nordeen...

I'm up, reading the news, and getting ready for the 'Great Nordeen' Ski race, a 36km race... luckily it's all downhill, er, except for the parts where it's not. It's not that I can't ski 36 km, it's just that it's too long for me to race well. So, time to suffer it up. I got my new aero haircut goin' though, minus the 4 pounds of afro (and big apologies to the woodowl who had nested up there), so i ought to be cranking.

For about, say 18 km.

Oh well. The conditions are as good as they can get, i should have the skis waxed for the right temperature, i took yesterday off, except for 30 minutes of biking, and that whole work thing, ya know, so it should be good.

In the interest of improving my classroom teaching, i gave a survey to my entire 52 person classroom. The results have conclusively proven that i'm 'too hard (30), too easy (2), awesome (5), a jerk (2) and that in the opinion of many students, 52 is too many for a classroom.'

That was useful. No actually it was. While the results demonstrate the usual things you'd expect about HS students (like 3% will hide behind anonimity to make jerk comments like it's the teachers fault for everything), it was worthwhile to learn that some kids, even high achievers, have a difficult time finding a way to express themselves: I'll probably repeat the experiment.

Of course, It's also clear that students want
1) an 'A'
2) entertainment
3) to do no work
4) to complain that the above teacher is too easy and a joke

if you are
1) hard
2) you are a jerk
3) and you should give easier assignments
and
4) go slower

I love to hear how kids complain about every possible educational situation. What can I take from this? Continue to refine my craft, work hard, etc. I think I found a few more hours to give. See, I'm putting in about 50-60 hours per week in the classroom and prep and grades, and another 10-18 hours per week as an unpaid coach. But if I stop eating, I can get 8 hours per week. Likewise, if I cut out bathing, thats another 3 hours. And finally, I'm going to cut my sleep to 2.5 hours per night.

eureka.

the amazing thing is how truly fun and exciting the job is.