Those who can't

There's an old saying:  "Those who can, do.  Those who can't, teach."

It's a terrible saying that is meant to insult teachers (particularly, I suppose, university and trade teachers).

I've often wondered, though, where does that leave the people who can't teach?  What do they do?

I had my first "proper" teaching day at prac today, and it sucked.  I was so terrible I even surprised myself - and, quite frankly, I usually expect to be terrible, so I'm not normally surprised to found out I am.

I was over prepared and underprepared at the same time (no mean feat), and I was also just plain awful.  I was boring.  I gave the students work that veered wildly between "too easy" and "too confusing".  I had no sense of where I was with the crowd, and I could see all the horrible things I was doing as I was doing them...  But couldn't catch myself.  I just kept grinding downhill, and taking those poor students with me.

There are two things about myself that I know to be equally true:
1.  I'm a frickin' genius.
2.  I'm the thickest of dunces.

When I'm in the zone, and on a role, you can't stop me.  I can solve any problem.  I can handle any situation.  I just sit there and say to myself "Well, Sharon, you're a frickin' genius, how do we make this better?" and a few minutes (heck, sometimes just a few seconds) of frenzied thinking reveals a solution that was worth the arrogance.  Sometimes I can come up with something instantly.  Sometimes I can say "leave it with me", and by the next day I'll have an answer that works.  I have this power.

But I also hit these points where all I can do is make mistakes and repeat them.  I'll say to myself, "well, Sharon, you're a frickin' genius, how do we make this better", and from deep inside something in me says "I got nothin'.  Just keep doing that thing that isn't working and hope it gets better."  When I'm a dunce, I'm a serious dunce.  I can't even read the situation, let alone handle it.  It may take me five years to realise what's actually going on. (No, seriously.  On more than one occasion I've had the "Oh, that's what she said" moments several years after the event).

And then I'm standing there, feeling completely useless while part of me screams "make it better!  Make it better!" and the rest of me screams back: "I don't know how!  I don't know how!"

I had a large portion of those moments when I was a high school teacher.  I'm having them again, now.

Yesterday, because I didn't have any classes in the morning, they got me to catalogue some resources for them.  I solved six problems before lunch.  Yesterday, I was a genius.

Today I was teaching, and I feel like I'm drowning in my own incompetence.

If this prac has taught me one thing, it's this:  I really like being a librarian.

Actually, I already knew that.  I just thought I might also like being an ESL teacher.  I think, now, I can safely say I don't like being any kind of teacher.  It makes me feel stupid and useless.

Maybe "those who can't teach should stop trying to kid themselves" should be the other part of that saying.

Other people's houses

As a homeless vagrant, I spend a lot of time in other people's houses.  Most of the time it's my mother's house, but I've been doing a bit of house-sitting of late, so I'm getting to experience the joy that is "The Homes of Others".

One of the joys of staying in other people's houses is the fact that other people put their stuff in weird places.  This is not usually a problem, unless you find you need it and then you can't find it.  There was one place I recently house-sat on two separate occasions.  The first time I spent days trying to find the matches before I gave up.  The second time I spent days trying to find batteries before giving up - but I managed to find the matches in the process.

At the moment I'm staying at my aunt's house with her two youngest "children" (both in their early 20s), in which she has kindly offered me shelter while I'm on prac in Brisbane and she's away at a conference.

Whenever I stay with family I'm always amazed by how different their homes are.  My mother's home and my grandmother's home were always very similar in things like the basic location of bits-and-bobs.  Yet, when I visit places belonging to my aunts and uncles, they have their bits and bobs in entirely different places.  I spend vast periods of time opening and closing draws thinking "surely, these people were raised by my grandmother, so it must be here somewhere?"

And things that are hardest to find are always the things you need in a hurry.

When you cut your finger on the edge of a jagged can, a few thoughts go through your head at the same time:  "Well, that seemed entirely unnecessary", "hey, I'm bleeding" and "when was my last tetanus shot" for example.  Very quickly, though, one thought takes prominence:  "I should probably clean this with disinfectant and put a dressing on it."

I'm sure my aunt must have disinfectant in the house somewhere.  I can't imagine her not having it.  She had three children and a large succession of pets, so I'm pretty sure infection control was something that would be on her radar.  Couldn't find it though.  I asked my cousin if he new where it was.  He searched for approximately 5 seconds and then declared they probably never had any.

