ABC Doco on Sir Douglas Mawson

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

Teacher's Guilt

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)

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.

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

...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

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

Oh the places they'll go...

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

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

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

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

It is a good day when...

• 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

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

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

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…