Just Call Me Mister D

When you have a complicated last name to pronounce such as mine, there’s no choice but to compensate with a simpler title. In this case, the first letter. Of course, it’s great to see & hear Kiwis doing their best to get my last name right, but I don’t have the time to judge everyone’s performance.

I have ‘survived’ the first week of TP2 at Villa Maria College, boy free since 1941! Around 700 intermediate & senior girls attend Villa to learn a variety of subjects which will guarantee them a high school diploma. I’m still laughing at the presence of political correctness: cooking is called Food & Technology, and sewing is Materials Technology.

The first week is always awkward, since you’re the new face around campus . . . and part of the male teaching minority. (There are other male teachers). Villa’s teaching facilities are spread out in several buildings, unlike Canadian high schools where everything is in one building. The college is the proud owner of a swimming pool & several tennis courts, something you also won’t find in Canada.

There are four student teachers (including me) at Villa Maria: two science women, an English man, and a male historian (me). Even though I’m a musician, I’ll only be teaching social studies & senior history, but I can still get involved with extra-curricular music activities.

For the first week, I endured a fire drill, greeted my associates and the rest of the faculty, and observed many classes. During TP2, I’ll be working with Year 9 Social Studies, Year 10 Social Studies, and two Year 11 History. I have already been assigned several lessons for next week as well supervise & mark a test! That’s on top of having to learn the names of 90 students, but the two good things are that the attendance lists come with photographs, and there’s at least a Holly, Katie, Emily, Hannah, Amy, & Georgina in every class.

Overall, the best kind of strategy is to always plan ahead, practice, and never teach just to make it to the end of the day. Doing so will zap out the quality of teaching and put me in danger of failing.

Outside of teaching, my writing abilities has impressed the editors of CANTA Magazine and in their latest issue, they published two of my CD reviews, Fabriclive.44 and Beat Konducta Vol. 5-6.

To make it easier for everyone, Ben purchased two old refrigerators (on auction) for our flat, at a cost of $10. Now we have tons of space to store our food & alcohol, as well as, find everything we need. When we were cleaning out the original fridge last month we found several yogurts that had expired last September.

Back home, I finally received my Performer’s ARCT Diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. ARCT stands for Associate of the Royal Conservatory of Toronto and the diploma is a step below a university music degree but just as important. Due to my overseas commitment, I was unable to attend the January graduation ceremony, but now I’m able to say that I have another diploma hanging in my room in Canada.