Body Protests Risk-taking

A few days back the Grade 9 students all gathered together to receive an inspirational introduction to our new unit ‘Poetry of Protest’. Being old hippies at heart, myself (old) and Jabiz (hippy) had agreed to sing a few of our favorite protest songs. I dug up an anti damming song and a Jackson Browne anti-war mongering song whilst Jabiz went for one by the master, Bob Dylan ‘The Times They are…’

Being a volunteer to role-model protest as well as  risk taking is one thing; doing it in a area of uncertain expertise is quite another. As yoonseok wrote afterwards – “i don’t like sing a song in front of people but they did sing in front of so many people maybe 80?” Of course there weren’t 80, more like 2000.

Was I nervous? Well, I’ve played the songs many times before (at home) and I’d brushed up on them over the weekend. I also took the precaution of a cheat sheet with lyrics and chords. And yet, as I drove back home on Monday morning to collect my forgotten guitar, my stomach began gurgling uncomfortably.

Bonnie wrote, “When they are ready for playing guiter they looks very nervous. I heard that some mistakes nevertheless it was nice”. And she was right about me. I did a lot of lyric explaining to put off the inevitable first strum. My mouth had gone dry even before I entered the classroom, my fingers felt like dead fish and my eyes inexplicably went out of focus so I could no longer see my cheat sheet. My stomach’s gurgles were moving dangerously. And then I charged, no – warbled into it…

Ning Ning was perhaps the most encouraging of my students when she wrote “… But still nice. The are three songs that they are shown to us, but I do not understand the meaning of the song. But it perhaps sounds like about protest.”

The thing I take away from the experience is how unexpectedly traumatized I was by the whole experience. I talk to students everyday, often whole grade levels. I know almost all of the Grade 9 students having taught them in the past. I like them, and I think they like me. So… what was the big deal?

And of course, the big deal is that it is risky putting an uncertain talent on display against an audience who know you and expect your best. Peers, let’s say, who know you well enough to accurately assess your level of success (or failure).

We put our students through this every week and it is not a nice feeling. This morning I have a group of Grade 10 students presenting a dialogue to their class of 11 students. Do they have a right to a fit of nerves? Last week, I would have said no, practice makes perfect; but after my weekend practices and subsequent un-nerving performance, I’ve had a change of heart.

Felicity and Creative Commons

Is this Felicity, the Muscovy duck? Of course she isn’t a Muscovy duck – they are a different color with a distinctly red bill. However, the name Felicity means ‘happiness’ and that cannot be denied. Perhaps I chose this image of Felicity on Creative Commons, because it gives me a feeling of happiness to know that I am no longer a conscienceless image thief who uses and fails to credit the photographic work of others. Perhaps I never even knew that what I was doing was wrong when I trawled Google images for photos that could be conveniently slipped into slide-shows without acknowledging the creative efforts of their creator. (It’s possible that I am also one of those people who visit the Rp 7000 DVD kiosks and get my kicks without giving anything back to the US movie industry.) Hopefully, the new me will felicitously frolic freely in the photographic pond of Creative Commons, ducking and diving into waters less murky than those of copyright infringement. Hopefully too, when I regress to the former habit of Google image searches, an IT Coach won’t be sitting beside me anymore making snide comments.

To be or not to be online?

imageby Metal Chris

With the increasing and seemingly unrelenting pressure to have an online identity that is perpetually available to communicate with family, close friends, colleagues, former colleagues, present or fondly remembered students, acquaintances of those students, colleagues not yet met, and random others, one could be forgiven, surely, for feeling somewhat overwhelmed.

No longer do we have the luxury of sending off a letter and waiting a goodly 4 weeks for a wordy and considered reply. No more do we have the shield of a shoddy postal service to excuse tardy replies to distant ones. If we can be got at, in milliseconds at random times, is there an expectation that our replies should be equally millisecondanal?

Do I bask in the glow of a bursting in-box or does it make me shudder? The answer is perhaps obvious. I like to take time with communication, quite a deal of time. Do friends  find my dawdling and delayed replies unworthy of the wait? Is it irritating to my sister that I still haven’t responded to her birthday wish on Facebook? I feel perhaps it is. I feel perhaps that being available in so many forums is uncomfortable for me – not that I am available of course, so long as I avoid them.

Will a blog expose me to more Facebook like attention – join this group! who likes this singer! save the beaver!Will it? I don’t know.

Suffering in Silence

It could be, as Jabiz suggested, that he is a very poor instructor, or I am a very poor student. Naturally, I hope it’s the former, but life experience tells me it’s probably the latter.

Looking back at major learning opportunities – surfing, skiing (water or snow), skating (ice or roller blading), rock climbing, golf, there have been few instant successes. I was reminded by this is 2004 when I tried water skiing for the first time. Somehow I had spent more than a dozen years convincing myself that I was an athletic guy – good at most sports and physical recreations. Maybe I had actually just subconsciously dropped all attempts at activities where I suspected I would not succeed. Whatever it was it got a big surprise when all of our social group took to skiing like ducks to ..er.. water; and yet I, again and again went face first into the water. After 90 minutes of abject, repeated failure to stay upright, I stumbled home, limbs aching and nursed my battered ego… and… recalled the long list of not meeting my apparently high standards.

I could tell about the next morning and allowing myself to be cajoled into returning to the planks and risking failure reinforcement. But let’s just ease into talking about blogging.

How many times have I not made a blog?