An Identity of One's Own

Planning a writing workshop

2011-09-07T10:59:00.002+10:00

It's interesting the way it all starts to come together. I am planning the next workshop for our inquiry group of pre-service teachers, who are currently away from campus on their final, five week teaching practicum.
This session will be a writing workshop: an opportunity for them to share and reflect critically on their experiences during their practicum so far. Hopefully, they will bring along some in progress writing to share (their impending assignment is an extended critical narrative about the teaching of writing).

Preparing for this workshop is bringing to mind some of the workshops that the Advocacy Group organised (when we still existed as a 'formal' entity) a few years back. This notion of writing (and talk) as a form of advocacy is something that I hope the pre-service teachers will be able to 'take away' with them after their participation in their group, even if they don't continue to experiment with new media, new literacies and the other buzz words next year.

Image source: http://staff.esuhsd.org/danielle/english%20department%20lvillage/informational.html

A common table

2011-09-01T14:10:00.001+10:00

I can't help but feel a sense of accomplishment as I reflect on all that we have achieved so far with the English and new media inquiry groups that we have set up at Monash.
The opportunity stemmed, initially, from a government funded project which enabled universities around the country to second teachers in schools to work with pre-service teachers in universities. The idea was to use the experienced teacher to help university lecturers develop curriculum that 'skilled' pre-service teachers up to be more confident about using 'ICTs' in the classroom. Of course, there are all sorts of tension and issues associated with an approach like this, with the teacher 'mixin' it wid th kids' each day positioned as the 'expert', rather than considering the prospect that such a partnership might be mutually beneficial. It certainly has been for me.

Needless to say, we haven't really adopted the expected approach to this project. What we have done is set up two inquiry groups, one for interested pre-service English teachers at Monash, the other for practising teachers (all Monash graduates).

The pre-service teacher group (with an amorphous collection of around 15 members) has met together four times now. Each week, we explore a different avenue into multimodality, with a view to engaging in some critical discussion about the issues, challenges and possibilities that each avenue raises. We have explored multimodal narratives, such as Inanimate Alice and Such Tweet Sorrow; web 2.0 tools for creating texts, such as flickr, storybird and pixton; we have created our own digital narratives using images from Shaun Tan's picture books and art. It was wonderful to hear, after catching up with some of them last night, that our workshops have made them feel excited about the possibilities and what they can achieve with their classes during their final five week practicum.

The practising teacher group is composed of teachers from a rich variety of school contexts. They range from Monash graduates in their first year out, to teachers who have been in the profession for twenty-odd years. Each one of them has been an exciting and dynamic presence in the group. We have met twice, face to face, over pizza, nibblies and wine. There is already a lovely rhythm to the conversation that develops, for each member of the group has so much to contribute. In our last session, a few members of the group took the lead by sharing snapshots of their practice. One teacher shared screen grabs of the 'Pride and Prejudice' facebook profiles that her students had created, and the discussion that unfolded amongst the group in response to these artefacts was fascinating. About playfulness, identity, language, experimentation, dialogue... Another teacher spoke about podcasting student feedback instead of writing it, but her approach was actually about far more than that. She spoke about how she felt that she was now responding as an interested reader of her students' work, instead of assuming the mantle of 'the teacher'. Another teacher shared these amazing ‘tweets’ from year 8s in a history class (she called the activity ‘twitstory’). I don’t think that she had realised, initially, just how cool they actually were. She gave each student a tag , such as #battleofhastings and they had to come up with a relevant tweet. They were just brilliant. So funny and so clever.

I can already sense that this group will take on a life of its own, beyond the span of the government-funded project that has enabled it. It is a testament to the value of collaborative inquiry and the possibilities that arise when you get a group of passionate English teachers around a common table.

Image from: http://ryanbushphotography.com/#

Stumbling over unpublished blogposts…

2011-07-12T15:58:00.001+10:00

(from July, 2010

I have spent the past few days in Perth, attending the AATE conference for teachers of English. This afternoon, deciding not to attend a keynote presentation on phonics, I walked beside the Swan River. In a garden near the Burswood complex, I found two sculptures. In a way that felt rather serendipitous, looking at these sculptures and reading the plaques nearby, seemed to capture the 'lessons' at the forefront of my mind after listening to the voices of various researchers, educators, and even a lawyer, over the past few days.

The first sculpture that I stumbled upon was entitled 'The Storyteller'. The figure represented was Mary Durack, a local historian. In the sculpture, there are two 'Marys' represented- a young girl, representing Mary's youth, and Mary as a woman, taking on the role of an ancestor passing on a family history. The older Mary reads a book entitled 'The Swan River Saga' to her younger self, and so the narrative within its covers acts as a link between generations, or ways of knowing the world- as a child and as an adult.

Conferences of this size always seem to convey this dichotomy to me- experienced voices and newer voices, conversing in the same space. The opportunity to listen to Bill Green talking about his 3D model of Literacy, for example, brings it to life in a way that cannot be captured in quite the same way as printed text. He reflected on the idea of using a model, such as his, as a vehicle for 'thinking' and 'talking' about literacy- a point of shared understanding, or a common starting point, that then forges the possibility of re-thinking and re-making our own model or metaphor. He stressed the importance of conceptualising literacy in a way that 'does justice' to the practice of literacy. The need for a framework that is rich and generative instead of reductive and without the potential to shift and grow through changing times.

In the same panel discussion, Catherine Beavis applied Green's model to the teaching of digital literacies. As is typical in discussions about digital literacies amongst teachers, there was some disquiet expressed about teachers' knowledge of the 'operational' aspects of technology- and whether their lack of knowledge impedes their ability to use digital technology in creative and generative ways in their classes. I really appreciated Catherine's response to this- that teachers need to have sense of what they are looking for in student-generated digital texts- of how to articulate their understanding of the evidence of student learning in the 'product'. In this way, Green's model becomes a useful framework for analysing student-created texts as well as 'reading' the texts of others or planning for learning. It made me reflect on the complexities of assessing multimodal/digital texts that my students have created in the past.

Some of my students have produced digital texts that have had a pronounced effect on me, and their peers for that matter, as the 'audience'. Most of my work in this area has been about merging poetry with digital technology and multimodality. My students have created multimodal interpretations, incorporating sound, music, images and animation, of poems by Plath, Blake, Dylan Thomas... the list goes on. My initial response to the texts that they create is often driven by emotions stirred by the music, the images, and the appropriation of the poet's words by the student. They can be profoundly moving and often seem to suggest an engagement with and understanding of the nuances of mood, language, and imagery in the poem in far more sophisticated and subtle ways than they may be able to demonstrate in a 'typical' poetry response like an analytical essay.

But, more recently I have found myself wondering how much of those nuances are suggested by design and how much are made possible by the affordances of the technology platform and the sensibilities of the audience. The same difficulties arise in assessing all forms of writing, I suppose, but when the technology becomes more than just a tool and begins to shape or direct student work... then assessment starts to become a little more complex and requires more critical thinking. And, I haven't really figured all of this out yet, but I can see the Green's model might be useful for me in this respect, too.

The second statue that I came across on my walk was called 'Hopscotch: Children at Play'. The positioning of the three child figures captured the feelings of exhilaration, absorption, immersion that characterise children at play. Alongside the statue was another Hopscotch that children could use to mimic the game played by the frozen statues. In this way, the statue was no longer a piece of art to 'observe' from a distance, but something to interact with- a source of imaginative play. The plaque described at the concept at work as "one of participation. Visitors to the park are encouraged to join in this simple but fun filled activity." In the final paragraph, the author (the artist?) states, "it is hoped that in this day of sophisticated electronic amusements children can learn to recapture the mood of a by-gone age by taking part in this traditional game".

This notion of 'play' has certainly been a notion that discussions have swirled around and touched on in this conference.

New beginnings

2011-04-19T22:11:00.003+10:00

I'm back. :)

I find myself, once again, arriving at a new beginning and so it feels natural to return to this blog and, hopefully, turn it into a new space. (a space that I will visit regularly- I hope!)

I have just embarked on a part-time secondment at M Uni, which means that for the remainder of this year I will be working across different spaces... my school... an education faculty in a university... other schools.... digital realms....

I'm excited, and nervous, about the prospect of shaping a new identity for myself (one more addition to my collection of multiple selves) in this university space as a... as what? Which label to affix here? And do I even deserve this shiny new label? (shh... don't tell anyone that I haven't figured that out yet)

One of the goals of the government-funded project that I am involved in (henceforth to be known as TTFF in case I want to write critically in this space further down the track at the risk of google gremlins tracking me down) is to improve the ICT capabilities of pre-service teachers before they enter this 'brave new world' of future-oriented curriculum documentation and classrooms full of digital natives. That's the rhetoric, anyway. I'm not particularly interested in buying into that sort of discourse. What I am interested in is the prospect of participating in, and providing opportunities for, some rich, ongoing conversations about English teaching, technology, what matters and what is possible, between pre-service teachers, English teachers and teacher educators.

The challenge is that there are so many possibilities.

It has been six months since my last (confession) blogpost..

2010-01-27T19:51:00.002+11:00

Back at school. In Oz. Noice.

It has been quite a while since I have felt any compulsion to blog... I'm not sure exactly what that means... or if it means anything at all.... it's just the way things have turned out.

After travelling through Europe until I ran out of dough, I returned to Australia and did some CRT work and other bits and pieces whilst looking for a new position for 2010.

At my new school today, I was excited and reassured by the new Principal's speech about community and creativity; interesting and interested colleagues; and intriguing opportunities for professional learning and development.

Two more staff days to go. Then, I get to teach again. Noice. :)

36 hours

2009-07-19T07:03:00.004+10:00

For the past 36 hours my head has been in danger of exploding. My school in England closed for the summer, I have said goodbye, and there is so much to process.

I won't deny that I have found it tough, arriving in January to pick up the pieces after two teachers that left before me and attempting to hit the ground running. There were times when I thought that I wasn't going to make it. But I have.

I can't claim to have made any sizeable difference though, or to feel anything close to the sense of satisfaction and completion that I experienced after leaving my school in Australia after five years in 2008. I know that I have only been teaching over here for a short time, and I'm sure that if I stayed for another year it would get a lot easier, although I'm not sure that I would want it to. This isn't an education system that I have any desire to 'get used to'. Even if there have been recent signs of the UK learning from the past. The decision at the beginning of this year to do away with the Year 9 SATs is one, and the recent reports in the media about government plans to return some autonomy to schools and local districts is another. But I am looking forward to getting back to teaching the Victorian curriculum with its emphasis on multimodality and metacognition, where creativity and deep thinking aren't sidelined by 'the basics'. Not that it is this simple- I know full well that curriculum documentation is only a small part of the conversation in a learning environment full of diverse students and teachers. But at least without the constant oversight, the threat of Ofsted inspectors and heavily regulated teacher performance system, they at least have a fighting chance.

There have been numerous times this year when I have stopped and thought to myself, 'oh, where is that learning focus gone?' or 'why are the processes of reading and writing treated so seperately over here?' I guess the fact that I have had the opportunity to ask these questions, to realise what it is possible to lose from our curriculum back home is worthwhile enough, particularly as we continue to march forwards towards a National Curriculum. My experiences here will certainly colour my perceptions and contributions to this ongoing debate when I arrive home.

For now, I am going to attempt to 'let go' and enjoy the rest of my travels before I head home and have to figure out what I am going to do with myself in 2010.

Arrival

2009-06-15T05:22:00.002+10:00

Heathrow airport at 10pm in January is a miserable place. After queuing for hours in customs and retrieving my two-ton suitcase containing all of my worldly possessions from the luggage carousel, I gazed bewilderingly at the regimented rows of Britons marching smartly towards signs to the tube station. I, on the other hand, sought out the counter for the national express airport- to-hotel bus service that I had booked back in Australia, not wanting to risk complicated transport routes on my first night in the country.

I was directed by a woman in a twin-set to take a seat on the lonely row of moulded chairs beside the automatic doors. I pulled my massive suitcase over to the chairs and peered out through the glass doors for my first glimpse of England. An occasional set of headlights loomed through the darkness, but no sign of my bus. Through the mist a man in a fluorescent orange vest appeared, walking purposefully towards the glass doors. The doors slid open... the shock of cold sent me scurrying back to my suitcase to retrieve my coat.

Precisely thirty minutes later I, along with a few other hapless Aussies, drove through the swirling mists towards central London. We seemed to take a circuitous route through streets lined with curry houses and signs reading ‘off-license’ until, two hours later, I was unceremoniously dropped in front of a BnB in Bloomsbury. Too cold to revel in the fact that I was standing on a street that members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood may have strolled along, I pressed the buzzer beside the bright blue door and waited, hands thrust deep inside my coat pockets.

‘Hiya,’ said the blonde in a sing-song voice as the door pulled back. ‘Are ye a’right?’

I blinked. Am I alright? Unsure how to answer the question, I responded with, ‘I have a booking’.

‘Brilliant,’ she replied. She stepped back and allowed me to retrieve my suitcase from the pavement and haul it up the short flight of stairs and into the carpeted hallway. A forbidding staircase appeared before me, covered with red and yellow paisley carpet.

‘I’ll get my husband’.

‘Sure,’ I replied, staring at the portrait of a stern individual in navy uniform who glared at me from above the sideboard.

Minutes later a short, thin man with a cream t-shirt tucked tightly into his jeans stepped into the hallway. ‘Good evening,’ he said.

‘Good evening,’ I replied, stepping forward and revealing my suitcase cowering behind me. His eyes widened in horror.

‘We don’t have a lift,’ he said softly.

‘What?’ I replied, looking around in confusion, ‘well, that doesn’t matter, I...’

‘We don’t have a lift and you’re on the fourth floor.’

‘Oh,’ I replied, still not sure what the big deal was- I’ve climbed stairs before in my time. Then, I became aware of his fixed gaze on my suitcase.

‘Oh,’ I laughed, suddenly comprehending, ‘that’s ok, I can handle...’

‘No,’ he sighed, stepping past me and grabbing my suitcase handle determinedly. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘No, really, I...’

He heaved my suitcase up the first two steps and balanced there for a moment. I stepped meekly behind him.

‘What have you got in here?’ he scowled.

‘All my worldly possessions,’ I laughed, then stopped. My host wasn’t laughing.

‘I’m moving here,’ I tried again. ‘That’s why I...’

I let my voice trail off as he sucked in a deep breath and pulled my suitcase up another couple of stairs.

‘Hmph,’ he said.

Ten minutes later, he unlocked the door to my tiny room. ‘Breakfast is at 8:00,’ he huffed, before heading back down the stairs. I could still hear him wheezing as I stepped inside and closed the door. I held out my arms to touch each wall. I felt the tears well.

‘I’m here,’ I whispered, and unzipped my suitcase to pull out my scarf, gloves and thermal underwear, ready for tomorrow.

(after reading the prologue of Bill Bryson’s ‘Notes from a small island’)

Late night photo shoot

2009-06-11T07:30:00.009+10:00

Possessed by the night spirits, I left my flat at 10pm with my camera, pen and journal. Here is the result.

I sought the river, but it was the shadows that followed me home.

The Sound of Music

2009-05-22T03:24:00.002+10:00

I am heading to Salzburg next week- looking forward to the Sound of Music tour!

Good News Stories

2009-05-17T06:47:00.002+10:00

I have been consumed with what is lacking in my new school, in this UK education system. I must remind myself to keep looking for the good learning and teaching moments, because they are there. This week, I will be getting my Year 7 classes to design their ideal school. We have been reading David Almond's novel, Skellig, in which the home-schooled Mina agrees with William Blake that schools are institutions which "drive[s] all joy away".

Hopefully, they will prove the poet wrong.

Limitations

2009-04-01T06:05:00.007+11:00

I had an extremely frustrating lesson with one of my year 8 classes today. The first objective, which I wasn't expecting to be at all problematic, was to return their reading and writing assessments (discussed in last post) and have them record their 'levels' and 'targets for improvement' on their ongoing progress record, which was what I was instructed to do. Sounds pretty simple, right?

My first mistake was to assume that they were familiar with their assessment grids, or at least had gone through them before. I was told not to provide written feedback for this task (thankfully, because I only had a week to assess 60 of them before recording their results on their reports) and circle the outcomes that they needed to improve in order to progress to the next level.

I started to take them through it- they couldn't make head nor tail of it, and so began to lose focus and concentration pretty much straight away. This is a pretty tricky group at the best of times- so them not having a clue descended pretty quickly to mayhem. I was so frustrated at the time, and still am, at myself now rather than them (during the class, I wanted to throttle every last one of 'em). I should have known better. But, the question needs to be asked, why are we even bothering to return these app grids to students when they include language like, 'syntax and full range of punctuation are consistently accurate in a variety of sentence structures, with occasional errors in ambitious structures'? I mean, what is it that we are trying to achieve here?? What the "*&! is a Year 8 kid meant to do with that?

There is a clear focus in the school (and I'm assuming other schools in England as well) of students knowing their current 'levels', and what 'level' they are expected to reach by the end of each stage of schooling. Students even have them on the front of their exercise books as a stark reminder of what is at stake! There is nothing wrong, on the surface, with students having clear achievement goals set before them. But when it becomes so arbitrary, and mathematical, like 'every student should be able to improve by two sub-levels within a year', there are so many assumptions being made about student learning (not to mention teacher performance) that simply aren't being addressed.

At Key stage 3 (years 7-9) the assessment grids are the same for each individual assessment- one for 'reading'tasks, one for 'writing' tasks. The criteria are weighted differently (sentence and paragraph structures rank highly; writing 'imaginative and interesting texts', for example, is lower down the list). So, there are assumptions made about the skills that are valued, for a start. More troubling to me is the way that the same assessment foci for each task limit possibilities in the classroom- in terms of creating assessment tasks that 'meet' these same criteria, rather than using the learning itself as the starting point. And, when student performance data is so important for schools over here, it doesn't take a great leap of thinking to see that that is a likely outcome. 'Negotiating the curriculum' is one thing, schools having the courage and fortitude to go completely against the grain and value other skills is another.

Thinking more deeply, what is truly worrying is how such narrow conceptions of 'successful' writing and reading will affect the way that students, as citizens of the world, will be able to value, appreciate, critique and, indeed, create texts that do not subscribe to these narrow parameters. What kinds of writers and readers are we trying to foster?

I guess I'm just sick of feeling bad about the crap job that I feel I'm doing when I am having to grapple with so many limitations and parameters.

The Surface

2009-03-27T07:30:00.002+11:00

I commented to one of my new colleagues the other day that I feel I have been 'tunnelling along' and have only just managed to stick my head up and have a look around during the past week or so.

