In Hindsight

January 1 : Rituals by Anne De Manser · 365 Project

2012-01-01T03:45:00.000-08:00

January 1 : Rituals by Anne De Manser · 365 Project

The Graduate

2011-12-22T23:10:00.000-08:00

Two years of hard slog came to fruition last week when I graduated from The University of Melbourne with a Masters of School Leadership.

A lot of time has passed between my first spate of tertiary education and this one and the graduation caused me to reflect on the differences between those two experiences.

When I finished at the same uni over 30 years ago, I didn't attend my graduation. I was very young and had lots of things to do that at the time seemed far more important to me. This time I have a far greater appreciation of the value of further education and while the lure of the floppy Ph D hat is something I may consider after I retire, I know I may not get the opportunity to stretch my thinking in this way again for a long time.

First time around I chose teaching because the government of the day offered me free tuition, a generous weekly allowance and a guaranteed job on the completion of my diploma. I had no idea whether teaching was the career for me at that stage, it was simply a means to an end. This time, still armed with a scholarship, albeit a half fee one, I have had to make huge sacrifices of my time, my money and my energy to get through the course. With a husband studying his Masters at the same time, family life has been limited and our little boy has had to make some sacrifices too. This time though, I know that I love teaching and so the decision to improve my own qualifications is more relevant and connected to my everyday life.

Throughout my first stint at uni I was a firm believer that 'Ps got degrees' and I fulfilled that requirement in a spectacularly insignificant way. This time I got an HD for each and every assignment and subject. Since I set really high expectations for the kids I teach, there was no way I was going to lower them for myself! Continuing to achieving those marks added pressure to what I was doing but it also gave me a goal and provided the motivation to balance my procrastitory nature.

Back in the 70s I met some nice people on my course and we spent a fair bit of time at PAs (the pub across the road). Occasionally we would work on an assignment together but mostly we just drank a lot!
This time we occasionally called in to PAs after lectures but the drink vs collaboration ratio was reversed. Now I have a much greater appreciation of networking and the opportunity to get together with other like minded, progressive, positive thinking educators was one of the best outcomes of the whole experience. The support of my cohort of fellow students has been amazing. I have made new friends of all ages and I'm looking forward to an ongoing sharing of ideas with them.

The return to academia, especially the demands of academic reading and writing, was difficult. I remember reading the prescribed chapter for our first assignment. By nature an avid and voracious reader, I got to the end of that chapter and realised I hadn't understood a single word of it. It took me three readings to feel like I actually had a handle on the philosophical work of Jane Roland Martin. Now I skim read similar texts and assimilate the understandings as I go. I find my conversation pretentiously littered with words like pedagogy and paradox and empirical. I have learnt to accurately and precisely reference my work in APA style ( although I have not gotten over my hatred of this time consuming convention). I struggled through the 1000 words of our first written reflection. Last month when I went to submit my final action research report, it took three weeks of editing to prune it to 7500 words!

Educational researchers who were previously just names to me were bought to life during our intensives as we were presented with a veritable smorgasbord of educational crusaders like Alma Harris, Patrick Duignan and John Hattie. I was inspired and entertained and awed by them. There were so many 'ah ha' moments that I filled four Smiggle notebooks.

What now that the Masters has been mastered? Well, we've bought a caravan to fill in the weekends that have been soaked up with study for the past two years. It's time to devote some time to the education of our son and there's no place better to do that the on the road exploring the countryside. I hope that what I've learnt about myself and about leadership has equipped me to achieve better outcomes for the students and teachers in my school. I know that I've learnt personal lessons about perseverance and positive thinking that will stand me in good stead for the rest of my life.

Somewhere down the track I think there's a doctorate in me but I think I'll encourage to Geoff struggle through his first. I quite fancy the vision of myself as an eccentric and studious old lady. For now, I intend to continue my research into social media in education because it's a fascinating and ever evolving topic. Sooner rather than later I hope to have the confidence to share it with a broader audience.

After that, who knows? What I do know is that I will always be seeking new ways to stretch and challenge my mind. Once ignited, the thirst for knowledge is unquenchable!

The List

2011-11-07T03:07:00.000-08:00

I've been working on a fairly big list lately and today I ticked off the last of it.

My young friend Olivia says August is the evil month but this year it was a week in October that nearly caused my downfall. I had taken a study day to work on my final Masters presentation and so I was at home when the phone rang at 9.15 on Monday morning. It was my dermatologist ringing to say that a routine biopsy I'd had during the holidays had come back positive and I had a melanoma on my leg that would need to be removed as soon as possible.Given that my mother was diagnosed with melanoma at exactly the same (to the day) age as I am now and had subsequently died a very painful and undignified death from the disease, this was pretty traumatic news for me.

The following day, Tuesday, I was due at a job interview for the Acting Principal position at school. The surgery was set for Thursday in Melbourne. I had to come home for the school fete on Saturday and then back to Melbourne on Sunday to give a presentation for the final subject of my Masters degree. The week after that I had a school camp and at the start of the next week, which is today, my final 7000 word Action Research Report was due.

I hadn't started the presentation and the report was no more than draft notes.
I allowed myself the luxury of an hour of wild, morbid thoughts and solitary sobbing. Then my wonderful husband came home from work to assure me I'd be OK and my good friend Lyle arrived with chocolate and coffee and the benefit of her own experience with overwhelming situations. She told me to make a list and tick off one thing at a time.

My training in positive psychology kicked in and told me I couldn't change the prognosis of the disease by worrying about it and I refused to let my amygdala be highjacked. So I wrote the list and only allowed myself to worry about one item at a time. I chose to think positively about each obstacle and to remain calm.

And so, one hurdle at a time was crossed. I did the interview and got the job. I had the surgery. I did the presentation (and got a perfect score for it).I went to the fete and wrote the report. I had a great time on camp and today I had my stitches out in the morning and hit the submit button on the Uni assignment this afternoon. In between I caught a cold and lost my voice for a week, but the list is done!

Starting tomorrow there is a whole new list of things waiting to be done and I know I will be watching for new melanomas for the rest of my life. But this list, that felt so seemingly impossible a couple of weeks ago, is done. My pathology is clear, I've completed two years of fairly gruelling study, I have tenure in my job (and an upcoming pay rise!) and more importantly, I've felt the warmth of kindness from friends and relative strangers who have gone out of their way to help me get through the list in one piece.

So what's this got to do with education and hindsight?

Easy; it's a lesson in stereotypical positivity and it's added to my lessons to live by.

Have faith in your own ability.
Depend on good friends and family.
Ask for help.You'll be surprised where that help will come from.
Don't farseek, take one step at a time.
Be positive. Visualise the best possible outcome and even if it doesn't work out that way , you'll sleep better in the meantime.

"Seuss!"

2011-08-20T03:37:00.000-07:00

"How sad, how sad, how unspeakably dreary..."

Twelve months of planning, six months of rehearsals and two weeks of performance came to an end last week with our final 'Seussical the Musical' theatre restaurant show. By the last performance it had actually become an exercise in survival, as one by one the cast succumbed to a particularly nasty virus with rapid onset fever and terrible headaches. Kids who had been as healthy as mules in make up were dropping like flies between scenes. Some of the Whos fell victim down under the stage in Whoville and had to be rescued and sent home! The flock of 12 bird girls was a reduced to a pair of barely fluttering pigeons by the time we got to 'All for You'. The Mayor's Wife lost her voice but soldiered on in mime while Cindy Lou Who sang her lines. The Mayor, shivering and shaking , sweated his way to the finale before collapsing in a heap on the stage. Yertle never even made it to the hall and the Sour Kangaroo was reduced to a squeak for the court scene.

Thankfully, The Cat, Horton, Jojo, Maysie and Gertrude held their health together through a strict regime of echinacea, pineapple juice, olive leaf extract, wishful thinking and just plain refusal to give in to the bug.

