Shotgun blogging

Well, I haven't blogged in a couple of months so I thought I would sit down and write a few thoughts.

How is school?
School is good. I absolutely love my students. There are a mix of good and bad of course but I often find myself thinking what wonderful kids they are. We have been reading "Rules" in class on Fridays and have an aquarium with a few guppies. I was the organising teacher for our fall dance. I thought it went really well. One thing you have to get used to is the fact that people don't praise each other in Asia. Compliments are rare. A few other teachers thought it went well and I thought it did so I just have to be happy with that. The funny thing was that two weeks later I was emcee for the sports day and that was met with loads of compliments. I scratched my head a lot at that one. The dance was a much bigger affair than reading the placings of students in the 100m etc.

I struggle a lot with how the school is run. The last two years I worked at great schools in the states where they accepted all comers and were run efficiently. Here we have a two day admittance test and only take the best and brightest. The school is run in typical Malaysian style. That means someone comes running in with an 'important' task. You drop everything to do it only when you get it finished you find it wasn't that important. The real struggle is the amount of admin work teachers do. I have to update school folders for all my students, so the first week of school I spent 5 hours typing their biodata into a spread sheet. Now we are finishing our term and I had to write 187 1-2 sentence comments about each student I teach. I then had to write 19 more comments (one paragraph) for my homeroom students. I don't mind this but, for example, I listed an actual instance where a student gave up. The comment was edited to read 'gives up when the going gets tough'. I rarely get to focus on creating great lessons and really just try to tick off all the duties required of me in a week, doing none of them with excellence. Unfortunately I have a personal creed to do things with excellence. Dang those personal creeds!

I go back and forth almost daily on whether or not I'll teach here next year. I have always wanted to teach multiple years in a school but putting up with poor management makes me wonder if it is worth it.

Actually, I was offered a job in Texas in October. I say 'offered' but I was asked to apply which is about the same thing. I turned them down because I feel a duty to finish the year with my students here. However, last weekend I had a 'panic' attack. I was really missing my family and my former active life of running and bicycling etc. Here I work 11 hour days and don't have the support network (living with my parents) that allows me to be active. Again my sense of duty wouldn't allow me to email and see if the post was filled. But then a day will come and I will have some great interactions with students and I think "I'll never leave here." I suppose all teachers fight similar battles emotionally.

How is Malaysia?
I have always fought this problem that I have three distinct spheres: Oklahoma, Bellingham and Malaysia. I feel equally at home in all three. I love being back here. I am often taken aback when people ask me basic questions about Malaysia. I forget that I am very obviously NOT Malaysian. This time the weather has been wetter than any of the other years I have been here and it has been harder because I don't ride my motorbike in KL traffic in the rain, if possible.

Random Tidbits
I'm going to Korea over Christmas, something I've wanted to do for a long time. I'm very excited about it. I had planned on a trip to the Similan Islands in Thailand before that but I won't be making it because I have to take 5 students to a conference on leadership the weekend before I head to Korea. My school year will end on July 23 and I'm not sure what I'll do after that.

My computer hard drive crashed and I've been adding songs again. There are a few songs that I always get. I was thinking about that recently, how I always make sure they are a part of my music library. Some are (in no particular order):
Live--Lightning Crashes
Van Halen--Humans Being
Van Halen--Jump
Billy Joel--We didn't start the fire
Madonna--Vogue
Bruce Hornsby--Mandolin Rain
U2--With or Without You, Beautiful Day and Where the streets have no name
Smashing Pumpkins--Disarm, Tonight, Tonight, 1979 and Bullet with Butterfly Wings
Cranberries--Linger
Some newer ones that I just think of as entire albums
Coldplay--Viva la Vida
Parachute--Losing Sleep
Nickle Creek's first CD
Emmy Lou Harris Red Dirt Girl