Update II: Classes and a field trip

My group itself seems to be settling in to the regular rhythm of classes on Mondays, Wednesday evenings, and Friday mornings, and we’ll have that normal schedule for these two middle weeks of October before throwing a three-day-weekend opportunity in there at the end, with some adjustments the way we did at the beginning of the term.  Even so, this past Friday we held our class as a field trip, walking around the old part of the city with our charismatic and much more coherent regular instructor Lorraine, whose regular gig is at the Art College. 

It’s strange to try to do some of the same things I always do, in a new setting: for example, for my first short assignment I always have students bring in hardcopies and then tape these to the walls so that everyone can look at each others’ submissions and reflect on what they see in others’ work that they didn’t do themselves, and what they’d do differently on revision, and why.  I don’t have them write anything on their colleagues’ work, just their initials, and then after they’ve had a chance to read at least ten others’ pieces, they take their own down and write out comments on the back--these comments can become the bases for my own critique, as in “You’re right, Jacob--you can include X and Y, and bump that other paragraph down a little,” so that the whole process becomes less completely directed by me.  The classroom is not ideally laid out, as the chairs don’t have tops, but there are half a dozen small tables that the early arrivals lay claim to so they have a writing surface.

 "A gift from Florence" for those of you who remember...

We’ve had some unseasonably cold and rainy weather of late, just in time for our first outdoor class of the term on Friday, a walking tour starting out at the cathedral downtown and taking in some of the earliest buildings constructed after the convicts arrived.  Amelie joined us after making sure Alex was safely at school, and mercifully the rain had stopped by the time we were actually underway.  About four students were late, something that is always a little hair-raising for me as a trip leader, and unfortunately it was the usual suspects with whom I will have to have one of those Difficult Conversations with.   

But Lorraine’s approach was informed, lively, well-paced, and thoughtful, and I was heartened to overhear so many students saying “I want to come back here later and see more.” That's not always a given with these things, and I appreciated how well paced the whole tour was--none of that overstaying one's welcome or feeling you were being yanked away, and even with some street crossings we kept the group together pretty effectively.  That said, every field trip or other excursion is for me a stressful occasion, and my sleep has been affected by the anticipated problems, the need to remember lists of phone numbers, etc.  

Of course at the end of the afternoon, after a pleasant lunch with Lorraine and Amelie at the cafe atop the Museum of Contemporary Art, I saw this vision of an alternate reality as I waited for the ferry home at Circular Quay--those are sort of normal sized boats in front: