Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Who Steals From Disabled Kids?

November 29, 2010

I was very saddened to read about the animals stolen from the Echuca Specialist School’s premises. The theft has almost certainly forced the school to scrap a program involving animals.

Eight chickens and two ducks were stolen from the Echuca Specialist School’s kitchen garden in two separate incidents.

Three of the chickens have been recovered, but one was found dead.

Principal Christine Wakefield says the school can no longer keep animals on site.

“[It’s] very disappointing because it’s good for the kids’ learning to have these experiences with animals,” she said.

“If we can’t keep animals on the grounds without them getting injured or stolen, we’ve really got to change our programs, unfortunately.”

Ms Wakefield talked of the effect these callous robberies were having on her students:

“One of our girls in particular just loves them and she knew exactly which ones were missing and I think they’ve named some of them as well.”

How much of a lowlife do you have to be, to repeatedly deprive disabled students from enjoying the experience of having animals at school?  What satisfaction could one ever take in doing such a heinous crime?

I hope the school set up hidden surveillance and catches the scumbags.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Is it Harder Being a Kid Nowadays?

November 23, 2010

I never would have thought so.  In actual fact, I would have guessed that it is easier being a teenager now than it has ever been.

Not so according to the annual Mission Australia report.  The report which quizzed 50,000 young Australians primarily aged between 11-19 revealed that:

27 per cent of them were concerned about stress levels, while 20 per cent aged 11-14 said they were struggling to cope.

Respondents spoke of the high expectations and soaring levels of pressure experienced by young people “nowadays”, seemingly in comparison to the angst-free utopia enjoyed by previous generations.

“We’ve got more responsibilities, like part-time jobs,” one high school student offered by way of explaining the apparent cause of this skyrocketing stress.

Now, I could be wrong, but I doubt highly that our teenagers are under more pressure than generations before.  I think they are more mollycodled and  protected than they have ever been.  Teenagers have always had jobs.  The only difference is, they used to get jobs to support their family, now they are getting jobs to support their consumerism.

Perhaps they’re just better wingers than ever before?

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »

Drunken Teachers Beat-Up

November 21, 2010

The Sunday Telegraph should be reprimanded for an appalling article which claims that teachers in Catholic schools drink alcohol in the staff room on a Friday evening.  The article doesn’t ring true, seems designed for shock value rather than true journalism and fails to give proper evidence to back up its claims.  Read the article here:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/happy-hour-in-school-staff-rooms/story-e6freuy9-1225957381180

Example 1:  The Sunday Telegraph understands many of the 200-odd Catholic schools in NSW to have refrigerators stocked with alcohol in staff rooms and to publicise cheap alcohol.

Yeah?  How many of these schools?  Prove it!

Example 2:  Drug & Alcohol Research & Training Australia’s Paul Dillon said he had grave concerns about the example being set for students by the behaviour.

What behaviour?  You have yet to prove such a culture of drinking exists.  You have yet to name 1 of the 200 schools.

Example 3: “Certainly I have confronted schools and principals about the practice and the worst thing I’ve seen is actual prices of alcohol pinned on fridges,” Mr Dillon said. “Young people go into the staff room, they see the fridges.”

Students do not have access to staff room fridges.  Heck, they shouldn’t have access to the staff room!  How many schools have you visited with alcohol prices?  Does it really matter anyway?

Example 4:   “There is also the issue that [teachers] are doing this on a Friday night. They are then getting behind the wheel and driving home.

“When I’ve raised this, the teachers have become very, very defensive. They say things like, ‘It is our right to do this’.”

If they went straight to the pub it would be none of your business, and since you have yet to establish that this is a clear problem, I still ascertain, it is none of your business.

So what do we have here?  Figures to prove its a problem?  Nope.  Pictures or video footage of beer-loaded fridges and booze-ups? Nope.  Can we name and shame a school that has transgressed in this way?  Sorry, we don’t have that information.  How about a quote from a student who witnessed this behaviour or saw evidence of alcohol in the staff room?  No, we don’t have that either.

There is no story here.  If I was affiliated with a Catholic school I would be ropable.  What an abominable piece of gutter journalism!

Shame on you Sunday Telegraph!

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Nurturing the Inquiring Mind

November 16, 2010

One of the most important contributions a teacher can make to their students is the ability to get them to think for themselves.  Essentially that involves giving them the tools to ask the important questions and make their own conclusions.  Just simply filling students up with facts is hardly good enough.  For our students to thrive we have to nurture their inquiring minds.

Academy-award-winning film producer Lord David Puttnam is now a member of the British House of Lords, whose policy focus is on improving education standards.  In a recent television interview, Lord Puttnam called for teachers to make inquiry in the classroom a priority.

“The most important thing I think teachers can do for young people is to make them inquiring, is to ensure that they know how to gather information, that they check information and they take their information from a multiplicity of sources.

