Queen's Birthday & Such

The big news down here in Middle Earth is the recent capture of William Stewart, a 47 year old fugitive who managed to stay on the run from the law for 3 months by slipping through police undetected, earning him infamy & the nickname Billy the Hunted One. With him back behind bars, he’s now known as Billy the Captured One.

Following that is the release of the government’s budget to combat the Recession. Long story short, no tax cuts, and there’ll be a deficit of a few billion dollars.

And to top it all off, comes the problem of boy racers (known as street racers in North America). Federal & Municipal governments are passing strict laws to combat the road pests with severe punishments such as prolonged impoundment, and having your racer compacted into a cube.

While these stories surround the community, college life has been going quite steady. My classes are senior history, junior music, Creative English, and Prof. Studies. With regards to assignments, I have to write a Y12 history unit plan about the IndoChina Conflict (1945-1975); arrange a song for a Y10 music class; and create a portfolio full of resources that would help me in teaching English. In Prof Studies, we looked at how to deal with the sexual harassment, & bullying (cyber, texting, verbal).

Ilam Village received a new neighbour this week, Pizzacarto, a pizza, coffee, & gelato shop. The business made itself at home in a big empty room that sits across the laundry room. Despite odd location, I paid them a visit last night to test the quality of pizza and was impressed with the quality, although the price was quite high ($12.50NZD for a thin crust medium pizza). Next time I’ll be trying the gelato.

The people of Middle Earth will be getting a three day weekend because it’s the Queen’s Birthday on June 1^st. The extra day off gives me more time to complete assignments for my classes. Canadians, however, get an extended weekend a week earlier for celebrating Queen Victoria Day.

On the world stage, I was shocked to hear & watch Canada’s Governor General Michelle Jean partake in the consumption of seal meat while touring the territory of Nunavut. Annually, 900,000 seals are clubbed to death in Northern Canada for food & clothing. As much as I respect the Inuit, they need to find another source of food. If I were Prime Minister, I’d replace clubbing with shooting, and slowly & continually reduce the maximum quota until it reaches zero.

Another shocking surprise to me is the ending of May – almost half of 2009 is already complete! The first decade of the 21^st century is nearing its end! I never thought it would get here so fast. So much has happened & yet it feels like not a lot of time has passed.

North Korea’s insane & stubborn 12 year-old-but-stuck-in-a-66-year-old-body dictator, Kim Jong Il, has got it in his head that if he dies, then his country will die with him. And so he orders his isolated Stalinist country to conduct another underground nuclear weapons test, and announce that they’ll no longer follow the terms to the 1953 truce with South Korea. I’ve always wondered if the situation in Korea would ever be resolved and right now it’s looking like there may be another Korean War.

And lastly, the university has recovered from a major computer network failure, which prevented me from posting a link to my latest CD review for CANTA Magazine. I reviewed Where I Was Born, the debut lounge album from NZ's own Rare Shot Blue.

Monsoon

It’s been raining, it’s been pouring, but I’m nowhere near snoring. For reasons that have yet to be discovered, I tend to sleep well when there’s a storm outside. The sun was out last weekend but this week has been nothing but grey, wet, & cold – Invercargill in October (or all year round I’m guessing). I'm still surprised that Christchurch is not under water after such a downpour. Apparently, it's supposed to clear up by Monday. I’ve had to switch over to my Avirex winter jacket when venturing out into the autumn bliss so that I don’t catch the rhinovirus (common cold) or swine flu. Hot food items such as hot chocolate, pizza, & pasta have become my best friends for the duration of the cold weather.

Aside from the crummy weather, the first week back at the College of Ed after teaching practice turned out quite well. It was great to see everyone back after nine weeks & we shared stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly during Professional Studies class. The main thing everyone wanted was Crisis Management Training, out of feelings of paranoia, and/or wanting to be prepared for the worst in the future. I spotted an ad in the NZ Education Gazette about an upcoming 4-day CPI training course this coming Monday, but researching the details proved disappointing because of prices ($645NZD for just one day; $1500NZD for 4!).

The Canadian midyear students (including myself) met with Mike Johnson, the director of CANTEACH, the program that made it possible for us to study here in Middle Earth. With only 4 weeks left, it was time to start thinking & practicing on how to best apply for teaching positions in NZ, and back in Ontario, Canada. (Mock interviews are practiced in Prof Studies). The Graduate Diploma in Teaching & Learning (Secondary) will certify us Canucks to teach in NZ, and the Canadian province of Ontario. If you wish to apply to a different province, Mike suggests to get into Ontario first, but to forget about British Columbia because of the insane amount of paperwork & requirements.

