Hi there you lot. The first bit might sound like a moan but its really not and I am still grinning like a loony, just a bit of a mixed up loony... (what's new you say... yeah I know) but my head is spinning a bit (understatement of the year there... surprised I am not suffering from G force or warp 9 or whatever)
Well, I feel like I have been hit across the face with a cricket bat. In a good way, but am now reeling. I guess I have been locked up in a cupboard for ages and ages and it feels like they opened the door and said off you go... and I don't quite know what to do or where to go. I know it will come in time but I was thinking about Sunny saying we live in 2 worlds and I now feel that...Everyone is saying Oh great you don't have cancer anymore and I am going back to work and the 'normal world' where we are fit and well and don't think about time or stop to feel the grass or watch the clouds and then I still have to go to the other world of hospitals and waiting rooms and blood tests and GC every month and an operation in a few months even though they 'can't see the tumour.'.. so one day I am a patient, then fine, then patient, then fine then who knows as inbetween there will be the will it/won't it come back thing for a while and the operation to do and work and normal life to go back to and what the heck am I meant to do now, cos normal has gone and what is the new normal? Wow. I feel like a rabbit in the headlights... A lot to get my head round, so apologies if I say weird things... (I know, I know I say weird stuff all the time) weirder than normal (ha ha there's that word again...) Oh and if one more person says keep up the healthy stuff, no smoking and eating well and exercising etc etc cos you don't want it to come back... I will.... well ,you know. Cos I feel sooooo bleedin saintly and vice-less and I know it is good and it helps and all that.. but oh for goodness sake... can i still be naughty sometimes? just a little bit? please? But promise I will keep off the fags... :o)
And before you say anything... I know, I probably sound really ungrateful and why aren't I jumping from the ceiling screaming whoo hoo etc (which I am of course too) but as i have said before... cancer is headF**k however you look at it and at the moment, my head is well and truely f**ked... in a good way of course.... cos of course i wouldn't want it any other way... but phew.... So yes, I am the happiest person alive at that news but also... what do I now do?
So first on my list after this is go for a walk (good for you, stop it coming back boring boring hate walking, but also to feel the grass and watch the clouds oh and the pigs cos I can actually get as far as the pigs again whoo hoo- I'll tell you about that sometime, but lets just say my stamina has got just enough to get as far as the field with the pigs in behind my house... have to sit down with them for a while and get my breath back, but that's fun.. they make me laugh)
Anyway, that's the brain dumping out of the way... so as you all knew about the speech I had to give yesterday and gave me advice etc I thought the least I could do was show you what i wrote. I changed it a little as I spoke of course, but it is pretty much word for word.... and thanks to Steve. In honour of him having his op, (as well as being gorgeous in his sandals) I called it what he said... Hope you are ok Steve...
After wards they said that we get feedback on what we said. Hmmm wonder what they will say... and whether they will disapprove about the not doing facts etc, but you know what? I don't care and if they don't accept me, I don't care... Oh and another woman signed up from another school so it is 3 blokes and me and another woman (so might not be the one and only now, but one of the first still and she is nice... ) Oh and if I get on it, I get a student card hahahaha cos it is a university course run by Christchurch Cantebury... so a bit far from me to go and raid the Union bar, but tempting....
Anyway, here it is ...
Love Courage and Laughter
I have been teaching chemistry for 10 years. I try to work with the pupils through questions and wonder and discovery. We experiment, we wonder, we look at people and phenomena and theories. But theories are just that...theories. And if we are to produce the next generation of scientists, then we need to not stuff them full of facts and tell them they are facts and that they should learn them, but teach them wonder and how to question.... We would still be teaching Rutherford’s atomic planetary model is Bohr hadn’t come along and said, but what about....?
So, In theory this is what I do.
Sometimes, especially after 10 years it is easy to forget the wonder and the journey if you are in a rush and only have one lesson; rather than talk about the alchemists and their passion and secrecy and strivings and beliefs in nobility of metals and then try alchemy by trying to turn copper into silver ourselves in the lab... it is easy to think ‘Oh, they need to do displacement’. And tell them it is the reactivity series in action. ‘More reactive metals are displaced by less reactive metals in solution. You can illustrate this with copper and silver nitrate. Here look’ and then draw the equation on the board.
I have not done it often, but I have to admit I have done it. The rush to get the facts takes over from the wonder and the facts are needed for future study so we are endlessly told.
My experience...
On the 9th of March, I sat on a large throne. It was owned by a man called Damocles. He is King of a hospital these days and he told me I had cancer and it might kill me very soon or never kill me (or something in-between) and I would just have to sit on his throne and wait to see. He tied his sword above my head with the single thread and there it has dangled above my head for the last 6 months and it will do for the next 5 years at least. Yesterday I went to see him to find out whether the sword would fall there and then or have it left dangling for a bit longer. Seems yesterday, he decided to tie another thread onto it...
Now, time takes on a different meaning when you have that sword hanging by a thread and what is important does too. When the pupils leave this school, what will they remember? Will they remember the theory of displacement or will they remember the moment they went Wow! when we pretended to be alchemists and when they saw those first crystals of silver start to appear and glisten and shine? Will knowing the theory of displacement make them want to study chemistry further or become scientists or will the ‘wow’ live with them and make them want to study it and find out and ask questions? Will they remember the memories of sitting in a classroom writing facts or will they remember the day we went outside and stood in the grass and felt it between our toes and looked at the clouds and wondered and laughed? Which will stand them in good stead for what ever life throws at them?
I now value time. My last lesson might have been my last... not being morbid or maudlin, but it might well have been. What would I have wanted to leave them with? A question or a fact... Awe and wonder or a theory... So my teaching has changed. because in future, if pressed for time, rather than rush to the finish line and skip the journey and the question, we will stop at the beginning and finish with a question.
I hope you approve... if you don't and they don't, then I am really stuffed!
Champagne on ice for all of you today and the biggest hug to you all too....
Little My xxx
