Arthur

I don't know if I mentioned but in the British and American culture class I am teaching, there is another American teacher who is teaching several sections of the same class, and we were told that we have to coordinate our teaching at least to the degree that our students will take the same final. So in order to start things off on the right foot, I decided to go along and show the same movie that she is showing in class, The Mists of Avalon, which is a telling of the tale of King Arthur that was done as a TNT series with Angelica Huston and Juliann Margules, and which for some reason there seem to be copies easily available here. Now, I almost certainly would not have done Arthur had it not been for my co-teacher's decision to show the movie and my desire to try to coordinate our teaching. But as I began to thing about how to present the Arthur story, which rates maybe a line in the chapter on history in the culture book, I decided that in fact this might not be a bad idea, because it would allow me to talk about myth and the role that myths play in setting forth the values of a culture. At least that was the theory, and it was a good theory. Unfortunately today it got sabatoged by the technology. In the technology classroom I am in absolutely nothing worked today. The dvd player would not run the dvd; the overhead projector would not show my overheades; the computer would not download the files I had loaded on a disc. I was reduced to scribbling notes on a whiteboard with a magic marker which students told me afterwards they could not follow and I told them I realized but that everything I had prepared could not be used because of the multiple malfunctions (which were exacerbated by my inability to work the equipment). Anyway, it was a total mess, but it made me realize you always need to go into class with a backup plan, especially in these technology classrooms where you do not know what is going to happen. Well, I have the class two more times this week, so hopefully we'll have the bugs out of the system by then. On a side note, I've been told that I will finally get some more classes to teach and be told what they are tomorrow. This is a little disappointing because it's been nice having only six hours of teaching. They will probably bump me up to fourteen, which will definitely keep me jumping. I just hope they wait until after the October 1st holiday to start those classes, although talking to my co-teacher that does not seem likely since she just told me she's been given a couple of more classes and they start Wednesday. Well, it was nice while it lasted.