The Moments I've Been Waiting For
WOHO! It's finally here - I've been waiting for at least 3 years for this! TULIP FESTIVAL!!I must be crazy! Yesterday afternoon, a bunch of us walked along the canal towards Dow's Lake where part of the Tulip Festival is held. It was a cloudy afternoon so it wasn't the most ideal time to be there and many of the tulips haven't opened yet but it was still a gorgeous sight - I was on such a high the whole time (my cheekbones were sort of sore when we left due to all that grinning).
I sort of expected more festival-ish atmosphere but I guess since it was 1- a weekday and 2- the 2nd day of the festival there wasn't too much of that. I'm planning to go back on either Monday or Tuesday to see if I can get some better shots. It's been so long since I've photographed flowers that I've forgotten how to use the settings! Anyways, I've posted a few of the more decent shots (as you can see).
The workshop finally finished on Thursday. We got out around 1:30 which was such a relief! That workshop was all about how we can create a community like atmosphere in our classrooms through something called "Tribes". It's a very big thing now in North America. I was a bit sceptical when I first started but I can see how it would work - although I'm not altogether convinced that it's THAT powerful. It's too hard to judge since I've no class to experiment on :P Anyhow, the only thing that drove me nuts was all those interactive whole group activities. I think one big thing was that the group was just too large. By the time we were on to person number 10, I was feeling like "OK HURRY IT UP ALREADY!!!!!!" (that's patience for ya! I don't think I'd be like this for children, just adults pretending to be kids :P)
This year, we had sooooo many "interactive activities" that are what our students would be doing (I mean, come'on, how old are we? As if we can't imagine what it would be like for the students??). If we had a presentation and the group wanted to make it interesting, they would throw in an "interactive activity". Bah humbug! It was all fun for people in Drama but maaan it was sometimes painful for me.
This reminds me of one particular day during phys ed where a group was going to teach us "hip hop". Gag me please. The memory still gives me goosebumbs. Anyhow, we were all forced to participate and there was quite a tense atmosphere in the class. We had to do a bunch of girating movements and shake this and that (SIGH). To make matters worse, they decided that they would divide the class into two. One group would perform for the other and vice versa. THEN, to be REALLY NASTY, they were going to VIDEO TAPE us!!!!!!!!!!!! !~@_)#(!@_)#(!@_#)(!@#(*& Have they not learned anything in teachers college - UH, HELLO, the concept of creating a safe learning environment is WHAT?!?!?!!? Anyhow, I was pretty pissed off when they announced that but still went through with it. Yes, half of you are laughing your heads off thinking of ME, JY, trying to hip hop dance. YA.. it wasn't a pretty sight and I do not care to say anymore :P
Well, that just brought down my mood! OK. Better stop being so negative :P
I'm really blogging right now because I'm procrastinating. I'm suppose to be reading my notes for my Spec Ed class so that I can make a posting online. Gah.. so much work! SO much reading, posting, reading .. and that's not including my assignments :( I hope I can keep up!!!
Back to work! Later People!
posted by jaryee @ 9:10 a.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home