Cross Country

The new camera in my phone, though liberating in how it opens any opportunity to being recorded visually, isn't really much good for photography per se. There just isn't enough detail and stability in a camera phone, even though it has 3.2 megapixels in it. The role of the pictures that camera phones take, I think, is for storytelling, and illustrations are just as legitimate a literary device as, for example, rhyme and rhythm.

So, today, the school had its cross-country meet, which didn't cross anything resembling a countryside at all, the route only winding around school. And it very nearly didn't happen, too - for the first time in a month, it actually rained in the morning this morning, and though I usually love raintime, dread quickly followed the thrill of surprise at waking up to the patter of raindrops, since if the run couldn't be done today, it would have been postponed to tomorrow, which would have unravelled all my lesson plans. I had planned to lose the two lessons I was scheduled to have today with 2L and 2N; but I cannot afford to lose the six lessons scheduled for tomorrow. Talk about planning yourself into a corner. In the military, this would be anathema. But given the restrictions of mark submission deadlines and the need to work with other people rather than dictate a schedule to them, this ninth-week cramming is regrettably unavoidable, I think.

It has been too long since I ran the last time, and though it certainly felt good to be going at something above strolling pace once again (and around the route that we used to run in Sec 1 and 2, no less!), I could feel the lack of training in the way the nausea tempered the exhilaration. Ah well - I'm still alive, and that's the important thing, I guess. And all the kids finished alive too, which a throwback from the Army days tells me is something to be relieved about.

Stayed back today, despite it being a half-day, to plan tomorrow's 2-hour lesson with L3, my new CSE class. It's pretty convoluted - each CSE student has a different designation for his different subject classes, on top of which his civics group (I guess you could call it that) has a designation too. And within a subject, the teachers are supposed to carve the class up into levels, like how you do interval training. Which gives rise to very complicated and tailored lessons. And coming up with something for them to do on a topic that I myself haven't grasped fully yet was a dodgy experience, to say the least. Every line on the worksheet was second- and third-guessed, and after a while I guess you could say that I was making the worksheet to teach me more than to teach the class about political philosophy. But the lesson will happen tomorrow no matter what, and I hope the planning pays off.

The staff room was really peaceful today, with almost everyone gone. I find that I am most productive when I am alone, although the satisfaction that comes from that kind of solitary work can't match up to seeing the product of that work interacting with real people. So it was a day of good work, but the fun effectively ended when the school was dismissed this morning. Tomorrow, in contrast, will be overwhelmingly social, ending off with, hopefully, an afternoon of free time, as the term draws to an end and I prepare to wind up all the classes' work for a fresh start two weeks later.