I am working with good people, but in a flawed system.

Still, I suspected that would be the case before I even arrived in the country.

This past week has had a heavy assessment focus- year 8 assessments using very rigid (and frustratingly narrow) app criteria for 3 classes with a one week turnaround, and a day of moderating GCSE (year 11) coursework. This was a very 'quiet' day, and I missed the discussions over benchmarking that occur in my school back home. Still, they have a lot more to get down over here- whole folders of coursework have to sent off for external moderation (the paperwork alone seems ridiculous) and it is important to get them 'right' before they go. I found out today that things will shift again in 2011 when all coursework will be required to be completed in classtime under exam conditions. The UK did the right thing by getting rid of SATs this year, but they seem to be counteracting this move with even more rigid assessment practices in the GCSE. One step forward, two steps back.

My mind feels so alive at the moment- like waking up after a long sleep. I feel that I am thinking more thoughtfully, critically, about my own work and education in general than I have for a while.. but at the same time I am wondering what is the point of it all. Since my head has managed to pop above the surface, I have noticed all of these 'gaps'- missing pieces of my subject knowledge that I have taken for granted in Australia. Like multimodality... critical literacy... alternative readings... where have they gone? Where is their place in this strange, CS Lewis Wonderland of an education system?

I keep getting frustrated at myself when classes don't go the way I planned, or when it is taking longer than I would like to forge positive relationships with some of my classes, or when I feel lost and inadequate trying to make sense of an app grid... but then I have to stop myself from taking it out on me all the time- there are so many systemic reasons why these things are happening that aren't all my fault, that may in fact have very little to do with me. Everyone is very helpful, but trying to figure out what the right questions are to ask sometimes to get the answer that you don't yet know you need can be tricky, particularly when you don't recognise the pitfalls in a system that is not (thank God) your own.

Anyway, now that my head is above the surface, at least some of the time, I am going to work on feeling like my old 'teaching self' again.

Notes from a moleskine journal

2009-03-19T05:58:00.003+11:00

29/12/08, Somewhere over Russia

I am flying over Russia, following the sun. I was so nervous before I left home, but now that I am on my big adventure it feels right.

When I woke in South Korea this morning, there was snow on the ground. Korea reminded me of Thailand in some ways; the high level of organisation with stickers and directions and prompt service, but without the chaos. I didn't feel as though I was walking into another world the way I did when I walked, as though in slow motion, through the outer doors of Bangkok's airport into mayhem. Incheon is neat and polite, unobtrusive.

On the first leg of my flight, a Korean movie was playing called, well, I forgot what it was called, but it was about a sports coach trying to make it as an English teacher. A noble feat indeed. Here, as in Thailand, English is held in the highest regard- it is a source of power.

I was reminded of this again during breakfast this morning, reading an English translation of the 'Korean News'. The front page story- above the news of 200 dead in the Gaza strip after the Israeli bombings- was about the Korean government relaxing its immigration rules to allow other English speaking foreigners (outside the US, UK, Aust and S. Africa) to apply for positions as English teachers in Korea. Their hope is to expand the pool of qualified teachers for conversation classes. The America accent- their preference- is not so highly valued anymore. And, as I modify my own English in order to communicate, as I attempt to cut out my colloquialisms, mannerisms and excentricities, I wonder why English has ended up ruling the world for so long.

The sun is a yellow haze on the horizon. Soft, gentle. It must be growing colder- the clouds are no longer visible beneath the grey fog.

Austen moment

2009-03-18T09:46:00.002+11:00

Reading Mansfield Park is a totally different experience when you are living less than an hour away from Portsmouth and less than two hours from Bath. ;)

Relationships

2009-03-17T08:47:00.005+11:00

Starting in a new school has reinforced how important relationships are in my teaching. They are taken for granted until you have to start building them all over again. I am amazed at how much my teaching style has had to change without that 'relationship capital' in my backpocket. Slowly, surely, I'm building them again...

We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness.
T.S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages (Four Quartets)

The Snow Event (February)

2009-03-13T08:18:00.005+11:00

Sixth letter home (extract)

2009-03-13T08:08:00.002+11:00

10th March, 2009

I should be marking because I have just collected 90 pieces of work this week (the downside of having multiple, 30+ junior classes) but I can’t be stuffed and I want to write.

I am settling into 'new school' now that I am here five days a week, which is both good and bad. I am glad to be in the same place every day (kind of), but I am finding the place a bit challenging, in a number of ways. The glossy, pretty picture that I was shown at my interview of those ‘excellent’ results and that angelic year 7 class has certainly faded, I am starting to think that this school is just plain weird. I have certainly been to Mass more times in the past two weeks (Lent is to blame) than I have in the last five or so years. I still remember everything. But that isn’t the weird part. The weird part is the way that people interact within this school community, what is expected of each individual, and what ‘teaching and learning’ actually means here.

The last two weeks have been a case in point. GCSE coursework (for Year 11 students) was due at the end of last week, and consequently my colleagues have been running around like Molly (my dog) after some cruel person hides her ball. The reason for this is that they are not simply having to chase students for work that should have been completed during the last few weeks, but coursework that may have been set sometime during Year 10 (how re-doing an oral on Romeo and Juliet six months after the text was studied is actually going to help anyone is beyond me). There are no penalties set by the school for late coursework, or by the Welsh board, it seems, so as long as students get it in before final deadline (ie, the end of Year 11), everything is all hunky dory. In many instances, the students that teachers have been chasing are repeating coursework, because they did not receive their ‘target’ grade the first time around (or the second) and are therefore asked to resubmit. At a first glance, this might sound like a policy with student learning at the centre, right? Let’s give them opportunities to develop their skills over time, and learn from their mistakes? Wrong. It is patently obvious that the only reason for all of this pressure on teachers is the school’s desperation to get as many A-C grades as possible in order to look good in the league tables. Not that this is just the school’s fault, of course. The Education system has become so entrenched in this culture of statistics and numerical values and quantitative data that little else seems to matter. Which is why the school deems it necessary to hold staff meetings in which individual teachers are asked why student X did not receive a C for this task and whether the teacher thinks it would be at all possible to lift their result (please, pretty please?). Only if it is justified, of course (wink, wink). The result of this is that students are encouraged to take absolutely no responsibility for their own learning, and teachers have to shoulder it all.

Anyway, I was disappointed at first when I heard that I wouldn’t have any senior classes as part of my load, but after seeing the stress that people have been under during the past few weeks I’m not at all sorry now.

Some days, I feel like Alice in Wonderland. For example, this is the gist of a staffroom conversation that I overheard between two colleagues (one local and one from further afield):

A: Is this the criteria for the speaking and listening task?
B: Yes.
A: But... this criteria only refers to content, not skills. Can I change it, so I can give them some more useful feedback?
B: Well, that’s made from the official National Curriculum.
A: Yes, but can I add to it, and clarify some things?
B: It’s from the National Curriculum.
A: But it doesn’t actually say anything about speaking skills.
B: But that’s what’s in the documentation.
A: Ok, but...
B: It’s just the way it is.

See? Straight out of Lewis Carroll.

Speaking of assessment, well, you probably don’t want to get me started. You probably don’t want to hear about any of this, actually. How the kids can make head or tail out of the results they get when I can’t is beyond me. There are outcomes based criteria grids for each task, which is fine, but the grades that actually come out of them seem to be determined largely by gut instinct. But the thing that really annoys me is the complete lack of appreciation of how the reading and writing processes are connected. An assessment task is classified as either a ‘reading’ or a ‘writing’ task. A text response essay, for example, is a ‘reading’ task. All of criteria relate strictly to a very narrow definition of ‘reading’ and the fact that it is in fact a piece of writing that the student has produced and is also learning about writing in the process has simply no bearing on their assessment. Apparently, I’m not supposed to take structure, language, vocabulary, etc, into account, even though that is how the student is making meaning from the text that they have read. It’s completely infuriating, because it’s just so blatantly WRONG.

In the classroom, I am having to change my teaching style completely, but not in a way that I feel very happy about. I am having to design lessons that are far more tightly structured than I would like because that is what the students are used to and that seems to be, for the time being at least, all that they can cope with. It is taking me a lot longer to train them up than I was hoping for! It hasn’t helped matters that I am their third teacher for the year and the first two were fairly clueless, so I’m trying not shoulder too much concern over it myself (but you know me, I can’t help it). They are so dependent on the teacher, and when you take the culture of the school into account and some of the issues that I’ve already mentioned, it seems obvious why this is the case. It’s frustrating though. I am finding group work and even discussion close to impossible with a couple of my classes. Not all of them, but enough of them for it to be terribly frustrating. They find listening terribly difficult, to the point where I am wondering if it is actually a cultural thing, since kids were similar at the other schools where I have taught over here as well. It could be my fault, I’m out of practice with teaching 13 year olds, but I don’t think it’s that.

Oh, and having basically no access to technology is driving me insane, but that’s a whole other letter.

Anyway, I am not unhappy, I’m doing ok, I’m making friends and having fun, and I’m not spending all my time working, or at least I haven’t been- the next couple of weeks might be a bit of a slog, but Easter is less than four weeks away. But, I couldn’t teach if I didn’t care about what I was doing, either. Who would choose this life if they didn’t care?!

Bring on Italy at Easter!

Fifth letter home (extract)

2009-03-13T07:52:00.008+11:00

21st February, 2009

It has been difficult to write to everyone about happy news over the last couple of weeks, especially after seeing the coverage of the bushfires and hearing about the effect that they have had on my old school community in particular. It has been difficult to be here, and not there, but probably not as difficult as it has been to live amongst it. I was sad to hear about A’s house in particular, after having him in my tutor group, as well as the others.

Anyway, I had intended to write some more about school, but now I just want to write about Paris! I spent the half-term break (schools in England have at least a week off every six weeks, gotta love it) in Paris, and arrived back in Guildford last night.

I went over on the Eurostar when I found a special deal that I could use that wasn’t going to cost me much more than flying, and was so glad I did, because it was so much fun. I love the Eurostar. Drinking wine whilst watching France slip by at breakneck speed- what could be better?!

I stayed in a hostel that was fairly far out of the centre, but it was right near a metro station, so that was fine. It smelt like disinfectant so I knew it was clean, so I treated the smell as a plus. It was much quieter than I had anticipated, not many people around, but that was ok because I was out and about from 7:30 each morning until about 11 at night. I crammed a lot in, but still only managed to do about a third of what I had hoped.

When I arrived I made a beeline for Notre Dame and arrived when the organist was playing, so that was pretty incredible. The tower had closed for the day so I couldn’t go up and inspect the gargoyles.

On my first full day I went on a free walking tour of the city that lasted for about four hours with Ange, the teacher from 'tiny town' who was staying in the same hostel as me. It was run by a slightly annoying but fairly knowledgeable Canadian ‘dude’ and it gave me a good sense (kind of) of the layout of the city. I still managed to get lost every time I tried to use a map though. We went to Montmartre in the evening and unknowingly ate dinner in Amelie’s cafe and I had my ‘Amelie moment’, tapping on the crisp toffee shell of my crème brulee.

Sacre Coeur was beautiful at night (there are photos on flickr) and I thought of you while I was there, P.

After that, I ditched Ange during the days so that I could see Paris in my own way, and we caught up in the evenings for dinner and plenty of glasses of kir (a regional French aperitif, or at least that’s what the Polish guy in the bar who recommended it to us said). We ran amok in streets of Paris, taking extremely un-Parisian photos, and discovering the free view of Venus de Milo (I can tell you which window if anyone wants to know!)

I saved the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay until the end of my trip, because I knew that if I didn’t I’d spend too much time there and miss out on seeing everything else. The Louvre was a breathtaking spectacle, but the long hallways and crammed walls meant that there was just too much to see. I spent most of my time with the Italian paintings, but even that was too much to achieve any sense of narrative or understanding. Mona, behind her wall of glass, was nowhere near as impressive as Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa. I loved, loved, loved the Musee d’Orsay though. The Van Gogh room was just incredible, seeing his brushwork close up added so much to my appreciation of his work. And it was wonderful to see so many Monets. It was such a beautiful space, too.

I spent one of my days in Chartres, about an hour out of Paris. I wanted to see the Chartres Cathedral, which is the oldest medieval cathedral (I think, one of them at least) in France, and it was just incredible. Such an ancient, solid, echoing space. It was so much quieter than Notre Dame with its hordes of tourists, but every sound echoed endlessly through the cathedral. It was interesting to compare the cathedrals in France with the churches of England. The space itself seems to have prominence in the French churches, whereas the English churches were more cluttered and haphazard, filling organically with memorials and tombs over the centuries, even to the present day. The town itself was lovely too, with remnants of the medieval town still in evidence along the river.

What else did I get up to? I spent a morning in Versailles, which was a beautiful place, but a strange place too because of its history. It was interesting to see the souvenir shop selling little girls Marie Antoinette parasols and fluttering fans- no hint of where it had all ended! I spent a couple of nights wandering through the streets of Montmartre- I loved that area- and found one of Van Gogh’s houses and Picasso’s workshop. I visited Galleries Lafayette which didn’t excite me much at all, apart from the heaped baskets of salts and spices in the foodhall (although H would have loved the place). I loved the Latin Quarter (ate a number of chocolat crepes there- purchased in a dingy little milkbar style place that sold incongruous items like baguettes, cognac in Eiffel tower shaped bottles and orange vodka shots, but I swear that they are the best crepes in Paris, they must be) and walking along the Seine at night. I spent a beautiful sunny afternoon sitting on one of those green metal chairs around one of the fountains in the tuileries. I visited a number of markets near the place de la Bastille, as well as the flower and bird market near Notre Dame. I visited Saint Chappelle, walked to the Arc de Triomphe and climbed the Eiffel tower.

On my last morning before I caught the train back to London I returned to Notre Dame and managed to climb the tower. I thought that the view was better than from the Eiffel Tower, and enjoyed communing with the gargoyles. I drank a heck of a lot of coffee, because I was aware that I was unlikely to get another good cup until, well, until I get to Italy in six weeks’ time! I brought back some cheese and wine, which I will keep to share with whoever comes to visit me first (the wine, not the cheese!) so there’s an offer for ya.

Back in Guildford, I was planning to spend today getting stuck into my marking before Monday, but it was such a beautiful sunny day that that didn’t happen. I left my flat without my coat this morning for the first time(!) and went for a walk along the River Wey. I didn’t intend to go far, but I ended up walking all the way to Godalming (about five miles-dunno what it is in kilometres), gazing at the canal boats, the river locks and the pill boxes (left from world war II- Dad would have liked them).

So, I have a busy day of marking (not mine, a gift from the previous excuse for a teacher) ahead of me tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll write about school next week!

Fourth letter home (extract)

2009-03-13T07:38:00.003+11:00

31st January, 2009

I can’t believe that I have been in England for over a month. At the same time, it seems like much longer than that, because so much has happened. I am looking forward to everything being a lot more settled now that I have the job front sorted, but I’m also lamenting an earlier return to regular marking and lesson planning than I was hoping for! Oh well.

My first three days at 'new school' went well, although it was certainly a case of ‘information overload’. Starting four weeks into a term, following a supply teacher who had only stayed for three weeks, is going to mean a lot of careful planning to ensure that I can cover the learning outcomes within the time remaining- before I have really come to grips with the individual skill levels of the students under my care. From what I can gather, the students have been left to mostly faff about or watch the dvds during the last three weeks, so we have a lot of catching up to do. The fact that I am still teaching at 'tiny town' two days a week until half term (because I’m more interested in doing the right thing than my agency was) also means that I am having to leave extras for the teaching assistant who will be filling in for me at 'new school' while I’m not there- hardly ideal. Anyway, we’ll get there.

The English faculty has ten members, and from what I have seen so far they are all intelligent and engaged, and mostly young. They have been really helpful and I have no doubt they will continue to be, but at the same time 'new school' has no staff induction system to speak of. I rocked up on Monday morning and was teaching my own lessons from period one onwards... and that was it! At least the curriculum is well planned out so I’m not going in there completely blind, but the assessment and reporting practices are still a mystery, so I’m hoping to come to grips with that asap so that I don’t end up with a big mess on my hands.

Getting to know my students will be more difficult than I am used to- I have three year 7 classes, two year 8s, a year 9, a year 10 and a year 8 drama class. That’s double the number of classes that I have been teaching in Oz over the last couple of years, and I’m actually under allotted by four whole periods. The 7-9 classes have over one hour less class time than they get at my old school, and the senior classes are about the same. I am missing 70 minute classes in which you can actually get quite a bit done. I am also missing laptops and access to technology in general. The change is going to make quite a difference to my teaching style, but that’s not the only change, of course.

Working in exercise books has become quite an art-form over here! The students use different codes for course work and homework, and get quite agitated if you forget to write the date on the board or give them a heading, or don’t specify whether or not you want something written in the margin (margins? Try getting a kid at my old school to even rule one). Even the senior students, who wouldn’t give a stuff about headings and whatnot at my old school ask for bloody headings. I have to work pretty hard to bite my tongue and not say, ‘who cares? This isn’t learning- you’re never going to write in a bloomin’ exercise book again once you leave school and it’s just wasting our learning time’... but that wouldn’t go over very well. Suffice to say, I don’t think that developing independent learners is a focus of the English education system.

The students are quite cute (a lot of them anyway- not the year 10’s so much) but I am so out of practice at teaching the middle years. I am missing my year 12s. One of the year 7 classes in particular are endearingly keen and so desperate for my undivided attention that I tend to feel like I have 30 toddlers attached to my ankles when I am teaching them. They seem younger than Australian year 7s, especially considering that they are already more than halfway through their school year, but I guess the timing of the school year makes a difference as well. Anyway, I think that teaching the younger years will be fun- I just need to train them up a bit!

It’s a very traditional school in lots of ways- I nearly fell over when I walked into my first class and began to take the ‘register’ (call it the roll and you get either laughter or confusion) and every student responded to their name with ‘Yes Madam’. Seriously. I’m not joking. It is taking some getting used to, and it is hard not to feel a certain sensation of identity loss when you realise that not one of your students is actually going to address you by name, ever. Even when kids are trying to get my attention during independent work I don’t get the singsong ‘mi-ss, mi-ss’ anymore- I get ‘madam, madam’. I can still hear it in my head today. Ugh.

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. I think that I will learn a lot, but I’m not really thinking beyond keeping my head above water by following the workplan and getting to know the kids at the moment. Hopefully that will change in time. It has only been three days, after all!

