Random Ramblings

One of my subjects this semester is creative writing. Which seems like it should be okay. But the problem is everytime I sit down to write something I can't think of anything. Which has led to the song "Die, Vampire, Die" from Title of Show to run through my head and while that's fun it's possibly a little counterproductive. Now considering this subject means I have to write a 2000 (or thereabouts) that is due in about three weeks can anyone take pity on someone who's pretty sure i'm crap at fiction and tell me where ideas come from? Or at least how do I get ideas to start with? Cause right now i'm having no problems with non-fiction and the fiction ideas are just not coming.

So this (or variations of this) have been reposted a couple of times to my flist:

AUSTRALIA IS HOLDING A CENSUS IN AUGUST DO NOT LEAVE THE “RELIGION” SECTION BLANK. BE SURE TO AT LEAST TICK CHRISTIAN (OR YOUR OWN FAITH). 1,000,000 MUSLIMS WILL TICK THEIR BOX. 10,000,000 AUSTRALIANS WILL LEAVE IT BLANK THEN WONDER WHY CHRISTMAS CAROLS ARE BEING BANNED IN SCHOOLS AND MOSQUES BEING BUILT IN NEIGHBOURHOODS! PASS THIS… ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS, IT'S NOT ABOUT RELIGION, IT'S ABOUT KEEPING OUR WAY OF LIFE!

Of course I can't help but bite back, pointing out the wrongs (last census there were 350000 Muslims in Australia somehow I don't think 650 000 more appeared in 5 years), the bullshit and the general scaremongering failiness of this. Now if this was only being done by the bogans back home i'd understand but one of my classmates posted it tonight. Considering we are doing a degree focussed on social justice and acceptance of all cultures this kind of got up my nose.

Am I wrong to be biting back? Should I let it slide and just hope they don't every have to deal with any "real life Muslims".

...that should go unsaid to pretty much anyone sensible. Not all theatre is for everyone. I have never heard of a show that hasn't got people that both love it and despise it. Before you book tickets to see a show have a look at what it's about.

I say this because last night I went to see Spring Awakenings in Melbourne. It was awesome but that review will be another post. On our way in my friend went to the bathroom which is where a woman in the queue stopped her to ask what the show was about. My friend gave a short description and the woman double checked that it was a musical... Because they'd come down on holidays and wanted to see a musical. That same woman and her partner left at intermission looking somewhat disturbed by the content. This is the second time i've heard of someone leaving part way through a show because they didn't like the tone or what it was about. The first was Avenue Q, the people leaving that complained later to a former co-worker that it was sick and anyone who liked the musical was obviously not a good person.

These are both musicals that I love but I will say to anyone who wants to go to them look at them first... if they are not your style don't go. Musicals aren't just light and fluffy. Spring Awakenings features a teenager killing himself, a girl dying from a botched abortion, references to abuse and a lot of adult language. It's a brilliant and heart-breaking piece of work but it is not for everyone - as the couple last night found out. Of course they found out after they blew $50 a ticket on it.

This summer i’m going to be helping out at the local library with the young adult reading group so I thought I should read a bunch of young adult novels so that I knew what to recommend. Who am I kidding? I read a heap of young novels anyway it’s just that I know I have a better excuse for it. I saw Boy in the Striped Pyjamas last year at the movies and have been trying to read John Boyne’s book since but i’ve never quite gotten around to it. Then I found out about Morris Gleitzman’s “Once”, “Then” and “Now” trilogy and decided I wanted to read them first.

“Once” is set in 1942. It is the story of Felix a 9 year old Polish Jew. Felix’s parents were booksellers so he tells the story of his life as if it’s one of the tales he knows. His parents left him at the catholic orphanage with the nuns because they needed him to be safe. He begins the story optimistic after finding a whole carrot in his soup which he decides is a sign from his parents that they are coming for him so he leaves the orphanage to meet them. Outside he is confronted by the real world that includes soldiers who shoot at him, a 6 year old orphan named Zelda who he befriends after rescuing her from a burning building, books that are being burnt and not cherished as his parents would like and that Adolf Hitler is not the “great man” that the nuns taught him he was. Felix and Zelda end up in the Warsaw Ghetto where Felix finds people like him who tell stories of “death camps” and trains that go to them.

“Then” is a year later after Felix and Zelda escape the ghetto and the train to the death camp. They escape to the countryside where they find a sympathetic woman who shelters them on her farm. And “Now” is set in modern Australia about Felix’s granddaughter Zelda and shows how Felix grew up to fulfil his promise of “being the best human being he could be”. He is a retired surgeon and Zelda has come to stay for the summer while her parents are in Africa.

