Insider information

I don't get a chance to go into the ROM very often anymore. Other items on my portfolio are needing to be first priority, so I can only pop into the ROM when I've got extra time.
It's not that I have tons of time in my schedule right now, but I was able to squeeze in the annual departmental meeting in today (well, I took the one-hour lunch 'break' to run down the street to go in to school and get some work done - sigh).
BUT...as always, there are exciting things at the ROM.

1. Maya is coming in November!!! The lead curator for the exhibition, Justin Jennings, came in to chat with us and his enthusiasm was contagious. It's clearly going to be a great exhibit (which will be going to the Canadian Museum of Civilizations afterwards) and his talk brought me back to some of the stuff that I remembered learning about in Grade 8. Yeah, our school had a trip to Mexico...that's how we rolled. Anyway, the sites that we went to all of those years ago aren't going to be featured in the exhibition because they're too recent. This exhibition is looking back at pre-Spaniards stuff. It's not only that the topic that Justin was presenting about really great, nor was it that he was an exceptional presenter, but the fact that he was SO excited to share his love of the topic, his excitement for this exhibition...you couldn't help but be excited too. He was clearly geek-ing out as he was presenting some of the artifacts and details of their culture. Like a kid in a candy store.
It just further illustrated the importance for a teacher (speaker/presenter/etc.) to be passionate about the subject that they're teaching. Passion and genuine enthusiasm for a topic can get you a long way. I hope that my passion for my subject matter comes across when I teach. I'm pretty sure it does. In fact, I'm very aware of how giddy I got when I gave my intro talk about Calculus each time I taught that course. Sure, my students were laughing (at me), but I knew that they knew how excited I was about the topic and how much I wanted them to be excited too. I'm looking forward to getting that kid-in-a-candy-store feeling starting next week (roller coaster car is still going uphill...)

2. findthebabybison. Duuuuuude...when this finally goes public, it's going to be soooo goooooood. I wanna spill the beans so bad!