Third letter home (extract)

2009-03-13T07:27:00.003+11:00

15th January, 2009

I have had an ‘interesting’ week (this is me remaining optimistic). After spending the weekend ‘moving in’- lugging my two-ton suitcase up the four flights of stairs and walking back and forth to main street with things like ironing boards and saucepans in my arms- I got an early night on Sunday night to wake up early on Monday morning. I showered, breakfasted, and sat and waited for the phone to ring. It did, eventually, with the pronouncement that there was no work available today, but that I would be paid anyway because of my contract (they have to find me five days of work a week and I need to be available every day). It was a bit of letdown... for about five minutes before I decided to head into London and visit the Tate Modern instead. Not bad for a day’s work! On Tuesday, the same thing happened again- I got up early, sat around in my work clothes until nine, tempting by pouring over guide books deciding what I would do if there was no work, then headed off to nearby Salisbury (about an hour away by train). I visited the beautiful cathedral, strolled around the town and got on a bus to visit Stonehenge before the sun set. Again, not bad for a day’s work.

On Wednesday, when after I went through the same morning rigmarole with the same outcome I headed into town to attend to some errands, and bought some postcards with the intention of sitting in a cafe for the afternoon and writing to you. Before I made it to the cafe (the Garden Room, if anyone is interested or likely to be in Guildford any time soon(!). You walk in and it literally feels like you are in a greenhouse for the first five minutes until you adjust to the temperature, but after that it’s fine. They serve fruit scones with jam and clotted cream, and make their own mayo for their sandwiches. I would be the size of a house if it wasn’t for all the exercise that I have been getting, but I think I am actually losing weight.)... anyway, I got a phone call from my agent and my blissful plans for the afternoon changed in an instant.
He reported that they had overestimated how much work would be available in Surrey (the agency had just opened up in the area, and their idea had been to use me to help them make connections with schools) and as a result they would have to terminate my guaranteed work scheme, as of Tuesday next week. I couldn’t begin to tell you what I thought. I had done my part-the only school I had been sent to so far had said they would contact the company with more supply work if it was available. After repeating how sorry he was he asked me if I had anything to say, and I had nothing to say (I had plenty to say later on, after I had gotten over the shock). So, I had signed a six-month lease just two days previously, and now the company was ending the contract that guaranteed me five days pay each week... after just three days of no work. I won’t go into this anymore, apart from saying that I’m not letting it beat me and I’m working through it. My agent is working doubly hard to find me work, and I believe that he is genuinely sorry for what has happened- Surrey was the first region that he was put in charge of and I think he got in over his head. My contract wasn’t terminated by him, but by his money-obsessed senior manager (I’ve never met him, this is just how imagine him when I line him up in front of a firing squad in my head) and as a result there have been some fairly intense conversations taking place between him and myself.

Anyway, I’ve made contact with another agency that specialises in long-term contracts and I have an appointment with them on Wednesday. They will be looking for a full-time position for me beginning after half-term. My agent has since found two days’ work for me on Monday and Tuesday in school that is in need of a full-time English teacher that sounds quite interesting because it offers the IB, so if I like it I might stay there. Otherwise, I still have 'tiny town' on Thursdays and Fridays until half-term, and I think that they’ll be able to find me enough work on the other days (even if I have to travel closer in to London) until half-term, when I will be looking to find a place at one school until the end of their academic year. I’ll make a decision then about what to do next, but that will get me to the end of my lease, in time to travel around Europe over the summer.

From a more philosophical perspective, what I couldn’t get my head around was the callousness of it- this rather bizarre convergence of the corporate world and the world of education. Here was I doing the typical things that I do as a teacher- getting to know the teachers that I was sharing classes with, helping to prepare lessons and keeping up-to-date with the progress of their classes on the days that I wasn’t there via email, getting to know the kids and chatting to their teachers about them, and while I was busily doing that the agency was busily watching their bottom line. When I spoke to the other agency that I have an appointment with on the phone, they asked me if I would accept a position if one became available within a couple of weeks, and I said no because I didn’t want to leave 'tiny town' school in the lurch! After just two days I already felt a sense of responsibility for the students in my care and a commitment to the teachers I had worked with, particularly after they were so used to temporary teachers coming and going, but that notion of working relationally seems to have little connection to the work of an employment agency- which I find somewhat surprising.

Anyway, I was really keen to work differently for a while and experience a range of school settings, but it’s too stressful doing that without the guarantee of money coming in, so I’m going to work on finding a long-term position. It shouldn’t be too difficult. I just wish that the agency had done a little more market research before bringing me all the way out here.

Second letter home (extract)

2009-03-13T07:14:00.004+11:00

9th January, 2009
I have been living in Guildford for about a week now, which is quite a large town in Surrey (Jane Austen country) about 40 or so minutes out of London. It’s bigger than W-gul, but quite similar in terms of demographics (apart from socio-economic status, so rent is more expensive here it seems than in London). It wasn’t until I arrived in Guildford that I started hearing predominantly English accents- I heard mostly European voices and languages in London, particularly French and Italian. Guildford was alienating in a similar way to the way I found W-gul to be, when I first started working there (the sameness).

It’s a beautiful town- it has its own castle (built in the 12th century), cathedral, and canal boats. But it also has Starbucks, Maccas, KFC and Marks and Spencer! I have enjoyed getting to know the town and getting myself settled whilst making friends with my real estate agent, bank clerk, employment agent, etc. (I’ll take friendly voices where I can get them, right now) but it has been quite stressful, too, as you can probably imagine. I am looking forward to my first paycheque in pounds so that I can stop watching my Aussie dollars disappear before my eyes, but it won’t be for a little while because I am using this dodgy (well, it seems dodgy to me, but everyone does it so I’m not arguing) off-shore bank account kind of set-up where I don’t pay anywhere near as much tax but have to wait slightly longer to get paid.

I started work on Thursday at a school in a tiny town, about a ten minute train ride from Guildford. I will be there every Thursday and Friday until half term at least, filling in for a sick English teacher, so it will be nice to have a bit of consistency without too much responsibility! It went quite well, mostly. I taught mainly Years 7-9, including Romeo and Juliet to year 8’s (I can’t escape from that bloody play), poetry to year 7’s, etc. I had one Year 10 class at the end of my first day which was an absolute nightmare (but probably nowhere near as bad as it could have been if I was in central London). It started with their teacher announcing to them that he had to go and look after another class that had had a string of supply teachers, so he was going to have to leave them with a supply teacher (ie, me) for a lesson. (yes, thanks for that- very helpful). So that was great! To add to the agony, they had just come straight from a mock exam, and it was the last lesson of the day. I haven’t been in a situation even similar to that since one of my teaching rounds. There were too many spotfires to put out, I didn’t have a list of kids’ names, and the task that they had been left to do was, quite simply, stupid, and very confusing. So yes, not fun. But the rest of the classes were lively, but nice. English kids are just as funny as Aussie kids, which was nice to discover. So, I had a few successes, and I’m feeling quite good about going back there next week. Where I end up from Mon-Wed will be a mystery until Sunday night.

I’m not even close to understanding the curriculum yet, but one thing that was really interesting (but quite the norm in England) was the way that each year level was streamed- and not just into top and bottom, but into about four-five different levels. I think that it is an absolute travesty. Great for the top kids, perhaps, but it is quite clearly a myth that the kids in the bottom groups will get what they need when there are so many behavioural problems and learning difficulties lumped together in a room of 30 plus kids. There was a teacher’s aide in a couple of classes that I took, but he didn’t seem to be assigned to particular kids and spent most of the time watching from the back of the room, and occasionally telling a chatty kid to shut up.
Another interesting discovery was the impact of supply teaching on the education system in England. There are some classes that were clearly used to being abandoned, and I had to assert very clearly that I would be around for a while to get them to take any interest in me. They seemed to be a lot ‘needier’ than kids that I have taught before, and I think the fact that they change teachers so frequently is the reason for that. Apart from supply teachers, many of the classes (particularly those in the lower levels) are shared by two, sometimes even three teachers, who have them for one or two lessons each week. How full time teachers can possibly get to know their students well in situations like this is beyond me.

Anyway, it was an interesting, but relatively successful beginning, so we’ll see what next week brings.

First letter home (extract)

2009-03-13T07:01:00.003+11:00

... So far, everything has felt more familiar and comfortable than I was expecting during the admittedly anxious weeks before I got on the plane. As soon as I was looking through the plane window at a miniature London during a very slow descent into Heathrow, I regained that sense of euphoria that I had when I dreamed about this adventure before it became reality. It was a relief to feel that again.

When I arrived at my shoebox of a room in a hotel in Bloomsbury (yes, Bloomsbury- I like writing that) it felt like 3:00am, because it was, back in Melbourne. Despite being determined to stay awake until a later hour to combat jetlag, I fell asleep immediately.

Walking off my English breakfast the next morning, I discovered so many places that already had meaning in my literary imagination. Russell Square... Bloomsbury Square... Bedford Place... Just metres from my hotel I stumbled across this:

And then this:

Although I searched for Virginia Woolf’s plague in the area, I haven’t found it yet.
I have spent each day since my arrival travelling around London and trying to see as much as possible. I visited good ol’ John Donne in St. Paul’s Cathedral which was absolutely incredible. The religious shrines have been my favourite sights so far- Southwark Cathedral, which I stumbled upon whilst the bells were ringing was even more beautiful than St. Paul’s or Westminster Abbey to me.

What I have found most surprising is how compact central London feels. I can walk from Bloomsbury down Tottenham Court Road and end up in the West End after 10 minutes or so, and every time I turned a corner during the first couple of days I discovered yet another cultural icon (or monopoly square). I have been to the Tower of London, looked up at Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly, Leicester Square, Buckingham Palace, elbowed my way down Regent Street during the sales (big mistake), strolled around Covent Garden, walked awestruck through the British Museum...

I feel like a pro at navigating the tube now. I love it. For one thing, it’s underground, so I don’t need to rely on my awful sense of direction, and as long as I follow the little coloured lines in the right direction, it’s all good.

Two of the highlights for me so far have been seeing Twelfth Night on the West End, and walking around the Serpentine in Hyde Park. I was queuing in the freezing cold outside the theatre for returns on New Year’s Eve (I am very grateful to everyone who made me get thermals) when an American couple came over and asked if anyone was after one ticket. I said, ‘Me! I am!’. They were going to give me the ticket for free but I insisted on paying, we agreed on 20 pounds and I ended up sitting smack bang in the middle of the second row! It was wonderful, and the theatre was beautiful. Since then, I have resisted temptation and haven’t seen any more shows, because it could easily become a very expensive addiction. I will have to pace myself.

Hyde Park was all wintery and atmospheric. I will have to go again during the spring, but I love the way that London’s parks look in the late afternoon when the mists hang in the air (and the squirrels are very cute).

Tomorrow I am moving to a hotel in Guildford, Surrey, and then reality will have to take a front seat for a while whilst I look for somewhere to live. There are a few options, so hopefully at least one of them will be decent. Then, I have a meeting with the teaching agency on Monday the fifth and after that I will start work, and then reality will really set in!

Farewell Warragul

2008-12-21T21:03:00.008+11:00

The wetlands

Mike's tree

Celebration

2008-11-06T20:17:00.002+11:00

nb is not celebrating because the literature exam is over, nb is celebrating because at 5:15, when her students came out smiling, one of them commented, 'oh... now we won't have lit classes anymore.' ;)

The next leap

2008-10-25T17:27:00.004+11:00

Our year 12s graduated last night. As I watched them walk across the stage, it really hit me for the first time that I am leaving, too.

Endings are strange beasts. There is a sense in which your years of work are condensed into one small, rosy snapshot and the reality is lost amidst the tearful hugs and warm thank yous.

A number of parents hugged me last night, asked if they could take photos of me with their children, expressed regret that I was leaving, asked me if I would be coming back, thanked me for the relationship that I had developed with their son, daughter or children. It's all lovely, and gratifying, albeit a little weird at times, but it can also make it difficult to extricate yourself from the fuzzy feelings that arouse the doubts- am I doing the right thing? Will I find a community like this again? Will I teach kids like these again?

My Year 12 Literature class surprised me with a bound collection of the stories that they had written as part of their study. They had taken great care to make it look authentic, from the dedication, the blurb, the publication details, the formatting... it was a literature teacher's nirvana.

The epigrah they had chosen was a quote from Cyril Connolly: 'while thought exists, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living'.

So, perhaps leaving behind a trace like that should make it easier, not harder, to take the next leap.

This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.
-T.S. Eliot (Little Gidding, Four Quartets)

Numbers

2008-08-20T20:48:00.003+10:00

I got some wonderful news last week.

The head of senior school came into the English faculty staffroom today to announce that we had enough students for two full Year 12 Literature classes next year, and two classes at Year 11. I did a bit of a happy dance.

Each year, the numbers have continued to grow steadily from five years ago, when there was one combined class of 11 and 12 Literature, consisting of about 12 students- total. One could argue that the recent changes to 'Englishes' from VCAA which allow students to study either Lit or English at Year 12 level, rather than having to do both could be the reason for the growth since students could find it easier to 'fit' Lit into their timetables... except for the fact that most students who are electing to do Literature are also choosing to do English as well. So, I'm going to choose to believe that the development of the curriculum of our Year 10 Literature course and Year 11 Lit course in recent years has been a big part of it, and I'm feeling pretty good about that. The students feel encouraged to engage with literary texts in all kinds of ways and are developing so much more confidence in their own readings.

I think that another factor is that the teaching of the subject has also become far more open in recent years, on a collegiate level. It's not hoarded by one person as the 'secret' highbrow literature subject anymore. I'm working in a team with my favourite colleagues- our knowledge is shared and teachers have the chance to 'follow their kids through' into year 12 if they wish to. I think that the students are really aware of the fact that we work together so closely too, and our collective passion for the subject comes through to the students.

All of this popularity is wonderful, and particularly the fact that students seem to be heeding our message that they should choose subjects that they love and not make choices according to which subjects get scaled up the most is great, but becoming so popular so quickly has its challenges. Teaching in an environment in which numbers are- if not quite everything- then pretty damn important, has sent a cold chill down my spine once or twice this year as the range and variety of students that we get wanting to study literature these days continues to widen. It takes guts to stick to your guns and not get caught up in the numbers game and the fear campaign which whispers in your ear to contain those classes to the cream of the crop, rather than open up the doors. But it's worth the stress, in so many ways.

Wednesday afternoons

2008-08-20T20:39:00.002+10:00

I spent a lovely afternoon with a small group of my beautiful Year 12 Lit students. We sat around a table, drank hot chocolate, ate tim tams and talked about Antigone. We are going to make it a regular Wednesday afternoon thing.

The discourse(s) of conversation

2008-06-30T17:41:00.005+10:00

I have been pondering the value of conversation lately. A collaborative group that I am involved in is currently reflecting on its future, and how it can operate productively. I won't mention the name of it here. There is no doubt at all that our efforts are worthwhile, but we are all very busy people, and we are too few, and there is just not enough time in each day. Late last year, we decided to do away with regular meetings, and instead communicate via email, until a clear purpose for a meeting arose. The work is still happening, in different ways, but it is the face-to-face conversations that I miss.
Don't get me wrong, most of the reflection into my teaching over the past five years has occurred through email conversations, but this isn't happening as much these days, and I don't think that the reason for this is that there is no longer a need for it. Blogging serves its purpose, but this is different again from how I write, and how openly I can write, when I am communicating directly with an audience that I trust. But I'm getting sidetracked...
What I am trying to say is that not even email is the same as face-to-face conversation. It just doesn't fill the same need, partly because it's not in 'real-time'. When I'm writing, the energy is in my fingertips, and it doesn't fill the whole room.
But it's more than this... it's not just 'face-to-face' conversation that matters, it's conversation with people who share similar philosophies. I get passionately involved in conversations during meetings at school, but that's partly because these meetings often feel like battlegrounds.
Really, it's about discourse. When I first started meeting with this group I often found myself struggling with the discourse- it was part of the everyday conversations of other people in the group but not of mine. Now, I miss it. I miss using the language that allows me to talk about education and writing in a richer, more nuanced way than I could otherwise. I miss having regular opportunities to speak with, and even more, to listen, to this language around a common table.

Wordle

2008-06-23T19:15:00.003+10:00

This is a 'wordle' of an old blogpost. I want to use this tool when I teach poetry next term

Poetry

2008-06-16T22:15:00.002+10:00

Next term is all about poetry (+words+music+images+sound+light+silence)

hmmm....

2008-06-16T21:56:00.002+10:00

'Have you heard yet?'
'No'
'Don't worry, you will soon, I'm sure'
'I'm not that fussed, not really'
'It will be nice to know though, won't it?'
'hmm...'

My colleagues and I make jokes about me disengaging. 'It's started already!' they announce, 'nb has left the building!' 'Yep,' I reply, stretching arms overhead, 'whack it on the pile over there. I'll get to it eventually. So, exactly how many year 12 classes will you be teaching next year, P? Up to four yet?'

We're only joking. As if anyone worth their salt can ever disengage.

end of term melancholy

2008-06-16T21:49:00.004+10:00

I am staring down the last week of the term. Most of my students have already gone on work experience, etc, and just my year 12's remain. Exams are marked, reports are done, I just have to type up feedback on one more pile of assessment pieces and then I'm done too.

I am going to spend most of my time over the break thinking about and planning for the future. I have big plans for next year, but lots of research still to do.

I thought I was going to write about this some more, but I'm too tired.

Disquieting 'truths'

2008-06-11T22:05:00.006+10:00

I should be marking more Year 10 English exams, but what the hey.

I have spent some time over the past few weeks contributing to a multi-voice review of 'The Literacy Wars' by Ilana Snyder, so the contemporary landscape of literacy education is on my mind, particularly the furores that have roared around critical literacy over the past few years.

My Literature class has just finished their latest assessment task, in which they write an analysis of a critical review of a set text, unearthing the assumptions and comparing it to their own interpretation. It's quite a challenging task, requiring close reading of both the set text and the review/critical essay, as well as confidence in their own reading. The text they studied was Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, which I have already drooled over in this blog, and the review that I found could be roughly described as a post-colonial reading of the text, a fabulously controversial essay by Jane Marcus-Delgado.

It worked so well, because the majority of my students absolutely hated her reading. They hated what they saw as her selective use of textual evidence, railed against the lens that she had 'subjected' Bel Canto to, and were quite indignant about what they viewed as her complete disregard for the author's intention. It was certainly a polarising interpretation and it really enabled the students to consider a perspective on the text that was drastically different from where they were coming from.

