Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people (Eleanor Roosevelt)

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Advice from Purdzilla #364: as much as possible - avoid 'office politics' and gossip. It will do you no good.

Going places (Herb Alpert)

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Currently, my Year 11 students are writing a piece on a trip or a journey they've undertaken as part of a Going Places unit. They could fictionalise their story, but only one student has followed that path.

So many of them have struggled with this activity, even though they have been on incredible overseas trips. For various reasons they struggle to commit to even a tentative start.

Surprisingly, their memory of even quite recent events is often vague.  I asked a few students if they have ever kept a travel diary/journal, or if their parents did and they looked at me with a blank expression. When I said I did and that I could easily find notes on various trips I've made they looked at me as if I was clearly mad - like this was the most perplexing thing they'd ever heard.

Given the amount of money their parents have paid for these foreign trips, I find it quite sad that they have little to no memory of them.

Plenty of lessons to be learned.

I'm reading Dr. Ian Hunter's latest book on fixing the problem of student writing. Hopefully, he slips me the answer.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader (Margaret Fuller)

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It's really as simple as that. Read and you shall prosper.

Whatever you do, do it with passion. The rest comes by itself (Fabiola Haro)

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What a great quote with which to kick off term three. Monday morning! I'm ready!

We think as we write

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Ryan Holiday provides a good argument against using AI or ghostwriters in his book Wisdom Takes Work.

We think as we write. Indeed, we cannot finish a sentence until we have carried the thought all the way through. We ponder opposing ideas as we pause between keystroke, the pen becomes our third eye. It doesn't even need to be prose - a drawing can help, a diagram lets you see the problem in a new way. 

On the page we see the pattern. Transcribing the passage or a quote, we get to feel real genius and insight pass through our mind and our fingers, processing each word, weighing and understanding the wisdom.

Every misconception is a poison, there are no harmless misconceptions (Tolstoy, paraphrasing Schopenhauer)

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Ryan Holiday uses the above quote in his book Wisdom Takes Work.

Interestingly, when I searched up the quote it emerged as 'Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe'.

A lie and misconception are not the same thing, but I see why Holiday uses it. It's the truth that he's wanting to promote. Plus, a life-long pursuit of the truth, despite our many pre-conceptions, opinions and misconceptions.

As we age, the tendency is to get wrapped up in all of those things, but even my young students can get fixated on their own versions of events.

Part of my job as a teacher is to work towards them finding the truth away from their biases.

Positive thoughts bring positive outcomes (Raisa Jimenez)

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The school holidays have kicked in, which means a change of pace and routine.

The alarms on my phone have been put on hold for two weeks, the family time has already begun with the Denver and Melbourne branches joining us at Maple Grove, and the school work is put away until the second week.

The FIFA World Cup, Joan Didion and Ryan Holiday books, and my records all beckon and jostle for attention as we look to visit family in New Plymouth, Palmerston North and Wellington in the first week.

Raisa's message will be front and centre during this time.