It's true that with over 70 kids on the stage, we do have room for some attrition but after working so hard for so long, it's really disappointing for the kids if they get so sick that they can't perform. Luckily we did 8 shows altogether so even the sickies had time to star for at least one show. And star they did. As always I was overwhelmed by the professionalism and enthusiasm of our cast. To see (extra)ordinary, untrained kids producing such high level entertainment is thrilling. To be part of a community team of staff, students and parents who help them achieve this standard is very satisfying.

Every year success comes in different forms. This year there were a couple of stand outs. Last year several of our long standing stars graduated from school and so it was really gratifying to see the next 'layer' of performers emerging to become leaders on stage and off. Especially, it was great to see them taking feedback after each show and creating something even better the next day. It is truly the mark of a mature performer when feedback is sought as a way to improve rather than being perceived as criticism. More importantly, a couple of them even stayed to help pack up at the end of each performance and took the time to thank their teachers for all the work they'd done. A thank you to the directing team is a rare gift and one that is gratefully received :-)

As usual, from the chorus arose new stars. Down in Whoville there were a couple of eager young thespians whose characterisation endeared them to every audience and who will definitely be making the move to the top stage next year!

Another bonus was the great support we got from parents this year. We had mums who sewed and made soup and created magnificent makeup, grandfathers who helped make the sets, dads who built things and photographed things and a couple of rare gems who were at almost every show just taking care of whatever needed to be done. As always, when teachers and parents work that closely together, it's the kids who benefit.

There has been some speculation at school that while the benefits from being involved in this performance are great, the impact on school life may be too much. I totally disagree.The benefits are greater than anything we can do inside a classroom. It is unfortunate that the benefit to each individual involved can't be measured. If it could then there would be unanimous agreement that two weeks of disruption to the regular school program is a very small price to pay.

Here are just a few of the benefits that I see. Please feel free to add more in the comment box.

Connectedness to school: Everyone wants to be there and as a result we all feel part of a team and the pride in our school is overwhelming. Some kids who don't necessarily 'fit' in other areas of school are VIPs in the production.
Relationships: Teachers, students and parents working together toward a common goal creates strong, lasting relationships. You get to know each other very well through 6 months of rehearsals. These relationships spill over into the normal school routine. I've NEVER had a behaviour problem with a student whose been part of the production.
Happiness: By and large, during the show, the entire company is happy. People smile a lot.
Real life, rich task learning: We have had kids who've learnt to read so they could read the script to get into the show. We have kids on the sound desk running mics and lights and giving stage direction, selling tickets and programs and making props. There's an abundance of literacy and numeracy involved and these skills are valued because they are vital to the show's success.
Leadership: There's a hierachy involved in the cast and everyone knows it. The experienced students are expected to mentor and lead the younger students and they do so with care and respect.
Self Confidence: Being on the stage is scary. In fact, when the big spotlight goes on, it's terrifying. Over the course of their years with the company, timid little year 5s become Cats and Hortons and absolutely Amayzing Maysies. You can bet this confidence will come in handy at their first job interview.
Sense of pride: It's hard to find an experience anywhere else in the school program that will instil this sort of personal and team pride in 10-18 yr olds.
Perseverance: Putting on a show of this calibre is very hard work. There are moments during long, dark Wednesdays nights when everyone feels like giving up. Those who don't learn that it's worth sticking with things and that perseverance pays.
All Roundedness: In a small , country town like ours, there's a real danger of kids becoming very one dimensional. Because we have such a high participant rate, it's possible for our students to be footy stars and academics and performers.
Public speaking: Obviously.

And so, The Jungle of Nool and Whoville are gone, but the lessons of Solla Sollew remain. We'll be back again next year, striving once more for excellence and knowing, as always, that the show we put on will be the 'best ever'!

".....Remember that life's A Great Balancing Act. And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed) Kid, you'll move mountains."

Lessons from Teapots

2011-05-18T03:04:00.000-07:00

On Monday morning two of our teaching staff were discussing the media beat up of the phenomena known as ‘planking’. The two psychology teachers were musing that planking in itself wasn’t a problem, rather the unsafe behaviour of the unfortunate young man who tragically died while performing the stunt on his balcony, was. They decided in fact that planking itself was no more or less dangerous or interesting than ‘teapotting’, the act of standing with one hand on your hip and one extended as a spout.

During the luncheon after our special Education Week assembly that morning, they mentioned the teapotting idea to our student leadership team and for a bit of a laugh, took a photo of the group ‘teapotting’ and created a facebook group.

So begin a very interesting ‘living’ social experiment conducted by the teachers with their students on a social network. How many people would be happy to ‘like’ and repost teapotting? The goal was 100 in a night. By midnight the tally had reached 200. The next day it topped the 1000 mark. One of the national TV networks heard about it, lifted some of the photos from the site and claimed the idea as their own. Likewise the Herald Sun newspaper. Suddenly there were over 2000 followers on facebook and the thread had picked up it’s own hash tag on Twitter.

For awhile, the thread looked like it might be sabotaged by a few naysayers who used the urban dictionary to portray a nasty side to teapotting or who encouraged or predicted gloomily that teapotters would become planking risk takers. But the group was undeterred. The teachers monitored the site continuously and reminded visitors to the page that it was a digitally ‘safe’ space where profanity and disagreeability would be swiftly removed. Teapotting, by it’s definition on their page, is only authentic if conducted in a safe and sensible manner.

Today the media coverage intensified and then an awesome iteration occurred. Someone on Twitter suggested the connection between teapotting and the Cancer Council’s Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea fundraising event on May 26th. Now the idea had wings and a cause. An idea born in jest and then nurtured in educational philosophy had suddenly become a random act of kindness!

Next Thursday our school will host Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea and the media are coming to cover it. We will have our 15 minutes of fame and more importantly, the Cancer Council will get a boost for their research.

Since my current Master’s research is based on the positive influence of adults on social networks this incident is like a data gift for my project. As a school leader however, my glee is tinged with terror that someone will railroad the group and turn it into a negative for our kids and the ‘social media in education’ cause.

Most of all though I am excited by Liv & Alison's 'big think' and overwhelmed by the rich learning opportunities offered by such a simple idea. Thanks to everyone who has come on board to support the concept and helped point out the teaching points along the way.
So what have we and might we learn from teapotting?

• Social networking is a powerful medium for spreading information. If you post a photograph online it can end up on national TV without your permission in less than 24 hrs. The need to examine privacy settings and check our digital footprints is suddenly very real.

• Teachers & students can have fun learning together through social media

• The world is a closely connected place. From our tiny town, teapotters around the world have appeared and to some extent we can trace and draw their connections to the source. Great for studying the transmission of epidemics!

• Social Identity theory is alive and well. It’s important to be part of a group. It feels good to have a common purpose. People who don’t feel part of the community will try to devalue it.

• Generally, people are good and they respond appropriately. They like to make connections with people they don’t know, in a positive way.

• Role modelling on facebook works. Generally speaking, kids don’t like swearing on social networks. Everytime one of the teachers removes a post or reminds posters of the need to be digitally responsible, they get lots of ‘likes’.

• We do care about copyright and we don’t like it when other people fail to acknowledge our ideas. Our classrooms will be much more careful with creative commons and source acknowledgement now that we feel something of ours has been ‘stolen’.

• However, we’ve also learnt that it doesn’t really matter whose idea it was in the first place if it achieves something worthwhile and for the common good. Social networking groups can collaborate to modify and expand small ideas into giant ones.

Education Week

2011-05-15T05:01:00.000-07:00

I knew I'd be a hopelessly intermittent blogger :-(
The only time I actually manage to get words on the page is when I should be writing something else (in this case a 6000 word literature review). It seems Blogging has become my preferred method of procrastination!