Bel Canto is a beautifully written text about, well... beauty. In all its forms. For my students, reading a review about a text they loved which had turned that beauty into something quite monstrous- well, at first it was like something had been stolen from them. Their initial reactions reminded me of how I felt after I read 'Wide Sargasso Sea' for the first time. It was as if Jean Rhys had stolen Jane Eyre. It is these sudden realisations, these alternative ways of seeing, that the traditionalists/canon preserversationists would rather we didn't have. And yes, they can be painful revelations. About the comforting, familiar stories that we love, about ourselves. It also brings to mind a student's voice in Deborah Appleman's wonderful book, 'Critical Encounters in High School English' (NCTE, 2000) after using deconstruction in the classroom: 'Why did you teach us this? I'm so sorry I know about this. How could you have told us about this? What are you trying to do- destroy us? How am I supposed to live with this knowledge?' (pp. 112-113).

Theory is uncomfortable. Theory can make us feel uncomfortable, because it makes us ask questions. It exposes wounds, belief systems, values, silences. It unsettles my students. It makes us talk about 'uncomfortable' topics in the classroom- race, gender, power, versions of history, identity, knowledge, truths... as my students and I discussed Delgado, we realised in the middle of our conversation that we were doing the very thing that she accuses Patchett of (and what Delgado is also guilty of)- privileging certain kinds of beauty and knowledge over others. 'But that's not the point of using opera in the book,' we tried to reassure ourselves. 'She's not using it as an example of high culture, she's using it to suggest that in opera, language doesn't matter... ' After horrifying my students with Delgado's failure to be seduced by the beauty of music, the interesting thing was what this did to their own readings. How fiercely they wrote, how determinedly they flipped through pages to prove her wrong. They found a new level of confidence. Was this a result of our blind determination to cling to a text that we identified with? Or was it simply our frustration with the way Delgado's reading reduced the text to a binary opposition? I'm not entirely sure. All I know is that the uncomfortable, challenging conversations produced some of the best, and most thoughtful, writing that I have seen all year.

I understand why some conservatives are so frightened by the prospect of young people engaging with critical theory. Get rid of theory, and nostalgia- a single, pleasant, banal truth -rules.

Critical theory has been invariably linked to some of the most uncomfortable, and rewarding, moments in my classroom over the past five years. It has shaken preconceptions, opened up possibilities, challenged both my students and myself. I can't imagine teaching and learning without it.

Friday morning 'team' meetings

2008-06-04T20:33:00.005+10:00

Friday, 8:30 am
(Old codger doesn't get his way)

Sit down, nb (Old codger says, leaping from his own chair with sprightly 60 year old legs)
Thank you, no, I'm happy to stand.
Isn't a man allowed to be chivalrous these days?
Chivalry isn't dead, I just want to stand on my own two feet.
Aha!
So, what are we doing in tutor group next week?

Friday after, 8:45 am
(Old codger attempts to 'educate' me, by hopping onto my 'feminist wavelength')

The sixties, now there was an era. The sixties and seventies, there haven't been decades like 'em since. If I was gonna design my own history course, THAT'S what I'd teach. The Kennedys, the assassinations, the revolutions... not any more. Social change... social change... no more. This decade is all about technology...
Technological revolution without social change? ("ooohh" someone chuckles, "here we go...") What, no global village? What about...
Nah... huge changes were laid back then.. changes for you. Don't you know what you have now, because of then? It all started with the second world war... women were able to prove themselves in the second world war. Before then, they had to stay in the kitchen, but during the war, they proved that they could do the jobs of men. The country girls all went into the city to be tram conductors, the city girls came to the country to work in the fields...
Actually, I think they proved themselves long before then. It's just that no one was...
It made all the difference. I saw it, saw it with my own eyes. I saw my mother stand up to my father, boy, when he didn't toe the line, he was sent to sleep on the couch! Yes, everything you have now, it was all because of the second world war. I'm not kidding, that's the way it was.
And yet, we still have such a long way to go... (more chuckles from the table. People stand, the meeting should have been over five minutes ago, I start walking out....)
(loudly) That's why you can do anything you want now. You should have respect for that!
(I keep walking)
Oh, I got away with that one, did I?!
(over shoulder) No, you didn't.

Friday next? I can't wait.

* * *

An imagined Friday morning, on the other side of the world...

Democrat elder: Hillary, it's time to read the writing on the wall. You're not going to win the nomination. Now is the time to bow out gracefully. If you keep this up, you will be responsible for tearing the party apart. Yes, I know, I know, you're following the democratic process... but you've made it this far, further than any woman before you, isn't that enough?

Don't bow out gracefully, Hillary.

(with thanks to Catherine Deveny)

Escaping the 'Garua'

2008-05-29T22:01:00.002+10:00

I managed a number of lucid thoughts today and feel as though I am finally leaving the fog of this term behind. I still have another 40 Year 10 essays and 16 Year 12 passage analyses to provide feedback on for Monday, but I'll get there, and then I'll be able to frantically write a review for Scott before I get the two lots of Year 12 sacs and year 10 exams that I'll need to assess over the long weekend.

I rarely get sick enough for it to affect my day-to-day life, but losing my voice for over two weeks was the most frustrating experience. It was particularly frustrating because there was absolutely nothing that I could do to fix it. I got so sick of trying to talk that by the end of each school day I simply wasn't interested in having a conversation with anyone, everything centred on trying to preserve as much of my voice as possible for the next day, and that wasn't much fun, for me or my house mates! It's so nice to have it back, and this week even my upper register returned so I am able to sing again without my voice cracking.

I am feeling really good about the way that the new 'context' part of the Year 12 English course, 'The Imaginative Landscape' is panning out. It's been tough (as it always is this part of the year) trying to keep my kids from going off the deep end due to their huge sac load and upcoming Unit 3 exams, but they are producing some wonderful writing, even if some of them aren't quite prepared to admit it yet. I think that this new part of the course is far more rich and complex than 'writing for different purposes and audiences' has become over the past few years (at least when you compare what we have been doing at our school over the last few years, to what we are positioning the students to achieve this year). They are thinking deeply about some really interesting concepts, and this isn't just improving the depth of their writing, but is also allowing them to explore texts and make connections between their 'literary landscape' and 'societal landscape' in some really lovely ways. It's bringing the notion of 'the writer in their world' to life for them. It's been so nice to be able to talk to my students about their writing, and the concepts that they are making their own, and feel my mind stretch.

My Lit class is really breaking ground at the moment, too. In a class populated by musos, the beautiful Bel Canto is really working for them. Many of them are starting to capture the musical lyricism of the novel in their own writing on the text, and that is so, so gratifying. The pressure of teaching Year 12 Lit in a school with so many kids who just love it and want to be part of the class but where the pressure to achieve 'results' is never allowed to be forgotten has weighed on me more heavily than I was expecting at certain times this year. It has kept me awake at night on a number of occasions, when I should have been revelling in the conversations, the passion, the fact that I have this group of kids who look forward to being in the same room as me to talk intensely about Sophocles, or laugh about the muffin scene in Wilde, or sigh over the language of Patchett.

A good day

2008-05-29T12:36:00.001+10:00

You know you're going to have a good day when you can have a great conversation with your Year 12 Literature class about Nietzsche and 'The Birth of Tragedy'. Bel Canto is turning out to be so much fun.

Time to leave...

2008-05-20T20:13:00.001+10:00

NB is submitting a leave application on Friday... wish her luck... she's gonna need it...

ABC Doco on Sir Douglas Mawson

2008-05-12T20:05:00.003+10:00

Having observed Mawson,
Piercing icicle eyes traversing
White wilderness,
One wonders how the cold still burns
A human hand.

Teacher's Guilt

2008-05-09T17:30:00.002+10:00

Teacher's Guilt is a strange disease.

I have been sick since a late night of parent-teacher interviews on Monday, after which I began coughing up what feels like the flesh of my lungs and haven't stopped. My voice shut up shop on Tuesday morning and hasn't returned as yet. And yet, rather than hiding under the covers for a few days like any sane person, I kept on teachin' (well, miming and gesturing).

I hauled myself in for each lesson of my two year 12 classes, coughing, spluttering and miming, all because of Teacher's Guilt. This is despite possessing a teaching philosophy and style which means that I am in no way indispensable in the classroom. I am well aware of the fact that my students are able to learn productively in a classroom without my illustrious presence. Intellectually, I am aware of this, but convincing my guilt-infected heart of this seems to be quite another matter.

One of my Year 12's thanked me for coming in to 'teach them', even though I was obviously sick. That was nice. Another berrated my head of faculty for allowing me to be at school when I clearly should be home in bed. That was thoughtful. Did I listen to the signs? Nope.

But while my head throbbed, my back ached and my chest seized all I could think of was my fear of falling behind. It's going to happen anyway- these next few weeks are insane- but it would be even worse if I dropped out of the marathon for a week.

This term has been the most difficult, in terms of workload, that I have experienced so far. It feels as though all I am doing is 'have to's'- prepare classes, correct essay after essay- and I still have no time for any of the 'want to's that should be have to's'- writing, reflecting, reading, extending my ict role, working on a whole school literacy approach, starting a writer's group, planning adventures, having a life, etc.

I don't quite know how to fix this lack of balance, but I need to figure it out soon, because I don't want to teach if this is all there is.

And I don't want to stop teaching.

Right of reply (100 words- 10)

2008-02-05T22:33:00.000+11:00

Ilana Snyder's new book 'The Literacy Wars' has managed to get some 'commentators' at The Australian all uptight. I can see the hand gesticulations and furrowed brows from here. Poor things.

I came across one such article today that I found particularly amusing... and bewildering. Good ol' Slattery took a young teacher to task for her teaching of the American classic 'Of Mice and Men'. I felt terrible for Mr. Slattery as I was reading the article- he has obviously been given a very, very hard time by all those scary English teachers. He must be feeling extremely wounded and insecure to bother to selectively quote an unnamed early career teacher in order to make his argument. He writes:

As one of the contributors to Advocacy Matters concedes, her "deep" interaction with Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men invariably involved an examination of the "power structures at play in the novella". She goes on: "How you can complete a thoughtful study of this text without examining notions of class, gender and ethnicity is beyond me."
Unlike some critics of the new literacy, I wouldn't want to deny students an engagement with these notions; but I don't believe we should build an approach to literacy around an ideology of textual resistance that easily descends to cliche and is, moreover, unresponsive to any kind of hermeneutics not fed by these socio-political energies. It is not, simply put, a pluralistic environment.

Now, I happen to know this teacher very, very well, and she was deeply concerned to read that her teaching was, by implication (hope it's ok if I quote selectively, Mr. Slattery), 'cliche'-ridden, apparently not very "deep" at all, and completely engulfed by 'socio-political energies' (she never pictured herself as a 'new age' teacher-type, into 'energies' and so forth).

But, then she realised that poor Mr. Slattery mustn't have had time to read her article 'deeply', for he would never have come to the conclusion that her classroom was not a pluralistic environment otherwise. He must be very, very busy. After all, the original text was as follows:

One attack that has been levelled at critical literacy in recent times has been that it is responsible for ‘dumbing down’ our English curriculum.

I used 'The Simpsons' to get students to think critically about class distinctions and their impact on society and to develop a reading of the novella with these ideas in mind. We also looked at movie posters, and debated whether this interpretation of Steinbeck’s work was consistent with or different from their own. We discussed the implications of images like these, the values that lie behind them, and how our 21st century eyes respond to the portrayal of Curley’s Wife.

As part of this exploration, students produced creative responses to Steinbeck’s work that brought to light riches in the text that they unearthed after much investigation and questioning. Some students gave Curley’s Wife a name, and delved into more of her history. Another re-visioned the red-feathered mules from a symbol of danger and desire into Curley’s Wife’s personal link to her lost dreams. Yet another brought to life a story from Crooks’ childhood, illuminating possible reasons for his bitterness.

Yep. That sounds like a pluralistic environment to me.

ICT Arvo (100 words- 9)

2008-02-05T22:00:00.000+11:00

We had our first 'ICT Arvo' after school today (semi-regular professional learning sessions that I run for teachers at my school who want to talk about/learn about/experiment with the use of ICTs in their classrooms). I have been doing this for three terms now and have developed a group of 'regulars' as well as individuals who feel comfortable enough to pop in, depending on what else they have on. This year, I am planning to take it to the 'next level' by beginning an 'ICT Action Group' whose priority will be to think critically about our use of technology in the classroom on a whole school level and be able to make recommendations to the school exec by giving the 'teacher's perspective' which often seems to go unnoticed, even though we are the ones working with the students. Sound familiar? I'm really excited about this, and I am imagining/hoping that it will run in a similar way to VATE's Advocacy Group, with a similar philosophy and goal (except it will be about ICTs and their relationship to pedagogy). I really like the fact that the group has 'emerged' if you will, rather organically, from a suggestion made during an ICT Arvo late last year. It also suggests to me (I'm hoping that I am right here) that the ICT Arvos are beginning to fill a more expansive/flexible role than technical know-how, by prompting debate, allowing discussions to occur across faculties, the beginnings of critical reflection, and all those other good things that can be achieved when teachers meet regularly with the common goal of professional learning.

Starting the ICT Arvos has allowed me to experience the dialogic possibilities of relationship-based professional learning through a project that I have 'gotten up' under my own steam. I am finding that this is even more gratifying than being part of the discussions that I love with people who have a deeper understanding of dialogism and community-based professional learning than I do. I came to the ICT Arvos with the knowledge and understanding of professional learning that I have gained from people like GP, SB and the Advocacy Group, and slowly, slowly, I can see it 'playing out' in a professional culture and environment that is far removed from where those conversations initially took place. Very, very cool.

Anyway, I was very nervous when I first started these sessions- certainly more nervous than I have ever been running the odd professional learning session for teachers outside my own school. It's a tough thing, at least it was for me, taking charge of a professional learning activity for my older, more experienced colleagues. But I am much more relaxed about the whole thing now, and it is quite amazing how quickly new directions, conversations and possibilities are appearing all the time.

Spasm (100 words- 8)

2008-02-03T15:56:00.001+11:00

At the beginning of each school year I remember the beginning of another school year, when I met M and we talked about literature and English teaching for the first time, with an intensity that I haven't experienced since then. He is the person that I want to talk to about Wilde, Sophocles, Astley and the others now, to clarify my understandings and crystalise my readings.

Grief is a funny thing. It lingers, simmering, and then spasms at odd times, like when P's son had his car accident last year and it was announced during the morning briefing. He was ok but the bitter taste, the clouds over the eyes and the knee tremors were suddenly back again, and the world suddenly felt very small again. And suddenly you remember how tears would stream quietly down your face every day for months while you were driving to school, and how you couldn't listen to music because it sounded like chainsaws.

Anyway, I should be studying.

Back to school (100 words- 4, 5, 6, 7)

2008-02-02T21:37:00.000+11:00

Ok. Well. Hmm. Of course. The kids come back to school and my blogging resolution falls in a heap. Typical. My students came back on Thursday, and so I've only had two days of teaching, and in those two days I've only actually taught two of my four classes. It's been one assembly/swimming carnival sign-up/tutor group after another. No time for academic classes. Good fun though. Week one down. Only seven weeks to go. This is going to be a crazy term!
The year 12's came back with pages of holiday homework (which I have spent today reading) and new resolutions, which should last them for a couple of weeks at least! As always, I felt very nervous and strange the day before I was teaching (this always happens to me at the start of the year) but of course once I was actually in the classroom everything was fine again. My year 10's and I did some thinking/talking/writing while analysing some reality tv clips that I had grabbed from youtube- from Big Brother to the 'Corey phenomenon' which is currently sweeping the entire country. It was a really positive first meeting, especially since I haven't taught any of this year level before. They come into Year 10 and have to 'integrate' back into the senior school after learning within a very different culture and environment at our Year 9 centre. This is my resolution for my teaching with my two year 10 classes this year- I want to be really conscious of drawing on their experiences and knowledge from year 9 as much as possible. It's so easy for it all to get lost amidst the pressures, procedures and levels of organisation that confront them as soon as they step into our senior school.
It was lovely to chat to my Lit kids again, and that's basically what we did for most of the first lesson. I had planned to begin by going around the room briefly and asking them to make a couple of comments about their summer reading, but of course what should have taken 10-15 minutes blew out into a conversation that trickled along through most of the lesson, and the close reading activity that I had planned to get their brains back into 'Lit mode' was clearly not the right choice for the remainder of the lesson. So, we talked while I collected the writing that I had asked them to do over the break. They are in love with Ann Patchett's novel 'Bel Canto' already, which I knew they would be because I am too, and it is clear that Antigone is also going to be a favourite. We'll get stuck into 'The Importance of Being Earnest' next week (they are obsessed with the muffin scene, and we haven't even started yet. It's going to become a running joke, I know it).

Ok, well, that's 461 words. Too easy.

Year 12- starting fresh (100 words- 3)

2008-01-29T19:46:00.000+11:00

Today, we had our first Year 12 English Teachers meeting for the year. It was long (new course means lots to talk about), and mostly positive, although my brain felt completely fried by the end of it. The transition into the new course is going to be very interesting, I think. The increased emphasis given to multiple readings and textual construction in the new study design will be quite challenging for some teachers, who do not already make this an explicit part of their teaching. There is plenty that I really like about the new course- this being one of them- as well as Area of Study 2- Creating and Presenting. In spite of the set text list and the incredibly frustrating fact that this component of the course will be assessed on the external exam (the area of study that it has replaced- writing for different purposes and audiences- wasn't really), there is still so much scope and so many rich possibilities. Our context (there are four to choose from) is 'The Imaginative Landscape' and I am already looking at landscapes and textual landscapes differently- simply because I am thinking about how I will approach this part of the course. It will be a different experience again once I get into it with my students.

Luckily, I have another day of planning tomorrow before the students return (I really need it). My Year 10's are starting off with 'The Truman Show' which I haven't taught before, and which I am very keen to approach 'differently' if I can. I am tossing around using the film to look at how writers/creators shape human experience into a narrative- how even the stories that we tell our friends are constructed around familiar notions of narrative. I am thinking about trying to get a lot of raw material together, and then getting students to work on editing the material into a tight little narrative. I am keen to use the webcams that we brought last year, too. Just haven't quite figured out the 'how' yet. Any ideas?

Shared Writing (100 words- 2)

2008-01-28T18:11:00.000+11:00

During these holidays I have completed (started) at least one productive project. I am co-writing a paper with GP and BD about literature classrooms and poetry (keeping it very broad here). I really enjoy the collaborative writing process, although the enjoyment does come coupled with a fair amount of anxiety, especially if you are writing with two people that you respect as much as I respect GP and BD. The anxiety shouldn't really exist, because I have a huge amount of trust in these two people, but the desire not to disappoint can lead to some fairly substantial periods of writer's block and crappy writing before some decent words finally start to ffflllooowww...