In short, to get certified anywhere, one must fill out a registration package, provide documents & evidence of your completed qualifications, and several hundreds of dollars for processing fees (filing). After the meeting, all I can say is one needs a degree in correctly filling out forms. Form filling . . . and lawyers are probably the main reasons why the world is in such a mess today.

Cadets is going steady with an upcoming lesson to teach on Monday about the role of the Engineers. In short, they build things then blow them up. The corps is currently studying the possibility of acquiring & renovating a portion of the Godley Head Defence Battery for future cadet exercises. Unfortunately, that portion does not include the bunkers, gun emplacements, and vacant armouries; those are publicly owned. (It would have been cool to recommission & rearm the battery so that cadets can train in coastal defence). But the barracks, officers mess, & community hall are not accessible to the public and in need of a touch up. All that's needed now are capital investments because the renovation costs are quite expensive.

It’s hard to believe that there’s just 4 weeks left in my course. The rainy weather makes it feel like I just arrived to begin my studies. In four weeks, I’ll be back in my Canadian homeland, resting up & taking several extra courses to strengthen my teaching qualifications. After that, I may be heading back to Middle Earth to begin teaching in 2010. Only time will tell.

End of TP2

And then there was none. May 15^th arrived faster than I thought, and just like that, my teaching practice at Villa Maria ended. The day before, myself & the other student teachers put together a special Morning Tea for the VM faculty as a way of saying ‘Thank You for putting up with us.’ Up for grabs were savouries, egg sandwiches, cherry tomatoes, biscuits (crackers), and chocolate cake. By the end of the lunch hour, everything was gone.

Counter to my hunch last week, I taught 11 lessons for my last week instead of 15. For Friday, my associates took over their classes because us student teachers needed to sort through everything & return any borrowed resources, such as textbooks, charts, and/or maps. As well, we were debriefed by the assistant principal, stating what we liked & disliked, and suggesting any needed improvements.

In my mind, Villa Maria is a well equipped school, with every classroom having a projector & computer, and the working environment is quite orderly. Of course, students will always get unruly on any day – it happens – you just have to cope and make sure they don’t burn down the classroom. My associates were quite helpful during my term but I could sense that they were a little annoyed that I had to use their laptops for some of my lessons because mine is obsolete.

As I observed my classes for the last time, the students were sad to hear that I was leaving them, but they applauded my teaching abilities & wished me all the best. I was even more surprised when one of my Year 11 classes presented me with a Thank You card. Unlike men, women enjoy given cards to people for any kind of occasion.

What makes NZ education system unique compared to North America is that it’s more activity based rather than content based. Confused? It means that students are to learn & understand the content through activities that promote self-discovery. My main weakness is that at times I still fall back on the old North American way of teaching, labelled as ‘chalk & talk’.

Where do I go from here? Well, back to the College of Education of course! For the next five weeks, it’ll be college lectures like before & then I’ll be finished. I’m already pondering on what my classmates will say when we all meet on Monday. It’s been 9 weeks since we were all together – there’ll be much to share. Come to think about it, it’s been 9 weeks since I last stepped onto the college campus – maybe the layout has changed?

Even though teaching practice has finished, it doesn’t mean that the flow of work has stopped as well. This weekend will be spent cleaning the flat, doing the laundry, and preparing for lectures on Monday. Rather than get a head start on Friday night, I just treated myself to Pure Blonde beer & partied with my flatmates. Ilam Village is always loud on Friday nights; thankfully I have earplugs.

Speaking of loudness, there’s some sort of a cult gathering happening above the small computer room where I’m writing this post. It may be hippies or a Christian student group but they certainly love banging a loud drum & chanting a chorus I can’t understand. Well, whatever, the laundry machines are calling.

And Then There Was One

It’s now the month of May, meaning the weather is getting colder & wetter. While Canada get sunny & hot, Middle Earth sinks deeper into a freezing winter. Luckily, by the time that happens, I’ll be on a plane back to Canada. The sixth week of teaching practice has ended with me teaching 10 lessons & being positively assessed by the College of Ed for the second time. I’m glad that I was assessed in my other Y11 HIST class because my Y10s are the rowdy bunch – must be something in the water.

Even though I have one week left to teach at Villa Maria, my associates won’t be letting me go that easily. It appears they won’t take back the reins of the classroom until I’m fully gone, meaning I’ll be teaching all my classes next week. That makes it 15 lessons! It’s hard to imagine how these experienced teachers can do all that every week & still go home alive. To stay ahead of the game, I’ve been spending more time after school go over everything twice, and received a crash course in efficient photocopying.

Like always, I’ve been paying attention to what’s been happening in the world & swine flu is still in the news. I’m glad to see my hometown moving ahead with plans to expand light rail transit (LRT) but I’m not impressed with the planned routes. I can’t understand why they’re putting so much emphasis on an east-west line when they should first expand the north-south line to the airport and into Hull, Quebec?