If you can get a child to do that and then become interested in the whole process of information gathering, you’re halfway towards becoming a learner. And once you’re a learner, you’re a learner for life. That’s certainly been my experience.”

It’s certainly something to consider when reflecting about how well we are teaching our kids.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

What’s Up With Detentions?

November 5, 2010

According to a ntnews.com report, 20 young children have been given detention by their school because they refused to swim in a pool.  Apparently, the pool was too cold for them.

Eva Lawler, NT Education Department Executive Director for Central Australia (now that’s a mouthful!), defended the school saying that, “In accordance with the school’s Code of Conduct – which is well-known to all the students – students who do not complete expected work during class time … are expected to attend … afternoon detention.”  Ms Lawler said all the students involved were aware that if they did not wish to take part then they needed to provide a note from their parents.

Sometimes I feel like schools are way too trigger happy when it comes to giving out detentions.  Swimming programs are supposed to be fun for the kids.  If they refuse to get in the water, chances are the conditions and/or program is not up to scratch.  No detention is going to suddenly make them want to brave the cold.

Detentions are for enforcing fundamental school rules.  If you hand out detentions for not providing a note from parents, detentions become trivial and lose all meaning.  I remember getting detentions for forgetting to bring my sport uniform and once for sneezing too loudly (I had a cold and shouldn’t have been at school).

I hope I never have to give a student a detention for nothing more than a reluctance to swim because the water is too cold.


Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

National Curriculum Proves Rocket Science

November 4, 2010

It seems that Science is the most challenging subject for curriculum officials to agree on as they endeavour to complete the national curriculum.  We teachers have been waiting for a while to find out what the completed national curriculum looks like, but at the moment all we have available to us is a rough draft.

The chairman of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, Barry McGaw, said the curriculums for maths, English and history were ”essentially done and dusted” but more work lay ahead to achieve agreement on the science curriculum.

”Comparisons show Australia is in the top five countries in science by the time students are 15. But we’re in the bottom 10 to 20 out of nearly 60 nations in how much our kids like science, how important they think science is for their futures, and how important they think science is for the national future,” he said.

”So we’ve got students who are good at a subject but are not engaged with it and thus not likely to continue to engage with it.”

It sounds like ‘spin’ to me.  I’ve heard that the draft science curriculum was panned for being too difficult for teachers to effectively implement.  The national curriculum has been marred with bad publicity, and teachers are starting to get a bit edgy.

I just hope the final product is worth the wait.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Swim for Good Grades

November 3, 2010

Researchers from Griffith University in Australia are in the midst of a study to find out if swimming helps children to become smarter. They say children who learn to swim appear to be smarter than children who don’t.

The study looked at over ten thousand children in Australia from five years of age and older.

Professor Robyn Jorgensen, of Griffith University said “Anecdotal evidence found swimmers tended to be more confident than same-age, non-swimming peers.”

Imagine the reaction from parents if my response to the question, “Should I get a tutor for my child,” was, “No, not a tutor – but a swimming coach would be great”?

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Happy Teacher’s Day

October 29, 2010

I would like to wish all my fellow colleagues a Happy Teacher’s Day!  May you continue to make a difference to your students.  I am very blessed to be in a profession with so many wonderful, tireless and selfless colleagues.

Tags:
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

The Inconvenient Truth About the National Curriculum

October 27, 2010

So the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority reportedly has said An Inconvenient Truth has a place in modern history studies and English.

In my opinion the new Australian Curriculum is a very flawed document and needs to be fixed from its current draft state.  My biggest problem with it is that it doesn’t just tell us what topics to cover, but also what angle to use.

An example of this is climate change.  The word ‘consensus’ which has been bandied around lately does not belong in the classroom.  The classroom is best served by looking at all sides of an issue and letting the students come to their own conclusions.  Instead, the National Curriculum wants teachers to teach climate science with a clear and unambiguous position.

In a recent unit on Weather, I played an excerpt of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.  I think it’s an interesting movie and has a place in the classroom. However, the curriculum should encourage teachers to present opposing views.

Perhaps the film could be shown together with the recent documentary Cool It to present both sides of the argument.

Provide the tools, and let the kids decide.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

State of our Schools Survey

October 24, 2010

The responses to the State of our Schools survey is out and I’m afraid it does not make for good reading. The findings indicated that:

“CLASSROOM sizes and behaviour-management issues are driving teachers out of the workforce.”

“Almost three quarters of Queensland teachers say it is difficult to retain staff because morale is so low.”

More than 40per cent of new ACT teachers said they would probably quit within 10 years.

What is going on in our profession?  Surely the strain and stress that teachers are complaining about is an issue worth taking extremely seriously.  I bet the findings of this survey will disappear along with the 40 per cent of ACT teachers.

Tags:,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »