Tuesday, March 18, 2003

London Trip Recap I know I promised a couple of days ago to go into detail about the London trip last week, but to be honest, it's too long a story to sit down and type-out.  So I'll just hit a few highlights and let the pictures tell the story. First, some of the things I learned about my students on this trip: They like to sleep.  A lot.  Especially when something facinating is passing right outside the windows of the bus.  I never saw such a collective lack of energy as I saw on this trip.  The way I saw it, you can sleep when you're dead (or back home in Eagle Pass -- same thing).  When you're on the trip of a lifetime, you want to experience every moment of it. That as a group, they can behave tremendously.  I didn't have any serious problems with the nine students who went on the trip.  The other group leaders (we were matched with three other groups) had nothing but praise for my group.  I really am very proud of them and would jump at the opportunity to take them on another trip someday. That they don't mind cross-dressing.  Kevin and Joey had no problems whatsoever with wearing female clothing.  Their parents must be so proud. So many great things happened on the trip.  Seeing all the sights in person, rather than just seeing them in books or on websites, was well worth the costs to go.  Hell, even the ride from the airport was worth more to me than you'd think. My only complaints have to deal with the time we were given to do some of the things on the tour.  Oxford and Stratford on the last day were so rushed.  Having only an hour at Oxford was tragic.  Having only an hour and a half at Stratford was criminal.  If I ever do one of these tours again, I make sure that my group gets much more time in those places.  Also, if you have the chance to see Fame in London:  don't!!  The tour company substituted that at the last minute for The Reduced Shakespeare Company we were supposed to see as our first show.  It reached a level of suckiness unknown to me before that performance.  What kept me from running away screaming was the attractiveness of the female cast members.  If they hadn't been so damn sexy, I'd have been pounding back a few at the pub across the street.  On the other hand, The Woman in Black was surprisingly good.  The kids really enjoyed it, and I liked it more than I thought.  Definitely got some of the kids to jump out of their seats and scream.  I just wish we'd had better seats than the nose-bleeds we ended up with. I also saw Dance of Death  with Ian McKellen (aka Gandalf).  It was good, but dragged.  Plus some parts of the second act just plain lost me.  I need to read the play sometime and see if I'll enjoy it more on the written page rather than performed.  Sad thing for a play if that's true, though. So over all, it was a great trip that no one who went will soon forget.  I know there's one part I certainly will never forget.  It was when we got to Stratford-upon-Avon and I found out from the tour guide that we wouldn't be visiting Trinity church where William Shakespeare had been both baptized and buried.  The guide told me that if it meant so much to me, I could use the 45 minutes he was giving us for lunch and souviner shopping to run over to the church and back.  I was crushed, but decided that if I had to, I'd run over there and back alone.  So when I told my students this news, and offered to take them, I didn't really expect them to want to give up lunch and a chance to relax to literally run clear across town and back in just 45 minutes to see a church.  I even admitted to them that we might not be able to get inside, that it might be closed for all I knew.  I figured I was going alone.  Remember, these are the same kids who sleep nearly every chance they get. They all came with me. We walked as fast as we could, got to the church (which luckily was open to visitors) and spent maybe five minutes inside, looking at Shakespeare's grave and those of some of his family, and then quickly walked/ran back to the meeting place with just a few minutes to spare.  It was exhausting, and I'm not sure if anyone got a decent lunch, but I do know one thing:  I've never been prouder of a group of students as I was that day.  So, sorry I'm not going to post a day-by-day account, but I am still posting pictures to my smugmug gallery.  I'm also adding captions to each photo to explain what was going on.  I hope to have it complete sometime this week.  Feel free to leave any comments about those pictures in the gallery and thanks for your interest in this trip. 10:19:34 PM     |

Open House Tonight was my school's Open House.  That wonderful time of year where the parents can come out and visit their youngster's teachers and find out what the little hellion is up to.  This year's edition of the Open House was not as great as it has been in the past.  Normally I'd have in the neighborhood of fifty or so parents.  This year:  16.  Last semester's Open House was just as poor.  I had basically the same number. I'm not quite sure what to attribute that to.  Maybe other teachers are monopolizing the parents by taking too long with each one and creating a logjam outside their classrooms so that these parents do make it out to the far reaches of the campus where I'm located.  Maybe the students are convincing their parents that they don't really need to see me.  Maybe the parents just don't care.  I don't know. And as usual, the parents I did see tonight aren't the ones I really need to see.  Usually the parents who already know their kid is doing fine are the ones who come by.  I never, ever see the parents of the kid who only shows up to class when he couldn't get high that morning, or the parents of the kid who can't read and won't try to learn, or the parents of the kid who just seems to have given up on life in general.  Those parents might as well not exist.  Or maybe that's already true. So, that was my last Open House for the year.  Hope I gave the few parents who came out their money's worth. 9:09:44 PM     |

© Copyright 2005 Alex L. Mauldin.