mothwing | Entries tagged with ref

So, today's the last day of school! Free time, possibly even warm weather, and even free LJ kisses, oh my!

What more could I ask for. I've got my big cup of cappuccino and I'm absolutely not preparing any lessons right now.

And of course I managed to get sick, but I'm used to that once the stress is gone, so I'm starting my holidays sniffling and sneezing once more. I'm not really in the holiday mood yet because I'm going to work on my thesis in summer and get to house-sit in Hamburg rather than going away somewhere, but it'll still be nice to have some free time, finally.

Apart from working on my concept I'm translating something for the charity that my neighbour runs and I'm contemplating which PC game to buy. Although that means I'll have to upgrade my graphics card sometime soon, because mine has been increasingly wobbly lately.

But other than being sick, everything's FINE.

Current Mood: sick and relaxed

People.

I know that you're all super busy with all your lesson plans and stuff, and I know that most of you sit through their didactics seminars pretty much on autopilot, but I'd like to point out something.

"The boys should focus on Romeo and the girls on Juliet, because all girls can identify with lusting after the forbidden guy."

Think about this for more than five seconds and you'll see that this is a dumb task with a dumber explanation for its existence. It's factually wrong. This is not PC-ness gone wild, this is a factual error that you're making. I think we all agree about the fact that you shouldn't teach kids wrong things. So get a clue, teacher. Especially given the fact that you feel comfortable saying this to me shows such incredible levels of idiocy I don't even know where to start.

I know that you'll say that you can't pay attention to these things all of the time, because the vast majority of people are straight and ID as either of the two, but seriously, do you also not pay attention to misspelt words if students only get one letter wrong because the vast majority of letters in the word are fine?

I know that there is a reason why I'm made so damn uncomfortable by the fact that everybody loves Romeo and Juliet and other straight institutions so damn much, but really, people, there's a fucking limit.

57.

Lehrerzimmer, by Marcus Orths.
Grotesque German satire on schools after PISA, though it's closer to reality than one might assume, sadly. Trainee teacher Kranich arrives at his new school in Baden-Württemberg where the headmaster's draconic regime has caused the teachers to form a secret resistance. This very short novel is sadly too absurd to entertain on one end and too realistic to be funny on the other. The plot, much-lauded as Kafkaesque and Orwellian, is more of a collection of bizarre anecdotes loosely connected by a very short plot. I was disappointed.

56.

Föhn mich nicht zu, by Stephan Serin.
Another novel on the pains of being a trainee teacher in Germany. Some anecdotes are funny, at times the humour is extremely forced, and where it is forced, it's completely out of line and very crude, but the parts which aren't forced really are funny. There were several situations which I sadly immediately recognised and it makes sense that most of the trainees in my year purchased and read this book. Still, it has serious issues, like the fact that I think we're meawnt to sympathise with the narrator, but I am not about to sympathise with a trainee intent on rating the breasts of his students or telling them to work as a sex worker if they get their answers wrong.

Current Mood: busy

The endless amounts of white, fluffy snow! now that I get to enjoy it from inside)! Reading "A Child's Christmas in Wales" aloud three times must have worked some kind of charm.
Going to Ikea with N. and coming home with stuff we don't really need. Like this mirror and these covers. I'm thinking about this lamp, too, but I don't like the way you can see the lighbulb and I think I'm going to get a candle instead. Or this one, which is also pretty.
Föhn mich nicht zulooks like fun - pretty much all of this year's trainees have purchased this book which is apparently a humerous memoir of a bad trainee's exploits.
Looking forward to baking cookies tomorrow
The Horrible Histories series which can be found on YouTube. Have some Charles II:
This aritcle:
«The cultural genome: Google Books reveals traces of fame, censorship and changing languages»
Abstract: We constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain of "culturomics", focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000. We show how this approach can provide insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and historical epidemiology. "Culturomics" extends the boundaries of rigorous quantitative inquiry to a wide array of new phenomena spanning the social sciences and the humanities. Entertaining summary here.

Summary with brief overview here.

Current Mood: full

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Uton we hycgan hwær we ham agen, ond þonne geþencan hu we þider cumen

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Last day of school!

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January 2022

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