my proto-apoplectic reaction.) Trouble is that they are so big they eat huge amounts all the time and leave tons of evidence in the form of crumbs and spillage, packets and boxes, cups and cartons, plastic forks and teaspoons, tissues and wrappers everywhere!
Ok, there’s some hyperbole there – maybe – a bit. But you want to know what happened back at the stairs. Well…
I pushed through hundreds of vast adolescents carrying jumbo sized bags full of bulky packs of teenage stuff, to get to the bathroom and grab handfuls of paper towels. These I dumped in the brown lake, having pushed through the ever increasing throngs of big kids anxious to get up or down that staircase in order, obviously, to help it in its endeavour to get an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for the greatest surface area AND number of stairs ever covered by a one half litre of cafe latte. (They have such stupid entries now.) The paper disappeared sadly into the thick gluey beige morass and Mr Schlehuber and Mr Malcolm gallantly and energetically helped contain the spillage that started to look like a recent ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Bits of us got stepped on but eventually paper vs. coffee was won 1:0 by us, the paper wielders. The combined skills of the coffee, the staircase and the kids lost. We teachers, battered, exhausted, bespotted and bespeckled in Migro’s finest, moved on in triumph to our next class.
But I do have a serious point. We teachers felt very depressed for a moment after this incident because of the reaction of the students – nonchalance. And only one student stopped and offered to help. It was a girl. The Co-Chairperson of the Student Council. Bravo to her, I say!
nickydarlington.blogspot.com
The maths was me counting the senior students walking up and down the stairs at lesson change through a dripping lake of cafe latte that was making its own independent way down the narrow stair case in the DSC. It was still warm. It was a full plastic cup, well had been a full one. Now it was on its side, a bit stepped on, with the lid on the next step down.
Of course, they looked at me as if I was from a parallel and frankly far less developed universe. Get off the stairs they did not. Walk to one side they tried but as there were four classes of our gigantic teenagers on the deck above out of sight (out of earshot I do not entirely think) they kept turning the corner and pushed from behind came down into the mess.
A teacher had discovered this event a minute or two earlier and grumbled, rightly, about the lack of clearing up responsibility by the coffee dropper. So I went to see. I was actually rather shocked (see a previous blog at the end of last year on nickydarlington.blogspot.com, again about senior kids busy not clearing up their lunch mess as it was not their job, and again my proto-apoplectic reaction.) Trouble is that they are so big they eat huge amounts all the time and leave tons of evidence in the form of crumbs and spillage, packets and boxes, cups and cartons, plastic forks and teaspoons, tissues and wrappers everywhere!
Ok, there’s some hyperbole there – maybe – a bit. But you want to know what happened back at the stairs. Well…
I pushed through hundreds of vast adolescents carrying jumbo sized bags full of bulky packs of teenage stuff, to get to the bathroom and grab handfuls of paper towels. These I dumped in the brown lake, having pushed through the ever increasing throngs of big kids anxious to get up or down that staircase in order, obviously, to help it in its endeavour to get an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for the greatest surface area AND number of stairs ever covered by a one half litre of cafe latte. (They have such stupid entries now.) The paper disappeared sadly into the thick gluey beige morass and Mr Schlehuber and Mr Malcolm gallantly and energetically helped contain the spillage that started to look like a recent ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Bits of us got stepped on but eventually paper vs. coffee was won 1:0 by us, the paper wielders. The combined skills of the coffee, the staircase and the kids lost. We teachers, battered, exhausted, bespotted and bespeckled in Migro’s finest, moved on in triumph to our next class.
But I do have a serious point. We teachers felt very depressed for a moment after this incident because of the reaction of the students – nonchalance. And only one student stopped and offered to help. It was a girl. The Co-Chairperson of the Student Council. Bravo to her, I say!
nickydarlington.blogspot.com
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Birth of a Blog (by email)
(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 …’
(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 …’
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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