Sinner's Lament #CTST

I am officially a Territorian now: I have a Northern Territory drivers' licence and NT plates on my car. This makes me happy.

Students returned this week, and it was wonderful to actually teach again. I have a new group comprising two of my students from last year, some who have come up from the pre-intermediate class, and three brand new students. It's a nice mix, and I feel happy to have already fostered a relaxed learning environment. It's a good blend of personalities, and I'm looking forward to a fun and successful term.

After six days of monsoon, we saw the sun in Darwin on Thursday. That was nice, but the truth is I like the rain too, and the storms are impressive, albeit a tad destructive.

I had a dream the other morning, as I was oversleeping, through which I believe I had a word from God. This has happened to me before on a couple of occasions. The dream featured an overcrowded church in which I was the only one interested in worshiping God. The message: how can you hear me when there are so many other voices in your head. My desire is to live a life pleasing to God and beneficial to others. I need to focus on listening to the Voice of Truth, and filter out the noise.

Wondering why I called this post Sinner's Lament? What's the connection with the content? Sorry to disappoint, but there is no connection. As I write I am listening to the album Sinner's Lament by Brisbane based heavy metal band, Taberah.

I hope you had a wonderful week. I did.

Celebrate the Small Things: good-bye and good riddance

I'm going off a week early here, but that's because a secondary departure occurred which also pleased me. The primary departure will occur when my my current least favourite student, and arguably my least favourite student of all time, leaves.

I've had a real struggle with him over the six months he has been with me. The first day I met him, he explained that his grammar and spelling were not good, so I told him that we could fix that. He said 'No, we can't.' I knew, therefore, from the get go that he was going to be difficult, if not impossible, to teach. How do you teach unteachable people? How do you open closed minds? I have no idea.

Rather than bore you with the details, I'll save my X (student's name) stories for other occasions. Suffice to say, he has caused me angst and made my job difficult. A mostly negative influence on the class, a bigot and a self confessed misanthrope, he will not be missed. 

Secondary departure occurred when another student, who also possesses a poor attitude and is lazy, decided to transfer to another college to do another course. I desperately wanted to advise him to lose the attitude or he would bomb out of his next course as he did my course. However, as he only showed up for three hours this week (out of 20 required) to do his catch up assessments and exit test, I thought better of it.

My problem is that I care more about the education of my students than most of them do. I love my job and I am thankful for it. I am also thankful for my students-past, present and future, both good and bad. I am thankful that I care, and that after 11 years, I still care, and by the grace of God I have not grown weary in doing my best.

The challenge for me remains though; to love the unlovable. How do you deal with closed-minded and negative people, especially those with whom you spend a fair bit of time?

Celebrate the Small Things: Doors

We, meaning the company I work for, are about to move to new premises. This move has been about to happen since I started working with them last August. We are now on our third 'firm' move date. The delays have been due to red tape - what a surprise. As an example of the ridiculous fiefdoms being operated by certifiers, the whole front counter had to be moved 30cm in order to improve airflow. Speaking of air, the most recent postponement was caused by another certifier saying the air-conditioning system was not acceptable. It is currently being totally overhauled.

Despite the delays, I am excited about the move. Our boss took us all in to inspect the new place last week, and even though it's rough, and one of the classrooms is only two thirds painted for some reason, it will be a great improvement on what we have now. One of the reasons why it will be better is because there are doors.

Our current premises is two commercial units side by side without internal access. There are three spaces (not rooms) designated as classrooms, plus two other rooms (because they have doors) which are sometimes used for small classes.

Let's be clear, the two main classrooms are open, one to the office and adjacent to the photocopier, the other open to through traffic from one other space (no door) and one other room (door). If I haven't painted a clear enough picture of how unsuitable and inadequate the current arrangements are, then just let me say this: the current arrangements are unsuitable and inadequate.

During the week, I had a couple of small classes so I held them in my office which is a room (because it has a door). At one point there was a lot of noise coming from another space, or maybe a room with the door open, so guess what I did? I shut the door.

Being able to close the door and block most of the noise made me so excited, I interrupted my students and gave them a mini speech about the greatness of doors. I am so thankful for doors.

By the way, the new premises has five good-sized classrooms with doors. (Big smile)

Celebrate the small things: full attendance

Full attendance is my elusive dream: at the beginning of each new term, at the beginning of each new week, at the beginning of each new day, I hope that all of my students will show up to class. Sadly, I have had to abandon my other dream that they would all arrive on time and stay until the end. I now that will not happen - but full attendance is possible, and this week I came tantalizingly close.

Due to the rarity of full attendance, I had cause to celebrate 'almost' full attendance twice this week. On Thursday and Friday, only one student was missing.

I am happy to teach whoever shows up. I start the class on time for those who can be bothered to be punctual, and late comers, miss out or have to catch up. Half of the class normally leaves after the second break, but I keep teaching in the last session for the benefit of those who aren't full of excuses about why they can't stay for another forty minutes.

It is annoying and disruptive to have students roll in like browns cows, and/or not attend whole days at all with no good reason, but the students themselves are the ones most affected.

They have to do five assessments every week. Students who are absent have to do those catch up exams when they show up, which means that while they are doing catch up exams which test their knowledge of skills they were not in class to learn or practice, I am teaching new content to those who did show up and who did do the tests. It's a vicious circle for students with poor attendance. Not only do they not learn new content, but they are continually tested on content they don't know, because they don't come to class. or when they do, they are busy doing catch up tests.

Nearly achieving full attendance this week means that all students are now up to date with their assessments, and I was able to teach new content to all but one for two days in a row.

I actually care about how my students perform. I may even care more than some of them do. Full attendance is a little thing, but it makes me happy, so today I'm celebrating 'almost' full attendance and the renewed hope that one day soon, I may get 100%.