Day 82: Promise

Day 82 (25 Feb) New semester, new campus. Not a great day to be travelling but at least public transport to the city is preferable to driving in a car up the Bruce Highway. Well mostly, except for the bit where Translink's machine stopped working so I was fined for not touching off a machine I couldn't touch off, on, as it were. The rain depressions continue to hang around, and this one is particularly persistent. It has again prevented me from attending rehearsal. 

News, views and coffee again, at 6.12am

At 6.12am then, it was all about reading over the news, finding material that might be useful in the class. Coffee of course, and the newspaper and a bit of background radio current affairs. I do actually find the first lecture perhaps the most important in the course. It's the one time you have to convince students to keep coming to class over the next three months. Yet, many skip it thinking it doesn't matter and they turn up subsequently hoping they hadn't missed 'important'. We grizzle, but smile and continue anyway. They miss all the good jokes in the first lecture, I don't tell any after that. 

Anyway, a reasonable turnout considering the weather and an engaged group of students. Our South Bank experience is going to be a good one I think. 

With a new campus, there are new IT networks to discover, operate, log on...can I say, it all seemed to work. The old, pre-tech teacher in me spent much of the morning making back-up, hard copies of all I was supposed to throw up electronically on a screen. Good, old-fashioned handouts. Luckily!

All good, despite the rain, at 6.12pm

The technology that was in the room last Friday (checked) was not there today so...it was revert to the old ways. I think the day worked. The students were great, engaged. Good going since they'd had classes from earlier in the day. We had some laughs, we asked some challenging questions...we started asking ourselves about how we form our 'politics', our political views. It is three hours, a small group and we can be fairly relaxed about the format. We will all just be glad when the rain stops. 

At 6.12pm

So when I got home I was pleased to see this budding rose and the frangipanis outside. It's a tad cliched but really, over the next three months, we'll witness some real blossoming in classes and I, for one, can't wait to see that.