Category: Teaching

Home
by Kimliatach

Daily

Almost three weeks back and Cobar is beginning to feel like home again. We have settled in and are currently expecting to spend the remainder of this year and the 2017 school year here.

Tutoring and teaching work has started trickling in and the projects are piling up. A class at the local state school for next year is looking like a promising prospect and there is no shortage of relief work available regardless.

The problem with leaving blogging even a few days, let alone however many months it has now been, is that every gap adds to the amount that needs told and makes the posting more daunting. I’ve had plenty of excuses for not posting but ultimately I use this blog to track my work and I have not, aside from a couple of small things I will share over coming days, been working.

That has changed, the posts are coming back.

I do after all have a lot to track.

Projects currently in the works:

Valley cards galore. I am really behind the curve on these. I’ve been experimenting with ways to improve my work flow a bit over the last week. Not much to show for it yet though.

Editing and sorting travel images. We have so many…

ben-udliad-peak

Near the top of Ben Udlaidh

liathach-peak

At the peak of Liathach the lower western peak beyond

Editing and posting a couple of short vlogs from travel. Including crossing the pinicles (a section of the Liathach walk part of which is just visible in the lower left of the image above)

Creating costume armour and weapons for the children’s Christmas presents to order.

Extending garden paths to use up the last remaining brick piles, making room for food gardens and giving joy to little boys.

Constructing more raised garden beds for food production. The Cobar tax on fresh food bites hard.

Getting the hens and tractor back from the farm. Surprisingly three of the four survived the winter. I had half expected a fox or snake to have taken them all.

T-shirt print image ideas x3.

Children’s books x3.

Polishing a giant fresnel lens.

Fencing the front yard. For child safety and so the hens will be able to free range more.

Re-creating my classroom charts and displays. I gave away most to peers in Brisbane and I may yet have a class of my own next year. Timelines, wordwall headings, behaviour charts all need recreated.

Trying to find a way to see some of the Great Barrier Reef over the Christmas break as it is N’s birthday wish.

Deciding how and where we will live post 2017. There are many possible options right now.

Getting fitter again.

Habitualising blogging again. See you tomorrow. 😛

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hail, Caesar
by Kimliatach

Such a silly film.

Self indulgent and self referential humour from the communist writers guilds ‘Shut the fuck up donny‘ moments to the momentus and gravitas and build up for the final soliliqy only to of course flippantly blow it off.

Honestly although it was a great visual spectacle it felt more cartoonish that cinematic. Like the Coens are ticking things off a bucket list, ‘Oh a golden age dance number’, ‘A Charlton Heston biblical’ oooh and some ‘Noire’.

I am pleased that the young actor widely tipped to be playing the young Han Solo in a forthcoming one off has some acting chopps. I don’t think he alone will ruin that particular film, but I hold no great expectations. Extraordinary talent on display by all of the cast. Only great actors can so comfortably and convincingly play bad actors. There are some splendid and enigmatic characters but no cohesion. It is as I say all a bit silly.

 

Daily & Creative

Next to nothing creative done today. Taught a 5/6 class, I’ve said before how much I like being relief. I get to show up for a day and be in many ways totally and completely different from the vast majority of other teacher they have ever dealt with. It is great fun, but deeply exhausting.

 

Racing Extinction
by Kimliatach

Watched ‘Racing Extinction‘ this evening.

It is a confronting and heart wrenching film. It is good for all that. Watch it.

Stylistically I had some issues with it, but I honestly don’t think I am the target audience. I’ve studied ecology and I know just how far up the proverbial creek we are if the Phytoplankton food chain collapses. That this threat is a real profound and present danger is something I and millions upon millions of others around the world have been doing our best to ignore for decades. I can’t ignore it anymore.

The pressure is on I am feeling a serious need to alter parts of my lifestyle and even more seriously parts of my pedagogy. I know about meat and methane and I am only now trying to cut our household consumption significantly. I know about flights and transport and as I have mentioned previously I plan to physically offset our adventures by planting and caring for the appropriate quantity of trees. I don’t think I can continue to sugar coat, brush off or play down the seriousness of climate change to school children. I am not saying here that I have in any way ever really sugar coated it. I’ve shown whole grades of year six students significant portions of  ‘There is no tomorrow‘ for goodness sake. Just that I have always been acutely aware that I don’t want to be sending little zealous climate nazis home to hassle their parents saying ‘Mr Lang says climate change is going to end the world’. What I am going to say instead I am putting some thought into because it can’t just be an impassioned rant. I want to communicate some of the urgency just how dangerous the game we have been playing is. But I do not want to give children nightmares or foster powerlessness, apathy and indifference.

