Our National Anthem: Barnsified

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.

My first Meme

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

Opening Windows

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.