Nearly the weeknd - goody goody

Well, the week is nearly over and I shall not be sorry to see the end of the working bit of it. My year 9s were great today and very funny and the year 12 speeches were very entertaining ( a weird mix of stirring/emotional and nearly fall of my chair laughing). But I still have my dreaded year 11 class last thing this afternoon - yucky.

I seem to have the 'crazy' 201 English class this year, which is fine because I'm probably the crazy teacher. One student did an amazing speech on her father's death which needless to say was very emotional. She spoke about the things she did as a result - how she became depressed and sucidial, then tried to be a 'bad' girl and got into lots of trouble as a way of hiding her sadness. Her visual aid (it is a requirement that they have a visual aid for level 2 speeches) was a serious of cartoon drawings of facial expressions. It seemed like a cheesy idea - demonstrating how a person may look one way on the outisde but really they are feeling something else but she explained it very convincingly and it seemed sincere rather than tacky. I'm always impressed by people who can talk about really tough experiences they have had in a sincere way and without seeming to indulge in self-pity. The whole speech was very moving and a bit of a tear-jerker really. It was the second to last speech and it was followed by a rather cheeky young chap in my class. His speech was about himself and how he was going to change the world because he was going to recreate the Village People for the 21st century. It was hilarious - he even had a visual aid of himself dressed as one of the village people and had also photo-shopped himself and his friends into a picture of the Village People. Very funny.

I gave my Year 9 class a quick team quiz at form time with the senior peer leaders helping. They became very competitive and had a good time. Some of them actually have very good general knowledge - impressive.

In ESS (English and Social Studies) we had been looking at the census results and making predictions about the changes in NZ society over the next 50 or so years. Things were getting a bit boring what with all the bar graphs and pie charts (I'm not really a Social studies person and graphs aren't my thing - even Stem and Leaf graphs left me cold). I decided to SF my class up a bit. I got the class to start making future predictions about various things - technologies, education, environment etc. they then had to write a short story set in NZ 50 years in the future. Some of the students (especially some of the serious girls) felt that few things would change dramatically. The boys, however, went crazy-nuts with their predictions. Hover-craft rugby, and virtual reality sports and games. Many of the boys felt that schools and teachers would become obsolete* and that necessary knowledge would just be downloaded via brain chips or plugs**. Another common belief was that robots would be readily available to do all the crappy work and chores, freeing up more time for the VR games. One boy became very excited at the prospect of people not having to walk anymore or do anything, and that people would just become really fat and sit around all day. Another boy thought that through the wonders of genetic engineering people would get crazy animal parts like kangaroo legs and be able to jump everywhere. Weirdness.

* I faked looking sad at the prospect of becoming obsolete and not having to work anymore but then they reassured me that I didn't have to worry becuase I would be dead long before the 2050s! Hmmpphff! I said that I would only be 72 in 2050 and intended on living well into my 100s.

** The plugs would be at the back of the neck, like in the Matrix, and would also allow for awesome VR games.