A small world - we happened to be in Chiang Mai the same weekend as Luis's child friend, Andy and her Mum and met them for a lovely dinner after an afternoon at the pool. Then it was back to the hotel for an early night to do it all again on Sunday. The weather was beautiful Sunday and Luis completed his first Spartan race in a great time. I was super proud of him!
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Friday after school we flew North to Chiang Mai for the Spartan Race. We landed about the same time as the tail end of typhoon Ragasa. At 3:30am they posted that they were unsure if the race would go ahead. Saturday morning was my race day and when we arrived it was chaotic. One of the races had been cancelled and they were trying to register people in other ones. People come from all over the world and I could see some disappointed faces. The queue to check in took an hour (usually 5 minutes) and when I finally got to the front I had two minutes until start time. The theme of the day was mud. And so much of it but it went ahead. It was ridiculously hard. I would be running through the forrest and then all of a sudden be knee deep in mud. It is a 5km run plus 20 obstacles. And these are not easy by any means, the rain and mud made it 100 times harder. But I finished, cursing myself and my decision to run the entire time. And then was super happy. I came first in my age group and 9th out of just under 300 women.
It was a busy weekend mainly around our building. We had a movie night both Friday and Saturday for the kids while the parents put the world to rights in the dining room. We got to have a window of the lives of parents with three young children as we had Ella and Fraser all day and night Saturday while their parents moved home. We managed to keep all of them alive, but there were some tricky moments. We lost Ella in it the shopping centre as she decided to play hide and seek and there was an obsession with fire. But we kept them both alive and safe. But boy was it tiring!
We came back the day before school started and I feel like we have been running ever since. There are many people I still have not been able to have a proper catch up with. But Nadia is not just any person and I real felt we were missing some key one on one time. We were finally able to fix that last night over a few tacos and a couple margaritas. It is always a pleasure seeing Nadia, she is possibly the most positive inspiring person I know. On the way home we stumbled onto Lauren at a a ladies night and stopped for a quick free prosseco. A great way to almost start the weekend.
I do not give him homework. I do not see any point, neither does most research on the matter. The students who do not actually need the extra work usually do it, and the ones that could use the extra practice usually do not. Teachers usually give repetitive tasks just to keep parents happy. It also disadvantages the students from homes with one parent or two working parents. And really students spend a ridiculous amount of time in classes. I do very little work outside of hours so why the heck should they. HOWEVER, all that being said, it was super cute to see how excited (although he pretended not to be) Sebastian was about his first homework. To draw pictures about his family. Well he was super excited until Fraser knocked at the door for a play and then he was off!
It has been a couple of weeks and I was ready to get back to the races. Well until 4am Sunday morning. But I did get up and me and Lyndsey went to the race. She, of course, won it. I got my best time but was not happy with the race overall. The route was super confusing and I messed it up. But I was super happy that I completed it.
Last week our school was lucky enough to have Peter Liljedahl come to do a three day work shop on Building Thinking Classrooms. Occasionally I look back on my blog to reminisce and something that always strikes me is how much more I seemed to be engaged in teaching. In recent years I think it is fair to say I lost some of this passion. I am not sure I am a big supporter of how we educate now, I think we are educating students for the past we had instead of the future they will have. I wonder how useful Calculus or Trigonometry will be to 99.9% of my students and well that makes it hard to feel inspired. This three day workshop was something I needed. I still do not think we have it right but it least it gave me a new framework for teaching Maths that will get students thinking. I do agree we have to teach students to think (there is a difference between deep thinking and just learning algorithms, as so often is the way in Mathematics). It was a great workshop and I feel inspired again. It was also great to see David Suraz, I went on a course that he led 14 years ago that also changed my teaching, Challenge by Choice. It was super nice as he told me in all the years he ran the course, I was his most memorable attendee (he said I was off the wall, full of energy and passion around teaching).
Wednesday is dancing and date now. We put Sebastian to bed and then snuck out (with Nin here with him of course). Luis treated me to an amazing dinner at an Indian just down the road. From the outside the place does not look like much but it is beautiful inside. The service and the food are both exceptional. But nothing like the company, what a lovely night we had. I am so lucky.