I swear that man is going to die if he ever leaves home.  He lives in this house, so I occasionally ask him questions about things that are worth knowing (mostly to do with food preparation, sanitation or simply "where is the...").  Nine times out of ten he doesn't know - something I've chalked up to the fact that he's a "boy" who lives in a cave attached to the house and only comes out to eat food which has been prepared for him or take-away.  However, not knowing anything about the location of the first-aid stuff was a bit alarming.

As was the fact that he suggested I wouldn't need disinfectant anyway, as the human body is good at taking care of that sort of thing and I cut myself on a sterile can...

Really?  That's you're understanding of reality?  You think the human body just happily processes infections and tin-cans that have shopping-center detritus on the outside and food on the inside are sterile?  Forget dying in a motorcycling accident, my man; you are going to get gangrene.

A bit of updating

Practicum stuff so far:

I appear to have survived the first week.  I have to admit, I was actually concerned I wouldn't.  As I was preparing myself mentally for this prac, I was remembering all of the things that went horribly, horribly wrong back when I was a high school teacher, and starting to freak out a bit.

People usually laugh when I mention that I was a really bad teacher.  They think I'm making some sort of self-depreciating joke.  I am prone to self-depreciating jokes, but it's actually a bit of a ruse - I occasionally through in comments about my real faults, and let people think I'm joking so that I can feel I've given fair warning without actually making anyone wary.

Yet, it's true.  I was a really bad teacher.  I really didn't belong in a high school environment, and I failed a lot.  I fail a lot as a general rule, but when you are responsible for the academic development of 80-odd teenagers, stuffing things up takes on a whole new dimension.  Nobody holds you accountable quite like a teenager.

One of the reasons I left teaching was I honestly felt traumatised by just how badly my little failures blew out of proportion in that environment.  I had let myself forget how much I hated being in that situation until this prac came up.  Suddenly, I remembered I'm still a little bundle of stuff-ups, and can probably fail this thing six ways to Sunday.

I'm at my best when I can help, but I can't hurt.  In a teaching environment, I can hurt big-time.  It's not my happy place.

So far, it's been "not horrible".  I've learnt a lot from watching the teachers in that environment - both things I should do, and things I shouldn't do.  I'll probably talk about some of them over on the other blog.

One thing I had forgotten about the teaching environment, though, is how tiring it is.  You start earlier in the morning than normal people (getting to work ahead of the students to get some extra preparation in) and spend most of the day on your feat, and "on".  It's like being on stage for four hours straight.  And then there's several hours in the afternoon spent trying to prepare for the next day.  Add in the fact that I have to get up at 5am just to get out of the house in time to catch the bus...

I'm bone weary.  Ich bin müde.  Ma olen väga väsinud.  No matter how you say it, I'm so dang tired I can barely think coherently.

And I have an assignment due on Monday - as well as lesson plans for 15 hours worth of teaching.

It is helping to crystalise something, though - I think I'd rather support teachers than be one.

The Dragon

I have a plastic dragon on my desk at home.  It’s an expensive toy I saw in an expensive toyshop, and I liked the look of it, so I bought it.  It’s not one of those new-agey things that people get because dragons are so, like, spiritual, ya know?  It’s a genuine plastic toy. 

It’s the kind of thing you might buy if you were a six year old boy who wanted to play dragons and warriors (and had parents willing to buy the expensive stuff).  I also bought a centaur and a gryphon (with a birdman riding it!) at the same time, so it really is dragons-and-monsters type stuff.

I bought it partly because I’ve always loved the kinds of toys they make for six-year-old boys*, and partly because it’s beautiful.  It’s just a glorious model.  Whoever sculpted the original just did a lovely job.  It’s so wonderfully detailed. 

You can see webbing in the skin of the wings, the tongues (two heads) are ever-so-subtly forked and there are various patterns of scaling in different parts of the body.  There are slightly different horns on each of the heads (intentionally so – not from lack of attention) and the musculature in the arms and legs is anatomically sound.  It’s also quite well weighted and balanced.

The paint has been applied by hand by someone who (although no doubt following a chart as he or she painted several hundred identical dragons) payed attention to shade and detailing.  It’s not perfect, but it also isn’t slap-dash and careless.  And whoever designed the details of the paint work did a great job.

