The Malicious Monocle

Today was spent at the Games Workshop store on Layton Ave. I participated in a large battle using my new Mûmak and Harad army. The scenario was that a group of four Mûmakil and warriors were marching through an unsettled area on their way to the big final battle at Gondor and were ambushed by the side of good. There were Dúnedain, Elves from Rivendell and representatives of the Army of Dead. I went a bit crazy with the camera on my phone so here are all of my pictures of the battle.

My Mûmak is the one with the purple on the howdah. I’m not done painting it by a long shot, but I at least had a enough painted to look respectable on the table.

Who won?

Evil, of course.

Soon my happy fun-time will end and I will start my student teaching. Am I spending my time practicing lesson plans? Am I reading about performance assessments?

No.

I’m working on my Mûmak.

Here are some work in progress photos of my Mûmak.

The paint job is mostly a series of drybrushing so far. The base especially has a lot of work left to do on it. Next up is to finish the toenails and then start in on the tusks. After the Mûmak is finished, I’ll start work on the howdah, alternating with work on the base as the whim takes me.

Last night was the second Benchmark for the teaching program I’m in. I passed. It was actually a pretty straight-forward experience. We had to prove we were able to put together a pretty portfolio and participate in a Socratic Seminar. I looked up my GPA and was pleased to see it sitting in the neighborhood of 3.8.

I have my first informal meeting set up with my student teaching supervisor and my co-operating teachers. I’ll be going in and meeting one of the teachers tomorrow. After that will be class. Whee. At least there wasn’t any homework due for the first night of class.

Benchmark II was fun though. There were tornadoes in town and so at one point we had to huddle in a windowless classroom for a bit at one point. There was even some question if we would finish the benchmarks. We stayed. All of us just wanted to get it over with and be done.

I bought a new miniature this weekend to assemble. It’s one I’ve been drooling over for a couple of years now. It was a little easier than I had thought to assemble, but it wasn’t easy.

Here’s a picture of it mostly done.

For my student teaching goal I propose an expedition into the deepest, darkest corners of the school A/V room. This expedition will, of course, be fraught with perils as I brave scorn from the oh-so superior A/V nerds and the overly protective and suspicious Tech-priests known as librarians. My goal for this expedition is to learn the effective use (if any) of film strip projectors which go ‘beep’ and other examples of educational archaeo-tech I may find.

As with any student teaching goal, I will have to answer the question of how I know if my expedition goals have been met. I will know I have succeeded when the Student Helpers accept me as one of their own and bestow upon me my A/V club name. (Personally I’m hoping for something fun like, ‘He-Who-Ironically-Forwards-At-The-Beep’.) Acceptance into their tribe will not be enough for the success of my goal, however. I will also need to be inducted into the arcane rites of the Librarian Tech-Priests. Only when they have taught me the proper prayers that need be offered to Edison, Morse and Bell before activating a piece of equipment will I be able to use the equipment as easily as any coal-stoker stokes the furnace of an ocean liner. I will know for sure that my expedition has been successful when I can walk in to a school library and get a knowing nod of the head as I point to any piece of equipment and know that the librarian is signing that piece of equipment out in the name of a teacher they don’t much like.

For an artifact I intend to bring back detailed schematics of all of the types of equipment available. Included with these schematics will be important notes concerning alternative power sources in the all too likely event that the equipment doesn’t work when needed. These schematics will clearly note if a candle may be used to replace a burned-out bulb or if the class hamster and its wheel can be used when the power cord has become too frayed to unwind from the A/V cart.