The final school term of the year started this week, so this morning I was back in the classroom for face-to-face ethics teaching. We finally finished the “Drugs in Sport” topic last term, so today we got to start a new one, on Fate and Destiny. I had the full class of 15 students today. They were interested in the topic, but several times started talking about it over the top of each other rather than sticking to one at a time.
I actually arrived a little later than I would have liked, due to a combination of traffic issues and a queue at the school photocopier where I needed to make a couple of copies of some of the material to use as handouts. There’s this pair of intersections I have to drive through, where there are two traffic lights in close succession. They recently changed the road configuration to smooth through-traffic, at the cost of making it a bit harder to turn. Now you can be caught behind the near traffic light, with the far one ahead showing no turn and cars queued back behind the near light. Then the near light goes red while the far turning light goes green, and while you’re still stuck behind the near light, traffic feeds in from the intersection just in front of you and flows through the turning light ahead. Then the turning light goes red, and the near light goes green, but the entire section between the lights has filled with queued cars from the other feeder street, so you still can’t move! This can repeat 2 or 3 times before you eventually creep forward enough to get through the first light.
And then when I got to the school I needed to use the copier to make just 3 copies of material for my class. One copier was broken, and a teacher was using the other to make about 50 copies of stuff for her class. I stood there waiting, and then another teacher came up and asked if she could push in ahead of me, since the bell had just gone and she needed to rush to her class. Well, she’s a real teacher and I’m just there to do the volunteer ethics course, so I said sure, and then of course she made like 50 copies.
Fortunately the kids are pretty slow to get to the classroom that I teach in. I think they assemble first in some area way on the other side of the school, because none of them ever arrive until at least 5 minutes after the bell goes. I guess maybe they get some morning announcements as well.
Anyway, after that class I tried to get some work done at home, but I don’t know where the time went, because I didn’t get much done! I went for a long walk after lunch with my wife (her day off work) and Scully, over to the Italian bakery, where we got some biscotti for dessert tonight. I baked some focaccia bread, since we had run out of bread. And made a vegetable lentil soup for dinner before my three evening online classes.
It felt like I was always busy. Time to relax before bed!
New content today: