On time, scoria and politicians, all of which are (oddly) cheerful
Today started with a flurry, which always happens when I have a writing deadline the same day as teaching. The writing deadline was my History Girls post, which is all about time and seasons and inspired by yesterday's curious calendrical happening. You can find it here: http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/living-in-time-gillian-polack.html It was supposed to be published on 2 September and is dated 1 September because I forgot to check the UK time. This is the post exerting its inner irony.
Class today was just the least bit surreal. We were let in early, because of Pop-Up Cabinet happening elsewhere in the building. All the government bods there to support the Cabinet Meeting knew who we were and were hoping that Cabinet (ACT level, not national level, let me reassure those for whom these things are important) would drop in on us. I got to ask the usual questions and was given the usual answers. The usual answers are all variants of "I can't tell you that" and "I can't give an opinion on this." This is Canberra though, and I said "Of course you can't" and was able to determine which interpretation was the actual one and they were able to nod their heads cheerfully when I was correct, and so we were all quite fine. Nice people, too. Although it worried me just how much everyone seemed to know about me and about my class.
In the end, neither politicians nor press interrupted class. They were going to, but left it too late and were in the middle of a business session when we packed up. I'm assuming that at the end of the business session we would have been ascended upon (one can't descend up stairs, after all) and I don't know whether to be pleased or saddened that we missed out on Cabinet in Class. Three of my students got to hang out with the Chief Minister over coffee before class, though, when all the photographers were taking pictures at the downstairs cafe. My students assure me that they were the epitome of politeness.
As thanks for their good behaviour, we went a bit overtime. Word of the day turned into concept of the day as 'scoria' morphed into an analysis of volcanic activity and why Australia is a safer place to live in this regard than the Cascadia Subduction* Zone. We talked about rims of fire and Krakatoa (for one of my students is Indonesian) and all kinds of side-topics.
It's amazing how much knowledge one needs to teach creative writing. We went into the main different types of volcanic rock (although I was a bit broad, let me admit, and skipped over metamorphic rocks without anyone but me noticing), into how continents move, into why Indonesia has active volcanoes and Australia just has the potential off the Adelaide coast, over how this affects soil types and a whole lot more.
One student said at the end "I want another word. I want 'Vindaloo'."
"You're just hungry," said I. "Go get some lunch."
My big teaching feat of the day was finding a method to teach people to structure long pieces of prose when those people (for we have new students) have no experience in writing anything longer than a few sentences. The technique I taught everyone worked magically and now all my students are faced with having to write a long text. This means all my students are on the same page, even though some have been working with me for years and some just started in the last few weeks. One of the new students is very cheerful and thinks I'm delightfully funny. This was before we spent fifteen minutes on geology.
*Why does the word processing component of LJ want me to correct this to "Seduction'?
ETA: The History Girls post now has the right date. The miracles that modern blogging permit!
Class today was just the least bit surreal. We were let in early, because of Pop-Up Cabinet happening elsewhere in the building. All the government bods there to support the Cabinet Meeting knew who we were and were hoping that Cabinet (ACT level, not national level, let me reassure those for whom these things are important) would drop in on us. I got to ask the usual questions and was given the usual answers. The usual answers are all variants of "I can't tell you that" and "I can't give an opinion on this." This is Canberra though, and I said "Of course you can't" and was able to determine which interpretation was the actual one and they were able to nod their heads cheerfully when I was correct, and so we were all quite fine. Nice people, too. Although it worried me just how much everyone seemed to know about me and about my class.
In the end, neither politicians nor press interrupted class. They were going to, but left it too late and were in the middle of a business session when we packed up. I'm assuming that at the end of the business session we would have been ascended upon (one can't descend up stairs, after all) and I don't know whether to be pleased or saddened that we missed out on Cabinet in Class. Three of my students got to hang out with the Chief Minister over coffee before class, though, when all the photographers were taking pictures at the downstairs cafe. My students assure me that they were the epitome of politeness.
As thanks for their good behaviour, we went a bit overtime. Word of the day turned into concept of the day as 'scoria' morphed into an analysis of volcanic activity and why Australia is a safer place to live in this regard than the Cascadia Subduction* Zone. We talked about rims of fire and Krakatoa (for one of my students is Indonesian) and all kinds of side-topics.
It's amazing how much knowledge one needs to teach creative writing. We went into the main different types of volcanic rock (although I was a bit broad, let me admit, and skipped over metamorphic rocks without anyone but me noticing), into how continents move, into why Indonesia has active volcanoes and Australia just has the potential off the Adelaide coast, over how this affects soil types and a whole lot more.
One student said at the end "I want another word. I want 'Vindaloo'."
"You're just hungry," said I. "Go get some lunch."
My big teaching feat of the day was finding a method to teach people to structure long pieces of prose when those people (for we have new students) have no experience in writing anything longer than a few sentences. The technique I taught everyone worked magically and now all my students are faced with having to write a long text. This means all my students are on the same page, even though some have been working with me for years and some just started in the last few weeks. One of the new students is very cheerful and thinks I'm delightfully funny. This was before we spent fifteen minutes on geology.
*Why does the word processing component of LJ want me to correct this to "Seduction'?
ETA: The History Girls post now has the right date. The miracles that modern blogging permit!
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