... Teach them well and let them lead the way.

Sometimes teaching is fun and it makes me laugh. It's good to have a job where you can laugh.

1. NIN

First thing this morning, I'm walking to my classroom and there's a girl standing outside the door. She says to me plaintively, 'Miss, I'm afraid to go in!'

'Why?' I reply suspiciously. This girl is mischievous, but secretly one of my favourites (though she'd never believe it, having had me gleefully confiscate half of her jewelry collection when she was in my form-class into a special envelope with her name on it).

'I was in the common room before everyone else this morning.... So I played some Nine Inch Nails. Really loud. And ..... nobody would stay in there. They all left. They all hate me!' She says this with a twinkle in her eye though. She is the only kid in Year 12 with dread-locks.

'Well, blimin' fair enough then - you kids and your devil-music,' I say, while laughing at her.

I get a real kick out of her. She has this I-hate-school exterior and often wags classes or even gets suspended, but whenever she is in class she stays behind afterwards and talks to me about obscure arthouse films she's seen. And she always ends the conversation with really sincere recommendations of, 'You should see it, Miss! You'd love it!'

I told her to go listen to the Johnny Cash version of Hurt. Me recommending a country singer to her will tie in with the fact that every time she saw me walking around school with my i-pod on last year she'd ask what I was listening to.... and while there is a plethora of 'cool' and 'hip' stuff on there I'd always be up to the Norah Jones song for some reason..... It was eerie. Norah does not impress her.

2. DAMNED EMOS

I had a great discussion with my Year 13 Media Studies class. It was supposed to be a five-minute starter activity (while Miss got her mind into gear and decided where to start with the real lesson), but turned into a really passionate dialogue on all kinds of recent events in the media.

You can't often have those conversations with a class of teenagers - a lot of them would look at you blankly. But this class are 'special'. They all watch the news and talk about politics with their parents. They are neato!

We started with the Virginia Tech coverage and I was very nearly convinced of the public need to see the footage the murderer sent to NBC. A few convincing kids talked about how it struck a chord with them because of the closeness in age, and how the human issues in it created an actual need for closure and explanation. They argued that because we, as an audience, struggle to understand such acts that go against human nature we are comforted that there is reason behind it.

We segued into the use of blogs as a forum for public sympathy and whether such a soulless form of communication (compared to face-to-face contact) could be effective. There was discussion of what makes a murderer and what might happen in a dystopic (?) future if you could somehow scientifically tell someone had a propensity for that sort of violence while they were in the womb or a baby. There was talk of the biased representation of pit-bulls and their owners in the media and the Jennifer Lynch revelations and how they represented the US Government. There was praise and criticism of Michael Moore and George Bush (in equal parts).

It was fun!

The funnest bit was when the other kids jokingly said one of the girls in our class fits the profile of a school-yard-killer (she wears a lot of black, admits to being proudly cynical and plays bass in a rock band). I put on my innocent teachers-have-no-clue-about-pop-culture voice (which I often use when quoting lyrics to hippity-hop and rap songs or talking about sex as if it's a dirty word and I'd never have it in a million years - they love it and make me promise to never ever try to talk about that with them ever again) and said totally dead-pan, 'Yeah you do - it's because you're an 'Emo'.'

That always gets a rise out of her! I have learnt that calling a kid Emo is about the biggest insult you can give...... And thus I put on my 'special' naive voice and do it as often as possible....

3. Interview with the Teacher

Parent interviews were even good! Actually, they usually are, I just angst about them a bit because you're entering the unknown each time a parent steps up to your desk. I learnt that a few quiet girls who don't say boo in class are going home and watching movies with their parents and making comments like, 'Oh.... I actually understand why they do that now....... ' Bless!

I have ruined the ability to watch a movie without analysing it for another generation of students.

4. Off the Cuff

I did my favourite speaking activity with a class today. It's an impromptu speech game Nicky made up years ago, which I have perfected. It's basically an extended version of the 'Ummm' game (you're out if you say 'Umm') with extra rules and a scoring system.

I give them easy or hard topics (hard ones are worth double points!) such as 'Lawn Bowls', 'The Best Place to sit in a Movie Theatre' or 'Cheese' and they talk for as long as they can, gaining points for their team.

It's hilarious - some kids last 3 seconds, others get past 30. But the humour of it and the team camaraderie takes away from the scariness of being up in front of the class speaking by yourself. It tricks them into getting more confident!

Highlights were one of the more shy and anxious kids getting the topic of 'Frisbees'. For most kids this would be a bugger of a topic. But she happened to know the entire history of the thing and told us all about pie-tins and other fascinating stuff.

The other highlight was an immersion kid getting the topic of 'The Benefit of Learning Another Language' and having the idea of giving her speech in Maori. She told us the equivalent of 'umm' in Maori before she started and we had a couple of other immersion kids in the audience monitor how on-topic she was. The word 'korero' came up a few times - so I was convinced.

As usual, they were skeptical when the words 'impromptu speech' were mentioned but by the end of the lesson they were all asking if they could have another go and if we could do it again tomorrow.

Public speaking is FUN!