It's a crash course for the ravers (David Bowie)

I've just returned from a full on week in Christchurch, learning all about aviation English from Colin Davis and the kind folks at Airways New Zealand http://www.airways.co.nz/index.asp.



Colin and my fellow student Mike.

My Wozza's Place blog has details on my new career path in Wuxi, China. Before I can embark on that I needed to be certificated in Aviation English teaching by Colin,
This meant a flight to Christchurch early on Monday morning to the headquarters of Airways NZ. I had no idea what a huge concern this is. TI noticed their organisational chart on the wall and it was vast; made Cognition Education look like a corner dairy in comparison.

Day one of the course and we are analysing air crash disasters! Gulp! Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of your beloved blogger knows what a nervous flyer I am. Yes - since 2003 I have flown all over the world but that's thanks to red wine, diazepan, and a carpe diem attitude.

The blogger and the trainer.

 So to say this was just a teensy weensy bit out of my comfort zone is like saying Usain Bolt can run a bit.

After a while I shrugged it off and started concentrating on learning as much as I could about aviation terms in three days. I slept well each night, believe me.

The fourth day was about putting my new knowledge into practice with some Japanese students from the Christchurch flight training school. A lovely bunch they were too. I took three sessions and managed to gain my certification.

Which means - next stop Wuxi!

I'm going to make a brand new start of it in old New York (Frank Sinatra)

This is a companion post to one I did on my Wozza's Place blog (http://www.wozzasplace.blogspot.com/) to farewell my amigos and fellow Cognition Education workers from Al Ain and Abu Dhabi. Contracts come and contracts go and most of the crew is heading off for pastures new or pastures familiar in Nu Zild.

To commemorate/celebrate I decided to head into the archives and chuck down some visuals of an exciting and very fulfilling part of my life. I met some exceptional, inspirational, and often gifted people during my three years working in Qatar and the UAE and I want to wish them good luck - whether they are staying in the Middle Eastern sandpit or making a new start somewhere else.

And to my brothers at Ali bin Abi Taleb School - I certainly miss you guys!

Graysy and Deno looking relieved to have Wozza on the team

Hisham and I try to locate Nu Zild on the big map

The Qatar crew enjoy a late breakfast

CJ doesn't believe Deno and Larry's instructions re the ablutions

Cogs and local Principals (Ally blanks me shock)

At Shakespeare's with the dream team

Hassan the art teacher

Adbulla commands the mic shock!

Nidal with the shy and withdrawn Adbulla

CJ trying and failing to locate the picture of Sheikh Zayed



Mohammed waits for Pete and Maggie to test the food



CJ - fearless leader - boldly samples the cake first

Cognition's failure to supply a desk does not deter Johnny

CJ asking local just where does he think his kandoora is!

Bye y'all - it was real!!

I stumble into town just like a sacred cow (David Bowie)

I'm reading Joe Bennett's Where Underpants Come From at the moment. It's subtitled 'From checkout to cotton field - travels through the new China'.

I'm not really a fan of his work. He's usually trying too hard to be funny in a clever way, whereas a great travel writer (clearly he aspires to Bill Bryson status) is just funny in an effortless way and informative in a clever way.

In the absence of any other amusing travel writing on China though - he's it.

I'm six chapters in an so far he hasn't moved from Shanghai. Chapter 6 was solely concerned with trying to make a dinner experience with a Chinese couple witty.

He does make some interesting points though which elucidate my own thoughts and knowledge of China. We both know little to nothing about it, beyond that there are a phenomenal number of people in China (1.4 billion I think), it's the world's producer of just about everything we buy, and it's an ancient land - 3,000 years and counting (at least, I think).

So we have ignorance in common.

With that in mind I watched an interesting TED talks item which clued me into the new generation of Chinese and the new China better than Joe could manage (in 95 pages so far). It also answered a few of my questions about blogging in the new China. Enjoy!