President Barack Obama celebrated his 100 days in office (very well managed in my mind), thus giving the biased, conservative news agency, Fox News, to unload an unlimited amount of ludicrous criticisms on him. It leaves me wondering how Americans can watch American news because when I try to watch Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC, my IQ drops several notches. The only credible news source in the USA right now is the Daily Show with John Stewart!

The only big stories down here are the recent police standoff in Napier, the murder retrial of David Bain, and the crisis in Fiji. Since I'm teaching my Y9s about forms of government, we'll be looking at the Fijian crisis & how the people's rights, especially of the media & journalists, are being denied by a self-centered military man who thinks he can do no harm. Sigh, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Um . . . I thought I would have more to write but I guess not. Aside from the wet weather, and busy school teaching, there’s not much else I can think of right now. Cadets is going steady; I taught the Basics how to tie several knots (Reef, Fisherman’s, & Figure 8) for bushcraft. For the next lesson, I’ll be getting them to tie the Clove Hitch & Bowline.

Hard, Hard Week

The first week back at Villa Maria after a two-week break was more than I expected. Lacking a personal laptop means devoting more time to preparing lessons because you now have to factor in the time to getting to an available computer. The climax of the week came on Friday when I taught three classes for the first three periods. In total, I taught 7 classes which doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re a heavy planner like me, making sure the lesson is covered from every angle, planning & teaching one lesson can be just as tough.

Thursday offered some warmth because it was a Professional Development (PD) Day. Rather than teach young students, the teaching faculty was treated to a presentation of how to implement the new curriculum into the classroom. The presentation was quite interesting, and high spirits were kept throughout the day with privately catered munchies. Long story short, the new curriculum can’t be taught the old way, not just via textbook with chalk & talk. In the age of the Internet & social networking, the way to teach is in a process of transformation meaning lessons now have to be fun & interactive. The old way is boring & obsolete.

By Friday evening, the whole Hinau block in Ilam Village decided to share my feelings of overworked by suffering three power failures over the course of four hours. I’m guessing students were cranking up their heaters to the max because of no insulation, thus sending the power grid into overdrive. When the power quit, students flooded outside to gaze at the stars, and publically voice their displeasures. ‘I suppose this is what life is like in North Korea,’ I quietly reflected, before dressing myself in the dark after having a hot shower.

On a musical side note, CANTA's latest magazine issue contains two CD reviews by yours truly: I was reviewing the latest releases from NZ groups Sola Rosa & State of Mind.

Two of my associates will be away during the first half of next week, leaving me to fend for myself at the time when the college will be stopping by to conduct its final assessment of my teaching potential. I should be fine if I budget my time wisely.

Swine flu seems to be the new fad these days, but with the paranoid reactions being taken by Mexican, American, Canadian, and other world governments, I’m guessing this sickness will be a one hit wonder like SARS back in 2003. There have been reported cases here in Middle Earth, even in Christchurch, but it hasn’t reached the point where everyone is walking around with face masks.

Back in Canada, my Liberal Party will be paying their respects to Stephane Dion, a Quebec politician who was the party’s leader from 2006-08. It’s somewhat odd to hear this dedication considering the party treated him as a subhuman. He was forced out of the leadership because he didn’t win the last election, and was replaced by Iggy, a man who claims to know so much about Canada that he spent the last 30 years overseas. It was either him or a singing nudist. Dion was not the lowest point of the party’s history, it was the party itself because they are out of touch with reality. Most of the blame goes to Quebec, who wouldn’t let go of Dion’s Clarity Act in 2000. The most Iggy will ever get is a minority government, despite his charismatic nature. Dion will return in the future because there’s no one else to lead the party. If I were Dion, I would have fought until the bitter end; it would have taken more than an army to boot me out.

Back to lesson planning.

Last Minute Preps

Just like the first, the second week of break has come & gone. In two days, I’ll be back at Villa Maria teaching history & social studies. I’ve been spending the remaining days doing last minute preparations and trying to get rid of this annoying cold I caught yesterday. I’m contemplating whether to get sushi or onion.

Through past experiences, I discovered that eating wasabi covered sushi is very good in clearing a blocked nose. Wasabi, aka ‘Japanese horseradish’ is a very strong spice, and it will burn a clear nasal path after you breathe in the strong scent after consumption. If wasabi is unavailable, like when I fell ill when studying in Ukraine in 2006, my host family made me breathe in the scent of onion through my nose. Hopefully, my cold will be vaporized by Monday because I have two classes to teach that day. It’s odd that in the early 21^st century there’s still no cure for the common cold.

