THURSDAY, 10/16/14
Early morning departure and train ride for me. The weather is nice and I’m ready for a long day. My classes are early, and then I have to wait until 4:00 pm to meet with the Orchestra Club. It’s been a long time since our last rehearsal (3 weeks), and we need to get going again.
Students are bringing in their instruments to the classroom intermittently all day. After school, I’m waiting, and no one ever comes in. After 20 minutes, I walked downstairs and found the entire student body seated in the multi-purpose room listening to one of the school administrators. Eventually, four students stood up and read from prepared statements. It turns out that one of the students downloaded a porn picture and sent it to another student, who sent it out to a small group. One of the students in that group sent it out to a larger group, etc., etc. They were apologizing to everyone. They’ve been suspended for a week.
After the “shame” session, there was a college tour visit. It had been advertised as the “Linden College Tour”. I thought it was one school. It turns out that 24 colleges were part of the tour, organized by the Linden Company. Needless to say we didn’t have an Orchestra Club rehearsal.
FRIDAY, 10/17/14
BISS has a “Principals’ Pancake Breakfast” this morning. Judy had the Grade 5 students performing today. They did a great job. The “Pancake Breakfast” was a new activity for parents and a huge success. Lots of parents attended and everyone had a good time.
Judy’s working hard! Shannon, her principal, is standing against the wall in the background
My classes went well. At lunch, the principal came through and told us there was a meeting after school for all the foreign teachers. I probably could have gone on home, but decided to get ahead on lesson planning and stayed around. At the meeting, the foreign teachers (as opposed to the Chinese teachers) were given the info about the “shame” session and then there was discussion about some possible schedule changes related to the APEC Holiday. It’s going to be an interesting 2 weeks until the holiday. The schedule is adjusting daily, and will probably continue to shift.