akuluk

whew!

staff meetings are da bomb! i've met someone! fiona isn't pregnant! i love when people romanticize the north!

man, i wish i'd had my camera at the ready just now. i looked out the living room window to see a plane landing, reflecting brilliant sunshine, flying right over the town with the mountains and fjord in the background. it would have been a perfectly composed, colourful picture. perfect for northern propaganda purposes. oh well.

by the way, everything from paragraph two is a lie. a big fat ugly one.

we're into planning for next year. I'm supposed to have my sealift order done by today... but then the deadline was pushed to next Thursday (thank god). staff meetings always increase my awareness of my own personal style. when i'm repeatedly interrupted, i remind myself not to interrupt. when someone talks at length about something that is irrelevant to most people in attendance, i think that maybe i shouldn't do the same thing. i'm actually pretty proud of this meeting. we got a lot accomplished, shared a lot of ideas, and decided to implement a whole bunch of things that I suggested. I know it's silly, but I like when my little ideas grow up and take form and actually become something. maybe that's why I teach.

I've been known to complain that as a teacher I don't create anything or produce anything. At best, I used to think I processed individuals to help them in life. But over five years in the classroom I've come to accept that people do benefit from being shown how to think, learn, decide, reason, and behave. And I've realized that I am creating something, no matter how intangible and ephemeral it might be; I'm creating an environment in which people can grow and develop. Put that on a t-shirt! A decade after denying that structure served a purpose or was in any way helpful, I've done a 180 - structure frees us up to ignore distractions. caveat: It has its place, and it needs to be a relevant, helpful structure.