What happens in Vegas...

I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom. ~ George S. Patton (died 21 December 1945)

Christmas is coming,

Rob is getting fat,

We're going skiing,

Then Vegas is where it's AT!

We're all booked in. We'll be skiing in Panorama over in BC for 3 days till the 25th. It will be nice to have a white Christmas up in the mountains. This will also be a foray into British Columbia. I'm told BC really stands for Bring Cash. Albertans find the rest of Canada expensive because of the Tax. Here's how tax works here: when you see something for sale in the shops, say at $10, it will ring up at the till as $10.60. That's because some years ago Canadians voted to have their GST and PST (Government Sales Tax and Provincial Sales Tax) made explicit. It can be a pain in the bum remembering that the price you see is not actually the price you pay, but you soon get used to it. Anyway, here in Alberta the Provincial government makes so much money from oil and mining operations they don't charge PST, but everywhere else does, so once we're in BC a $10 item costs $11.30 (6% GST + 7% PST) on top.

~

For all that stuff will be 7% more expensive I am really looking forward to skiing some new slopes now that I feel I have found my feet on the snow. The snow In BC is reputed to be bigger and fluffier, making it nicer to fall in and slower to ski on, both good things in my book.

~

Once we're back from Skiing we'll have a few days at home and skiing local hills before heading off to Las Vegas, Nevada on the 1st. We're staying at the Luxor, a giant 2500 room hotel built like a huge glass pyramid. It is truly a word famous hotel icon and somewhere I've seen in films like Oceans 11 and various Bond films, so it's going to be a treat to stay there. We hope to explore the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam while we're there, as well as strike it rich. I'm putting it all on red! (All $10!!)

~

Finally, it was nice to say 'Happy Christmas' to my TA this morning. We all had waffles and chocolate milk while they all told me how much better waffle day was with their regular teacher who they insist on as addressing as just 'Vandelaak' (said with no breaks). We get along well, but they do miss you Alison.

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it for himself.

Galileo Galilei

Two get ups left, almost the end of the longest stretch of work I've ever done. So, what have I learned on the far side of the world?



- Minus 10 is not as cold as I thought



- I enjoy working with older students. Will I miss it when I get home?



- I have really enjoyed the challenging subject matter. Maths at this level is just harder than I've been used to and it's refreshing to give those mental muscles a work out and find that they still function pretty well.



- In general, young people respond well to being given more responsibility for their own learning. I believe that you can lead a class to learning, but you cannot make them think. The more we do to make it easy and interesting for people to learn stuff they don't inherently care about, the more we will have to do to keep their interest. At some point you have to say "work or don't work, but choose what is important to you and live by that choice." At what age do we begin trusting people to make their own choices? How do we train them to choose well? Thoughts please.



- Ofsted culture and the perpetual cycle of observation in the UK; good thing bad thing? It's been nice and a bit odd to go through half a school year without being observed once. I believe British schools do a good job holding themselves accountable for high standards in teaching and learning. I believe you can judge a teacher by their results to some extent. I believe good management of a school, a staff and an individual teacher must start from an honest and informed position arrived at through detailed data analysis and lesson observation. The constant drive for improvement in standards has worked; things are getting better and young people are learning more. That being said, there is none of that here and it all seems to work fine. Teachers here are professionals who can be relied upon to do their job well and do not need micromanaging. Has the UK gone too far? Has Canada gone far enough? Is it simply the case that both systems work well within their own culture and there is no universal model of 'best practice'?

- The whole road system works best if we are all generous drivers. If we all let each other on and off roads everything flows smoothly and driving would be stress free and much more effective.

- Spending time with my wife is a joy, and she is so relaxed not being at work. It's nice to have dinner cooked for me and a smile to welcome me home.

- Working with older students: most of them are lovely, some of them get on my nerves. Pretty much in the same ratio as younger pupils at home. And grown ups in the real world. Most people are lovely, a minority are gits. I guess this starts early.

- Skiing is fun, and perseverance is well worth it.

- Chuck Norris facts are fun, and almost certainly true. Check out www.chucknorrisfacts.com My favorites:

Chuck Norris once kicked a horse in the head. That horse's descendants are now known as Giraffes

Chuck Norris CAN divide by zero

Chuck Norris CAN believe it's not butter

- Chocolate milk and root beer should be available in British restaurants, and there should be o shame in adults ordering them.

