Another school: Shireville High.

Another Wednesday, another school observation visit. This time, I had the pleasure of trekking across the city to the Shire. I mean, I understand the importance of experiencing things outside one's usual sphere of existence, but just let me whinge about waking up at five in the morning, sitting on two trains for one-and-a-half hours, and walking about a kilometre uphill, all before nine o'clock. Thanks.

And I didn't even get to see a science class, after all that. The whole faculty was on an excursion to fuck knows where so they put me into a year ten maths class instead. Yay. Binomial expansion and quadratic factorisation. Nyeh. I couldn't teach that, or maths in general. Seriously, if a kid can't see that (x + 7)(x - 4) is x² + 3x - 28 then I'd smack him upside the head and yell at him, "what the fuck is wrong with you?!?!". I have no time for maths. I know maths is a big part of a science curriculum, but that's a maths teacher's job. I expect my physics students to come to class knowing differential and integral calculus, dammit. So much for numeracy and literacy being the task of every teacher, whatever the subject area.

Anyway, the kids were great. The girls had their heads down and worked through the exercises, while the boys were-- well-- boys. You know, things like sticking post-it notes on each other's backs with cheeky little messages on them. They even put one on their teacher, but with a benign note about playing the bass in some pussy rock band. Still, any normal teacher would have "chucked a spaz" (do they still say that in da skoolz these days?) but this teacher played it cool and surprisingly maintained a good level of order. I'd pay to find out how she did that. No wait, I already am. It's called HECS. Har-di-har.

But I'll tell you what: I'm not sure if this is representative of schools in the Shire or anything, but the place was crawling with prettyboys. Now I'm not saying that in a dirty-old-man-pervert kind of way. It's just, you know, yeah. An observation. Even the nerds in my maths class today were trendoids. Bah! Only in the Shire.

So yes, the place wasn't half bad. Apparently, it's got a waiting list, so that's pretty special for a public school. And for a school down in the Shire, there were a surprising number of NESB kids - something the deputy principal kept bringing up in his introduction spiel. Well that, and how far away along The Kingsway (and down a few back streets) the school was from Cronulla.


Listening to:
Title: Cry Me A River
Artist: Natalie Cole
Album/station: Take A Look (1993)
Length: 3.53