Feeling a bit rusty…
Happy Monday, everyone.
Today is my first day back to work after Spring Break. In conjunction with the first day back, I’m also on my first day back after having had a student teacher for six weeks. I’m feeling really rusty, and hoping for the best. Please send your hopes and encouragement my way today, and I’ll hope that I make it through.
Good morning, from SFU
This is what it looks like when I arrived at SFU yesterday morning. I have to arrive, to mark exams, between 7:30 and 7:45 in the morning, as we start marking at 8:00. With the incredible weather we’re currently enjoying here in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, the sunrises are gorgeous.
Well, I guess you might have already guessed that.
Enjoy your Sunday!
WordPress Photo Challenge: Windows
WordPress’ photo challenge this week is “Windows“. I went hunting through old photos for windows and found all kinds of photos, but nothing really stood out until I found this one of the Academic Quadrangle at Simon Fraser University. I think this pretty much meets the challenge.
I included a few of my favorite quotations about windows. I hope you like it.
“A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them.”
“Never have more children than you have car windows.”
“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.”
A view of history
This is St. Ann’s Academy in Victoria, BC. During the reception for my brother-in-law’s wedding this weekend, I took the opportunity to shoot the area surrounding the Parkside Resort and Spa. Across the street from Parkside is St. Ann’s Academy. It’s been a lot of different things in the more than hundred years it’s been around, but one thing that’s not changed is the beauty of this old building.
We do not build buildings like this anymore.
We Day: Awesome!
We Day was so awesome that it almost deserves two or three exclamation marks. It won’t get the extra punctuation, as I am an English teacher and extraneous punctuation is unnecessary and a horrible sin against all things great about writing.
If you’re not familiar with We Day, you should look it up. There we 18000 students, aged 12 to 18, packed into Rogers Arena to hear amazing speakers like Michel Chikwanine and Mikhail Gorbachev and other speakers whose names did not start with “M”. Also, you should “like” it on Facebook. For every “like”, corporate sponsors add a dollar to the cause. One million “likes” equals one million dollars. Kind of cool.
More tomorrow.
No Photo: Sorry.
I had a great day today. We had Kate Whitfield in our school today talking to the girls and she met, after, with all of the girls in leadership to discuss how they could set the proverbial bar higher in our school for “girl-world” behavior. Then I hung out with my son tonight as we watched “How To Train Your Dragon” and for part of it, he let me run on the treadmill. I’ve been so busy that I’ve not gotten out to take any new photos and I feel like I’m rehashing stuff from way too long ago. I’m going to rectify that this weekend, starting tomorrow.
To recap:
1. Helped make my school a better place for the girls.
2. Hung out with son watching awesome animated movie.
3. Exercised.
4. No photo…yet.
p.s. If you’re a teacher and need someone to come in and discuss girl issues with your girls, there’s no one better to call than Kate. She’s awesome.
We’ll cross that bridge…
…when we get to it.
I feel as though most of my conversations in my profession end with that phrase. We so love our contingency plans. We love them so much that we sometimes forget that the worst case scenario rarely occurs. In fact, because of our increasingly litigious world, we’ve become insanely insular in the name of safety and insurance.
Maybe we should just cross those bridges when we get to them, rather than constantly planning for worst-case bridges.
Today was the first day of school…here’s the beach
I went back to work, officially, today. I’ve been in the school (I’m a teacher, btw) a few times already this year, for a 9th grade orientation that I run and to put some things together for the year, but today was the first day that all the students were in the school and classes kicked into gear.
So…I’m thinking of the beach. And how much I wish I was there.
It’s not that I don’t love my job. I do. I feel that teaching is my calling – it chose me as much as I chose it. It is an incredible profession and most days I can’t believe that I get paid to have this much fun. I do, however, wish that I was still on holidays, lazily enjoying the ocean breeze, desperately avoiding real life.
To that end, I present to you…driftwood. A friendly reminder that only seven hours away from work is a beach. A happy place, as it were.
Mind on the beach
Where I’m going to be in a week? At school, back at work for the next ten months.
Where I wish I was going in a week? Back to the sandy beach of the Oregon Coast.
I guess there’s always the lottery to make that come true. Or, another 21 years and then retirement.
C’mon lottery…
Bragging? No. Really.
Tomorrow morning, at 8:00, I’ll be welcoming up to 240 9th Grade students to my school. Along with forty-eight student leaders, I’ll be attempting to entertain and inspire these students to greatness in their first year of high school. It won’t be easy. It will be fun. I will pass out when it’s all over. This post ends now, because I have to go read the script you see above one more time. And probably again. And once more…
All is mostly well – here’s a new photograph
This is the ceiling of the Maggie Benston Center at Simon Fraser University. It houses the university’s bookstore, the Student Services center and a myriad of other student services. It is also where I’ll be marking exams again tomorrow. I’ve already marked for a day, but there’s at least two, maybe three days of marking left. The room in which I mark exams overlooks a large grassy area on which students lie around a suntan while I read the papers of a couple thousand students. I missed marking today (although, if I am completely honest, I didn’t miss it that much) due to a medical concern yesterday.
After nine hours in emergency, x-rays and blood tests, the doctor diagnosed a complication in my abdomen. After ruling out appendicitis and most likely ruling out a kidney stone, Doc decided that I’ve got a little (well, Large) intestine issue. So I’ll be eating a ton of fruit and drinking enough liquids to drown myself over the next couple of days and I’ll get it all sorted out.
Well, that was more personal than I meant it to be.
Line of thinking…do people think in lines?
There’s a line in a poem by Taylor Mali (I think the poem is “Train of Thought”) wherein the speaker ponders whether people who think in “trains of thought” aren’t lacking creativity. That people should be thinking in “dirigibles” and zeppelins. They can go anywhere, back, forth, up, down, where train of thought thinkers can only move forward or back at a relatively slow pace.
Now that the school year is finally over, I’m happy to say that my line of thinking is less line-like than ever.
On the other hand, I seem to be gleefully moving toward summer and I’d like that line to be as short as possible.
Street cred is wha…ahhh…I’m too tired for this.
I really am too tired. I’ve not taught a student this week and I’m more tired than ever. I’m currently moving my classroom from the third to first floor (at my request) and I’ve been moving the better part of twelve years of teaching around my school. And…ho-ley craaaaaap have I accumulated stuff. I’m using this as a time to cull the stuff I don’t use, but I still have to move it, whether I cull it or not. Yay! Now I know how Sisyphus felt.
Needless to say (so I won’t – haha), I’ve not had a great amount of time to take new photos. Above is a photo from last week’s graffiti photo-fest. I found this one buried among the other photos.
Being in the church building…
…makes you a believer as much as standing in your garage makes you a car.
This analogy works for a lot of buildings – going to school makes you a students as much as…going in to work makes you a worker as much as…working in a school makes you a teacher as much as…
But the appeal in this analogy to me is that who you are is a choice, not a geographical position. I think a great number of people I know believe that being in a place makes you something related to the place. This is not true. Not that being in a certain place is not inspirational, but there is a long way from inspiration to change.
Busy, busy, busy…sorry this is late.
I could make a bunch of jokes, like: ”I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place.” Or, “I’m leaving no stone unturned.” Or…actually, maybe that’s all I could come up with. I just got back in from my school’s awards night and I have ten hours before I have to be teaching again and I’ve had no time to take new photos.
Oh, and I am writing almost exclusively in run-on sentences now so forgive the lateness of this post and I hope to be remedying the situation shortly. Either that or I’ll have a nervous breakdown.
Yay!
Oh. The photo? It’s a big crack in a mountain in Manning Park.
How many people love a good teacher?
Davis Guggenheim, the speaker on stage here, was discussing his latest documentary film “Waiting for ‘Superman’” with 18000 high school students. That’s a pretty big number of people. I recently watched this film and my immediate reaction, as a Canadian teacher, was one of revulsion and disappointment. I see what’s happening to children, to young people whose future is outside of their control and jeopardized by adults – teachers, politicians, administrators, economists – who are thinking of themselves instead of those they are charged to protect, teach and help and it makes me feel queasy. Listening to Guggenheim last October made me feel at least somewhat encouraged that there are people who are seeing the horrors of the education system.
While visiting Vancouver for We Day, Guggenheim reminded the students that the reason they were there was because of good teachers and that good teachers would make the difference in the lives of students who would change the world. As a teacher in attendance, it felt pretty good. For a brief moment, me and the teachers in attendance were given an ovation that few of us will hear in our lives. 18000 people clapping, cheering for the good we’re doing is pretty amazing. Thanks, Mr. Guggenheim.
BTW, Photo Friday and WordPress’ Photo Challenge this week are met in this one post: “People” and “Numbers”.
A Canadian Hero
At Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, BC, there’s a bronze statue memorial for Terry Fox. He’s a Canadian hero. He decided that, while he had cancer and had already had a leg removed, he would run across Canada to show both that people with cancer could accomplish great things and raise awareness to the cause of research for a cure for cancer. Along the way he quietly ran into the hearts of millions of Canadians. He’s definitely one of my heroes.
Keep running, Terry.
I’m tired. Will you accept a Black and White photo of a mountain and marsh?
I had parent-teacher interviews tonight, and I’ve not been home all day, but I wanted to post this. It is absolute crap weather outside and at the rate we’re going it should be sunny sometime around October. Also, maybe I can get some solid sleep by then.
Anyway, I’m rambling and need to sleep.
Here’s the photo. Sleep well.
English Majors, unite!
Those of you who’ve read this blog before might have caught on to the fact that I’m a teacher, an educator. I’ve never really spelled out, I don’t think, what it is that I teach. I teach Student Leadership and English. In the area of Student Leadership part, I am a teacher of 55 dedicated students who meet at 7:00 in the morning twice a week to plan events for the other thousand students in my school. They plan dances, assemblies, pep rallies and lunchtime events like the human curling and crazy obstacle courses.
The other part of my job is spent teaching students to think critically, read critically, present knowledgeably, and write eloquently. This is not teaching students to read, but to read better. Not to write, but to write better. I am qualified to teach this subject because I have an English Major in my B.A. degree. All of that studying of literature when I was university has amounted to quite a nice little library of books in my classroom, all of which I have read.
I cannot say that I loved every one of these books – in fact, I kind of loathe a few of them. I have quite fond memories of most of them. Are there any in this photo that you liked? Or hated?
Hmm…where does this lead?
I’ve written quite a bit about Simon Fraser University over the past week. This will, in all likelihood, be the last SFU photo for a while. The thing about this photo is that I honestly do not know where it might lead. The reason for my lack of knowledge is twofold: 1. I’ve never walked to the end of this hallway. I’ve never had reason to. I’ve never been so overwhelmingly curious that I felt I had to. 2. I cannot reason out, in my puny mind, where it might lead. This is the basement of the Maggie Benson Building. The building itself, like most of SFU, is built into the side or slope of Burnaby Mountain. The building also has only so much space, and I’m pretty sure I’ve covered most of it, and yet this hallway seems to extend into what I can only predict is more workspace, but I don’t know. It seems, in my brain, to extend into part of the mountain, because I know that there are no classrooms that are that far out of the building. Perhaps this is a secret place, a special place. Perhaps it’s where they put you when you don’t pay your tuition.
Or, maybe my brain isn’t as spacial as I’d like to think it is. I guess I’ll have to wait to find out.
Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
The entire quotation is, in fact: ”Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.” It was written by Octavio Paz, a Mexican poet and writer. It stands out to me from a video I once saw of a poetry reading and interview with him, only years before his death. I remember it making an impact on me, specifically because there are those moments when, even when one is surrounded by others, one may feel completely alone. There are a couple of types of solitude, however.
There’s the kind of solitude that is not desired – think loneliness.
Then there is that solitude that is self-imposed, and even enjoyed. I found, over the past few days, a certain kind of enjoyable solitude. Those moments when there was no one to talk to, no one to ask for anything, no one needing anything. Just me.
In order to ensure this state of silence and solitude, I left my iPod at the hotel, my laptop behind and turned my Blackberry to “silent”. Unless I felt the need, I was alone. And what I found was that my thoughts have long been ignored. I don’t spend enough time by myself thinking, planning, brain-storming, relating, even plotting (not in a Pinky and the Brain kind of way). I want to fill my head and time with useless endeavors, with mental dead-ends, with noise so that I feel busy. I found myself figuring out ways to finance a Master’s Degree, appreciating the utilitarian, if not beautiful, architecture of SFU and thinking of what makes my children so amazing. In silence and solitude, I found many things I was ignoring.
Maybe we all need a bit of silence and solitude.
The AQ; or why SFU architecture is really cool
Okay. I know. Yesterday I wrote about how much I hate the depression caused by all the concrete on the SFU campus. But I am large enough to contain contradictions. But there are introductions to be made, so…here goes.
Everyone, this is the AQ. AQ, this is everyone. Well, not everyone, but a bunch of people who are nice enough to read my blog.
AQ stands for the Academic Quadrangle. On the left, you’ll notice there is some water. That water extends all along the west end of the AQ. In that water live a school (pun intended) of koi fish. Also, there are some chairs and a safety cone, but those are probably not supposed to be there. To the right is a bronze statue of Terry Fox, a Canadian hero. The two stories of the AQ you can see in this photo are classrooms. The all have a great view of the quadrangle itself, except for the corner classrooms, which have an outside view. What you can’t see are the two floors of classrooms, lecture halls, theaters and museums that are underground in roughly the same shape as the quadrangle you see here. It’s pretty cool.
One bit of personal trivia: you’re looking north toward the Education department, which is where I spent the summer of 1999 while attending class in my PDP year. Pretty cool, I know.
BTW, if you click on the photo above (a panorama made up of three individual frames) you’ll get a larger view that might add some details.
Where do these stairs go?
Sorry about the scrolling down.
These are stairs that exist in the back hallways at Simon Fraser University. I marked Provincial Exams there today (and yesterday and tomorrow and Tuesday). I marked 660 exams today and over 1000 over the last two days. It’s been fun.
What really has been fun is the Maggie Benson Center. We mark exams in three different rooms in this building and I’ve spent quite a number of days over the last 10 years marking exams here. What that means is that I’ve tried out as many back hallways as possible. Some are not accessible without a security pass, but quite a few allow anyone to wander around. I haven’t taken these stairs, but I think they come out near the student services area.
SFU is a big, concrete mass on the top of Burnaby Mountain, and was designed by Arthur Erickson. I love Erickson’s vision, in that he followed the contour of Burnaby Mountain with his designs. What I’m not sure I love is that it’s all grey. On the top of a mountain. In the Lower Mainland of BC. What that means is that it rains a lot, and even when it’s not, it’s cloudy a lot, and when you’re at the top of a mountain you’re often surrounded by clouds, even when everyone else is not. Let’s just say, it gets a little depressing up there.
But what the school has done is put in these splashes of safety yellow. On stairs. On railings. All over the place. Yellow explosions amongst the sea of grey.
Here’s a bunch of…uh…I don’t know. Lights?
If you saw this ahead of you at night, you would think it was:
a) a UFO driven by aliens who just finished off way too much Romulan ale.
b) a firefly on steroids or LSD.
c) one of those dudes who stands on a runway guiding planes in who recently filled a prescription for muscle relaxants.
d) a superhero chasing a supervillain with an LED flashlight strapped to his back.
e) write in your own answer…
