december 2, 2000. This is going to be short, because I have a bunch of web stuff to do, and I've already spent far too long on the computer already. I sat down at 4:30 to finish up some writing, and it's already 7 o'clock. I have about 60 assignments to mark this weekend, and I'm not leaving it for Sunday night. That way lies disaster. Deep breath. Yesterday my supervisor came in to see me teach a lesson. Again, it wasn't as nerve-wracking as I thought it would be. Once more I felt the huge painful knot in my gut in the moment before I opened my mouth & began, but once more it went away when I didn't pay attention to it. The class was somewhat between the angel class and the hell class of Thursday - there were a lot of kids, and they whispered to each other the whole way through. I bounced around the room like a pinball on tranquillizers, putting out classroom management fires around the room as they arose. The really gratifying thing was that some of the chronic talkers came on board halfway through, and I was able to keep their attention till the end. But the really un-gratifying thing was that none of the kids wanted to say anything about themselves, which was a crucial part of the first activity. They're all Grade 12 and convinced of their own coolness (as Zaphod Beeblebrox once said, 'baby I'm so cool that you could store a side of meat in me for a week.' That cool.) It's totally unlike teaching younger kids, who are all about telling you every thought that crosses their mind. One girl came up to me later and said that she would've talked about her hero, but she was positive that most of the people wouldn't know about the Dali Lama. (Heard from the class: "I thought that was a building.") Once again, some girls hadn't seen Star Wars, and used this as justification to give me a snotty looks throughout the class. But I had learned my lesson from the hell class: this time I integrated the two examples throughout, so very few people were left in the cold. It's a fun lesson and a fun idea (I think), and I was happy that they seemed to get it right away - or at least a lot quicker than their slightly younger counterparts. My only problem is that now that I've taught the lesson three times (four if you count the remedial session I gave a kid who'd been absent), I can't watch or read anything without thinking about Joseph Campbell's hero arc. Fucker. My supervisor seemed to think that it had gone reasonably well, although he wasn't the most enthusiastic person I've ever seen. He's coming in again on the day that I'm doing little parodies of Hamlet & Gatsby, so maybe that will impress him more. I dunno. In the grade 11 classes, I did a touchy-feely experiential exercise in the first ten minutes: because they had read The Outsider, I felt perfectly justified in playing "Killing An Arab" by the Cure and distributing lyrics (complete with head shot of Robert Smith.) It didn't go as well as I thought it would - quite a few were distracted by their assignments and some snickered through it as if I was trying to impress them. The only thing that redeemed the whole experience is that they knew exactly what the song was about even before they had the lyrics in front of them. And that I got to force 70 kids to listen to the Cure. (One kid asked, "is this your brother's band?" I told them last week that Nic was a drummer in a punk rock band and it's the only thing that seems to have stuck with them.) And then the most amazing thing happened in last period. At the beginning of the week, I had started to search out sources for my lesson on the 8th - I'm scheduled to begin teaching Fifth Business that day, but the kids have until the 11th to read it, so I've got a swing day. I had thought that I might show them a video, but the only one available is so boring that while I screened it, I found myself thinking of excuses to leave the living room. So I had another idea about parody and treatment, and I set about looking for sources. Unfortunately, the book that I need is out of the Acadia Library until halfway through January (and of course, they only have one copy. The phrase "jerkwater burg" comes to mind.) I spent a night scheming impossible solutions - would Dirk photocopy the pages & fax them to me? Could I get them transcribed somewhere? When Petra suggested an interlibrary loan, I felt like an idiot. So I checked, and there's about 8 copies available in the area. Bacon saved, I went about the week ready to tackle the library when my schedule cleared up. Fast forward to last period. I was sitting at the back of the room, marking the 60-odd papers on Joseph Campbell and Mordecai Richler, when I heard my co-operating teacher say, "I think Atwood is overrated." We have discussed this before; while he hates Atwood, I think she's okay. So I got to my feet, laughing. "What are you telling this poor boy?" I thundered ominously. I noticed that the student was The Boy With A Thorn In His Side, the one that's like a Smith's song come to life and the one I have a tiny secret non-professional crush on. And then I saw what he had in his hands. It was the book I needed. It had been nestled in the school library all this time, only to be discovered and brought to me by TBWATIHS as if I was living a version of the Grail myth. I was dumbfounded and I felt the wonderful euphoria one feels when reality outpaces the inner realm of wish generation. I was, in a phrase, giddy & stupid. But I still lived happily ever after. This has become surprisingly long after all. Oh, the joys of laptop procrastination.