Tomorrow marks the beginning of Education Week. We'll be celebrating the occasion by opening our new BER building. The building isn't what we wanted. We have an excellent performing arts program that desperately needs a home and the 2 million dollars allocated for our building would have created a beautiful space for that. No longer would we have had to traipse our cast of 70 plus up the road to our local hall where we pay exorbitant fees to rent the space for our non profit making performances. No longer would we have had to squeeze our huge cast onto a tiny stage or let them freeze backstage in the unheated and unlined bluestone side room. If we were an independent or catholic school we would have been handed the 2 million to spend as we saw fit. Unfortunately, we are but a humble government organisation, not to be trusted with such autonomous suggestions!

However, that is a political argument that's now in the past and not worth revisiting. We have a beautiful building and it's going to very useful for many things. It's clean, it's shiny and it's full of state of the art gadgets including an awesome sound system that even I can manage.

It's a multi purpose building and when I was having one of my 'thinks' this morning, (as I do now that we are in the Seussical swing), it occurred to me that that's a perfect analogy for our school. We are, in many respects, a multi purpose school. We take all comers, we offer all subjects. We allow and encourage our kids to be the best they can be in a huge variety of areas.We teach about the real world in a school of 'real' people.All cross sections of society are represented in our school. Just as in life after school, our students learn to deal with difficult people and to monitor their own behaviour and develop sound relationships with people who come from different backgrounds to themselves. At our school, kids can be athletes, performers, academics, musicians, equestrians, leaders and world travelers. They can do all of these things at the same time and they don't have to leave their home town to do them (with the exception of the traveling part!). They're taught by people who know them well and who have a vested community interest in seeing them succeed. We teach our kids within their own community, for their community. In doing so, we build efficacy in the community itself.

This weekend I read the local regional paper and noticed a lot of very large, expensive advertisements from other district schools, public and private, all vying for the educational rights to the children of the area and beyond. Some of them were making some big claims and the colourful pictures painted a very rosy picture.We've been suffering lately from a spate of private school transfers and looking at those ads I can see how parents might be persuaded to believe that the grass is greener where the pastures look more lush.

We haven't put any ads in the paper or on TV. Quite frankly, I think there are hundreds of better uses in our school for the sort of money those advertisements must cost. In fact, if I were a fee paying parent at one of the schools who pay for the ads I'd be asking questions about how my money was being spent.I think the calibre of the students who graduate from our school is all the testament we need. I just wish more people would draw the logical conclusion that such success doesn't happen by chance. Amongst all the strengths we encourage at our school, maybe we should ease up on the modesty thing!

I think there's a blog post waiting to happen about local vs regional or private schooling, but this government school teacher has way too much on her plate at the moment to write it.
Suffice to say, I'm very proud of my school and all who learn in it. I couldn't wish for a better place for me to teach or my children to learn.

Happy Education Week everyone.

Please don't tell me my friends aren't real.

2011-01-24T20:56:00.000-08:00

Blogging was not on my list of things to do today but, as noted in my previous post, I'm easily distracted and I have difficulty sticking to my 'get it done' priorities.

Today's distraction is due the large number of references I've come across in my Twitter feed and Google Reader this week referring to'real life' as opposed to 'online' with the assertion being that the people you meet and communicate with online are somehow different, or the relationships with them are less valid or less important than the relationships you have with people in your pysical space. I'm used to that sort of misunderstanding and assumption from folks who aren't internet connected but it comes as a bit of a shock to me when I read it in my social media pages.

I firmly believe that this discrimination between on and offline worlds is one of the greatest barriers we face in promoting global unity and providing 21st century communication in schools.

Frankly, I'm tired of being told I should spend less time on the computer and more time talking to 'real' people. I'm over making excuses for providing my students with the opportunity to broaden their outlook by communicating with kids in other parts of the world. Here's the thing. Online is real. The people you meet there are real. The friendships you make there are real. The learning that takes place there is real.

I have friends I made in high school. I have friends at work, friends I met at parties, at mother's groups, while playing sport or because we've worked on committees together.I also have friends I've made online.The only difference between each group is their context. The commonality is that they are all my friends.

I love the fact that I live in a time when I can connect with people all over the world at anytime of the day. Given the relative isolation of my small country town, if I were to confine myself to only meeting and befriending the people I can see face to face, then my choices would be pretty limited and so would the opportunities of my students.

I've only been part of the Twittersphere for a short time but I've been collaborating with other teachers via the internet for almost fifteen years. I started my collaborative journey at TeachersNet where I met an amazing group of people with whom I became firm friends. Subsequently, I met some of them in a physical space, many I have spoken to on the phone and some have remained 'text' based. They are all real. The conversations we have are real. The support and advice we offer each other is real.

At Christmas, one of my old Tnet friends sent me two tins of canned pumpkin so I can make that wonderful American delicacy with ingredients that aren't available here. That pie (despite my poor culinary skills), will taste every bit as good as if it were hand delivered in a checkered tea towel because the sentiment behind the sending of it is just the same as the jar of home made cookies from my neighbour next door.They are both symbols of friendship.

I know there are cases where people have masqueraded as someone they are not on the internet. They are frauds but it's not the internet who makes them so. I've had physical meetings with quite a few frauds in my lifetime and while it was easier to discern their age and gender because I could 'see' them, their motives were just as well hidden as an online fraudster.We need to teach our kids how to identify genuine friendships and genuine people, in ALL their spaces.

It's time we stopped referring to online friendships as something different , strange or less important than the friendships we form in physical space.The world needs to be more connected; we need to feel more like the citizens of the world that we are, rather than barricading and segregating ourselves into minority (or majority) groups based on race or location or social strata or age. Online friendships promote empathy and cultural understanding. They provide opportunities for collaboration and consultation with other like minded individuals and they overcome the isolation of geography or circumstance.Online communities are just like any other community. They provide friendship and support and a sense of belonging.

I guess the most compelling proof of the reality of my online friends is that I married one of them. Back in the day when my online presence was just a nickname with no photo or profile, we formed a friendship based on humour and shared interests and common beliefs about teaching and the world in general. Given that we came from different decades and different countries, it's doubtful our paths would have crossed in any other space. And yet, here we are, twelve years on, still sharing common beliefs about teaching and the world and bringing up our 7 yr old who is absolute living proof that our 'virtual' relationship is pretty damned real!

Are online friendships part of your real world?

Think Big

2011-01-20T18:38:00.000-08:00

I've struggled to add to my blog over the holidays. I think my brain has enforced an imposed vacation to give itself time to recover from 2010.

I have been working on a few things for the new year though, and one of them is this year's production of 'Seussical'. The production isn't actually part of my assigned workload and so I guess I should be prioritising it below the staff rosters, the timetable and organising the start of year PD days but as I've mentioned previously, it's one of my favourite things to do and so I'm indulging myself by listening to the score over and over until it's inculcated and I've become a part time resident of Solla Sollew.

Each time we do a new play I try to connect to the story and characters in some way, to immerse myself in the story so that the kid's will 'feel' and believe the storyline when I help tell it to them.This time I've found an immediate affinity with two of the characters because I discovered that Horton and Jojo are thinkers! And so am I. Indeed the amount of thinks I have is astounding and like Jojo, they often get me into trouble.

Recently I did this quiz and it told me I was a visionary 'crazy maker' and that my inability to manage so many different projects may be adding to the workload of those around me.I think it was suggesting that I should shed some activities, lose some thinks in order to see more of them through without creating chaos for those I work with. I also read this post by Will Richardson about rethinking our online time and that created more thinking and more worrying. I agree with so much of what he's saying but I can't quite reconcile that with the burning desire to read everything, to follow every link, to try every new program. We live in a wonderful age, it's an exciting time to be an educator and I want to soak up and share every bit of it! It's a conundrum, but it's a problem I've decided to ignore for the time being.

Instead, one of my new year resolutions is to encourage more thinks. I am going to stand up for my right to think.I am going to stand up for my right to encourage kids to think. I will not sacrifice thinks for test scores (although I promise I will pay due attention to teaching persuasive text and I'll do my best to improve their spelling, provided great word choice remains their priority!). I will not be bound by or bow down to the staus quo or the 'historical' routines or a limiting curriculum that focuses on content rather than context. I will encourage and support staff at my school to try new ideas and dip their toes in the amazing networking possibilities of social media. I will no longer accept the 'I'm no good with technology' statement from teachers and I will be resilient in the face of criticism from luddites and digital dinosaurs.

'People are people, no matter how small' and our students deserve to be given access to the sort of

technology and the ways of thinking they'll need in their adult lives.If they are going to save the world instead of destroying it, then they need to collaborate with their peers all over the world. They need to develop skills to solve problems rather than create them. So, as Jojo says, 'I will think and think until I drop', and if that makes hard work for myself and others, so be it, because in the immortal words of Dr Seuss,
"Anything is Possible'.
If anyone out there has some ideas on how to manage my thinks, I'd love to hear from you.

The best classroom in the world.

2010-12-12T00:05:00.000-08:00

The best classrooms aren't necessarily the ones with four walls.

Year 9 is an interesting time for kids. At our school it's a limbo space, a twilight time between the children that they were and the adults they will become. The desire to work to please parents or teachers has long passed. The need to work in VCE seems still far distant. For some, it's a time to opt out and when that happens it's often really hard to opt back in.

That was certainly my own personal experience. A bright and engaged student until year 8, I became a stereo type of angst ridden adolescence. I hated the conformity of the classroom, I despised the boring text book, one size fits all approach of many of my teachers, I found it difficult to find relevance to my world in the tasks I was asked to complete at school. I did opt back in eventually, but only because I was lucky enough to have a couple of teachers who took the time to see the value in me despite my arrogance and refusal to toe the traditional line.

That was 30 years ago but nothing much has changed. We still expect kids to keep plugging away , doing things our way even though we know it is essential for them to find their own way.We serve up a regurgitated diet of text book content seasoned with a sprinkling of 'active', but not necessarily relevant learning. We expect them to conform to school uniform and school rules, even though we know they'll learn best by making their own mistakes. And a lot of kids respond just the way I did. They switch off from school and more critically, the type of teacher student relationship that is so vital to engaged learning becomes very hard to maintain.

This year we decided to try something a bit different with our year 9s at the end of the school year. Like many of the programs that run in private schools (where funding makes it possible to be alternative), and the government run Alpine School program (where places are limited), we wanted to give them some real life, rich tasks to finish off their middle years schooling. We called it the 'Survivor' program and based the final 5 weeks of term around a range of life skill's and outdoors activities. I think the whole program was pretty successful but this blog describes the two activities that I was involved in.

One of the 'Survivor' challenges was to bike ride 100kms from Colac to Apollo Bay along the Beech Forest Rail Trail over 3 days. I was lucky enough to be the support car driver ( my glutes are no longer designed for a bike seat!). The first day was 45 kms of mostly uphill riding on bush tracks. It was hard physical work and even the super fit front runners were struggling by the time we reached the run down into Beech Forest. We lost a couple of bikes but with some reshuffling everyone managed at least 40km of the ride. Sara took a tumble during the bush leg and arrived at the lunch time pitstop covered in blood from where her braces had punctured her bottom lip but a couple of kms in the bus was enough time to staunch the bleeding and she was back in the saddle for the rest of the day.

When we arrived at our campsite (a local cricket ground with toilets but no showers or power), in drizzling rain, I wondered about my own ability to survive the next two days. But the kids had their tents up in no time and their trangia stoves were soon cooking a gourmet array of beans, tinned spaghetti and noodles. A game of cricket in the gloom of dusk ended the day.

On Thursday we rode another 30 km through the beautiful Otway Ranges, up and then down into Skenes Creek.With hair pin bends at every turn and sheer drop offs from our side of the road, I was a nervous wreck and spent so much time watching and counting heads in the rear view mirror that I missed the majesty of the rain forest. The kids tell me however that it was an exciting and exhilirating experience to hurtle themselves down the side of the mountain without touching the brakes!

Our camp site in Skenes Creek was right on the beach which afforded tired legs with a welcome sea bath. It also had a shower block which was a relief to everyone's senses. Suprisingly, almost everyone was keen to ride the 6km and back into Apollo Bay along the Great Ocean Road that evening. Not surprisingly, everyone was also happy to take up the offer of fish and chips before bed.

On the last day we rode into Apollo Bay again and then drove to Forrest where everyone rode enough of the bike trails there to make up their 100km. Remarkably, in 3 days together, I didn't hear a single complaint and I didn't have to 'speak' to a single student in anyway but the positive.

So clearly everyone ( including the staff) had a great time. But what did they learn? As a YCDI school, the keys to success jump quickly to mind. Persistence; staying on that bike after the first 10km took bucket loads of it. Resilience; likewise. Confidence; you bet. Some of these kids have never ridden down the street let alone 100km. Success like that breeds confidence.Organisation; their bikes had to be in top shape and if they hadn't organised their food, they went hungry. And finally, Getting Along; speaks for itself if you can manage to spend 3 days with 22 unshowered classmates and teachers!

I can tell you there was a fair quota of numeracy involved in calculating mileage, speed, velocity and the percentage chances of rain. As for literacy, I heard a lot of really good stories and conversations during the two days :-) I also heard laughter and encouragement and cooperation. Not the things 15 yr olds are usually well known for at school.

The second activity I was involved in was 'The Christmas Elves'. During the week after the bike ride, the year 9s spent sometime in the kitchen whipping up batches of Christmas rum balls. These were wrapped in cellophane and the Years 5-7 students added a card of Christmas greetings. Then on Wednesday, everyone dressed in elfish finery and each year 9 led a group of 5-7s on a journey through town delivering the gifts to each household. The gifts were accompanied by some spirited carolling.

We thought this would be a fun way to provide some leadership opportunities and share some multi age comraderie while teaching the kids a little bit about altruism. I think the activity succeeded on both those counts but I don't think anyone anticipated how successful the activity would be from the recipients point of view.

We were inundated with thank yous from the townsfolk and even from some passing travellers.

One lady cried, another provided a song in return and yet another told the kids it was the first time she had felt the Christmas spirit in many years. Some insisted on giving the kids money (which they donated to a Breast Cancer fundraiser run by one of our Yr 8s the following day).

And so what, if any learning occurred here while the children were gone from their classrooms for the morning? One of the Year 6 boys summed it up. " I never realised you could have so much fun giving people stuff. I feel great!"

You know what they learnt? They learnt about Goodwill. The best Christmas lesson of all.

I'd love to hear about programs other schools are running to engage their students outside the traditional classroom.

What happens with the Year 9s at your school?

Alphonso's Dog

2010-11-11T00:43:00.000-08:00

I really should be working on my reports but I read this blog post today Of Monkeys and Bananas and it reminded me of the story of Alphonso's dog. We refer to Alphonso's dog so frequently at home and at school, that it has become an embedded phrase for anything that continues to happen just because it's become accepted practice, regardless of whether or not it's good practice.

Alphonso's dog comes from a story someone once told me about a monastery where dogs had been strictly forbidden for hundreds of years. One day the Abbot (called Alphonso), took pity on a stray that he found outside the monastery and he began to feed it. The dog, of course, kept coming back and because Alphonso was cool with it, the monks began to believe that having a dog in the monastery was OK and that the dog must, in fact, be a creature of spiritual significance. When Alphonso died, the monks revered the dog in his memory. In this way, in time, all dogs became important to the monks and were treated as something special rather than something forbidden. Pretty soon no one knew why having a dog at the monastery was important, it just was.

We use this phrase to describe many things, just one of them being the acceptance of teenage drinking in our community. When did it become accepted practice for 14 and 15yr olds to get slaughtered every weekend? Why is it that football clubs and parents condone the behaviour and in some cases even supply the grog? Because it's an Alphonso's dog, that's why. Everyone else does it, therefore it must be ok.

When I was a kid, it was smoking. Everyone else did it, therefore it must be a good thing to do. Thank goodness someone euthanised that dog before it euthanised me.

There's an awful lot of teaching practice that's become an Alphonso's dog too. Grouping kids by age is one of them. Judging intelligence based on good spelling and neat handwriting is another!