These three books are brilliant. Felix and Zelda (both original and junior versions) are vibrant, believable characters who face problems but keep looking for the best in the world. They grow through bad situations and are completely changed by them but the best of them remains. Even as a grandfather Felix tells stories and the little boy who escapes the orphanage is in him he’s just older and wiser now. Morris Gleitzman has stated that these books are fiction and “came from imagination” but his grandfather was a Polish Jew from Krakow who left Poland safely before the war... his extended family didn’t. So there is realism to his writing and a respect for the history and the characters he has created.

On the other hand “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” is about Bruno. Like Felix he is 9 unlike Felix he is the son of a German officer who works for “The Fury” and has just been sent to “Out-With”. After Felix who grew and learnt and lost his innocence Bruno is hard to take. He acts far younger than 9 and shows no understanding of the world. I get that kids can be sheltered but for a 9 year old German to not know “The Fuhrer” and not understand why Schmuel the young boy from “out-with” who he speaks to through the fence at the back of his new house isn’t allowed out to play with him just seems too much. At one stage the two boys compare the symbols that Schmuel wears on his arm to the one Bruno’s father wears. Schmuel explains he wears the star because he is a Jew which leads Bruno to wonder if he could be Jewish and why his father wears the spidery symbol instead. I see what John Boyne’s is trying to do and when the book ends it ends powerfully and horribly but it just doesn’t work for me. And i’m not sure if that’s because of reading it so soon after Gleitzman’s trilogy or if it would’ve been the same if I had read it first. Although I do remember Bruno bugging me with his ridiculous questions in the movie as well.

So i've got a couple of decent marks back lately and today I think I've had some really great feedback. A couple of months ago I did a lesson for my lit class that was designed to be a lesson for year 8. I did a lesson introducing Shakespeare to a Year 8 class in a way that most 14 year olds should have found fun and interesting and I had a great time doing it. Since it was our last lit lesson today we finally got the grades back. Out of 20 I received a score of 20. Which is incredible in itself but on the way out I got told by my lecturer that my lesson was the best of the class and she could see me as a high school English teacher with no problems. She thought it was innovative, interesting and recommended I expand it to cover several lessons. Both she and my history lecturer have given me feedback in the last week that I have a great manner, i'm easy to listen to in a class and I actually engage with my students I don't just lecture at them. So this is good news.

Of course at the moment i'm in a kindergarten classroom and that's an entirely different monster but I just had to bounce up and down happily for a moment and revel in this feedback.

This is not my group. My group is working brilliantly. I love working with my group cause it's S., Other Michelle and B. and the 4 of us get along brilliantly and came to our task with very similar ideas and to some extent knowledge. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for J.'s group which has caused a huge amount of trouble this afternoon and this has turned into a special brand of high school bitchiness (that has seeped into the mature-age uni students). Usually i'd keep out but J. has asked for some advice so in turn i'm asking the internets.

Okay so in groups we have to work out a team teaching unit where we have to come up with a group rationale and sequence and then a lesson plan each for Years 9 or 10. The group uses the same text and all lessons are built around that theme with each of us branching out into something else from the text. For example we are doing Pride and Prejudice S. goes first with Chapter Analysis; Other Michelle is taking language differences and syntax; B. is doing movie comparisons and I'm finishing with a creative writing task built in part on the spin-off books (including Mr Darcy, Vampyre and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies).

Two members of J.'s group informed the rest they were doing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. That's a problem but if the rest of the group went along not a big one. These two people in particular are overly detailed and passive-aggressive if things aren't being done to their standards (which to be honest aren't getting them the greatest grades anyway). They are insisting all lessons have the same outcomes (which I disagree with on a teaching level - the reason it's a unit is so all outcomes are spread throughout the weekly plan) they want 7 outcomes per lesson (which is way too much) and they want the same theme going through the whole lot. That is mostly teaching issues which they can argue about themselves and go through the lecturer on. The rest of the groups aren't doing it that way but it's really up to them.

The theme one member of the group insisted on was Aslan as a metaphor for Jesus which would run through all lessons for this topic area. That's what J. has major issues with, and for that matter so do I. In the Australian State School System should this be taught in what will most likely be a multicultural English/Lit classroom where we could have kids who will not be Christian? I'd have no problem with this in Religious Ed. or scripture classes but not sure about this... Is this just me and J.? Does anyone think this is okay to teach like this? Was anyone taught the books like this in a school classroom?

Wouldn't mind getting some external feedback about this from people who know the subject area better than me cause I am not a huge Narnia fan (I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe before I saw the movie - and that was the first time i'd picked up any of them).