- Canadians think Aussies, Kiwis and all British people (including Geordie, Scots, Welsh etc) all sound the same.

-Canadians sound like Americans to me. Sorry, I still can't tell. Unless someone says "Moose" a lot or ends all of their sentences with "Eh?" Or they have a giant Canadian flag on their backpack.

- Alberta AAA beef is the best I have ever had. Period. They really care about their beef here. They have names for parts of a cow I had never heard of before.The pinnacle of Medium-Rare meaty goodness is a New York cut striploin. Which part of a cow this is I do not know, and how they all get butchered in New York is beyond me, but it is so good. Tasty, tender and still dark pink in the middle. I am moving towards the conclusion that when Ol' Blue Eyes sand with such passion about New York New York he meant the steak. Come fry with me...

I feel I maybe on the verge of descending into waffle, so I'll post this and wish you all a happy Christmas; who knows when I will get chance to post again. Fingers crossed we'll be skiing and going to Vegas over the hols. Be well, and God Bless, wherever you are.

liquid truth

The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it, seems to me the deepest root of all that is evil in the world. ~ Max Born

Question for today: if you could only drink 3 things the rest of your life, what would they be? (everyone can have water for free)

This evening here in Calgary: Cam said White wine, Red wine, Juice (orange if specification required); Jack said Coffee, White wine, Orange&Mango Juice; Vic said Baileys, Orange&Grapefruit Juice, Chocolate Fudge Brownie Frijj ;Rob said Coffee, Beer, White wine.

What are your three? Tell us and feel free to judge our choices...

(Cam and Jack are two Australians travelling the world on Summer Holiday over Christmas we met in Banff through a friend who are staying with us for a few days.)


BTW, skidooing was AWESOME and I finally think I have cracked the skiing. I got comfortably down tricky blues on Sunday. Then we said goodbye to some of our Australian friends who are finishing their year in Alberta and heading home at Christmas. Bye bye all, and we've really enjoyed meeting you. We'll see you in sunny Oz sometime soon...

Brief one

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. ~ Jane Austen (born December 16, 1775)

Off skidooing this weekend in Golden on Saturday, soaking in the Hot Springs at Banff Friday night and skiing on Sunday. We are truly lucky to have the time, money and opportunity to do all these fabulous things, and good friends to do them with too. Have a good weekend out there all of you.

R

Other people's lists...

For myself, I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use being anything else. ~ Winston Churchill

Way to go Winnie, that's my philosophy too, in a nutshell.

6 get-ups to go until Christmas hols, 77 get-ups done. That's 15 & a 1/2 weeks in a row. One small step for all you non-teachers, one giant leap for teacher-kind. Not only is it the longest I have worked in a row, it's the longest consecutive run without a sick day. Something in the air must agree with me, be it the lack of humidity, the altitude or the snow.

I hope you noticed the addition of my life's to-do list to the right. It's there to prompt though and invite suggestions. It got me thinking what my list would have looked like at school age; I never troubled myself to write it down. That got me asking the students in mt T.A. group and staff over the hall for one thing from their list, not necessarily the top thing. Here's what they said.

My T.A.

Will: become a Chemical Engineer

John: Play guitar in front of thousands of people

ChelseaB: Go on a roller coaster till she pukes

Jasmine: Go to the Bahamas

Nick: Play a superhero in a movie

DanielT: visit Africa

Kevin: Go skydiving

Cat: work a season as a lifeguard

Kathleen: go to the Olympics (preferably competing as a fencer, spectating will do)

Brittany: travel in Africa (preferably Egypt)

Matt: learn to play the drums

Khloe: Become a brain surgeon

Jack: revisit Japan where he was born so he can have some memories of the place

CheseaW: go back to South Africa where she was born

Zesty: become a psychologist and start a practice with Monica

Monica: become a psychologist and start a practice with Zesty

Natasha: own a yacht

DanielD: learn to surf

TonyC: Bungee jumping

Andrew: drive a Lamborghini

the staff

Mr Chen: Go to Brazil at Carnival time

Mr Chiachia: volunteer for a week or so in South America

DierdreP: Go to Egypt

CorinneA: Curl in the provincial finals

MarcoF: Visit Majegorie in Croatia, site of a vision of the Virgin Mary

RichardO: See Pink Floyd in Concert at Earl's Court including Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour

Roberta: Buy a property in BC to go to as an escape with family and friends

TriciaS: Have a family

BernieD: Build his own home

MarissaDS: Buy a red convertible Corvette, drive to the Shushwap and cruise down the lake to a friends house for beers

JohnW: See Monument valley at sunrise

Cheryl: Own a Dodge Ram, and a biggun too (a 2500 or 3500)

Megan: Own an old Violin, maybe even a Stradivarius

Frances: Kiss the Blarney Stone and meet Sean Connery

Peter: Kilimanjaro. Nuff said.

Mike: Paint a recognisable self-portrait

Some pupils:

Caitlin: win a soccer scholarship to University

Karlen: Play Basketball for the University of Calgary

Caitlain: Squirrell suit jumping in Japan

Fran: Start her own record label

Jeremy: Run his own Architecture firm

Kate: be a vet

Matt: be a cop

Kamil: visit New Zealand

A short paragraph in the hand is worth 2 in the bush

A paragraph should be like a lady's skirt: long enough to cover the essentials but short enough to keep it interesting.

Today's quote comes from a web-page of English proverbs. This one was new to me but I loved it. Seeing as I have little to report today this paragraph will be so short as to be virtually obscene.

Calgary's fabled Chinooks have yet to make an appearance since the snow first fell. I was reliably informed that every week or so the Blackfoot Snow-Eater would come and clear the roads and paths, but we are still sliding around. That prediction that this would be the coldest winter in 15 years in holding true. That said, today it would be no blessing as Vic has trekked off to Sunshine Village near Banff to go skiing with Marg and her sons. It'll be good to spend a last bit of time with some new friends before they disappear, good to go with someone a little more gung-ho than myself on the piste (although my confidence grows with steady steps) and good to just be out there enjoying herself. I get to spend the day watching grade 10s (15-16 years old) doing a trigonometry test and then tonight marking it. Oh, to be a Lady of Leisure...

Lists II

Not much to report today, just bits and bats. Only about -5 the last few days so not too cold, although 3 inches of snow once again brought native Calgarians to a standstill. Skiing was good, plenty of snow at Sunshine Village although I'm a little unsure skiing in too much powder, it's a whole new ballgame. Next weekend we're going ski-dooing, which should be nice. High speeds, little braking and vague steering. praise be for crash helmets. Also, Vicky's choir performance was well received in church this weekend. Well done V.

This last Sunday saw us burning DVDs of our last couple of months ready to post home for Christmas. See them soon at at theatre/lounge near you...

Secret Santa is in full swing here at school. I haven't done this for years and I am pleasantly surprised to find that I am more focused on the giving than the receiving. Maybe I am growing up. That said, my butter candy was a brilliant surprise treat and I thoroughly enjoyed it walking home. Thanks a lot, SS, whoever you are.

I am very excited to discover that the fabulous Counting Crows are releasing a new album soon called "Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings." Hurrah! Look forward to me boring many of you with how great it is just as soon as it comes out!

I'm working on a list of things I still want to do before I die. Not that I'm feeling morbid, I just saw someone else's list and it intrigued me. Suggestions please either as comments or emails to pobham@yahhoo.com.

I am also trying to post an interesting/amusing quote on each blog. Any ideas for those, please comment or email pobham@yahoo.com. Here's today's from W H Auden, who I am really enjoying at the mo...

Base words are uttered only by the base

And can for such at once be understood;

But noble platitudes — ah, there's a case

Where the most careful scrutiny is needed

To tell a voice that's genuinely good

From one that's base but merely has succeeded.