I'm concerned that attitudes to social media are also becoming Alphonso's dogs. If you ask most of the people who have never used social media but are opposed to the use of it in the classroom why they don't approve of it , the reasons they give aren't based on their own experience but rather because 'someone' says so and 'everyone' knows. Thanks to shock jock media beat ups and just plain ignorance, the idea that the internet is a bad and dangerous place is becoming one of Alphonso's dogs.
One of the reasons I love teaching so much is the ever changing nature of the job. No two kids are the same, no two days are the same, every year is like starting a new job but with the bonus of lessons learnt from the previous year.

So how come some teachers keep regurgitating the same lessons year after year? When so many rich and varied tools are at the disposal of 21st century teachers, why do they continue to deal in 19th century teaching practices? I know it's boring for the kids but it must also be boring for the teachers. If I wanted to know what I'd be doing in week 4 of term one I think I'd be better off working in garbage collection. When the doors to classrooms all over the world are open and inviting us to Skype or Tweet or Elluminate ourselves in, why are some of us still working behind closed doors and closed minds ?

It's that damned dog of Alphonso's that's why and if anyone has ideas on how to get rid of him, I'd appreciate it if you shared them.

The Class of 2010

2010-10-23T03:57:00.000-07:00

Today was the last school day for our Year 12 students. Tonight they party, tomorrow they start Swatvac, next week they start exams and soon they will step off into the big, wide world of university, training or employment. So this reflection is a tribute to the graduating (said with supreme confidence in their ability to pass the upcoming exams!), class of 2010.

There's a lovely sense of privilege and pride, especially in a P-12 school, that comes from watching tiny, timid five yr olds transform into confident young adults. This is the third group of kids that I've been lucky enough to be associated with from Prep to yr 12 and with this group in particular, I've always felt a very strong affinity. They were the babies of our first middle years group, guinea pigs in a bold and very successful experiment to break the barrier of transition from primary to secondary school.They were also the first of our 'super' school productions, with everyone from years 5-7 involved in the chorus.They were founding members of our Kapahaka group and part of our school's performance tour of Knox during the Melbourne Commonwealth Games. Many of them joined our first ever school tour of NZ in 2005 and some even returned for a second trip two years later.

Outside of school I coached quite a few of them in netball or junior tennis and when I think about it, I can't remember any really negative behaviour from any of them. Most classes go through a bit of a 'too cool for school' phase when they get to yr 9 and 10 but not this lot. They're just a very special, lovely group of kids and it will seem rather strange not to have them at school anymore.

One of the outstanding features of this group is the amount of altrusists among them. Josh , Josh and Emily have been Moyne Shire Youth Councillors for the past four years and have given great service to the youth of the Western District. As one final initiative, Josh and Emily, along with Shelby and Lucy will be part of an 'Alternatives to Schoolies' trip to the Phillipines after their exams. Instead of partying at one of the country's beach haunts, they'll spend three weeks in the Phillipines, living with a local family and helping in the school there. Before they go they are working flat out to raise money to buy vegetables to plant in the village farms and school supplies to distribute to the children. If you'd like to donate to this fine cause, please contact us at school.

When they were in the 5-7 unit, these kids helped to establish 'Rainbow Reward' days, where everyone dressed up and took a day off class to celebrate the preceeding weeks of hard work. They approached these days with great fervour and their dressup skills were impressive. The legacy of this is that dress up days are now cool right across the school and everyone enjoys the chance to play for a day.

In a similarly flamboyant fashion they are almost all performers and nearly everyone of them has been involved in the Performing Arts during their time at school. They have created a aura of excellence around our school productions and 'mainstreamed' performing for boys. Of course this year also marks Geoff and my first foray into VCE drama and we are grateful to Sonia, Andrew and Paul for once again becoming guinea pigs and positive role models for a De Manser initiative.

To the 14 who completed the whole journey with us, we wish you well and hope that your life is full of wonderful events. To those who left to work or complete their schooling elsewhere, especially Johan and Grace and Aisha, we miss you and wish you all the best of luck with your exams too.
Can't wait to catch up with you guys when you're all rich and famous :-)

The Class of 2010 on PhotoPeach

Oh, the Drama!

2010-10-12T00:34:00.000-07:00

Today, our first ever (as in first for Geoff & me), intrepid pioneers of the world of VCE drama, completed their solo exam performances. This is our first year of teaching unit 3/4 Drama. Like most things in life we do it as a team, and while that in itself is not without tension sometimes ;-), it's nice to be able to share the highs and lows of working with these amazing young people in a subject that is, surprisingly, as academically rigourous as it is creative. It's scary though, to do something for the first time and we can only hope we are learning fast enough to keep in front of the kids and give them the best shot at being successful.

35% of the total marks for the year for Drama are externally assessed via a 7 minute performance. The students have to write the script themselves from one of 10 prescribed structures and stimulus. Within that 7 minutes they have to show a particular dramatic style, a number of dramatic elements and transform themselves into a range of characters who, in turn, transform through time and place with just a single prop. It's pretty demanding stuff. We've been working on these solos for 7 weeks now. There's been a fair amount of scolding, cajoling, encouraging, pleading and advising going on. As you would expect, some worked harder than others but in the end I think everyone gave it their best effort and today was the day.

What a tension packed experience! On a scale of don't care at all to having a baby, it was right up there. I actually found it very similar to coaching netball teams in grand finals. No matter how good the preparation, there was that feeling that you should be cramming a bit more feedback, a little more advice, just doing something, to get them over the line. That dreadful separation anxiety of not even being able to be in the room while they performed was like dropping your first born off at daycare! What if they forgot their words and you weren't there to prompt? What if they were going too fast and you couldn't give them the slow down signal?

In the end, as we knew they would, everyone came through with flying colours. There were no lost lines and no disasters. All performances filled their allotted time. They didn't need me to be there and that's a sign that we've done our job well. And so have they.We don't get the marks for a couple of months yet but really, in the scheme of things, the marks are sort of irrelevant. As I said to one of the kids today, drama solos are a life experience worth banking. Once you've bared your soul with seven minutes of non naturalistic theatre, on an empty stage in front of three complete strangers, who hold the key to part of your immediate future in their hands, and survived...why you can do anything :-)

So to "The Family Car", "Mrs Lovett", Meip Gies", "Jeeves" and the other "Family Car', congratulations and well done. We couldn't be prouder of you.

Now get back to work and study for the written exam!!

Lucas and the Ultranet

2010-10-05T00:58:00.000-07:00

On the last day of last term we finished reading 'Tuck Everlasting' in class. I love this story. It's full of metaphor and personification and it asks questions that make kids think.

Right at the start of the book Natalie Babbit writes of three events that happened on a single day, events that seemed unconnected but were. It caused me to reflect on three things that had happened in my day.

At our staff meeting, one of the Preps showed us how to manage the express space on our Ultranet pages. He explained it very carefully, the way you hear people speaking to newly arrived immigrants or very old people in nursing homes. And then he flicked the cursor around the page at light speed, showing off the work his teacher has put up for he and his classmates and the awesome programs he's able to activate from within the collaborative space.

That afternoon, I posted my latest uni assignment, a reflection on the progress of my action research project. The project is about digital citizenship and using web 2.0 and social media to communicate, collaborate and facilitate learning and I'm still in the root cause analysis stage.

And that evening, my friend Alison drew my attention to an article in the Herald Sun newspaper about the dangers of facebook.

Because of my research project and because I'm a fairly active online citizen, I've done a lot of reading about participation in social media lately and at least in part, this blog is a way for me to sort out some of the ideas in those readings in my own mind.So for those who choose to read my ramblings, prepare to hear a lot more about digital citizenship in the near future.