What is fate gonna do to us now? (The Exponents)

I was reading an interview recently on McKinsey Quarterly with a CEO (Moya Greene) who admitted that he no longer read novels -

I’ve usually got three or four books on the go. I’ve given up on novels. I can’t get through them no matter how good they are; there’s no way I’ll finish before there’s some kind of interruption. So I read poetry now: the collected works of Ted Hughes, Emily Dickinson. I’m working my way through Philip Larkin. You can take a Larkin poem and read it on the bus in 15 minutes. The good ones stay with you and will come back to you. That’s what I like about poetry: you get a little shot of mental protein without a lot of time.

I laughed out loud when I read this, but I decided to give it a shot nonetheless. Here's my little shot of mental protein for today:

Poetry Of Departures by Philip Larkin

Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.

And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detect my room,
It's specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said

He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,

Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.

I love my baby with the red dress on (Ten Years After)

A continuation of my last posting's theme - a trip down memory lane with material from that presentation I had to give.


Deputy Principal years at Cambridge High School



A return to the 'Naki as Principal Stratford High School



School ball with Jacky (She Who Must Be Obeyed)

In Doha doing the ole soft shoe shuffle

With Qatari leaders

The wedding venue we used to present our PD

Ring, ring goes the bell, the cook in the lunch room's ready to sell (Chuck Berry)

I recently gave a presentation that had me as the topic. More specifically - what made me so special?

New Zealanders don't generally like blowing their own trumpet but this was a rare opportunity to sell myself.

I did some research and along the way I came up with some groovy pictures from the past that cried out for inclusion on the blogosphere.

Here are the first lot - photos that appeared in Mt Albert Grammar's Albertian magazine way back in the mid to late 1990s when I was Senior Housemaster at School House. When I was a student at M.A.G.S. the School House was a really mysterious place ruled by Ron Hemus and hirsute senior boys who were gods (of sport in particular).

It was a terrific experience being allowed into that arcane boarding school world. It dovetailed with a resurgence in fortunes for football in the school. I'd been in the 1975 team that won the Auckland competition and it had been a barren time since then until Kevin Fallon brought talent into the team - boys who were mostly boarders, drawn to the school by Kevin's reputation and chutzpah.

A special time.

What a front row! Some amazingly talented men and women!



Jacky is between me and Harry.

   

Thousand-year-old petroglyphs doing a double take, pointing a finger at eternity (Bruce Cockburn)

I receive regular updates from the NZ Teachers' Council under their Food For Thought umbrella. The latest one was talking about something important (I'm sure) and it casually dropped in the statistic that 76% of registered teachers in NZ are female.

Wow! I am in a real minority. Less than a quarter of teachers are male. This was a shock. I had no idea that things had progressed to this point.

Clearly the figures for Primary school teachers will have been a significant factor as only a fifth of Primary teachers are male, but this is obviously a factor for secondary as well now.

One of the main reasons I became a teacher myself was the example provided by male teachers at Primary (Mr Lindsay at Manukau Intermediate) and secondary (Warwick Gibbs and Barry Gough at Mount Albert Grammar). I seriously doubt this would have been an avenue for me without these gentlemen.

The feminisation of the profession is beyond doubt.

The number of women in primary teaching in New Zealand has

over the decade between 1992 and 2001 increased by 13%, while the number of men has decreased by 9 percent. http://www.nzei.org.nz/site/nzeite/files/misc%20documents/Men%20in%20Primary%20Teaching%20in%20New%20Zealand.pdf

This situation has not changed over the 2002-2012 decade as far as I can tell. Upshot is we need more male teachers! 

Why? For at least four reasons according to that report I've cited above:

• Academic: To help address perceived learning deficits of boys

• Social: To cater better for perceived social needs of boys

• Environmental: To reduce an overly “feminised” nurturing ethos in primary

schools

• Representational: To make primary school staff more representative of society at

large.

I would add that we need male role models in schools because males and females are different. We think differently, we act differently, we talk and listen differently and we have different learning needs.

At what point do we as a society think enough is enough? When 15% of teachers are male? 10%? 5%? Zero?