The toy is a mass-produced plastic figure pumped out of some factory in China, but it is well designed and well executed.  It’s lovely.  The design and detail on the centaur and gryphon are also very well done, but this dragon is a thing of great beauty.  And yet, so many people would probably just see “plastic toy dragon” and assume it was therefor ineligible to be “art”.

We often dismiss things just because they are mass produced, or made for an audience we don’t want to be associated with or don’t respect (like children).  We fail to see the beauty and the art that went into the original design.  I have yet to see a “proper” sculpture that could top this dragon for attention to detail and depth of imagination.  A lot of figurines are like that, though – they are wonderful sculptures in miniature, and we just don’t see the art through the plastic.

So here’s to the artists behind the toys:  occasionally, someone notices how good your work is, and they are amazed (and hats off in particular to whoever designed the two-headed dragon in Papo’s 2005 toy line – you rock).

*Admit it - they have the coolest toys.

A short workout

So, this is something new I've been doing lately (not starting sentences with "so", even though the word doesn't belong there - I've been doing that for ages):

20-25 minute running work-out.

It's something I picked up from one of the trail running magazines I buy, and it had something to do with fitting in a work-out in your lunch break.  So far I haven't even tried to fit it in my lunch break (dude, I live in the Tropics; lunch time is seriously hot), but I sometimes throw it in for a morning or afternoon run if I only have a short time.

You have a five minute session, which you repeat four or five times depending on how much time you have:

• First 2 minutes brisk walk/slow jog
• Next 2 minutes normal run
• Last minute run like a crazy person.

Now, the "crazy person" bit involves jumping randomly from path to grass to road - dodging between trees, suddenly bursting into a gallop then going back to a sprint... running like you're being chased for a few seconds and then running like you're trying to leap over obstacles...  I tried skipping at one point, but found it easier to add leaping to my running stride rather than shift from running to skipping.

Then your watch beeps at you to tell you the minute's up, and you're back to the top of the 5 min with the brisk walk again.

Yes, it's basically a mini fartlek (and then a mini fartlek within the mini fartlek), but after 25 minutes you feel like you've done some exercise, so that's all right.

And I think my 16 year old me just said "you do what now?"

She would probably be more alarmed about the fact that I buy more than one running magazine than the fact that I actually try running workouts.

Running.  Never thought it would end up being my thing, but it's one of my favourite activities if I can find the time.

I'm not very good at it, but there's plenty of time.  Apparently (according to my magazines), if you start running in your 30s you end up getting quite decent at it in your 40s and 50s.

Something to look forward to.

Pharmacy or Kebab?

And now, time to play everyone's favourite gameshow:  Pharmacy or Kebab?

So, is this a pharmacist or a kebab seller?

Wii is a stupid name

So, I have recently decided it's time I became a gamer.  I've been thinking about it ever since I was a kid and my mother wouldn't let me have an Atari.

It's been a long time coming, but I'm a late adopter.  I bought a netbook just after tablets took off.  I recently bought a DVD recorder, now that most devices record directly to USB (I really wanted another VCR, but they stopped making those).  I'll probably buy an iPad 2 soon...

So, in keeping with my inability to commit to knew technology, I've just bought a Wii.

Yes, that's right, a Wii.  None of your fancy-pants Wii U thingy-whatsits for me.

I ordered it online because they've stopped stocking the bundle I want in my local shops, so I haven't actually got it in my physical possession just yet.  All in good time.

I really like buying stuff online because I can't have it instantly.  There's something wonderful about expecting things, rather than just having stuff.  It makes mail interesting.  It does make me sad about not using my local shops, but I'd order stuff from them if they had better web sites.  But I digress.

I have actually been avoiding buying a Wii for many years now, because Wii is a stupid name.  I probably would have jumped much sooner if they'd stuck with "GameCube".

It's still a stupid name, but it's also less than half the price of a Playstation3 - and if I'm going to buy a seventh generation consol just as all the eighth generation stuff comes out, I'm darn-well going to buy a cheap one.

I actually want a Playstation for the playing blueray-DVDs-etc capabilities, but I can't be bothered getting a PS3 now and I'm going to wait until the PS4s have been around for a bit before I get one of those.

By then I'll probably been a confirmed Nintendo kid and never switch.  Do you know Nintendo used to make playing cards back in the 1800's?  That pleases me greatly, for some reason.

They also owned a chain of "love hotels" in the 60's, but I digress...