Ben finally got his new computer, after waiting an extra two months, and driving it down from Nelson. Watching him play Grand Theft Auto IV got me thinking about my computer situation. It’s hard to plan lessons when you’re one & only laptop has called it quits and will only give you the Blue Screens of Death whenever you boot it up. Hopefully, I won’t have any troubles at the airports when flying back to Canada, because the security officials make you turn on your laptop to make sure it’s not a bomb. Scouring the Internet for the best deals on new laptops keeps me from listening to the angry voice in my head that wants to bash my old laptop for entertainment. It would make a nice vid for the BLOG, I might add.

My PC at home functions well, but it’s six years old, and I think it’s time for an upgrade. I’ll wait until Microsoft releases its latest operating system, Windows 7, because I don’t want to take a chance with Windows Vista. The cost for my dream PC stands at around $3000CAD, thanks to all the ultra powerful components I want it to have.

My American roommate, Ryan, came back from travelling all over with his American friends. The highpoint of his trip was when his Subaru car broke down in Auckland. Ever since buying it at a second hand auction, the Subaru has been nothing but trouble for him & his friends. It’s in the shops getting its engine fixed but if I were him, I would have abandoned it in Auckland or sold it.

As a Canadian, it was odd to see veterans selling poppies in public places in late April. Canadians only wear poppies for Remembrance Day on November 11th. Upon doing some research, it came to my attention that April 25th is ANZAC Day, where Australia & New Zealand honour the men of the Australian & New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli, Turkey during the First World War. Services are held at dawn and always include the lone bugler playing 'The Last Post' and 'Reveille'.

The Allied objective of the Gallipoli Campaign (25 April 1915 - 9 January 1916) was to capture the Ottoman capital of Istanbul and to secure a sea route to Russia. Turkey was allied with Germany & Austro-Hungary during WWI. The attack was poorly planned by the British & French, but would be carried out by confident Australians & New Zealanders who were eager to go into battle for the first time. Long story short: there were heavy casualties on both sides and in the end, the Turks reppelled Allied forces off the mountainous peninsula.

There’s not much else I can think of right now; my cold is giving me writer’s block. That’s it! Sushi time! Before I go, I’ll just say that I’ll be ready on Monday and I look forward to finishing the final three weeks of teaching practice. I just hope my diploma won’t be as big as my Piano ARCT certificate from Toronto.

Gone With The Wind

On paper it’s break time, but in practice it’s mostly the opposite. Teachers & future teachers may receive mandatory holidays & vacations but a large portion of that spare time is devoted to behind-the-scenes schoolwork like marking tests & assignments, and planning units & lessons. Having a two-week break is beneficial in that it’s possible devote time for R&R before continuing with research & planning. Truthfully, this past week has been mostly leaning towards the R&R side but I spliced in serious work whenever possible.

Since I’ll be briefly teaching the Year 9s about Rwanda, I rented Hotel Rwanda from Blockbuster to get a better mindset about the place. I won’t be showing them the movie because there’s no time for a film study but I’ll encourage them to see on their own time. Hotel Rwanda is set during the infamous 1994 genocide where 800,000 Tutsi were slaughtered by Hutu extremists in 100 days.

The genocide would have been happening during this time 15 years ago, while the Western & European powers didn’t care at all, refusing to support the UNAMIR mission, and only stepped in after the Tutsi rebels, the RPF, ousted the Hutus from power. It upsets me that the same is currently happening in the Sudanese Darfur region & little is being done.

The Belgians are to blame for creating the Hutu & Tutsi division via ethnic classification on identity cards in the mid-20^th century when Rwanda was ruled by the European power. The Tutsi were the elite & the Hutu were poor farmers.

The pendulum will be swinging to the other side for this week, and I may be spending many days at Villa Maria preparing my lessons. With this much focus on teaching practice, you tend to ignore the obvious & differences around you. Just yesterday, I noticed & remembered that the company handling Ilam’s elevators is called Schindler’s Lifts!

The flock of ducks that usually hang out in Ilam’s Quad Area have mysteriously disappeared. I’m guessing they decided to migrate somewhere else during the winter months. The weather has also changed into constant overcast, drenching Christchurch in a dome of white & grey gloom. It actually makes you feel like you’re living in a self-contained biosphere. Well, at least there’s some sun out today.

Lastly, I never thought this day would arrive so fast; it’s mid-April meaning I’ve beaten my previous record of 19 weeks living without the close assistance of my parents. My record is now 20 weeks & counting! I can still remember way, way back in the day when going to a sleep over or staying awake all night was a big deal. Well, when I journey back to Canada I’ll have to decide what to do first: go to Tim Horton’s, or get a shawarma?