TGIF

Tonight sees St Francis host its annual Brown's Ball, so called because the school nickname is "The Browns." Letterheads read "St Francis; Home of the Browns" and the various sporting teams are all known as "The Browns." Of our 1600 students nearly 1000 will be in attendance tonight, on their very best behaviour and dressed up to the nines in all their finest regalia. I am assured it is always a grand event much enjoyed by everyone. Unlike the Grad Ball in June the Brown's Ball is open to students of all years, so grades 10, 11 and 12 will all be represented. There will be dancing, food and soft drinks, and I presume, heartache and joy in equal measure. Vic and I will be helping supervise tonight and I look forward to observing the mating rituals of the adolescent human making both tentative and confidant steps towards (hopefully) mature relationships. I wish them all the best of luck. I remember the whole process from my own distant youth and recall it as a tense, melodramatic agonising torment with much effort expended for little reward. If only there had been an effective manual of textbook a geek like me could have read up on to help. I guess we all learn by trial and error eventually.

Let the trials begin...


Tonight also sees Vic and I head off for our Friday pint. While not coming close to the homeliness and camra-approved beer quality of the Abbey Inn, Bramley, we have found a certain pubby-goodness at the Wild Rose brewery in Calgary, by the Farmers Market, so whenever we are in town on a Friday afternoon ( a rare event as we are off touring Alberta most weekends, it seems) we head down there for a swift beer and a relaxed start to the weekend. It puts a nice bookend to the working week and gets that weekend feeling started for real. They also wheel out a cask of real ale at four O'clock every Friday, a welcome break from the carbonated fizz I am grudgingly coming to like over here. After that we'll be Brown's Balling and then off to Canmore to go skiing at Sunshine Village this Saturday where they have had almost a meter of snow this week. Sunday morning sees Vic performing with the choir at church, so I'll be sure to blog again on Sunday to let you all know how it went.

Ciao for now,

R

Quote of the day:

If you think that education is expensive, try ignorance.
(Derek Bok)

How Gaye is that?

My TAs came in this morning while the music on the ipod was stil going. It happened to be 'Mercy Mercy Me' by Marvin Gaye, surely a classic of our times and from 'What's Going On,' a seminal album, still as fresh sounding as when I first heard it and regularly listed on things like '100 Albums you should own.' A was not expecting my TAs to all be huge Marvin Gaye fans, but I was surprised that NONE of them had ever heard of him. We spent 10 minutes checking out some hits and they seemed to like it, but they may of course have been tolerating their fuddy-duddy middle-of-the-road duffer of a teacher. What amused me was when I told them Marvin Gaye was shot by his father, one of them (no names here to protect the guilty) asked if his Dad shot him because he was Homophobic.

Then someone pointed out that his Dad was Gaye too, so that wouldn't make sense.

The original questioner couldn't work out how this could be true. Bless.


Quote of the week, on a t-shirt worn by one of my students:

School is there to prepare you for life,

which also sucks.

Frostbite, and how much my friends love my balls

These big negative temperatures confuse me. We rarely see the cold in the UK, in fact, the lowest temperature on the car thermometer last year was -3 degrees, so when I see numbers like -16 and -22 they are all the same to me: bloody cold. It makes it hard to tell when it's too cold to ski. Last weekend the went out and it was -16 Celsius. We were chilly, but it was entirely bearable. This weekend just gone we went back to Sunshine Village and after just one short green run of Strawberry lift both Vicky and Marg (another Aussie exchange chum) had got frostbite on the ends of their noses! It was bitter out and the snow was too compact. They hadn't had a big dump all week and I know how crabby that would make me. The slopes were not in good shape; rocky, icy and hard. I found it difficult to make the skis do everything I had learned from Terry the previous week. I'm looking forward to more snow later in the season, and we're limiting ourselves to skiing above -20 degrees. That might be tough as the papers are all saying we're set for the worst Canadian winter for 15 years. Bugger.

On a lighter note we had a lovely time on Sunday. Brent, Wendy and baby Natalie came to visit as well as Terrie and Wendell with their 2 rather older babies Jesse and Madeline (both in there teens now). It was nice to get a family atmosphere going and quite a challenge to cook enough pork meatballs for 9 adults. Still, they went down very well so I'll add that to the recipe book.

Off to catch the 20 bus home in the cold now. I'm glad of my moleskin trousers in weather like this, courtesy of Eddie Bauer. Shopping there I am now quite firmly in the middle of the road were I belong. Nice.