Author: Kimliatach

Book Tree
by Kimliatach

Up past my bedtime to post this having only just finished a couple of the tasks I set myself today.

The costume is built and all foam pieces have been given a plastidip undercoat. Time allowing through the week I’ll add some detail in acrylic before clear coating and calling build complete.

I also did a bit of carboard dumpster diving yesterday, for N’s photography, sheet mulching the ever recurring catheads in the garden and building and hanging a new classroom feature. My very own book tree. The leaves of this tree will be made from book report/reviews done by students throughout the year. It will make an interesting way to show participation in the premiers reading challenge later in the year as well.


Just finished putting the fiction leaf template together now. A variant for non fiction books will also be required. Students can earn in class XP by participating in such activities beyond the two I will require from everyone.

 

 

Tower of Octodad
by Kimliatach

Phase complete on the Sir Vader Armour, ready to paint tomorrow. Which is a huge relief. Way behind on progress vids I know. In time in time.

Changed the blogs theme while trying to figure out what has broken in its CSS. Working fine in the big three browsers but broken display and back end in my preferred Opera in the last week.

I’ve pent the last couple of evenings indulging in a little gaming care of the Freedom Bundley. In particular I’ve been entertaining L with a little ‘Octodad‘ which has ‘QWOP‘ levels of frustration and hilarity and challenging my reflexes with a bit of the ol’ FPS bullet hell ‘Tower of Guns‘ As in inane and wonderful as it sounds.

This spectacularly lame screenshot brought to you by an unwillingness to get drawn in while trying to write.

Politics has been stormy this week and my prediction of a loss of majority is looking more and more likely. But I don’t have energy for a rant.  This article (pay walled but available free as your first of the week, or in full text here) read over breakfast this morning  upset me. Not that it was in any way unexpected, suicides are the inevitable result of the robodebt policy. But it is just so fucking pointless, so completely unnecessary and to be putting so many people through this Brechtian horror show is just unforgivably ghastly.

NCI Training
by Kimliatach

I spent today in Nonviolent Crisis Intervention training. Which was illuminating and built well on a number of other training types I have received over the years. I honestly wish that training had been a mandatory part of my teaching education as it would have helped manage a number of situations I have been in over the past few years better. I have never yet needed the physical defense training and honestly the hold breaks taught are inferior to Aikido anyway. The strategies for deescalation of crisis situations, avoiding trauma and supporting and being supported by other staff are definitely useful though.

I’m working tonight on the planning task sheet for a daily short speeches program. Normalising presentations and public speaking in the classroom. I have been using the first ten minutes of the day as a time for a morning meditation. Shortened to five minutes at the beginning of this week, but as I am still not getting full participation I plan to revisit that program later in the year. Starting late next week I will instead use the precious first ten minutes allowing two students to do a one minute presentation in the morning each day for the three weeks it will take for everyone to have a go. For the first round topic we have drawn countries from a hat.

 

 

 

 

 

Valentines
by Kimliatach

The Interview with his Excellency Sir Peter Cosgrove went well.

He provided some rich and interesting answers for the students to the questions I listed yesterday. He favours leadership strategies based on inclusion and positive reinforcement (surely unusual in the military). Of the many medals which he has been awarded, he has an emotional attachment to the Soldiers Medal earned at the end of the Vietnam War for bringing his troop home alive and of course his inclusion in the Order of Australia.

He proffers the meat pie as a possible national dish.

I am exhausted and have brought work home with me, even though it is valentines day. But a rom com and some canoodling is sounding mighty tempting about now.

Worth sharing: Humble bundle have put together and extraordinary pack for a ‘Freedom Bundle’ Including matched contributions, proceeds to a variety of charities fighting the Trump admin Muslim ban.

https://www.humblebundle.com/freedom

 

 

 

Put Your Hand Up
by Kimliatach

Tons of laminating, data entry, a spot of printing and some wrestling with IT systems to allow our class tele-interview with the Governor General Sir Peter Cosgrove tomorrow.

My approved list of questions for the GG, chosen by the class with some additions by me and N:

What should Australia’s national dish be?
 
How often do you correspond with the Queen? Do you have to visit England often to do so?
 
What are your favourite fiction, biography and nonfiction books? (Audience is 10-12 Years old)
 
What did you want to be when you grew up as a child? Did you achieve that goal or what changed?
 
As a leader and manager of people, what techniques and strategies do you use to quickly get the measure of people?
 
As a leader do you have favoured techniques for quickly fostering group cohesion/unity?
 
What is the most interesting or enjoyable part of your job as Governor General?
 
Of the many medals you have earned, are there any that carry a particular emotional significance to you?
 
What is your morning ritual?​

Falling asleep in my seat and I’ve a maths sheet yet to modify.

I’ll leave off with this:

Which I heard played on Double J over the weekend and have had it stuck in my head since. And this lovely account of the writing process for ‘Arrival‘.

 

Planning cont.
by Kimliatach

Less creatively productive than I might have hoped this weekend. I did finish all my marking, accomplish a significant chunk of planning and create a number of resources. But I did not; put my new tools to work, finish L’s costume, or paint anything.

I also failed to run or workout, which is simply not good enough. Working on the second draft of my philosophy of teaching statement for school planning documents this evening.

 

 

 

Arrival
by Kimliatach

A very hot day in which the only sensible thing to do was hide in the aircon, build Lego and mark maths tests.

One of my best friends arrived in Melbourne from Germany overnight and we watched ‘Arrival‘ this evening.

On first impression it is a sublime film.

Tense, exciting, moving and clever.

Fittingly, I have read and enjoyed the Ted Chiang Story it is adapted from but didn’t make the connection until the credits.

More thoughts with time.

Week One
by Kimliatach

A long hot first week done. A big weekend of making ahead.


Heat, late bedtimes and marking have eaten a few nights in a row.

Today was swimming carnival day, fortunately for me I was on leftover duty at school not out in the thermonucular blaze of the midday sun. We wrote haiku eg.

Cobar summer heat

Sweat sticks my shirt to my back

The cold tap runs hot

We also made tessalation art, played tiddlywink golf and tried a out a Taylor Mali lesson called ‘Build a Better Metaphor’. My favourite result of this last was:

‘The huge watermelon of happiness’

 

 

Snake
by Kimliatach

In addition to a small terrarium I have yet to fill. I now have a large glass tank containing a roughly 1.3m long Southern Carpet Python called ‘Molasses’. He’s a beauty. Unfortunately I haven’t yet gotten a decent picture of him as he arrived in class at midday and meetings consumed my afternoon.

 


Witnessed a motley collection of children chasing a startled rabbit with every intention of catching it, killing it and taking it home for dinner. It got away, this time.

Marking yet to do.

A Good Day
by Kimliatach

Gone in a blur of first day activities, heat and paper. Week one, which is actually week three of the NSW school calendar begins.

This evening I moved and mucked out the hen house, modified the freshly 3dprinted Cardboard VR goggles to accommodate my phone and pulled a few hundred cat head seedlings out of the back yard, not even exaggerating. Everything else in our garden is half dead from the heat and alive only by effort of watering and yet every few days there is a fresh crop of catheads threatening to go to seed. The sheer quantity of seed in the soil and the germination and thriving growth given conditions is extraordinary. We are slowly sheet mulching the entire yard with cardboard and hay but in every nook and cranny, at every edge and in great swaths across every bit of open ground they reappear again and again. I am offended by their very existence as is N. All must die.

Also finally signed up to the local union for the frankly shocking cost of $550 for the year. I am proud to be a member of the federation but geez that stung.