Won't you roll away the stone (Mott the Hoople)

Lame duckhood. I'm familiar with the feeling. It's that weird twilight zone area between leaving a job and taking up a new one.

It's about fighting the checked out feeling and planning for the next role. It's also about putting up with a lot of stick. I'm moving from a traditional boys' school to a very prestigious girl's school across town, so the genial banter has been relentless.

As I write this, my senior classes are on study leave, and with only two junior classes to teach I now have time to tidy up all of my resources, start taking my personal stuff home, and looking at how I can safely take down my Beatles, Arsenal, Star Wars posters (my passions have remained constant).

That's happening while completing the junior teaching programme, completing my appraisal for the year, and continuing to be here now.

You can do magic (America)

Photo by Nhia Moua on Unsplash

Senior prizegiving happened last Friday and, as always, it was a terrific way to send the senior students off to their external exams or summer holiday jobs. This was my second one at Hastings Boys' High School.

I'm a big fan of the pomp and ceremony that goes with school prizegivings. Seeing boys going across the stage receiving awards, wearing the academic gown, processing to the stage, the kapa haka performance, hearing the old boy speeches - all that stuff! It's magical. 

Although many walked the stage, prizes went to the most deserving. That makes them personal and meaningful. I've always seen prizegivings as an intrinsic reward for success, rather than a motivating factor for others. Although, healthy competition for prizes isn't a bad thing as far as I'm concerned.

Many are called, but few are chosen.

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey (Kenji Miyazawa)

Photo by Miltiadis Fragkidis on Unsplash

For Year 13 students, part of leaving school is to indulge in 'pranks' during their last days.

Usually, these are creative and fun jokes at the expense of fellow students and teachers. We get that - it's a release of tension and we sigh with a sense of nostalgia, admiration for their cleverness, and acceptance when they happen. 

Unfortunately, sometimes a prank can start out harmless enough, but then quickly turn things in a nasty and malicious direction. This happened at our school this week. 

The school's values and my pirate code were trashed along with the school as good people did nothing, standing idly by, or were involved in some way. 'Do the right thing, now' was quickly forgotten by people I liked and respected.

No amount of 'they're only teenagers' can repair the hurt delivered to some of my friends and colleagues.

The whole incident has left a sour taste to the end of the year.

So say goodbye - it's independence day (Bruce Springsteen)

Photo by Michael Barnes on Unsplash

This post is for my departing Year 13 students as they head off into their final study break on Friday and then, after external exams, onwards into the rest of their lives away from school.

According to Ryan Holiday we have two tasks in life: to be a good person and to pursue the occupation that you love. Joseph Campbell puts that second one very succinctly - 'follow your bliss'.

They're right. Everything else is a waste of energy and a squandering of your potential.

As teenagers, you're still in the learning to be a good person process. Your teenage years are a time for testing things out. Your next ten years are when you need to figure out both of those tasks for real.

Ryan's advice is worth keeping in mind as you go forth:

• Say no to distractions
• Say no to destructive emotions
• Say no to outside pressure.

I wish you all good luck as you go about figuring out how to live.

I've been breaking my back, I ain't givin' it up (Split Enz)

With only a handful of classes left now until the seniors leave on their study break for the external exams, I thought they'd probably benefit from some advice from their peers.

I'm going to show these to my senior students and see what they reckon. I'll report back on their thoughts.

Don't know much trigonometry (Sam Cooke)

Photo by Akshay Chauhan on Unsplash

My third deep dive into past posts regarding revision for exams.

3 NCEA External exams are imminent.

This means three things to teachers and invigilators the world over.

One - revision sessions for the exams



Two - Exam supervisions



and Three - a seemingly endless marking grind (reading the same stuff over and over again makes my brain hurt).

How did it come to this?



Ha ha - oh yeah, I forgot!

You don't want to flunk like a fool (revisited) (Loudon Wainwright)

Time to revisit a few old posts on this topic. The first I wrote in 2013 when I was working at Woodford House. The second is from 2017 when I was at OneSchool Global. I think they are still relevant for my students at Hastings Boys' in 2025.

Number 1

Exam revision time is a challenge in so many ways.

To avoid getting into a Mr. Bean examination scenario...

...there are many study tips out there and really the only decent two are (apart from learning by osmosis with the book placed under your pillow at night) - be active, not passive in your approach and create a study timetable to cover all aspects/all subjects and when the exams are on.

That means rewriting stuff and rereading primary sources (texts), not glancing over notes or pretending to engage in revising things or being distracted by social media.

The girls that I am teaching run the full continuum from fully motivated (redoing/ improving essays and answering textual questions, then getting my feedback) to doing zip zilch nothing (sitting on a computer looking at Spotify for songs to download). Thankfully only one or two in that last category, so most of them are in between those two extremes.

Startling revelation 1: some students don't seem to want to improve. They are unmotivated to do well in external exams for whatever reason.

Startling revelation 2: some students who want to improve are difficult to help. When I've suggested on a couple of occasions to individuals that they do something more focused than they are engaged in they have reacted negatively.  

I get it - revision is an individual thing but teachers are experienced in sitting/setting exams and preparing students for exams.

All part of being a teenager I guess.

NCEA provides some challenges too - students have different strengths and weaknesses in the different external standards so for focused revision they need to have individual programmes - tough to work through as a teacher but great differentiated learning.

So - back to motivation. I came across this nifty talk about what motivates people and found myself nodding along. I can also vouch for the message as the blog can attest - bonus schemes (yes - you, Cognition Education), DO NOT WORK!!!!!!

Number 2

The revision trick is all about focus. Qui Gon-Jinn's phrase is overused by me, I know, but it's so apt: your focus determines your reality.

To help focus I offer these great ideas from an Edutopia article on 'brain breaks'.

I've heard our students use this term but they regard it as a break from study and not a sharpening of their focus.

There are some great activities in the article. Read it! What have you got to lose? And you could gain some focus. 

It's within your grasp!