Here is some text that didn't make it (obvious when you read it):

The writing that I am supposedly ‘responsible’ for appears to begin here, but that isn’t really the case. It germinated in informal emails; individual, reflective blogposts; and face-to-face conversations- with both my co-writers… and others. During one of these face-to-face meetings with my co-writers, I was charged with the responsibility of beginning the text that would eventually form this paper. I will admit to feeling over-awed by the task. During the meeting I found myself trying to clamber for a little stretch of comfortable ground- which to me was the ground inhabited by my co-writers, two brilliant researchers whom I wholly respect and wanted to please. As the conversation meandered along, seeking out glimmering possibilities for the paper, I confess that on the tip of my tongue was the plea, ‘just tell me what you want me to write!’

Here I was, little NB, early career teacher, endeavouring to keep up with an Associate Professor and a Senior Lecturer. Often, the tensions in collaborative writing of this nature remain hidden, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.

Already, now that I have delivered some text and received some encouraging feedback, I am feeling much more comfortable- excited, actually- about it. It's such a strange process, collaborative writing, even stranger than the process of writing on your own. A direction will germinate in a conversation, and then someone, in this instance myself, will head back to their study and crank out some text, which may bear some resemblance to the initial direction but not much. And then that text, paragraphs that are born of spoken words/shared words/old words/new words/others' words will disappear into someone else's brain for a while and will change, grow and emerge again. And in the meantime there has been more thinking/writing/talking/listening which will colour this new collection of words momentarily, before the process begins again with another writer in their study. The result, at the end, (at least for me), is that you think and write differently than you did before you started. And maybe some readers- who haven't been privy to the head-scratching agony of the writing- will too.

And that's how words enable change.

100 words (1)

2008-01-27T18:20:00.000+11:00

I am going to see if I can write one hundred words on this blog, every day for a month. I am going to see if I can re-form a writing habit through sheer will power. When I have written on this blog in the past, it has mostly been the result of some careful thought, reflection and planning. This won't be the case if I am writing every day, because I won't have the time to think too much about it. I'll just have to see what happens...

On Thursday, my students will be back at school. It's a scary thought at the moment- I don't feel close to having my head around what I'm teaching yet, even though I didn't have a Masters thesis to complete this Summer. It feels as though there is so much still to do that the preparation that I am doing feels fragmented and hotchpotch. I am teaching four classes- two Year 10 English classes, Year 12 English and Year 12 Literature. It's feeling bittersweet- more bitter than sweet- because I have let go of the two courses that have been my babies for the past couple of years- Year 10 Literature and Year 11 Literature- in order to teach Year 12 Lit for the first time. Swapping freedom and autonomy for significant pressure and a big fat external exam isn't feeling like a fair trade at the moment. I know that I shouldn't get so attached to 'my' courses, because they're not 'mine' to start with, but I can't help wondering where they will head and what may be lost.

I am looking forward to continuing with my ICT Consultant gig. I'm going to get the ball rolling on the subversive underground resistance movement (aka ICT policy committee) that emerged during Scott's visit to my school last year, hopefully in the first couple of weeks of the term, whilst us teachers are still relatively bright-eyed and energetic. The teachers are back in town....

Is that 100 words? Probably.

Extract from a travel journal

2008-01-27T18:03:00.000+11:00

...in the darkness a flame flares- fishermen offering a prayer to the sea god before heading out to cast their nets. A boy rushes the torch to the water's edge, holding it aloft flickering water before quenching it beneath the surface. The fishermen's prayers must have become more fervent in recent years.
Darkness falls, the electric lights on distant fishing boats are piercing. A string of electric stars on the horizon. Walking home, grasshoppers sing and geckoes scuttle past our luminous toes....

New Year's Resolution

2007-12-30T22:39:00.000+11:00

My New Year's resolution is to try and make better use of this blog. My writing has just fallen apart over the last twelve months, which is probably one reason why I am finding it so difficult to get a decent foothold in the narrative that I am currently supposed to be working on (for which I need to have a draft completed by the end of the first week of January). One reason, but not the only reason. Many false starts later, I keep finding myself trying to tell a different story/explore a different theme from the one that I am supposed to be exploring. I'm not even getting close to what I'm 'supposed' to be writing about. This would be fine if I was writing alone, but I'm not, and I don't think that it is the time or the place to write the narrative that my fingers keep itching to type! Grrr... I'd better get on the right track soon... My frustration is making my words cantankerous and itchy (and so is the heat). Cheap, school-issued Acer laptops don't go too well in 35 degree heat, I'm finding. And why am I even bothering to write on the day before New Year's Eve, you ask?
Because I've got a deadline, damnit!

I want to write about writing... all writing is about writing, yes, but this time I really want to write about writing... like this...

No textual staging is innocent (Foucault 1978). Writing is an intentional
activity and, as such, a site of moral responsibility. Whoever writes
for/about/of whatever is using authority and privilege. But there is no such
thing as 'a thing' speaking of 'itself', because 'things' are always constructed
and interpreted, there is no Archimedean resolution to the problem of speaking
for others... Knowledge is always situated, embodied, and partial (Haraway
1988). We are always viewing something from somewhere, from some embodied
position. Consequently, the problem becomes a practical-ethical one. How can we
use our skills and privileges to advance the case of the nonprivileged?
-Laurel Richardson (1997) Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life
...
...
...my words are self-conscious (even more than usual).

Suheir Hammad

2007-11-20T21:02:00.000+11:00

Oh the places they'll go...

2007-10-31T21:21:00.000+11:00

The week before the Year12 English exam is both lovely, and stressful. My typical 'quiet' Wednesday, during which I teach only one Year 11 class and supervise a study hall, became incredibly hectic as clusters of frantic year 12 students appeared at regular intervals, clutching essays and/or collecting them, promising more, or just wanting a chat. Despite this, the hours seem to slow down, perhaps for them as well, because every hour the exam moves closer. The valedictory dinner has passed, school dresses and shirts have been inscribed with black texta, cars have been toilet-papered, classes are over. They become clingy, all of a sudden, when they realise that they won't see your face every day. They suddenly realise (some of them, at least) how many hours that you have dedicated to them. They scribble on cards, tell you that your classroom is where they realised that they loved writing (well, one of them did). They start to realise that this is the beginning of the rest of their life, and you begin to reflect on where they have come from, and how much further they have got to go.

Tired

2007-09-12T19:38:00.000+10:00

There comes a point when you start to wonder how much more you can give. You work hard because you are passionate about what you do... and because you are passionate about what you do you succeed at it... and because you succeed people ask you to do more... and more... and then you begin to wonder how you will look and feel after another year of people wanting more... and more.... and if you look and feel like that how can you possibly remember why you were once so passionate?

When you're too tired for yoga... something's wrong.

School Families

2007-08-29T20:17:00.000+10:00

I'm still exhausted after Parent-student-teacher interviews the other night, but I had a lovely moment amongst the madness. A parent of one of my year 12 students from 2005 stopped by to tell me how he was going- he's loving uni and his teachers are apparently loving the essays that he's writing. His mother reminded me how I had said that his essays were like paintings because of his unusual approach to structure and argument development- I have absolutely no recollection of this (and I have a feeling that if I did say this, I was being tongue-in-cheek) but I remember some of his pieces and encouraging his original approaches to writing. Now, he is continuing down this road and is really enjoying the responses that he is getting from his tutors. Uni was always going to be a good fit for him- he's an artist.

Last year, I taught his younger sister and right now I am working with his youngest brother in a year 7 literature circle extension program. After almost four years, I am noticing that I am developing relationships with families, not just individual students. It's lovely.

Hope Confirmed

2007-08-20T18:45:00.000+10:00

Tickets booked: the day after school finishes, I'll be in Thailand. Woo hoo!

It is a good day when...

2007-08-16T21:23:00.000+10:00

Your latest 'ICT Arvo' goes so well that teachers go home and talk excitedly to their 12 year old kids about everything that they learnt about 'wikis'.

A Year 7 English teacher (whom you assist in their class once a week) gets a call from a parent because their kid is incredibly excited about the literature circle blog that you have helped them to set up.

Your Year 11 Lit class don't want to draw their 'debate' about The Crucible to an end.

The year 12 student editors of the creative writing anthology come by the staffroom to show you the posters that they have stuck on their backs to encourage everyone to hand in their submissions.

And, when all of these things happen on the ONE DAY, your 'mid-term blues' lift and the icy wind becomes crisp and fresh.

AATE Conference Reflection

2007-08-02T17:23:00.000+10:00

Below is some text from an address that I gave at school, reporting back on my experiences at the AATE Conference in Canberra. I didn't want to do the usual blow-by-blow 'this is what happened' kind of presentation, so instead I chose to focus on what the experience meant. I don't get the impression that it went down so well- lots of glazed eyes- or perhaps Thursday afternoon isn't the right time for this kind of presentation. Sometimes, I feel like I am teaching within two different 'spaces'- my immediate school 'life' and a space where bigger ideas and more intensive reflection are valued. I get incredibly frustrated when they can feel so disparate, but I find it really difficult to have the kinds of discussions and participate in the kinds of discourses in my immediate school context that I enjoy and value so much in other spaces. I am feeling really disheartened about this at the moment, and don't quite know what to do about it. But, perhaps there is a chance that these ideas/word will get a better reception here.

'You don’t attend a National Conference to collect practical, ‘ready-to-use’, perfect for Monday morning, lesson resources. Or if you do, I think that you’re likely to come away disappointed, because that’s not what this kind of experience is about. I think that it’s too easy for us as teachers to subscribe to these kinds of discourses, too, this idea that teaching is just a matter of reaching for a photocopyable resource and dishing it out, or finding the next fail-safe great idea. In English classrooms, and probably other classrooms as well, we encourage our students to be wary of limited discourses that frame young people in restrictive ways- the ‘angst-filled teenager’, the ‘vacuous surfer dude’, the ‘black-obsessed emo’- these are images that kids see in advertising and popular culture all the time, and they can make the mistake of thinking that that is who they are.

What we perhaps don’t spend enough time thinking about is the way that teachers can be positioned in equally limiting ways- the ‘classroom practitioner’ who isn’t supposed to open a window to look beyond the four walls of the classroom, the ‘early career teacher’ whose only challenge in their first year of teaching is to ‘survive’, the student teacher, who as soon as they walk into a school is told that everything they learnt at uni is a ‘bunch of claptrap’ and that they should wait ‘until they get into a real classroom, that’s when they’ll actually learn something’. We’ve all been guilty of participating in these kinds of discourses, perhaps we even believe in them, but to me it seems to stem from a fairly entrenched culture in Education that defines the ‘purely practical’ as valuable and the ‘airy-fairy theoretical’ as a harmless indulgence at best.

This is a pretty dangerous binary, I think, principally because it devalues us, as professionals, and really limits the scope of the work that we do, and the way that we think about what we do, and the kinds of professional learning that we value. Just as damaging is the way that this kind of culture allows politicians to position teachers as mere technicians- John Howard’s and Julie Bishop’s attacks on English and History teachers in particular in the media recently have suggested that they would much rather that we simply ‘deliver’ a benign, centrally-prescribed curriculum rather than actually have us think about what we are teaching kids. Their fear seems to be that the lot of us will turn into card-carrying Marxist ideologues.

One of the most powerful moments of the Conference came during a writing workshop centred around the prospect of a National Curriculum. The idea was to be proactive, to start thinking and articulating what we believe is essential for our students to know and be able to do, before someone else tries to do that for us. We had been working on this task quite intensely in small groups, there was lots of rich, divergent discussion, and it was only at the very end that we realised that amongst our group we had every state represented. This was what characterized the conference for me- the notion that opening up spaces for dialogue, for conversation, is fundamentally important in the work that we do as teachers.

And so, this is what attending the National English teacher’s conference meant to me- not an opportunity to be a hell-raising Marxist ideologue, but a chance to engage with the minds of some great thinkers, to engage in some critical thinking about not only the work that I am doing in my classroom, but what it means to teach and learn in a democracy.'

Fav Moment of the Week

2007-07-31T21:01:00.000+10:00

When 'Tom' (year 10) asked very earnestly if he would be able to count Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War' for his wider reading requirement.

'Yes!' he exclaimed, pumping his fist, when I replied 'Um, yeah Tom, I suppose that would be ok.'

Silent kids in study hall

2007-06-13T20:24:00.000+10:00

Sitting before silent kids in year 11 study hall, I wonder at time slowing down. It always happens at this time of year. Senior students finish classes and get caught up in the hurly burly of exams, and the frantic pace of past weeks seems strangely distant. It isn’t as though there isn’t plenty of work to do- piles of exams to mark and reports to write- but the work becomes methodical, rather than exhilarating.

I am looking forward to next semester already. I am looking forward to teaching Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, in a world that has changed so much in the short time that I last explored this text with students. I am looking forward to teaching The Crucible for similar reasons.

I am looking forward to extending the work that I have begun this term in my new role as ‘ICT Consultant’ (dumb, corporate-sounding name; interesting work). The ‘ICT Arvo Series’ that we launched this term has started out so well, and I am keen for it to continue to gain momentum next term. Basically, the ICT Arvo Series is exactly what it sounds like- a series of afternoon workshops for interested staff to have a play and a chat about using technology for student learning in the classroom. The thing that I like most about it, and I think what the attendees have liked about it as well, is that the workshops are run by staff working within the school, rather than external ‘experts’. This has made such a difference: staff feel more encouraged to ‘have a go’, ask questions, share ideas, and, most importantly, are able to build professional learning relationships with their colleagues. While I knew theoretically, and from my own professional learning experiences, that this would be the case, it is really nice to see it play out for others.

And, of course, some of the richest learning has happened before ‘ICT arvos’ or between them. For example, the two sessions that we have run in the latter part of this term have focused on getting staff to use the interactive whiteboards more productively, with student involvement (which is kind of the point). I asked two different staff members to run each session because of the interesting work that they had been doing in this area in their own classrooms, and we all met one afternoon at a café to plan the sessions together. Between the five of us, we had four faculties represented: English, SOSE, LOTE and Science. This ‘planning session’ quickly became a professional learning session itself, as we all shared our own ideas and experiences with the IWBs in the classroom. The software had just been upgraded to version 3, and so at first there was a flurry of conversation and questions about what new ‘tools’ we had come across in the new version, but the discussion quickly extended beyond the use of technology to more intensive thinking and talking about pedagogy. As a consequence (I think so, anyway) the conversations that occurred later, during the actual workshops, followed a similar trajectory. It was nice to see, nicer to be part of, and even nicer to feel partly responsible for.

But this is just the beginning…

The Agony and the Ecstasy

2007-05-15T23:06:00.000+10:00

Today, I understood this.

Writing-Stories

2007-05-13T18:35:00.000+10:00

"The story of a life is less than the actual life, because the story told is
selective, partial, contextually constructed and because the life is not yet
over. But the story of a life is also more than the life, the contours and
meanings allegorically extend to others, others seeing themselves, knowing
themselves through another's life story, re-visioning their own, arriving where
they started and knowing "the place for the first time"."

-Laurel Richardson, 'Fields of Play, Constructing an Academic Life'

I write even though I have four piles of SACs glowering at me, even though I haven't had five seconds to myself all weekend, even though the thought of the coming week exhausts me and brings me to tears.

I write because I have four piles of SACs glowering at me, because I haven't had five seconds to myself all weekend, because the thought of the coming week exhausts me and brings me to tears.

In the hurly burly: a moment of clarity. At a year 11 English team meeting, a colleague comments, "this new unit was a nice break, I felt, from the norm". Others nod. Later, I wonder why. Why did she (and others) feel this way about a new writing unit which is drastically different from the way that 'writing' was 'taught' last year (and has been for many years)? Why did this seem like a 'break' from the 'challenges' of the rest of our course, even though the level of thinking required and layers of complexity inherent in this new unit are significantly greater (in my mind now, and when I was developing this unit) than anything else that we do in Year 11 English? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the feedback from students has been so positive: their engagement has rendered the teachers' engagement. At least, that is what I hope.

I write because I need to, and I need to remember that I need to, no matter how chaotic 'life' is: "writing-stories" (Richardson, 1997) enrich my writing, enrich my life... and hopefully the lives of others.

Tightrope

2007-05-13T18:19:00.000+10:00

My Daemon (Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' fans will understand)

2007-05-02T22:47:00.001+10:00

Altered Books

2007-04-04T23:22:00.000+10:00

Wow, hey, I want to find a way to do this with my lit kids... See this link...

Growing crystals

2007-04-04T23:01:00.000+10:00

How does the way we record and recollect an event shape not only others’ experience of it, but our own?
How does narrative capture experience? Does it matter if what is captured in words differs from the reality of the experience?
How can subjectivity be a productive source for research?

Imagine this: a darkened lecture theatre, filled with year 10 English students, a flickering projection screen and a teacher: me. Z stands at the front, her short film fills the room. A house creaks. A mother dies inside as her daughter leaves home. A forlorn music box tinkles. The walls of the house peel away, piece by piece. The mother is left alone in a vacant field. Her home disappears, like her daughter.
Inside: my heart rushes. Blood flows. Beauty. Emotion. Connection. Wonder.

How do you share emotional experiences like these in ways that are meaningful and productive?

I want to write a piece about research and narrative, focusing particularly on my teaching and learning experiences that have involved/been shaped by unconventional/multimodal narratives. The questions that I find myself asking about narrative and meaning have both led to, and stem from, my and my students’ explorations into narrative during the past eighteen months or so in particular. I want to write about, and share, my students’ Blake hypertexts, their multimodal poems, their creative re-visions. But this is not the end: this is a means. I know that narrative, and writing in particular, will continue to shape the way I think about and make sense of my teaching experiences. So, I want to keep getting better at it. But more than this: I want to make a contribution to my profession through this. This is what I want to write about. What constitutes practitioner research that is self-reflexive, self-critical, self-devised? How can it be framed, assessed, shaped, directed? What is its value, its worth? For the practitioner and/or for wider audiences?

I’ve written about these issues before in other ways and places but I think I need to revisit them. I’m not there yet. I am keen to do this by exploring and applying the writing of Laurel Richardson, who I have admired and wanted to draw on for some time. I went to lecture of hers some time back and it was fantastic, and I’m eagerly awaiting a couple of her texts from Amazon: ‘Writing Strategies’ and ‘Fields of Play’.

In her lecture, she described writing as not a ‘mopping up’ activity at the end of the research process, but a research activity in itself. Which isn’t really anything new of course, but the way that she explored the place of narrative in research was particularly appealing to me. Now, I’m looking back over my jottings that I recorded while I was listening:

Simplistic fiction/non-fiction divide no longer exists: there is only narrative.

