For the past 18 years of my life those words were synonomous with “day off.” Such is the case no longer. Today the Yamanashi Jet’s spent time in Kofu with our JTE’s learning about team teaching. In case you haven’t had the pleasure this involves watching insanely bad power points (white text on over exposed photo backgrounds), video documents of classroom teaching interspliced with pro wrestling footage with a soundtrack done by Pantera, and learning about vagina in a can.
Ok so 80% of the day was spent doing dry teaching lessons and games, most of which will probably turn out to be useful, but it wouldn’t be a JET conference without a bit of silly side-sessions.
Now I’m putting the finishing touches on a 10 question true/false quiz about The Nightmare Before Christmas. My JTE asked me to prep something about Halloween as an opener and this seems appropriate. I had a hard time selecting which 10 minutes of movie to use, but Jack’s song “What’s this!” is easily the best in the film so that got my vote, despite that it means 5 minutes are spent in Christmas Town. Whatever, I’m just prepping them for two consumer onslaughts at once.
I had seen Nightmare Before Christmas plenty of times before but it never really caught me, I think because I found the musical numbers a bit too forced and overwraught. But watching it again reveals an astonishing level of detail and character. These characters on the screen for maybe 4 seconds, yet they all have their place and tiny little moments. Look at their sheet music, or the weird penguin rat that’s spinning the wheel that’s driving them along. Wonderful.
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