Escaping the 'Garua'

I managed a number of lucid thoughts today and feel as though I am finally leaving the fog of this term behind. I still have another 40 Year 10 essays and 16 Year 12 passage analyses to provide feedback on for Monday, but I'll get there, and then I'll be able to frantically write a review for Scott before I get the two lots of Year 12 sacs and year 10 exams that I'll need to assess over the long weekend.

I rarely get sick enough for it to affect my day-to-day life, but losing my voice for over two weeks was the most frustrating experience. It was particularly frustrating because there was absolutely nothing that I could do to fix it. I got so sick of trying to talk that by the end of each school day I simply wasn't interested in having a conversation with anyone, everything centred on trying to preserve as much of my voice as possible for the next day, and that wasn't much fun, for me or my house mates! It's so nice to have it back, and this week even my upper register returned so I am able to sing again without my voice cracking.

I am feeling really good about the way that the new 'context' part of the Year 12 English course, 'The Imaginative Landscape' is panning out. It's been tough (as it always is this part of the year) trying to keep my kids from going off the deep end due to their huge sac load and upcoming Unit 3 exams, but they are producing some wonderful writing, even if some of them aren't quite prepared to admit it yet. I think that this new part of the course is far more rich and complex than 'writing for different purposes and audiences' has become over the past few years (at least when you compare what we have been doing at our school over the last few years, to what we are positioning the students to achieve this year). They are thinking deeply about some really interesting concepts, and this isn't just improving the depth of their writing, but is also allowing them to explore texts and make connections between their 'literary landscape' and 'societal landscape' in some really lovely ways. It's bringing the notion of 'the writer in their world' to life for them. It's been so nice to be able to talk to my students about their writing, and the concepts that they are making their own, and feel my mind stretch.


My Lit class is really breaking ground at the moment, too. In a class populated by musos, the beautiful Bel Canto is really working for them. Many of them are starting to capture the musical lyricism of the novel in their own writing on the text, and that is so, so gratifying. The pressure of teaching Year 12 Lit in a school with so many kids who just love it and want to be part of the class but where the pressure to achieve 'results' is never allowed to be forgotten has weighed on me more heavily than I was expecting at certain times this year. It has kept me awake at night on a number of occasions, when I should have been revelling in the conversations, the passion, the fact that I have this group of kids who look forward to being in the same room as me to talk intensely about Sophocles, or laugh about the muffin scene in Wilde, or sigh over the language of Patchett.

Year 12- starting fresh (100 words- 3)

Today, we had our first Year 12 English Teachers meeting for the year. It was long (new course means lots to talk about), and mostly positive, although my brain felt completely fried by the end of it. The transition into the new course is going to be very interesting, I think. The increased emphasis given to multiple readings and textual construction in the new study design will be quite challenging for some teachers, who do not already make this an explicit part of their teaching. There is plenty that I really like about the new course- this being one of them- as well as Area of Study 2- Creating and Presenting. In spite of the set text list and the incredibly frustrating fact that this component of the course will be assessed on the external exam (the area of study that it has replaced- writing for different purposes and audiences- wasn't really), there is still so much scope and so many rich possibilities. Our context (there are four to choose from) is 'The Imaginative Landscape' and I am already looking at landscapes and textual landscapes differently- simply because I am thinking about how I will approach this part of the course. It will be a different experience again once I get into it with my students.

Luckily, I have another day of planning tomorrow before the students return (I really need it). My Year 10's are starting off with 'The Truman Show' which I haven't taught before, and which I am very keen to approach 'differently' if I can. I am tossing around using the film to look at how writers/creators shape human experience into a narrative- how even the stories that we tell our friends are constructed around familiar notions of narrative. I am thinking about trying to get a lot of raw material together, and then getting students to work on editing the material into a tight little narrative. I am keen to use the webcams that we brought last year, too. Just haven't quite figured out the 'how' yet. Any ideas?