New ways of knowing are opening up the ‘academy’ to others (good!)

Five postmodern writing strategies: Contextualisation, personal narration (‘self’ is active, thinking, linked to the research process), reflexivity, alternative writing formats (poetry, finger-painting!), collaboration (yep)…

Demystify authority planes (this includes YOU)

Writing against the current put me against the wall. I should have been writing in my current. Making my own way, rather than simply writing against what is already there.

Group of people writing on the pages of a text. Burning, painting, annotating, etc. Becoming not just a reader of the book, but a creator of it.

Artistic, aesthetic ways of thinking and knowing.

I will never reach a destination.

Genre: found poetry

Whenever you are attempting to do something different, it has to be aesthetically worthy, as well as research worthy.

The personal narrative has to connect with a larger sociocultural frame.

Creative synthesis

The crystal metaphor: a growing, physical form. Multiple facets. What you see is how you look. Different ways of knowing, the same material.

Once you can speak another ‘language’, it doesn’t stop you from knowing the first one. It only makes it richer.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll be able to start growing crystals out of these fragments soon. I’d be keen to hear from anyone who can offer any other suggested readings about narrative and research, particularly unconventional narrative, before I move much further along the meaning making process.

Our National Anthem: Barnsified

2007-04-04T19:01:00.000+10:00

I showed this to my Year 11 students last week during a discussion about Australian identity. We decided we like this version better. See what you think.

End of term

2007-04-04T17:45:00.000+10:00

Poor blog. How I've neglected you. A whole term has passed by and not one single post to show for it (lucky that I have other things to show for it). But, after four days break including one show (Miss Saigon), two films (Becoming Jane and Reign Over Me) and a baking session culminating in honey chocolate cake, I'm ready to blog again (that and I'm procastinating from marking my Year 12 English SACs).

This term I've....

-Enjoyed teaching A Man for all Seasons

-Helped my Year 10's create their miraculous multimodal poems

-Shed a few tears with my year 11's when we watched Grave of the Fireflies

-Nursed my baby, my year 11 course, and watched with my colleague, with a certain degree of personal satisfaction, as it came alive for the students and teachers

-Scored a new position of responsibility (ICT consultant- starting next term, and it's not nearly as corporate as it sounds, or at least I won't allow it to be)

-Experienced yet another personal tragedy unfold in my staffroom (we're all getting very good at handling these now- lots of practice)

-Submitted my Masters (still biting my fingers in anticipation of the verdict)

-Taught music for the first time (oh, my poor ears)

-Attempted to change the world, and, you know, other stuff... ;-)

I did it!

2007-01-22T18:41:00.000+11:00

My first Meme

2007-01-09T19:51:00.000+11:00

I've been tagged for a meme. Now, when I get these kinds of things through email I usually delete them, because they always ask the same questions, but this is the first time that I've been 'meme-tagged' on my blog, so I'm excited. Especially since I was tagged by a fellow Victorian early career teacher, Soulcradler, who popped up on the blogosphere quite recently.

So, here are five things about me that people may not know from reading my blog:

1. I love to cook. My most recent culinary triumphs are roasted nectarine tart (crispy pastry filled to the brim with vanilla bean custard, on which nestle roasted nectarines drizzled with a sweet toffee syrup), rum and raisin ice cream (delectable) and roast pork stuffed with rocket, toasted pine nuts, prosciutto, lemon zest and fresh basil. The pork was my contribution to Christmas dinner- I was so impressed with the crackling that I took a picture:

If this teaching gig ever goes sour I'd seriously consider opening a cafe. It would be a coffee lover's haven.

2. Meet Molly.

My dog. She is the most delightful creature you're ever likely to meet. Her tail wags so hard that her bum wiggles. She loves shaking hands and going for long walks. She loves playing ball (but only if you're prepared to do most of the fetching- she's above that sort of nonsense). She enjoys sitting at the table and chatting over coffee (well, I drink the coffee and she just sits there and pats my arm occasionally, but she understands every word I say). Everyone should have a Molly.

3. I will be submitting my Masters thesis this month. Yay! I can't believe I'm finally here. I have the latest full draft sitting on my desk. The lovely, large pile of crisp white pages motivates me. Seriously, I can't believe I'm actually going to make it and that it might actually, hopefully, be pretty good....

4. I love musical theatre. Seriously, I am a musical theatre geek. In my past life, BT (before teaching), I did a lot of shows, both on stage, and in the pit (band) but I haven't done any for a while. But I'm doing one this year with my local theatre company and it feels great to be rehearsing again, and singing harmonies again, which I love. I'm teaching music for the first time this year, too. Music is my other method, which I managed pretty well to keep under wraps because I fell in love with English teaching. But, finding out that my school had me down to teach Geography of all things because they were operating under some misguided understanding that SOSE was my other method area, forced me to remind them that music was actually my other method area. I mean, I have no sense of direction. So, now I'm teaching Year 8 Music next year. More on that later.

5. My favourite childhood memory is watching my world from the roof of the house that I grew up in. When my Dad was painting the gutters or doing some work on the roof my sister and I would climb the ladder and clambour up the tiled slope to straddle the very top. We would sit up there for quite some time and look out over the entire neighbourhood. I asked my Dad about it the other day and he can't believe now that he let us do it. It was so dangerous. I don't know what the neighbours would have thought. But it was fun (almost as much fun as the time we built a flying fox between two trees in our front yard).

So, there you go. Quite an eclectic list. Hmm... who should I tag?

Scott (I know that he has something quite miraculous that he can put on his list, and it might get him blogging again)
School Days (who I see has just started blogging again after a year long hiatus), and
Darce

Like Swallows

2006-12-19T22:32:00.000+11:00

Or this one. 'Like Swallows' by Laura Henry. The description she provides of her creative vision is wonderful:

This piece is based on how the first portable typewriter played an integral part in the human aspect of WW1. I found letters that had been written by soldiers from the trenches ,still maintaing a poetry, whilst the noise and horror of war surrounded them.

Beton

2006-12-19T22:23:00.000+11:00

Wow. Just discovered this at Aniboom. I am definitely going to use this site in my teaching next year. I can imagine bringing a wonderfully enigmatic short film like 'Beton' (above) into my year 11 literature class and sharing/discussing possible readings and interpretations.

Hypertexty blogs

2006-12-19T21:15:00.000+11:00

Man. I am going to get really carried away with this labels/categories thing (check out my labels menu in the sidebar). And that's just three posts worth of 'em! But I really like the way that they can make the experience of reading a blog more 'hypertexty' (excluding a good blog-writer's use of hyperlinks, of course, which I really want to aim to be doing more of) by allowing the reader/writer to explore the posts via 'connections', rather than through the typically linear, reverse-chronological order in which the posts appear on the page.

Beta rocks

2006-12-19T20:56:00.000+11:00

Ok, I'm loving this new 'blogger beta' setup. For those of you who haven't switched over yet... do it! (that means you, Scott). No more mucking around with html (unless I want to!) and I can finally categorise posts- a feature that I almost switched over to edublogs for, but in the end couldn't bring myself to for fear of losing all my old posts in the process.

It was slightly annoying to make the move to beta only to discover that I had lost my counter, sitefeed and other funky encrypted thingies and whatsits, yes, but that wasn't difficult to remedy.

It was a good move. Now I just need to move house in January...

Opening Windows

2006-12-13T21:14:00.000+11:00

I've been thinking about the way that teachers define what it means to be a 'teacher'.

I said my goodbyes to my principal today, who is leaving the school, and he said, 'good luck with everything, nb, whatever you do, whether it's writing or teaching or academia. But I do hope you stay with teaching.'

Someone else was saying to me recently that he thought that teaching was a 'craft' and that he was glad that I was doing an MA and not an MEd for that reason. 'Teaching isn't a science or about theory,' he said, 'teachers are teachers because they either like kids or they like their subject.'

I think it's interesting when those within the teaching profession help to perpetuate, or at least believe in, incredibly narrow definitions what it is to be a 'dedicated classroom teacher'. Perhaps these definitions are remnants of a bygone era when teachers were supposed to be solitary creatures who entered a classroom, conjured mysterious learning spells in front of kiddies, and then returned to partitioned desks for more lonely lesson planning. I don't know- probably such a time never existed. I am beginning to notice however, that if you are the kind of teacher who likes to throw open your classroom windows occasionally and stick your head out to see beyond the 'immediacies' of teaching, you can make people nervous. Especially if you're a young teacher. Other teachers (esp. those in leadership positions) start shooting suspicious, sidelong glances at you, as though you're secretly plotting an escape route from the teaching profession, just because you show an interest in how your little piece of the teaching puzzle fits into the 1,000 piece jigsaw. As though they're just waiting for you to leave the classroom and go off to a university and read 'intellectual' books with those other 'academics' who simply have no idea about 'schooling'. It's the same sort of binary-thinking that underscores that tired cliche often spouted to (and sometimes spouted by) pre-service teachers: 'you don't learn anything about teaching in uni. Just wait until you get out into a school and all that stuff you heard at uni will go out the window'.

It's very strange. I don't understand it at all. But it is vital to think about and talk about what teachers mean by the label 'classroom teacher', especially when our profession is in the midst of developing standards for professional practice and putting in place processes to encourage ongoing professional renewal.

I used to 'play' with the phrase 'my professional identity' all the time, especially during my first year of teaching. It doesn't appear in my writing quite so often these days, perhaps because it doesn't seem quite as tentative and provisional to me now. I don't need to write the words so often, because my professional identity colours every word. In fact, after all this writing and thinking, 'my professional identity' has become precious to me. It feels like something that I need to protect, fiercely, in case other people try to define it for me, or even take it away from me. It has many facets, many shades, many sides, many layers, but somewhere close to the centre of this luminiscent, shimmering identity is the belief that I have a responsibility to continue to shape it and feed it. It's a responsibility that I take very seriously, and to do it right means looking beyond where I am right now.

So, next time you spot a young teacher sticking her head out the classroom window, don't ask her to shut it and get back in front of the whiteboard, where the 'real' teaching happens. Hand her a telescope, so that she can see even further.

Don't worry. She's not going anywhere.

Sheesh

2006-12-12T22:16:00.000+11:00

Last day of school tomorrow. Feeling very ready for it. Colleague/friend 'L' and I over spending long days and nights on new year 11 curriculum. Happy with it, but sheesh. Over it.
Good (sometimes) to be in an organised, meticulous faculty but other times... sheesh. Over it.

No longer able to write in full sentences.

Fluency: spent.

Wits: L and I crossed into hysteria at exact same time... last Friday.

New favourite words: Sheesh and putz.

New favourite food: chicken, swiss cheese, prosciutto and avocado focaccias from The Grange. Good for curriculum writing.

Other new favourite food: raspberry and lemon curd friands from Food Depot. (next door to Grange). Also very good for curriculum writing.

New realisation: writing new year 11 curriculum can cement bonds forever. The dynamic duo will live on.

Current thoughts: wondering if fab 'Kath and Kim' pic that L and I put on the front cover of the Year 11 English Handbook will survive the editing process. Yes, it's relevant. But clipart usually the status quo.

141 pages... sheesh.

Must... sleep...

A (failed) Guide to Indoctrination

2006-11-30T23:07:00.000+11:00

I was part of a panel discussion at the VIT (Victorian Institute of Teaching) today. The topic was 'Critical Literacy: Pedagogy or Ideology. The other presenters were Assoc. Prof. Catherine Beavis (wow!), Assoc. Prof. Ray Misson (cool!), and Dr. Kevin Donnelly. It was a surreal experience sitting up the front with that crowd, to say the least.

Below is roughly what I had to say about the matter. I have tried to embed my powerpoint slides in this post, which were mostly visuals that were part of the narrative that I was trying to convey.

An Early Career Teacher’s Gaze:
A (failed) Guide to Indoctrination

When I am beginning to explore a new text with students, I ask them to share their initial responses- the lines that jump off the page at them, their favourite characters, the moments that surprise them, the questions that remain with them. But then, I often ask them to put on a pair of sunnies. Not literally, but metaphorically. I ask my students to ‘see’ the text through someone else’s eyes- other than their own.

This is because I want them to read consciously, rather than unconsciously. I want them to think about the way that they derive meaning from a text, and whether this process is the same for everyone, every time. I want them to read critically.

And so, for a short time, I would like to ask you to look through the eyes of an early career English teacher. (slide 2) So, put on your sunglasses! What colour are the frames? What shade are the lenses? Are they cool and funky or a fashion faux pas? Perhaps these sunglasses are familiar to you and slip on comfortably, or perhaps they’re like the pair that I unearthed from my glove box last week, clumped together with sticky mintie wrappers.

After donning this pair of metaphorical sunnies, I would like you to imagine how this ‘debate’ over critical literacy that is currently taking place in the media, political spheres and here, might engage an early career English teacher, for whom critical literacy is an important part of their pedagogy.

You may have been as surprised as I was myself when I realised that my pedagogy placed me firmly within the ‘loony fringe’- a term used by the editors of The Australian for those who do not share their view that anything other than the ‘universal’ Western canon should be taught in English classrooms. You may also be able to appreciate the somewhat disconcerting experience of learning that the ideas I was engaging students with were “serious ideology” (as opposed to frivolous ideology, I can only assume). You might have experienced the dismay that I did when I read that by encouraging my students to engage thoughtfully and critically with texts, I was apparently denying them the opportunity to experience the “simple joys of reading".

What’s a young English teacher to do? Should I blindly accept the observations of various conservative commentators and dismiss the value of my own education, pedagogy and aspirations for my students?

My year 10’s finished formal classes for the year a couple of weeks ago. I would like to share with you the voices of these students, through extracts from their contributions to our class discussion board. We use this space to continue the conversations that begin in the classroom, and I would like to use my student voices to extend the discussion that we are having today. Sometimes my students begin the conversations on the discussion board, and sometimes I do, but our final discussion topic for the year required us to think carefully about what we had learned through our exploration of various texts.

(slide 3)

‘Jane’, the philosopher, writes:

Nothing in life is black and white and nothing in literature or art either really. If we had learnt it just one way we wouldn’t have learnt as much and couldn’t teach our teachers.

One attack that has been levelled at critical literacy in recent times has been that it is responsible for ‘dumbing down’ our English curriculum.

Around the time that catch-phrases like these were being printed in newspapers, my students and colleagues and I were busily exploring Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men. We had wide ranging discussions about friendship, loyalty, dreams and disappointments. My students laughed at the antics of Lennie as he sneakily hid his pet mouse from the grumpy George, responded in shock and sorrow at the terrible choice that George made and empathised with poor Candy for the loss of his beloved companion.

But we also delved deeper as we interacted with this text. We examined the power structures at play in the novella. How you can complete a thoughtful study of this text without examining notions of class, gender and ethnicity is beyond me, I’m afraid. (Slide 4) I used The Simpsons to get students to think critically about class distinctions and their impact on society and to develop a reading of the novella with these ideas in mind. We also looked at movie posters, like this one (slide 5), and debated whether this interpretation of Steinbeck’s work was consistent with or different from their own. We discussed the implications of images like these, the values that lie behind them, and how our 21st century eyes respond to the portrayal of Curley’s Wife.

As part of this exploration, students produced creative responses to Steinbeck’s work that brought to light riches in the text that they unearthed after much investigation and questioning. Some students gave Curley’s Wife a name, and delved into more of her history. Another re-visioned the red-feathered mules from a symbol of danger and desire into Curley’s Wife’s personal link to her lost dreams. Yet another brought to life a story from Crooks’ childhood, illuminating possible reasons for his bitterness.

As an early career teacher, I’m still developing my pedagogy. I’m constantly reflecting on my professional practice with colleagues, about what I’m doing well, what I need to improve, what I want for my students, what I think education is for and the role of English and literature in all of this. When I was exploring Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire with my Year 11 Literature students earlier this year, I asked them to think about the text as being like a kaleidoscope (slide 6): what we see depends partly on who we are, where we are, and how we turn the wheel. I like to use the same metaphor when I think about my learning process as a teacher: my vision shifts as I learn and grow. But it is clear to me that the impact of critical literacy on my pedagogy opens up opportunities for my students, rather than diminishing them.

(slide 7)

‘Simon’, the lover of exclamation marks, has this to say:

Now I know that if I don’t look deeper and ask more questions, there is so much that I am missing out on! So many different views, that the writer was trying to show, that other people picked up, and that I might find for myself.

I can learn so much more this way, it has been fun!

It is interesting to compare Simon’s excitement with the argument that the use of critical theory in the classroom steals the joy of exploring literature from students, replacing with theories “that they find abstract, dry and empty of meaning".

I haven’t found this to be my experience.

And I’m sure it’s fairly obvious to us that good teachers use a range of strategies and approaches to foster a love of reading in their students. Teachers provide opportunities for students to respond both critically and creatively to texts, sometimes simultaneously.

(slide 8)

‘Cam’, the film buff, writes:

It’s made me look deeper into things- especially movies. Analysing art has helped as well. But maybe sometimes we shouldn’t criticise and grade everything all the time. The world we live in these days rates everything. A new movie comes out and we rate it out of five stars. Maybe we should just accept it for what it is and not put it on a scale to see how good or bad it is?

Cam’s contribution to the discussion board made me stop and think. The question mark at the end of his response leads me to believe that he is still thinking about this, too, and grappling with what it means to develop a response to a work of art, whatever the medium. I’m glad that he is thinking about this, and even more importantly, that he felt comfortable enough to think aloud about it.

For me, one of the premises that critical literacy builds on is that there is more than one way of seeing. There is no doubt that this can be a challenging notion, for students, for teachers and for others outside the profession.

An English classroom is filled with different ‘ways of seeing’. Students bring their own values, beliefs, experiences, reading practices and questions with them, and so do teachers. Surely, it is better for students to be aware of the factors that make up their worldview than remain blind to them.

The questions that Cam is asking of himself, his classmates, and me, his teacher, reminds me of the questions that we, as teachers, ask ourselves and each other all the time. When I look around at the extraordinary wealth and diversity of experiences, practices, philosophies and contexts that are collected in this room, it makes me incredibly nervous for a start, but it also brings to mind the very reason why we must continue to seek out opportunities like this to share, critique, question and affirm what we do.

Our ways of seeing, understanding, and articulating, our teaching and learning are complex, intricate, colourful and multi-layered. They can’t be conveyed in a sound-bite, or a clever catch-phrase. Perhaps this could be considered problematic, when people seem so eager to speak for us, or position us, rather than allow us to speak for ourselves. But this isn’t a good enough reason to stop asking questions and exploring possibilities. If anything, critical literacy teaches us the dangers of assuming that there is such a thing as one ‘accepted’ position.

