(Untitled)

[marcelgift]

we had a workshop at school last week which focused on choices and opportunities. i was in a discussion group where we were talking about students who had passed away while we taught them and how this fit with the topic and how it affected the school. anyway, it put me in a morbid mood and i sat down and thought long and hard about how many

Comments

[onlylisa]

That is very sad.

[nikkidemon]

wow one a year is quite high, and some of them were murders? really? I thought saskachewan was pretty quiet.
I've not known to many people who have died, but it's never easy no matter how many you know that pass on.

[marcelgift]

generally speaking sask is pretty quiet, but the truth also is we have the highest per capita murder rate in the country. small population though. i work with kids who live to a large extent below the poverty line and in abusive households, so my numbers are high.

[nikkidemon]

wow i didn't know that. I didn't realize sask had such a high murder rate. What part of sask are you from again? I've forgotten

[marcelgift]

central. about an hour north of saskatoon.

school

[morfessa]

Sounds like you work in a school a bit like the one a friend of mine teaches art & English at in Berlin - lots of the kids don't even speak German as there is a high refugee population - but they can all SWEAR in 20 languages! He has to use comic books to get them to read anything - but he gets offered all sorts of 'nearly free' goods..... Haven't seen him for ages but sent Captain Corelli's Mandolin & Love in the time of cholera - not for the kids to read but for him to get some culture in English (he's from Frankfurt)

Re: school

[marcelgift]

this school is a strange place. the academics are not high by any standard, but i think reasonable given the circumstances. it seems that those who desire to continue in school(there is no real truancy policy) take it quite seriously, and while personal problems amd situations get in the way of many of them, the effort and desire is there. don't get me wrong, it's still a regular school, and there is a lot of fooling around and wasted time, just not as much as there might be, given the situation

later in the year i will introduce them to shakespeare with 'a midsummer night's dream', and it is always nice to see how they take to it. sometimes it baffles as well, when i have 15 year old thugs reciting puck's speeches from memory.

luckily i have no language barrier like your friend. there is a native tongue(cree) spoken by the community, but it's not really being carried on by the younger set. of course they also know how to swear.

[nikkidemon]

Hey i added you on AOL is that okay? I like chattin with you.

[marcelgift]

it's fine, but i'm on a new system and i don't think i have that program here. i'll look around.

[nikkidemon]

oh okay