Greg was enlisted today. I'm not worried for him; he certainly can take care of himself better than I could. But it is not an easy thing, the first night in a strange place with strange people, with the spectre of two years of more of the same ahead of you. I went in to Tekong with my eyes firmly and immovably set on the end of the experience, and I expect that for him it's the same thing. I only hope that the experience doesn't gnaw at his spirit too much, and leave him with less than he had when he went in this morning.
In school, spent the day preparing for next week, drawing up the materials for the new lessons, and clearing my schedule aggressively in preparation for the eighty-odd compositions that will come in (hopefully) on Monday. In this way, I find this teaching job to be remarkably similar in nature to my job in the Army; the impetus to do work comes mostly from the people under your charge, and when you see them working so hard and engaging themselves in the activity, you naturally want to live up to their potential. Teaching these guys is interesting every day precisely because I have to put in effort to keep up with them. Lessons don't go predictably, and therefore they go well.
I find it really heartening that these kids are responding so well to my self-indulgence. Every time I allow myself to bring in stuff that I like to be teaching materials, I'm imposing my tastes on them, and I daresay that it would be insane not to expect a certain level of rejection from them. But it has gone down surprisingly well so far - up to the point that I find myself bringing in new material nearly every day, and largely reading the resource files only so I know the workplan. It's no fun to teach using the very same materials I learnt with six years ago; but equally, it may not be fun for them to be taught using some rather esoteric and eccentric materials that I've been bringing in.
Next week, I'm gonna use Sigur Ros's music videos to teach one of the classes about descriptive writing, the rationale being that the luscious and sensual visuals in Sigur Ros music videos seem to me to be naturally begging to be turned into lyrical descriptive prose. And the music itself is also a good way to convey mood, and to provoke them into writing something with the aim of conveying an atmosphere or emotion to the reader. I'm using these two, seeing that they form a nice contrast with one another. Have a look:
Sigur Ros's Vaka
Sigur Ros's Glosoli
I mean, not only are the great music videos in and of themselves, but they are also good starting material for literary writing, aren't they? And it really does help that I love these videos personally; makes lessons something to look forward to.
And I guess it really is a way for me to pass on my own tastes. I imagine having children of my own would be something like this; the compelling blank slate, just waiting for someone or something to leave a lasting impression; or even an already-painted canvas, on which you can add one or two brush-strokes of your own, and so you wonder where you should apply the paint so that you can make the resulting pattern even more compelling. It's a legacy issue, I think, this compulsion to be remembered by other people so that you can reassure yourself that you matter in a real sense to other people besides yourself, and that whatever you were thinking, whatever that you remember of your past experiences, actually did happen and were not merely some fever dream.
And I guess it's also enhanced by the fact that I have no long-term professional obligations to the school. I've got no CCA responsibilities, and I'm technically untrained, which means that I generally don't get disturbed with extra supervisory work or stuff like that. And it also means that I feel more freedom to do whatever I like, because the May 10th time limit sets an upper boundary to the amount of damage I could conceivably do. And I can tell myself with a reasonable amount of confidence that whatever I do now is not driven by the prospect of promotion or commendation, and is based solely on what I think is worth the time to teach, and what I think the students are wanting to learn. So in that sense, it's a purer form of relationship I guess, with ulterior motives minimised, and more energy brought to bear on the important thing, which is to teach the kids, which is what every educationalist should be obsessing about, which seems like such an obvious point to me, but is so impractical to implement in the context of a politicised real-world workplace.
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Also, trying to find the time to continue the Directions project, though now that I'm actually working most of my writing effort is being channeled into the job. But it's coming along, and approaching the stage where I can start to proofread it. Hopefully it will be finished by this summer.
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