(slide 9)

‘Sophie’, the advocate, writes:

By learning how to look at a situation from alternative views, it can also help us in society. When someone is being treated poorly, we can look at the world through their perspective. We can learn to stand in someone else’s shoes.

To be confidently literate in this world is not just about reading for comprehension or being able to follow established rules for spelling and grammar, even though these skills are important.

I want my students to be able to stand on their own two feet in this complex and intricate world, but I also want them to be able to slip on someone else’s shoes occasionally, or see through someone else’s sunnies. I will continue to look for ways to achieve this, and I will continue to pursue this in my own professional learning.

The next pit-stop...

2006-11-05T21:22:00.000+11:00

On Friday my students and I reached the next 'pit-stop' in the journey we have undertaken this semester- creating new forms of multimodal texts (new to us, anyway). This time, it was multimodal poetry with my year 10's. We finished off the year with a unit on 'poetry'- one of the few spots on the workplan that classes were free to follow any direction we chose (basically because it was the first time that poetry had taken a prominent spot in our year 10 course). Just about every class went in a different direction, but I decided that I wanted to get my students to question some of the assumptions that my students were making about what poetry actually is and who poetry speaks to and for. To do this, I introduced them to a whole range of multimedia poetry that was created, in one or another, using computer technology.

They fell in love with these concrete poems by Dan Waber, particularly 'Arms', 'poidog' and 'HaHa'. My favourite was the strange and absorbing 'The Last Day of Betty Nkomo' by Young Hae-Chang. And 'Oh' was lots of fun to investigate, because it is interactive. I projected the poem on the electronic whiteboard, and a couple of students came up to see if they could figure out how to 'read' it.

Anyway, this had followed on from some discussions about various music videos and what the images added to the lyrics. After we had explored quite a diverse range of multimedia poetry by various poets, for assessment, students had to choose a poem (from a collection of poetry books) and create a multimedia interpretation of it. They could use MovieMaker or PowerPoint for this, and all except one group elected to use MovieMaker. On Friday, we had a 'screening' of sorts, where they introduced and explained how they had interpreted their poem and what they wanted to convey through the images, movie clips, voice overs, music, effects and animation that they had used.

I really wasn't sure what to expect, even though I had been working with them on their projects for about a week. The 'process' leading up to this 'screening' had been really enjoyable in lots of ways. Doing this for the first time- with students who had never done anything like this in an English classroom- it had felt really.... 'creative' and 'generative' and 'spontaneous' and 'freeing' and 'unruly' and... it became difficult to pin down exactly what was going on in my classroom during these past two weeks! I do know that the 'outcomes' that I had in mind when I devised the task had shifted in some ways by the time the students presented, although I couldn't tell you exactly when my expectations had shifted. And, as I watched the final versions of their multimedia poems, I realised that some of the most interesting 'learning' that had occurred in terms of what the students had produced was quite different to what I had intended- some of the more interesting things that were happening in their 'short films' had more to do with narrative than poetry per se. And I'm finding that fascinating to think about, although I haven't really come to any conclusions about it all yet. I'm not sure if it was to do with software used- Windows MovieMaker- or not. Unfortunately, I'm unable to explain all of this to you without you actually seeing the multimedia poems and filling you in about the different 'journeys' that a number of my students in particular went on. Anyway, suffice to say that that was a great start to the day, and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of them on Friday.

Hypertext lecture

2006-10-17T21:34:00.000+10:00

I have been meaning to blog about this for ages but simply haven't gotten around to it. I think that I can call the lecture I gave (on the hypertexts that my year 11's created) a success due to the positive feedback I received, although looking back on it there's plenty I would change 'next time'. I had, as is typical of me, come prepared with far too much material that I wanted to talk about, and didn't have enough time to do most of it justice. I thought that the narrative I was trying to tell was worth sharing, though. And I want to keep experimenting with my presenting style. Small steps...
It was interesting to chat with some of the pre-service teachers afterwards who asked a range of questions, and not just about the content of my presentation. I was a little thrown by the number of questions that I got asked about technology- how I had learnt to do that... whether schools expected you to know how to do that.... what should I do to prepare for using technology with students next year...
It surprised me because when I was planning the lecture (and the task with my students) I wasn't really thinking about the 'technology aspect' at all. I was preoccupied with notions of 'writing' and challenging some students' (and teachers') somewhat entrenched notions of what 'writing in classrooms' is. Trying out some things with hypertext was just the way that I chose to do this- on this particular occasion.
After doing my best to reassure these pre-service teachers that their careers would not be in jeopardy if they didn't know how to insert a hyperlink, I wondered what I would have changed about my presentation to address their concerns. What additional 'background' should I have provided? Should I have begun with a brief lesson on 'how to' insert hyperlinks? A 'practical' lecture on elements of hypertext design? An explanation of what they can expect when they get out into schools and are required to use technology in the classroom?
Well, I have come to the conclusion that all of these options would have been fairly useless, if not a complete waste of time. A lecture on 'how to create a hypertext' would probably be about as useful (useless) as a lecture on 'how to blog' and who knows what these pre-service teachers will come across when they leave Monash and arrive at their remarkably different school environments and contexts? I wanted to give an insight into how I reflect on my teaching practices, and I think I did that. This was the most valuable skill that I took away from my dip Ed, anyway.
I find myself continuing to muse over the differences in a lecture that I gave to English method students at the beginning of 2005, and the one I gave recently. It's interesting to see how my perspectives on what I'm doing in my classroom (and profession) have shifted in some ways and developed in others (at least, I think they have). It feels good to be able to come to this conclusion.

2006-10-14T20:38:00.000+10:00

Aurora (Northern Lights)

I thought I'd try posting a video...

Lunacy, alright

2006-09-24T22:25:00.000+10:00

Aaaah. I'm so, so proud to be part of the loony fringe. Aren't we all? It's funny though, when you think of how many of us there actually are. Not so much a fringe as a full blown freakin' mullet, I'd say.

Hmmm.... I wonder if anyone has told The Australian... Any volunteers?

Great, thanks. While you're at it, you might want to give the editorial staff a bit of helpful advice about editorial style.

'This is an editorial?' my students would ask, wrinkling noses. 'This is the 'voice' that this paper wants to project?'

'Nuff said.

Except this: David Freesmith's thoughtful argument stands strong against this, this and this. Talk about a multi-pronged attack... Except for the fact that they all say the same thing (and I don't just mean echoing each other's sentiments- seriously, Kenneth's Wiltshire meandering sludge splodges its way through three separate articles- impressive. Or something.)

2006-09-23T19:56:00.000+10:00

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

-Elizabeth Bishop, One Art

Writing, etc.

2006-09-16T17:21:00.000+10:00

I'm giving a lecture to 'English Education' pre-service teachers at Monash Uni on Tuesday. I've been thinking about it for weeks and I have all this 'stuff' that I want to talk about... my year 11 Lit students' hypertexts... a recording of a rap song that a group of my year 10 boys wrote... my 10 Lit students' discussion board.. my own 'teacher writing'... but I'm currently lacking the vision of how to put it all together.

I know what I would like it to be. I would like it to take the form of a kind of 'performative narrative', which is how I found myself describing my Year 11 Lit students' poetry presentations just over a week ago. They had worked in pairs to construct hypertext versions of poems from Blake's Songs, and then presented their work to the rest of the class. I was excited by the form that these presentations took. The non-linear hypertexts meant that the students were not bound/constrained by successive powerpoint slides flicking across the screen. The presentations became conversational, informal, directed by student voices as they used their hypertexts to build their discussions and readings of the poems. They made spontaneous connections to past class discussions and other student presentations. The presentations became part of the 'meaning making' process, rather than a 'report' or 'record' of this process. The presentations did not feel 'end-stopped', to use a poetic term, but meandered into each other, and past each other, and back to alternative beginnings. In many ways, the hypertext writing that my students produced stood on its own, but it was brought to life by my students' voices, and not just the voices of students who were presenting.

This was the first time that I had attempted something like this with students, and it was a rich experience, even though there is so much that I would do differently next time.

Anyway, that is what I want this 'lecture' to be like. A performative, hypertext narrative, that could go in different directions. I've had a go at constructing a hypertext to reflect on my teaching experiences before. I'd like to try something like this again, and turn it into a 'lecture' or 'perform' it. Of course, I also want it to be participatory, and I'm going to have to think of ways to do that. But this is the sort of writing that I want to keep exploring this kind of writing, on my own, and with my students.

Whenever I am poised to create something new, to 'teach' something, to 'write' something, to 'produce' something for 'others', I often find myself looking for ways to use it as an opportunity to explore my current preoccupations and interests. I'm not just thinking of my 'audience' even when it's my students. Is this wrong?

Maybe...

I'm not sure.

Media musings

2006-09-09T22:25:00.000+10:00

Some interesting media bites to munch on this week.

Somewhat eerily, this opinion piece (What the PM owes to Hansonism) appeared a couple of days after a colleague and I had been bemoaning this very 'phenomenon'. I can remember listening to Hanson's harsh consonants on the radio and feeling sick and so ashamed. I can remember asking Mum as we drove to my high school in Dandenong, 'what will other countries think of us? This isn't what we're supposed to be'.

Now, Hanson tangos in orange sparkles across the telly, Oldfield plays Robinson Crusoe on Celebrity Survivor, and Howard channels Pauline's old speeches.

And now follows the cringe-worthy witch hunt of Professor Greer. I intended to write more about this but have since discovered that Tracy Hutchison (as well as a couple of intelligent letter writers) have it covered. Yeah sure, the timing is not good, but I relished seeing her swat away the extraordinarily outraged condemnations of the channel nine (??) reporter during her interview as though he was a pesky fly. How does a media report of a tragic death turn into a hysterical and prolonged attack on one of the defining minds of the 2oth century? I mean honestly, we've annointed a new Australian Saint (move over, Mary McKillop) and ousted the new 'Aussie Devil' in one fell swoop (oh, but remember, Greer's an expat now, so we can just let the Poms have her).

I was lucky enough to hear Germaine Greer speak a couple of years ago and she was completely captivating. So funny, wise, gracious and brilliant. A voice of dissent, certainly.

How shameful it is when voices like these are turned into soundbites by the media, so you can no longer hear the symphony.

A confession...

2006-09-01T22:31:00.000+10:00

I plant poetry

beneath eucalypts.

Woolvs in the sitee

2006-08-04T21:28:00.000+10:00

I'm planning to read this to my year 7 library classes next week- I can't wait. The words are images- strange, unsettling, alien and beautiful.

Kid Germs

2006-08-04T21:24:00.000+10:00

I’m sick. Yep, over the last six months my body has lost its immunity to ‘kid germs’ and so I’m sick. Joy. At least it means I can finally catch up on my blogging, since the prospect of actually changing out of my trackies and leaving the house tonight is abhorrent.

Note: please excuse lack of ‘kapow’ in blogposts tonight- I’m high on cold and flu medication.

Someone commented to me today that next week we will be halfway through the term. It’s gone extremely quickly, even though it feels as if so much has happened and some days have lasted an entire year (that doesn’t mean they’ve been bad, just full).

After taking a little time to adjust to my new classes (I spent some time at the start of the term nostalgically longing for the classes I taught last year) I’m enjoying them all, most of the time. Today, for instance, I had a lot of fun with my year 10 class as they worked in groups on tasks of their choosing related to Of Mice and Men. A number of groups have elected to write songs or raps (raps? Rap songs? Am I finally showing my age or is it the meds?) about the characters in the novella, and so much merriment ensued as students reached gleefully into pockets to retrieve ipods and search for backing tracks. Good fun.

I’m loving 11 Lit, because the students are so wonderful. We sit in a circle reading Streetcar and they all read with such earnestness and fun and care for the characters that it is a joy. I sometimes stress about the time passing, but the conversations are so rich that I am letting go in some ways and seeing where it takes us. We began work on the creative response task last lesson- students are writing an additional scene or an extension of the scene. I have dreams of filming some of them further down the track in black and white like Kazan’s film, but I am keeping that to myself for the time being in case I end up having to disappoint them. I’m going to have to start on Blake soon, and attempt to do a lopsided juggling act between the two texts for a while, if we have any hope of doing everything I want us to do this semester.

The best thing about my 10 Lit class at the moment is the way they have taken to the discussion board I set up for them. I had success with this last year, but it grabbed this particular group of students’ interest immediately, and they are responding readily and thoughtfully to the topics I pose, as well as adding their own. Any topic is fair game, I’ve told them, as long as there is some tenuous link to ‘English’ and so they’re also sharing accounts of the fav movies or books that they have read recently, etc. I hope that I can keep the momentum going. I have set up a board for my year 11 Lit class as well, but they are less interested in it at the moment. I haven’t figured out exactly why yet.

I’ve also had a go at developing a wiki with my year 10 class, which is working well- for what it is. Students worked in groups to develop a page for a class wiki, and then I dashed around to various laptops and helped them add their pages to the ‘frontpage’ that I had already developed. I was very aware of the fact that the way that I set up this task worked against the ‘wiki spirit’ in some ways- ie, it didn’t evolve naturally as students refined and built on each other’s research and ideas. What is there at the moment is pretty much as it will stay. It will be a useful resource for them in many ways, and they did experience that momentary excitement of having their own ‘web page’ out there is cyberspace, but it wasn’t anything we couldn’t have done with a shared file on the intranet or posters stuck strategically on the classroom walls. I knew this from the beginning, and it took some of the joy out of it for me, knowing that I wasn’t really making the most of it, but I needed to start somewhere, and I didn’t know these students very well and needed to have a few checks and balances in place, otherwise things could have gone pretty pear-shaped. Still, it’s a place to begin… but the excited faces over song lyrics and backing tracks have been more worthwhile…

She's back

2006-06-25T10:19:00.000+10:00

Good news: Hipteacher is back. Cool.

Kid Lit

2006-06-20T17:26:00.000+10:00

I am currently trying to devour as much adolescent fiction as possible before I return to school and begin doing the 'book talk' for year 7 and 8 library classes. I want to make the most of this opportunity to develop a pretty decent understanding of this area of my practice, which I think is a bit lacking at the moment. I know my harry potters and my philip pullmans and my margo lanagans (my two most recent new loves) and I know what was around when I was fifteen, but I don't really think that is going cut it anymore. I love talking to my students about what they're reading, and the more I know, the better I'll get at it. I love recommending a book to student in the library and watch them sink into a cushion and begin to devour it.
The problem is that the librarian that I am filling in for has a better grasp of young adult fiction than anyone I've ever met. I don't know how she does it- she knows her library and every book in it like the back of her hand. I know that I don't have a hope of living up to that, but I want to give it my best shot. Hence wishing that one could read an entire novel by simply placing one's hand on the cover until the words unstick themselves from the pages. Hey presto, one book down- next! I've tried it- it doesn't work. I have a feeling that the Inside a Dog website and I will become very well acquainted, as I try furiously to keep up with my reading.

My list for the hols:

I'm going for the 'eclectic' approach. I'm currently reading this:

which I am enjoying, particularly the use of musical imagery in the voice of one of the narrators.

But I really want to be reading this:

and especially this

Unfortunately, the students must have beaten me to it, since I couldn't find them on the shelf. ;)

pictures of words

2006-06-19T22:29:00.000+10:00

scattered seed-pods

2006-06-19T21:47:00.000+10:00

There were sea-horses and mer-men

and a flat tide-shelf,

there was a sand-dune,

turned moon-ward,

and a trail of wet weed

beyond it,

another of weed,

burnt another colour,

and scattered seed-pods

from the sea-weed;

there was a singing snail,

(does a snail sing?)

a sort of tenuous wail

that was not the wind

nor that one gull,

perched on the half-buried

keel,

nor was it any part of translatable sound,

it might have been, of course,

another sort of reed-bird,

further inland;

inland, there was a pond,

filled with water-lillies;

they opened in fresh-water

but the sea was so near,

one was afraid some inland tide,

some sudden squall,

would sweep up,

sweep in,

over the fresh-water pond,

down the lilies;

that is why I am afraid;

I look at you,

I think of your song,

I see the long trail of your coming,

(your nerves are almost gone)

your song is the wail

of something intangible

that I almost

but not-quite feel.

- "The Poet", H.D.

I want to write with this kind of mystery...

Looking forward...

2006-06-13T21:45:00.000+10:00

At the moment it is difficult to stay focused on my thesis (even though I am getting closer and if I keep at it I will have it written soon) because the thought of returning to teaching in a month's time is distracting me. I am returning to a fantastic load (year 10 and 11 literature, year 10 English and some classes in the library delivering the wider reading program). On a version of the timetable a month or so ago I was going to be teaching year 8 English workshop (an 'intensive' program for students who find some aspects of English a bit challenging), which I was looking forward to because it is a small class and I was excitedly thinking of new things to explore with them, such as digital storytelling, which would be manageable in a group that size and a potentially fabulous experience for them.

Unfortunately, on the latest version of the timetable this class clashes with year 11 lit, hence picking up the wider reading program for the librarian who will be on leave. I'm really glad to be part of the wider reading program though, because what could be better than chatting to kids about what they're reading? It will give me the incentive to really broaden my knowledge of what is out there in adolescent literature at the moment, too, as this is an area of my practice that I would really like to develop.

Very excited about finally teaching year 11 lit, too, after making the wrenching decision to put this on hold to take some leave at the start of the year. They've been incredibly good to me- I'm lucky to be getting this class back, and feel badly for the teacher who is really enjoying these students and is having to pass them back to me. He will be a great support, though, and I know a few wonderful people I can/will ask for advice. I am beginning to feel the pressure of living up to the good work that has already been done, while at the same time wanting to explore some of my own ways of doing things.

So, lots to look forward to...

...teaching literature... teaching the only year 11 class, which means I can dance to the beat of my own drum... having another go at blogging in the classroom (hopefully with more success this time around)... playing/experimenting with students and some wonderfully fun social software resources, like this, this, this, this and these... chatting about 'the kindness of strangers', tygers, 'janeites', and the prodigiously wealthy... reading books on soft, plump cushions... getting the school creative writing mag up again, and hopefully satisfying my vision of turning it into a creative arts e-zine, complete with podcasts of students reciting their own poetry, recordings of school bands (established and subversive), photos of artwork, films of student media projects, short stories (yes, well, ok, this vision might take until next year- probably safer to start small)... turning this blog into something a little more dynamic that is a more complex, interesting reflection of my teaching self... and teaching again (sigh)...

Which female literary character are you?!

2006-05-30T21:30:00.000+10:00

Which Classic Female Literary Character Are you?