 

The election is called and the prime minister didn’t even mention climate in his announcement speech.

Vote Compass is up.

I maintain that Vote compass should be as much a part of the Australian democratic tradition as the sausage sizzle. The latter of which I will miss by voting postal this year. This also marks only 7 days left to register to vote.

 Vote Compass 2016No surprises in my results.

Apathy Antidotes
by Kimliatach

I’ve shown this clip to a number of people lately. A couple of classes too, though I generally skip parts for them. I finally got around to grabbing a copy of the film itself this evening and I’ll follow up once I have had a chance to watch it.

I’ve been feeling a bit angry and powerless about the climate and government situation again this past week and I find this video and others like it are helpful antidotes to apathy.

It also helps that there are politicians who are not only well informed but do actually care.

It also helps that there are exciting, entertaining bloggers and vloggers out there who are capable of putting things into interesting perspectives.

It really helps to have an equally angry and passionate wife who is, even now writing scathing letters to local members.

Creative

In keeping with this post doing some work on my political posters this evening.

Gaming

I have quit Slither.io it sucked too much time the last few evenings. My best score was only 17 thousand+ and 4th on the leader table at the time. If I could see a few upgrades added to this little game, one would be the ability to emote even just two or three simple emotions. Another would be a kill counter tracking active user ID’s activity, who has killed you, who has been killed by you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Show Day
by Kimliatach

Two rather expensive and kind of socially required trips to the local show.

A rather impressive fire work display this evening.

Party preparations continue, paper mache this morning and honey joy’s baked this afternoon. Though I will need to make another bath of them tomorrow because ah yum…

Best in show. #chicken and clearly uncomfortable #duck highlights of the #Cobar show.

A photo posted by @liatach on


The boys rode expensive mini trains and L has his first ever show bag. L has been really getting into Gonoodle which is great.  Side effects include having had this mind worm stuck in my head all day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pW5_ZfAkt0

Link

Speaking of paper mache, I found this incredible paper mache dragon blog while looking for something today. I am pretty sure I had a book by him as a child, Gremlins, Gargoyles, Goblins or something.

A Run
by Kimliatach


Spent the afternoon completing online mind numbing mandatory trainings all built around some descendant of Adobe Shockwave player. All using a chuck by chunk page reveal that assumes a pretty mediocre reading speed. All of which could have been done by jumping straight to the assessment were it allowed. I am now certified for the NSW education departments own brands of WHS, Emergency first aid theory and Anaphylaxis management.

In part in inspired by the brilliant transformation N’s very old friend KT has undergone in recent years I finally got off my arse and went for my very first run in many years this morning. Oh my aching calves.

4 weeks to go…a good point to reflect ?! Thistimeican.wordpress.com

A photo posted by KT Ridge (@ktmems) on

 Creative

Very productive Skype business meeting with the games creator ate into painting time last night. Back to it this evening.

Link

Quite touched by this remembrance of T Pratchett: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/

Reading and Naps
by Kimliatach

Curriculum documents always make such somnambulic reading.

All but L had a lovely siesta and he contented himself with audiovisual entertainment care of ABC3.

Watched the only vaguely offensive ‘Hotel Transylvania‘ with the boys this evening. Not a memorable film, which apparently passed Bechdel but I blinked and missed it amidst the constant casual sexism.

A Good read on the origins of and problems with Neoliberalism. 

 

 

Mass
by Kimliatach

Attended my first mass today. Church is church, they sang some songs, children fidgeted and ritual cannibalism was practiced.

What struck me though, was why is it that Australian churches are so ugly?

Maybe I’ve been listening to too much De Botton but the construction and layout of a space is very important to how we treat it and how we feel within it. Australian churches are from my admittedly limited experience overwhelmingly ugly.  Resembling as they so often do, municipal amenities buildings with ‘modern’ pipe framed steeples, or fiberboard 70’s spaceships dropped from considerable height. I have been in a generous estimate maybe fifteen Australian churches in my life and maybe to or three times that many elsewhere in the world. Perhaps my visits have not been characteristic but they are my anecdotal experience.

The Church I was in today is a lovely red brick classical nave with white crenelated turrets and a vaulted wooden ceiling. But… everything within it was shabby, kitch and often fake. Clearly the church has in the past had a wealthy and active congregation. These days however the impression is of hastily completed repairs and half measures, dodgy AC units sitting out of plumb on walls whose paint is marred by the cord marks and paint chips left by the removal of the previous and the the sagging conduit lazily tacked on to provide power. The tacky and now probably half a century old electric votive candle stand. The mishmash of Christ imagery. Here a screen printed British medieval madonna and child on a one piece vac formed plastic frame and canvas. There are poorly painted three quarter scale plaster of Christ offering benediction luridly painted but for his alabaster skin in a manner that recalls the recreation of how the Greek classical sculptures may have looked. The signs of the cross hung at uneven spacing around the hall. The whole set dish cast in waxy green/grey resin. All of left me kind of saddened at the state the building has been allowed to wallow into. Where is the glory?

true-colors-of-greek-statues-peplos-kore

 

It is not fair to compare the local church with far more impressive European equivalents many centuries older than the local but I still found the whole experience underwhelming. Compounded no doubt by having to repeatedly shush impatient and bored seven year olds around me.

I am looking forward to some days back in the secular system in term two. As grateful as I am for the work I’ve had and the days I’ve already locked in at the catholic for next term. I am very clear that religious education is not my home.

Creative

A reminder that the game I am working on as well as some others from the mind of Jack will be available for playtesting this weekend at this event. 

No creative output so far today other than designing a new art activity off the cuff in class this morning.  The plan called for colouring pre-printed .jpg artifact ridden grey mandalas during religion time. I had students draw their own by tracing around the edges of interesting shaped objects within the classroom in black marker to make mostly radially symmetrical patterns which they then coloured in. Some pretty results though I didn’t think to take photos unfortunately.

 

 

Juvenile #truebug with great #pareidolia on its back. 10mm #hermiptera #insect #macro

A photo posted by @liatach on

Crafp
by Kimliatach

The school Easter hat parade was this morning. Some lovely homemade entries but ‘crafp’ was as ever with these things a dominant feature. store bought disposable plastic hats with glitter covered Styrofoam eggs, plastic paper shreddings and synthetic and plastic puff ball chickens abounded.

The ‘crafp’ life cycle:

CRAFP lifecycle

It has crept into art curriculums nation wide. Insidious easily assembleable craft with no skill development, no creativity, no artistic merit, just disposable shiny busywork. It is particularly prevalent in activities which require parental involvement because it is often sold directly to parents as an easy way of meeting the expectation of involvement.

Going to have to face the music and make some art tomorrow. Heading to bed early tonight.

Link

The only April 1st post that caused me to do a double take this year. 

Tue 29th
by Kimliatach

One of those days where every thing is stretched thin. Fighting infection in the cut on my left pointer knuckle. Kindergarten takes such enormous focus of attention. One client canceled due to illness at the last minute. Nine thirty at night and only just now beginning a post after which I can either go to bed, play or create.

I have managed to get a sketch card done most evening lately and so I am plodding away at the 44 evolutions deck. The Castle terrain card is taking enormous effort to make even small progress on but by little steps it progresses still. Haven’t touched my story book in more than a fortnight. Planning another path and some sawhorses outside, next big build will be a cubby to attatch our slide to. Likely also build on a quad bike crate. That project will take a while to come together though.

New tutoring clients lined up for later in the week which is good news. Two weeks of holidays approaching most understandably want a break, which combined with the lack of school work is will putting pressure on the finances. More costs cropping up at every turn too. We have to transfer registration of our car to NSW prior to departure an expensive and tiresome process including fresh blue and green slips as well as fresh and more expensive insurance.

Started listening to ‘The Art of Travel‘ which is quite lovely but not, at about the half way point, as entertaining as ‘Consolations‘. Caught up to episodes of Sense8 I’ve seen before and have slowed down on them, as extraordinary as remembered and a pleasure to see what I had missed. Looking forward to finding time to read the ‘Fight Club 2’ comics.

Keeping up on my professional readings on data which WESS crew will know I just love. This report is involved in a bit of the fuss in Australian education at the moment.

Adding a couple more photos to yesterdays epic, showing design details.