The little preppy who showed us how to use the Ultranet is part of a generation of kids who will grow up with social media. I have a 7yr old at home who knows how to text, can independently log on to Club Penguin and often Skypes his Nanny in NZ so she can back up any arguments he has with his parents! He has his own facebook page ( and yes I know facebook sets an age limit but it's like a bank account in his name but under my guardianship so he doesn't actually log into on his own). I was tired of him wrecking my Farmville crops and besides, via facebook chat he can type away to his cousin in Dunedin and his sister in Melbourne at university. While he does those things we talk about the way he should respond and react to people online. He develops a relationship with his sister and his cousin that given their distance and difference in age, would be highly unlikely otherwise. His father and I teach him the etiquette and social rules of online citizenship just the same way as we teach him how to behave in society in general.

The article in the paper horrified me. It was another negative, participate at your peril piece, full of dire warnings for teachers who dare to inhabit the same cyber space as their students. The sub heading was 'Tell us your facebook horror stories." Why doesn't someone in the written media write an article asking for positive feedback? Maybe it's because I can get my news faster and more accurately on Twitter or Facebook on my iPhone than I can waiting for tomorrow's newspaper and the print media are feeling threatened by that.

Then there was the principal whose kids had been writing negative comments on facebook. She said it shouldn't be a primary school problem. Ummm, maybe it shouldn't be, but clearly it is. Maybe if there were a few more adults involved in their kids online activities it wouldn't be. I've also heard people say sex ed shouldn't be taught before year 10 because the kids shouldn't need to know about it until they're legally old enough to engage in it! Oh dear! To me, it's the same scenario.Start teaching them before they need to know, concentrate on building healthy relationships and provide accurate information so they don't have to make up the rules for themselves.

The third event that day was my Uni reflection. So, how is my action research going? Slowly. I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew (how unusual) and when I read news articles like the one mentioned here then I'm not sure one old lady like me has the energy to fight against the negative propoganda and ignorance that surrounds this new means of communication.

But then I remember Lucas and the Ultranet, and Taine telling his big sister about his day on chat and I know that the opportunities for teaching with social media are just too important to ignore. It is at the childrens' peril that adults keep putting their metaphorical heads in the sand.

Bon Voyage Mitchell

2010-08-27T02:24:00.000-07:00

In a land where all students are equal but some are more equal than others, one of our favourite sons sets off an adventure tomorrow as an exchange student to France for the next 5 months.

When I wrote my first post on this blog about things I'd do differently in another lifetime, student exchange is one of the things I should have listed. Unfortunately I didn't have the confidence or the bravery to do it and here I am many years later, still only dreaming about visiting places like France, so I am looking forward to sharing a vicarious journey with Mitch.

I like to think that as a school we have contributed something to Mitchell's decision to make this trip. He is a remarkable boy by nature, a caring and inquisitive soul with an empathy for others and a strong sense of justice but he hasn't always been as outgoing and confident as he is now. Since year 5 however, he has taken every opportunity offered to him and it has been very rewarding to watch his personal growth. As one of our Performing Artists he has been shot on the battlements as 'Gavroche', cavorted around the stage in a lycra body suit as 'Mungojerry' and perfected a magnificent hair flick and sung an (almost) high C as 'Sir Galahad'. As a member of the Kapahaka group, he has stripped to the waist and performed countless haka with such mana and conviction that he has been left bleeding. Once you've shown the confidence to do that, a few months in a foreign country is a trifling matter!

Mitch has been on our NZ camp twice and didn't waste a second of the time that he was there.

Last year Mitchell had the opportunity to attend the Alpine School program at Glenormiston. For 9 weeks, he and three other students developed their leadership skills in a technology, junk food free environment. They came home changed, invigorated, motivated and ready to take on the world as valuable contributors to their society. From that experience, Mitchell's desire to go on exchange was born. It is testament to his strength of mind and the support of his family that having decided this was a good thing to do, he went about doing it!

Last year, another of our stunningly successful students Emily, spent 5 months in Italy and hopefully these two have set a precedent for many more of our kids to follow. There's nothing wrong with growing up in a tiny town like Mortlake when the world is just outside your doorstep.

And so, armed with 12 months of French by correspondence and a 'take it as it comes and expect the best 'attitude, Mitchell will board a plane tomorrow , followed by a train on Sunday, to Marseilles, where he will sacrifice his Summer holidays to spend the next 5 months at school.

We know that he will charm his new friends and family and have a magnificent adventure.

Ayez un temps magnifique. Coffre-fort de voyage. Voir-vous en Janvier :-)

Action Research

2010-08-23T01:23:00.000-07:00

This year I returned to study at the University of Melbourne in the Master of School Leadership program run through the Bastow Institute. It's a two year course delivered by intensive, on campus study in three, two day blocks each semester. The reading and the assessment schedule are fairly intense on top of a pretty crowded full time work schedule but I'm really enjoying the intellectual challenge and the opportunity to learn from amazing educators and fellow student colleagues.

One of the major requirements of the course is an Action Research Project designed to effect change in our school and improve student learning. Last year I was involved in the Leaders in the Making program and together with other participants from the Warrnambool network we identified online behaviour as one of the leading problems in all our schools. We put together a proposal for the network principals to initiate a student led action group to educate parents as a way of improving the digital footprints of our students. Due to almost all our group members falling pregnant during the course (luckily my advanced age provided me with immunity from that!) our plans for this project have gone on hold. So, given that the problem with online behaviour has worsened rather than improved since then, it seemed a logical idea for me to pick up and continue in the MSL project.

My ruminations about the content of the project can be found on the collaborative wiki set up for my school team participants and I would appreciate it if anyone who has taken enough interest to read my blog could also take the time to read my project outline. My biggest problem is narrowing down the information I want to find out and deciding what exact course of action I might take once I've found the information. I would sincerely like to solve all the problems of the world in one go and I hate being restricted to achievable chunks! Unfortunately this attitude frequently leads to a revolving crisis of brilliant ideas and no action.

On Friday we had a visit from Michael Phillips, an educational researcher from Monash University. Michael is conducting research into students' online behaviour with a view to compiling a guide book for them explaining the legal ramifications of some of the stuff they do online. We had previously completed some of his online surveys and I was really interested to meet him as a lot of the questions in his survey related directly to the ideas I'm keen to pursue in my study. One of his sessions involved interviews with several of our middle school teachers. During that interview it became evident to me that I was not alone in thinking of the internet as just another place where kids hang out and that our reaction to this space needs to be the same as any other space our students use. Much of our discussion revolved around the tendency of school administration to use the 'block, ban, ignore' method of dealing with issues that occur online with the excuse that it 'didn't happen in school time'. Unfortunately a lot of it is now happening in school time. Free facebook access on most smart phones means that status updates are happening from inside classrooms and during breaks and when those updates are negative toward someone in the school then I'm pretty sure it's a school issue.Online incidents that happen after school almost invariably end up on the welfare officer's doorstep at the start of each school day. We also talked about the idea that, in a lot of education circles, social media is almost always referred to in a negative context with the emphasis on the perceived dangers, rather than as the incredibly useful communication tool that we see it to be.

One of the reasons I've chosen this area to study is that I feel so strongly that social media can provide another avenue for building the kind of strong relationships that are the heart and soul of every good school. This blog post by Ric Murry tells it like it is. I certainly think that part of the reason my students do so well is that they want me to be proud of them. We have the kind of mutually respectful relationship that engenders best effort and it's simply not possible to get the same results unless you care about the kids and they care about you. Today is my birthday and it is interesting to note the different ways the kids at school helped me to celebrate. I had a birthday wish from the entire school at assembly this morning, the 5-7s sang a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday and the Yr 12s shared some of their mad Monday cake with me during Drama. And....by the time I checked my facebook as I was finishing this post, more than a dozen current and ex students had taken the time to post a personal birthday message to my wall. That's a lovely, real way of communicating and connecting and it's worth fighting for.

Anyway, as usual I digress. As you can see I've done a lot of talking with like minds and I've become an avid reader of other bloggers and almost without exception the same themes keep recurring, all reiterating my own thoughts about online spaces and behaviours but also confusing me by adding even more thoughts and ideas to the maelstrom spinning around in my head. I need help with the focus of my project.
I'm off to eat more cake. Please check out my wiki and give me some guidance!

Ageism Rules

2010-08-20T23:51:00.000-07:00

Why is it that schools and school systems designate their students to age based grades and expect them all to achieve standardised, age based outcomes?

I'm really frustrated by this. Maybe part of my frustration is because it's a 'rule' thing ( see my previous post for my feelings on rules!), but mostly I'm frustrated because my teaching experience tells me that age expectations are so restrictive for some and downright depressing and unachievable for others. Just as kids differ so remarkably in physical development, cognitively and socially they are all over the shop as well and deserve to be taught where they are at, not where some arbitrary, chronological line assigns them.

In my own teaching unit I am lucky enough to work with two colleagues who share my opinion of the negative effects of pigeon holing by grade. We teach 64 kids from year 5 to year 7 and within our core classes we group them by learning style, not by age. The work we plan for them and the expectations we have of them are based on their individual needs, not on the grade list they belong to. We don't even think of them as being in particular grade levels and when asked by someone from outside our unit, we often have to stop and think very hard to say whether they are in year 5, 6 or 7.

The academic data from our unit is exceptional, especially at year 7 level and the break down of academic achievement is also interesting. In mathematics, for example, the range of achievement goes from a VELS level of 1.9 to 5.2. In reading, from 2.3 to above 5.8. Interestingly, the lowest scoring reader is a year 7 student and, you guessed it, the highest scores in both areas come from year 5 students. And yet, I read just as recently as this week, that it is very nearly impossible for a student to be graded at a higher level than grade level in mathematics because the subject is of a lock step nature and the child could not possibly have learnt the material necessary to score so highly! I just really don't believe that and our data refutes it. If my students' achievement was restricted to only what I, personally had taught them, then it would be a shame. Even I'm not egotistical enough to think all their knowledge comes from me. Heck, I have kids who know how to use semi colons properly; and they certainly didn't get that from my classroom ;-0. I have also heard it suggested that year 8 students shouldn't work in vertical groups with year 10s because they will hold the older students back. I would have a few year 8 students who would suggest it might be the other way around because chronological age is a pretty poor indicator of maturity in adolescents!

I've done a fair bit of surfing through Google Scholar while I've been thinking about this and while there isn't a plethora of research available, the work that has been published quite overwhelmingly comes down in favour of multi age grouping that involves individual and differentiated learning tasks. The interaction between the different ages not only enables individual progression, it allows for mentoring, role modelling and nurturing and creates opportunities for a team or family like environment in the classroom.

I'm not sure if it is a status quo thing, as in that's the way it's always been done, because age segregation is actually a relatively recent phenomenon and I found an old but easy to understand article that explains the evolution of this type of education in a far more articulate fashion than I can manage.
On the merits of Multi Age Classrooms.

My gut feeling about the continuance of age/ grade grouping is that it's done that way because it's 'easier'. Easier for teachers, easier for text book writers and test makers, easier for planning the furniture allocations, easier to explain to parents who were themselves taught that way and so think it must be the best way for their own children.

My hope is that this is one of the factors of education that will change dramatically through online learning. I certainly know from my own experience that one of the great benefits of online communication is that you meet the mind first. Your interaction and opinion of another person's intellect and personality is not prejudiced by what they look like, how old they are, or what their social or economic position is.

Imagine if this was the case with our students.If we took away the expectations we have of our students due to their age or grade level, how would that change the way we teach them and the ideas to which we expose them?

Rule 33.a

2010-08-16T04:28:00.000-07:00

This week, George Couros posted a blog inspired by a TED talk by Barry Schwartz. I really enjoy reading George's stuff so I took the time to watch the video. It got me thinking about a lot of things and my brain overloaded so far that I actually took some notes while I was watching it.

I have a bit of an issue with 'rules'. In fact everytime someone asks at staff briefing "What's the rule on that?", the hairs on the back of my neck start to bristle. I know rules are necessary for many things, however I believe most of them could be left unwritten if everyone followed my favourite rule, Rule 33.a, the Rule of Commonsense. My dad coined that rule when he was the president of the local football league. He said that meetings often got bogged down with trivial discussion and when that happened he would just tell everyone that it was covered by Rule 33.a and move on. So when I was watching this video of Barry Schwartz, it occurred to me that this was exactly what he was talking about. If we teach our kids to be wise moral citizens, who act in a particular way because it's the right thing to do rather than the mandated thing to do, they will understand Rule 33.a and the need for a lot of our rule making will be over. If kids learn character and to respect themselves and others, then the rules will be redundant.

A few years ago we instigated a one rule fits all approach. The rule is ' In this school, every student has a right to learn and every teacher has the right to teach. Anything that interferes with that is against the rule." Backed up by Rule 33.a, and in an atmosphere of shared respect and accountability, this stands us in good stead in our Yrs 5-7 unit. Pretty much all behaviour can be bought back to that one rule and Restorative Practice helps to point any wrong doers back in the right direction. Unfortunately, outside the immediate classroom, we still have a fair few rules. Take the hat rule for instance. The Rule says you have to wear your hat when you are outside during terms 1 and 4. All very well unless you get an extreme UV day in term 2. And what happens when kids don't have a hat? Can they sit under the shade sails? Can they just take the hat off while they play sport? What if their little sister stole their hat and sold it on the black market? Here's the thing. When the UV is over 3, you're going to get skin damage from sun exposure. Respect yourself and wear your hat when the UV monitor tells you it's 3 or more, or stay inside.

How about the uniform policy? Boys must wear grey school socks. You know what? I don't care if they wear pink socks (actually I'd prefer it) but the policy says grey, so just get your kid grey socks! And if on rare occasions they have to wear white ones (which are generally grey by recess anyway), should I rant and rave and demand detention from them? Rule 33.a. Don't sweat the small stuff.
Anyway, I digress. What really struck me about this video was the notion of how 'wiseness' relates to use of social media. I'm a great fan of social media. I was an early adopter way back in 1997 when ICQ was the way to chat online and the Teachers Net lounge was 'the' collaborative space for teachers. These days I'm an avid facebooker and I'll write another day about all the useful ways that I use the application. But what I'm thinking about today are the rules that the digital dinosaurs keep inventing to cope with new technology like Facebook, Youtube, Twitter etc? The front line defence rules are the 'block' and the 'ban'.This might work except the kids are a lot smarter than the grown ups when it comes to social media and they can get around every techno wall I've ever seen. The other problem is, these applications are full of learning opportunities. How can we teach our kids to be moral and ethical digital citizens if we don't model and scaffold the correct behaviour in our schools and in our own lives?

Many schools (thankfully not mine) have a rule that says teachers may not friend students on facebook. I just really don't understand this. I live in a very small town. I'm friendly to the kids in the supermarket. I'm friendly to them at the football. In fact I get along pretty well with most of them at school! I don't request access to their pages but if they invite me into their space and they are of legal age to have a facebook account then I am more than happy to be friendly to them in an online environment. I don't stalk their pages looking for private information about them. If I were the type to conduct inappropriate relationships with my students then I certainly wouldn't do so on a public forum like facebook! Just like when I see them out at any public event I interact with them in a friendly and professional manner. I take notice of the things they choose to show me and I comment positively on items they present to me. As teachers, within our community we are always teaching and someone is always watching. Therefore, rule 33.a would tell you that as a teacher I need to have the same awareness of my digital profile as I do my public profile in the community. As Schwartz says in this video, " As teachers we should be ordinary heroes - we should strive to be moral exemplars to the people we mentor", and if ever there was a place that needed moral exemplars, it's social networking.

So, I think we should worry more about how we teach our kids to become great citizens and less about how many rules we can put in place to tempt them to become bad citizens. Rules get in the road of respectful relationships. As Schwartz quotes Scott Simon from NPR, "Rules and procedures may be dumb but they save you from thinking."

Spammed

2010-08-10T23:27:00.000-07:00

There are times in your career when you know absolutely for sure and certain , without a shadow of doubt, that teaching is the best profession in the world. Last Friday night was one of those occasions. It was the final performance of our school production of 'Spamalot', the culmination of 12 months planning, 6 months of rehearsals and 2 weeks of performances. As they made their final bows, the faces of 82 wonderful kids beamed at us from the stage. The show was a huge success despite many of them battling through bouts of gastro and bronchitis. They were proud of themselves, their parents were proud of them, their teachers and community were proud of them and we, ( the staff in charge of the show), were filled with the sort of overwhelming satisfaction ( not to mention exhaustion), that comes from a job well done and a plan coming to fruition.

Our school musical is an annual event and open to all the students from years 5 - 12. This year we had 72 in the cast and a further 10 working behind the scenes. It's a massive undertaking that starts in the planning stages for the following year about two days after the last show of this year ends. There are four teachers involved with directing and producing the performance from the beginning and another couple majorly involved with the production season and the theatre restaurant catering, but the maestro of the entire thing is our Producer & Director, Lyle Russell. Where she gets her energy from I do not know but this amazing woman designs and makes most of the costumes and props, casts and directs the actors, manages the music, the sets, the lighting, the sound and a million and one other things in order for almost half our senior school population to get up on the stage and star. Amidst all this she continues to teach a full load and fulfil her role as a middle school co ordinator. Even after working alongside her for the last 8 years, I am still in awe of her ability not only to multi task but to remain calm and in control.

On our opening night this year, the sound boys thought they would get a jump on the workload by hacking Lyle's computer to get the sound track going. After three unsuccessful attempts the computer locked down and no one could access the music. While the rest of us ran around like headless chooks, Lyle quietly consulted the computer tech on the phone, tried every solution suggested, still couldn't access her files and so improvised with a compilation of un named tracks on a cd !

Our company is unique among Australian schools in that our cast is made up of almost 50% boys. While most schools struggle to find males to fill the main roles, we have a magnificent plethora of them. The boys who play this year's knights of the round table have been performing for a number of years and have set a precedent of inclusion in the performing arts. At our school, the 'cool kids' are performers, or if they choose not to perform, they are at the very least supportive of those who do and often take on a job in the support crew. Our school works very hard to make sure our students are encouraged to choose from a wide range of extra curricula pursuits so that their success is never one dimensional. This year's 'King Arthur' is also our school sports captain and a likely candidate to take out the Yr 12 dux award (for academic achievement).Our performing artists all have impressive student curriculum vitaes that include success in academia, sport, leadership and community. We do our part to enable this 'all roundedness' by staging our rehearsals to fit in with football and netball training and making sure there is never an 'either or' choice between performing arts and sport.

To me, the Production is the epitome of what makes a great school because the company and the performance is based on great relationships and mutual respect between teachers and students and students and other students. It is filled with real, rich learning tasks. Kids who have never read well suddenly find a purpose for their learning when a script is the text. Performing Arts provides scope for different learning styles. The kinaesthetic learner thrives, interpersonal and personal skills come to the fore as cast members learn to cope with their own time management and the dependence on team work required to get the show up to speed. As an English teacher I am astounded every year to find a new 'star' who may not speak up in class but given the opportunity to speak in costume or character, suddenly loses their shyness. Leadership skills blossom among the ranks and cross age mentoring and friendships are common place. Most of all though, I think our performing artists learn that it's OK to have a go, it's OK to hear constructive feedback and to work hard to show improvement and achieve excellence.They learn that in real life sometimes things are hard, we get really tired and have to dig deep to keep going and in doing so they know that they are important cogs in the big picture.

Not only does the Production foster relationships between teachers and students, it also provides an avenue for parents to become involved in the school community. At Mortlake College we are blessed to have so many parents helping with sets, costumes, catering and clean ups. For this year's show, one parent sewed us a full sized cow! Another bought hot soup to rehearsals for the entire cast.

This year's final performance was tinged with sadness for us. Our graduating year 12s were the babies of our original company 8 years ago and we have watched them blossom from walk ons as 'lamingtons' and wolves in 'Beauty & the Beast', through chorus roles in 'Oklahoma' and 'Grease' to significant cameos in 'Les Miserables" and 'Cats' to lead roles last year in 'Pirates of Penzance' and now 'Spamalot'. They have grown from pesky 10 yr old chorus fodder to spectacular 17 and 18 yr old leading men, leading ladies and backstage managers. Their confidence and leadership is a wonderful testament to our program and to their persistence and loyalty and we value them not only as past students but now as friends and colleagues.

May they always look on the bright side of life!

A Place to Start

2010-07-31T16:16:00.001-07:00

I hate growing older because it means I'm running out of time to learn and see and do things.

I don't like the physical effects of ageing either, but mostly that's just vanity and since I've been a bit dismissive of older people all my young life then I deserve some payback now. I must admit though that the shock of seeing some old lady looking back at me in the mirror is continually disturbing! She certainly doesn't reflect the way I feel like I look.

Not being able to get my body to physically behave the way I expect it to is also frustrating. I watch my daughters play netball and while I can't quite pinpoint the moment I realised I could no longer do that myself, I do know that I would break if I tried. I want my own Avatar. My 50yr old brain in my 20 yr old body and I would be a super star!

Most of all however, I despise the inevitability that time will rob me of the chance to keep teaching and learning and travelling. I think about how quickly the last 20 years have passed and what huge shifts in technology have occurred in that time and I lust to know what life will be like in 40 yrs or 100 yrs.

To compensate and to keep my mind off my mortality, I try to fit far more into every day than I previously thought possible in an attempt to feed my thirst for knowledge and new experiences. Blogging is one of the things on my bucket list and I've put off the first post for a long time because I couldn't decide what to blog about (and because of point 9 below). Today it's cold and raining outside so I'm just going to begin....

I've called my blog 'In Hindsight' because I believe reflection is the key to future learning. Making mistakes is how we learn but making the same mistake twice indicates a poor attention span or a flawed attitude.

So for my first ever blog post; in hindsight, what are the top 10 things I have changed or would have changed about my life if I could?

1. I would never, ever have smoked a cigarette. It took me 30 years to stop the filthy habit and it has most likely robbed me of quite a few of the years I am so worried about keeping at this end of my life.
Don't think you will be the one who can just give it away whenever you want to. Addiction doesn't work that way.

2. I would never have left the house without sunscreen. That tan I thought looked so healthy at 16 certainly doesn't look so flash now.
Skin cancer kills people.

3. I would be more grateful for what I have and less envious of what I have not. Envy is a wasted emotion. You make your own luck. I wish I had spent more time chasing my own goals rather than thinking how lucky other people were.

4. I'd have more kids. The three I have (aged 26, 19 & 7) are truly wonderful, amazing creatures and I love them to bits.They are my greatest achievement and my greatest joy. I never cease to be amazed by the miracle of childbirth. If I'd been a better family planner I would have one more in each of the gaps to keep each other company when they were little!

5. I would be nicer to people. Forgiveness is so much healthier than bearing a grudge. Anger is a very negative emotion and causes you to act in an irrational way that generally embarrasses you and your family.Sweating the little stuff sucks up the energy you need in case major stuff happens.
Choose to be happy.

6. I'd worry less. You can waste a lot of time making contingency plans for things that never happen. I tell my kids, 'drive carefully, wear your glasses and watch out for bees'. That covers most circumstances but it doesn't stop me from jumping every time the phone rings.

7. I would have travelled further, sooner. Thank goodness for books and the internet which have allowed me to 'virtual travel' to every corner of the Earth and beyond.

8. I would be more assertive. Stand up for what you believe in and don't be a bystander to bullying. I've learnt to do this more often recently and I like the way it feels.

9. Stop procrastinating and just get on with it. This is a work in progress.

10. I wouldn't have cut my hair the first time when my dad paid me to do it, the second time when I decided I was too old for long hair, or the third time or the time after that for the same reason. Don't feel the need to conform for other people.

What would you put in your top ten?