Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

I spoke too soon last Saturday, although I had to wait until today to talk about it.

On the first session for the second day of the retreat with the facilitator, after the Brother President spoke to them and they had their morning snack, half of the participants took their time in coming back to the session hall, long enough to make the facilitator walk out, something he says he has not done in 16 years of handling all ages of retreat students.

While I was busy trying to gather the students from their cottages, apparently the facilitator had gone back to stop the president before he left.

This is because he comes from a campus where the students' evaluation alone can get a teacher thrown out at the end of the term.

The president said to the students he would talk to the facilitator about returning, and that if it doesn't work out, we can just have the school shuttles called back and leave, the underlying threat was this would be the first batch to have the retreat cancelled because of the behavior of some students, maybe even prevent them from graduating altogether.

Privately though, he told the religion teacher that if the facilitator walks out, we should be able to finish the retreat ourselves.

Of course the students responded to the threat, but not consistently, being early after one break and being late in another, not only because of the all the temptations in their rooms such as the bed and whatever vacation items they brought with them, but also because they use each other as an excuse and have to wait for the last person to shower or change clothes before they all go to the session hall.

I just had to plead with some of them to make use of some more free time later in the day for extended personal hygeine, and just listen to the lined up group activity for now.

Just a few more footnotes about it tomorrow, then hopefully I'm done with the topic.

Session 2031 doesn't mind coming off as the relative less strict teacher this time. Class dismissed.