You're Elizabeth Bennett of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen!
Take this quiz!

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Student voices

2006-05-28T13:47:00.000+10:00

I spent a couple of days last week getting paid for listening to kids talk- a pretty nice way to earn some extra money, if you ask me. At my school, the year 12 students present their English orals to an external assessor (ie, me, since I'm on study leave) and a small group of their classmates, rather than during class time. It takes about a week to get through them all because they are allocated a time during one of their free periods so they don't miss any classes. I'm sharing the marking load with S, who is a brilliant retired English and lit teacher. We marked together on the first day (I was only supposed to stay an hour or so in the morning for crossmarking purposes, but we were enjoying working together so I ended up staying for most of the day) and now we are alternating days until we get through them all by the end of this week. The 'system' works pretty well, although it pales in comparison to the organisation that would be needed to get through them all in one Saturday, like Jo did. But I don't think that would work for us- we would probably need to run some bus services to get all the students into school, because they come from miles around.
Anyway, I love doing the orals. I miss out on teaching this group in their final year since I am on leave this semester, so it's nice to be involved in their last year of English, albeit in a small way. They blow me away- they do an amazing job in their presentations and I can't help smiling and nodding at them the whole time, but most impressive is the way that they (without exception) support each other as audience members. So, yes, I'm enjoying myself, although I will admit to feeling a little over hearing about the dangers/potentials of nuclear energy and the growing obesity epidemic in young Australians. But that's ok- there's enough variety because they can talk about a current issue of their choice or develop a topic relating to one of the set texts (I got to see an impressive dramatic monologue based on a character in Rayson's Inheritance the other day).
I haven't yet spent much time thinking about the return to school next semester- busy stressing over my masters- but I am starting to allow small seeds of excitement to germinate. I'm feeling very happy about my load- as long as I got my wonderful year 11 lit kids back I was going to be thrilled- but year 10 lit has been a somewhat unexpected bonus, and the teasing possibility of some hours in the library delivering the wider reading program to year 7s and 8s (depending on the final shape that the timetable settles in) is like the rainbow sprinkles on a decadent chocolate cake.

... I was wondering this morning what a reader who doesn't know me would make of this hodgepodge of a blog- this somewhat bizarre concoction of discordant notes that even I don't know what to make of. I lurch from one entry and/or pseudo genre to the next with no explanations, noticeable development or direction. I think I've shifted at some point or other from being preoccupied with the thought of an audience and who/what it consisted of to just letting this blog extend into whatever direction it wants to. Oh well. That's probably a good thing (or at least an interesting thing). I think that I do need to work on making these entries more 'bloggish' though, in terms of being hyperlinked and thus connected and multi-dimensional. Hypertext was one of the elements that most appealed to me about blogging to begin with, but it has slipped off my radar screen of late. Hmmm...

Discourse

2006-05-22T22:24:00.000+10:00

I tried to speak in your tongue but

My mother tongue is Maeve Binchy novels and ginger fluff sponge, early morning dreamings on the back step, porcelain owls and zygo cacti

My father tongue is quartz and sandstone, toy planes fashioned from beer cans and a Stanley knife, framed photos of black and white beaches

I hear your words and I want them, desperately, but when I try to catch them and pop them in my mouth they splinter and I bleed

So it must be best to leave them in the air

Drifting past my closed lips

Your words are a tapestry; precise and intricate on the surface but turn it over and you can see the garbled mess of knots and listless strands of surplus thread…
So you frame it and nail it to the wall above the striped couch and that’s that- the Symbolic hides the semiotic.

Which should be comforting but it’s not

The semiotic is where my nan has retreated since that imp named Alzheimer’s perched on her shoulders, supping on her memories with a silver spoon. It is the ‘how tos’ and the ‘what fors’ he has crunched and slurped with particular relish- he is saving the precious faces, loving voices and faded wedding photos for last

Teetering,
see-sawing,
I hope

some days that he will keep jabbing with his spoon for the chink of useless phone numbers and the clink of scone recipes (as though hunting for glinting pence in the Christmas pudding)

other days I pray that he will hurry up and finish his meal so that she can finally lose herself and return to the (M)other where it is warm and safe

these words were not supposed to arrive here

Poetry is not a luxury

2006-05-20T22:55:00.000+10:00

The quality of light by which we scrutinise our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realised. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are- until the poem- nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt. That distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding...
At this point in time, I believe that women carry within ourselves the possibility for fusion of these two approaches so necessary for survival, and we come closest to this combination in our poetry. I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean- in order to cover a desperate wish for imagination without insight.
For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

-Audre Lorde

'Rubbish', ay?

2006-04-21T22:28:00.000+10:00

Dearest Johnny,

I heard what you had to say about educational stuff yesterday. And don't you worry, I didn't believe a word those nasty people said about you knocking teachers just to get the media off your back about the AWB. I believe you, mate, I know that if you said you didn't read those diplomatic cables then you didn't read them. You're a busy man, after all. And I know you'd rather spend your time reading the classics, like that chap Shakespeare's book, Julius Caesar. Or Macbeth. Or King Lear, perhaps.

Schools these days, ay? You send ya kid along to one of these places for a bit of schoolin’, and they come home spoutin’ that Communist bloke and tellin’ their own flesh and blood that they don’t need to mow the lawn no more because they’ve given away the back yard to the aborigines as a ‘reconciliatory gesture’. And, I don’t want to alarm you or nothing Johnny me ol’ mate, but they’re spreading all kinds of porky pies about you. All this stuff about kids falling off boats, workers getting sacked for coming to work, and something unmentionable about you and Indonesia’s behind.

I just thought I’d better warn you, Johnny, because the stuff schools are teachin’ these days is pretty outrageous, especially the public ones. And they’re getting organised. Yep, kids are tapping away on them new fangled mobile phones all over this sunburnt country in a secret code (most likely akin to something the Enemy used during the war, I reckon) that no one else understands. ‘Txting’, they call it. Technology and such has got a lot to answer for, if you want my opinion.

Face it, Johnny, you’ve got to get yourself prepared. Head down into that underground bunker that I know you’ve got hiding beneath Canberra somewhere and watch your back. Take your mates Pete and Nelson with you, ‘cause those crazy kids have got marks on their backs too, from what my sources tell me. Believe me, mate, they’re heading your way in droves. Rows and rows of ‘em, marching, chanting, “Marx, Marx, Marx!”. Sends shivers down my back, it does.

And you know where they’ve learnt all this ‘rubbish’, don’t you Johnny? Yep, you betcha Union Jack you do. After all, you saw it coming, didn’t you? You knew that the day those schools started thumbing their noses at ‘real’ Shakespeare and switched to studying ‘rubbish’ that it was all going to end this way. Ah, the good old days. They should have listened to you, not those ‘trendy’ postmodern professors. ‘Critical literacy’ my ass. Kids should be taught to know their place, and not run around questioning everything. They should be taught the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Yep, you’ve hit the nail on the head, Johnny, I reckon. Those so called ‘independent’ education authorities better listen to you, if they know what’s good for ‘em. Say, maybe you oughta cut some more of their funding, just to keep them in line, you know? That’ll teach ‘em. Or, try ‘negotiating’ with them like you did with that flag thing a while back. Cut them out of the good stuff unless they hang a picture of you in every classroom. That’ll remind ‘em what real Australian values are. None of this ‘multicultural’ crap.

Yeah, you’re right Johnny, education sucks in this country. The states suck, the teachers suck, the new fangled ‘texts’ (what’s wrong with ‘books’ anyhow?) suck. Fancy those educators wanting to develop our young people into alert, interested and compassionate citizens who can place themselves in someone else’s shoes and understand that there is always more than one side to any story. What sort of country would want a citizenry like that? Yep, you’ve got the answer, Johnny. Drones all the way, I say.

Go team

2006-04-11T20:56:00.000+10:00

I am going to school to help out with the athletics carnival tomorrow- It's giving me flashbacks of my own school days... I'm fifteen again...

The annual compulsory athletics carnival on the oval that nothing short of a death certificate would save you from. I remember them well. Sitting behind ropes watching people run by was not my idea of fun and all my friends were in other houses wearing respectable colours like 'red' and 'blue' not 'white' which, by the way, is not actually a colour, but try telling that to teachers, and what can you do with 'white' anyway, I mean besides wrapping your body in rolls of toilet paper which many students did in my house- the kids with the sparkly red tinsel in their hair on the other side of the flimsy rope that you couldn't cross because if you did you would be hauled back to the patch of grass where all the crazy toilet paper people were must have been laughing at us, but what else was there to do but throw toilet paper around, because if you tried to do something like, oh I don't know, READ A BOOK the school 'protocol officer' would be sure to loom above you without warning and take it from you because that wasn't showing team spirit, even if you argued that you were reading a biography of Mary MacKillop, the woman your house was named for and what could be more team spirited than that it wouldn't fly because he could read the cover and know you were actually reading Jane Eyre. And didn't anyone bother to tell the protocol officer (ex-Navy, I kid you not) that fascism is frowned on in most parts of the world these days, and what does it say about the school's philosophy if they actually think it's a good idea to hire someone for the position of 'protocol officer' (especially some guy with a buzz cut and military training) in the first place? But that's beside the point because the point is that kids whose only attempts to do a triple jump where when they accidentally tripped down the stairs had to sit there all day watching other kids run round and round and not even be allowed to reach into their backpacks to grab their discmans (it was the 90's)to add a soundtrack to the festivities or even resort to doing their homework which was also not allowed on aths day even though it was at school, and I hated it and I could actually run and even won a few ribbons (my best friend and I were fabulous at the 3 legged race, but they took the fun out of that when they cancelled novelty events from the program when I was in year 90), so if I hated it and I quite liked running, what was it like for the kids who hated athletics of any form with a passion, and besides, like I said so often back then, it's not like attending the school musical was compulsory, it's not like there was a school 'debating day' which everyone attended, or an 'art show' that everyone had to come along to, NOooo, the only compulsory activities were for the sports lovers which says quite a lot about a school's priorities if you ask me and fringe dwellers be gone, so there.

Note to reader: I am not really quite as bitter as I sound, just can't resist striving for comedic effect.

Trobairitz and tensions

2006-03-30T21:25:00.000+11:00

If it helped me, I’d remind you, singing,
that I had your glove,
the one I stole in fear and trembling:
then I feared
you would be harmed
by the lady who has your service;
so, friend, at once
I gave it back, because I know
I have no rightful claim.

-Castelloza, “Ia de chanter non degra aver talan”, Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner et al (trans.)

This post springs from some of the reading that I have been doing for my masters, which, as is often the case, resonates in other spaces that I occupy. I have been reading about women troubadours (trobairitz) from the Middle Ages. Only a handful of their writings survive, far less than those of male troubadours. These women write within and outside the tradition of fin’amor, in which the lowly poet begs for the love of a usually silent and distant lady, typically the wife of his lord. What I find interesting about this tradition is that it appears to put the lady in a position of power, during a time in history when you expect that women would have very little power at all. The courtly lady rejects the advances of luckless suitors from her pedestal, seemingly entirely in control. What the lyrics of love and pain obscure from the reader however, is the economic code they represent. Laura A. Finke describes fin’amor as “an ideology that smoothed over the contradictions brought about by homosocial competition to control women as resources… It represented aristocratic women as simultaneously on display and inaccessible” (Feminist theory, women’s writing, 1992). The apparently heartfelt poetry of fin’amor had more to do with economics than the love of women, in effect, the poems operated as coinage, a form of symbolic patronage between vassals and their lords. Thus, “the languages of poetry and of sexual desire existed in a dialogic relationship- entangled- with the languages of economics, warfare, and politics” (Ibid).

When women write within the codes, forms and symbols of this tradition, the results are subversive, exposing the power dynamics and struggles that the poetry was originally designed to hide. In the case of Castelloza, the trobairitz I quoted from above, she does not write from the position of a woman in power, and the effect is unsettling. She tries to write about subjects that the code of fin’amor was not designed for, and so her words, meanings and associations swell against the poem’s form, flooding the retaining wall of language.

This is important to me when I am trying to write the voice of a woman narrator who threatens the retaining walls of courtly discourse in a society where women’s speech is considered irrelevant at best. It is also interesting to think about when I am considering the value of having a voice in other conversations and spaces, particularly in spaces where the accepted discourse is somewhat inaccessible, or challenging. I find myself ‘trying on’ different discourses all the time, particularly in various teaching worlds, until they become comfortable. But then, I start to worry about why they have become comfortable, concerned that they slipped over my body like a soft, faded jumper without me noticing. I worry that I am becoming parrot-like, speaking in shared languages to make connections, even if I don’t truly understand the translation.

And so, the anxiety of mimicry leads me here, to think critically about the discourses that I hide behind, to develop my own critical understanding of them. Then, when I put them on again, I will feel at ease because although I’ll be wearing the same soft, faded jumper, I will be standing in my own doc martins.

Stay tuned.

Darkness

2006-03-21T22:08:00.000+11:00

At the moment, words and writers are making patterns in my mind, though I cannot yet wholly see or understand the shape they form. I reach into the dark...

Into this wild abyss,
The womb of nature and perhaps her grave,
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds...

-Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II, ll. 910-916

Finding yourself in a hole, at the bottom of a hole, in almost total solitude, and discovering that only writing can save you. To be without the slightest subject for a book, the slightest idea for a book, is to find yourself, once again, before a book. A vast emptiness. A possible book. Before nothing. Before something like living, naked writing, like something terrible, terrible to overcome.

-Marguerite Duras, Writing

The storyteller of the tribe puts together phrases and images: the younger son gets lost in the forest, he sees a light in the distance, he walks and walks; the fable unwinds from sentence to sentence, and where is it leading? To the point at which something not yet said, something as yet only darkly felt by presentiment, suddenly appears and seizes us and tears us to pieces, like the fangs of a man-eating witch. Through the forest of fairy-tale the vibrancy of myth passes like a shudder of wind.

-Italo Calvino, Cybernetics and Ghosts

In order to go to the School of Dreams, something must be displaced, starting with the bed. One has to get going. This is what writing is, starting off. It has to do with activity and passivity. This does not mean one will get there. Writing is not arriving; most of the time it's not arriving. One must go on foot, with the body. One has to go away, leave the self. How far must one not arrive in order to write, how far must one wander and wear out and have pleasure? One must walk as far as the night. One's own night. Walking through the self toward the dark.

-Helene Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing

The moon had set by now, and the sky to the south was profoundly dark, though the billions of stars lay on it like diamonds on velvet. They were outshone, though, by the Aurora, outshone a hundred times. Never had Lyra seen it so brilliant and dramatic; with every twitch and shiver, new miracles of light danced across the sky. And behind the ever-changing gauze of light that other world, that sunlit sky, was clear and solid...
... And as he said that, the Aurora flickered and dimmed, like an anbaric bulb at the end of its life, and then went out altogether. In the gloom, though, Lyra sensed the presence of the Dust, for the air seemed to be full of dark intentions, like the forms of thoughts not yet born...

-Philip Pullman, Northern Lights, His Dark Materials trilogy

Writing a tapestry

2006-03-11T22:34:00.000+11:00

I've been thinking recently about the desire to pin down text like a struggling butterfly impaled on a collector's needle. At a meeting with a newspaper editor it struck me first- a journalist's necessary urge to 'find the story', as thought it can be separated from everything else. It hit again in a meeting with my masters supervisor- I need to articulate the central question that I am trying to answer through the story that I am currently (physically) writing. M was very good at this sort of thing- he could peel a text like an onion until he thought he had found its core, and wouldn't stop until he did. But I can't do it. Not for this story at least (not ever, I don't think... could this be a problem??)

I have tried to narrow it down, and this is what I am left with.

The story is about:

metamorphoses..... and...

the life cycle of the moth.... and this quote from Cixous,

"the painter is the one who takes the model's life" and consequently...

"The Oval Portrait" by Edgar Allan Poe, and so...

...creation/birth/death...

If music be the food of love... and so the

'mythomania' of love... romance... dancing... dining...

talking back to Tennyson...

...journeying... on and on... and on... what happens in the time between awakenings...

Sapsorrow, the Russian folktale...

my grandparents...

new epics...

Lizzie and Dante... Enid and Gereint...

...imagination/creation/inspiration...

and this painting by Rossetti...

and this sketch by Lizzie...

and these words, by Margaret

You fit into me
Like a hook into an eye
A fish hook
An open eye.

See? I narrowed it down, though my jabbing pin has missed the butterfly...

Procastination... (hey, I wrote heaps today! I earned it!)

2006-03-11T18:25:00.000+11:00

You Are A Maple Tree

There's not anyone in this world quite like you.

You are full of imagination, ambition, and originality.

Shy but confident, you hunger for new experiences.

You have a good memory and learn easily.

You are sometimes nervous and always complex (especially in love).

What is Your Celtic Horoscope?

Back in the classroom...

2006-02-22T21:16:00.000+11:00

I've been neglecting this blog terribly of late which is a shame because I want it to be a dynamic, intriguing, metamorphising space. I just haven't been feeling inspired enough to do anything about it, or rather any flashes of inspiration that I do have are being fed into other writing spaces. I want to do something about it though, so hopefully soon I will want it enough to actually do it. I should just write, rather than wait for the writing to happen. So...
I'm back in the classroom this week and it's fantastic. Ironically, I'm teaching more English classes this week while doing CRT work than I was last year with my own classes! Bizarre. My school has been really good about giving me mostly English classes, which is great for me because I get to do some real teaching and good for the students because they still get to spend time with someone who is keen to explore words with them, even though their 'real' teacher isn't there. So, I've been reading stories aloud with all the voices, teaching short story structure using The Simpsons, playing with Bruce Dawe and falling in love with "Katrina", talking with students about their favourite songs and chatting about writing folio ideas and Indiana Jones. Fun stuff.
I've spent a couple of days teaching in our new year 9 campus, a converted rope factory of all things, down the road from our senior campus. It's really beginning to grow on me, there's something wonderfully authentic about this learning space that has undergone its own metamorphosis from workplace to school ground. Industry leaving behind an empty space for learning. There are classes in magical sounding places like 'the ballroom' and students 'drop everything and read' below shady trees. It is a place of spaces, like the huge, echoing, musty hall that no one has decided what to do with yet, so at the moment the students use it to play cricket at lunchtime, hitting balls high into the rafters and sending them ricocheting from wall to wall. They couldn't possibly hurt a space like this, all they do is add to its history. I taught in the main hall, an enormous space without dividing walls, while another class carried on about 20 metres along the space. The kids were great. The walls are bright colours. The ancient wooden floorboards gleam. I like this place. It's not a fairy tale, but I like the spaces.