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I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.
That's an apt quote from Jimmy Dean (a country music singer and TV personality). It describes how I feel as I navigate my way in new schools, which all come with their own unique cultures and personalities.
I think it's good advice to school leaders, as well.
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| Photo by Adrian "Rosco" Stef on Unsplash |
Finally, the Term 3 grind has come to an end. The winter term felt interminable.
However, the flu season and busy school events soon blur out of focus as soon as the two week spring holiday break rolls around.
Holidays are when real life takes over for a while - family times, adventures, work down on the farm, road trips...
Pretty soon we'll be back at the brick factory, but for now, let's celebrate!
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From time to time, I am still asked if I miss being in a senior leadership role (twice last week). I get why I'm asked because after seven years as an English teacher that was my life from 1990 to 2023 before returning to life solely as a classroom teacher.
Former school principals who have that particular career trajectory is nothing new. Partly it's because it's such a lonely road where only other principals understand the stresses and strains. Which can be completely overwhelming.
I'll always remember a lunch I shared with other principals in Taranaki where everyone apart from me talked about their heart conditions and the procedures they'd had. It was super scary and a good warning although I did do another seven years as a campus principal/ district principal.
All of those staff issues (serious and trivial - they are unrelenting), the demands from disgruntled parents, the discipline issues, the endless meetings, the petty jealousies, the back stabbing, all of that offsets the positive aspects over time.
I think it's an impossible job to do really well and remain sane without selling your soul - at least it was for me. Why would I want to go back to that?
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| Coogee Peters |
One of my former teachers at Mt Albert Grammar School passed away this week. Jim Peters (for some arcane reason, better known to us turd formers as Coogee Peters, and as Winston's brother) was my social studies teacher in the third form (Year 9).
It wasn't his fault that I came 35th out of 35 in that class. This was back in the day (1971 to be precise) when marks were read out in class and then your placing in class. I can still picture myself squirming in my seat as it happened. That naked statistic then appeared on my end of year report.
As an undergraduate, I did some history papers at stages one and two, and then, at Auckland Secondary Teachers' College, I trained to teach English and social studies.
I've only taught social studies twice over the last four+ decades - my first year teaching in 1983 and, hilariously, this year! Funny how things work out.
I'm sure Coogee (a real gentleman) would be tickled to know all that.
Photo by Sebastian Dumitru
on Unsplash
Mondays!
I could have used The Boomtown Rats for the title song lyric. Same deal - I don't like Mondays. Hang on! Stop it! Stop it!
I'm in need of a revisit to a previous post from six years ago, where I listed the five good reasons to shake it off and deal with Mondays (as opposed to all those weirdo nebulous copycat reasons you read online when you google 'reasons to go to work on Monday')
Yesterday, I was asked to adjudicate a House debating competition at school. It was very entertaining and a whole load of fun. Some great zingers were traded back and forth by the girls.
Overall, it was fairly obvious that the two teams who put in some solid teamwork, took most advantage of the opportunity. Having debating experience is a real plus too. That experience gives speakers' confidence.
Hats off to the 12 students who took part (three per House) - they did a great job. It's not easy standing up in front of a whole school and delivering arguments and answering points of information on the fly.
They seized their opportunity for sure, and the experience will only strengthen them.
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| Photo by Alicia Christin Gerald on Unsplash |
Cecile Springer's full quote:
Above all, challenge yourself. You may well surprise yourself at what strengths you have, what you can accomplish.
My working life has been dominated by the need to challenge myself. Because I needed to move locations to meet those next challenges, it meant some collateral impact on my family that I do regret.
Serendipitously, in 1983 my path led from Auckland to New Plymouth. All of my initial job applications in 1982 had been to schools in Auckland because of my mother's health condition, and none were successful. Eventually, that lack of success meant widening my reach to include all of New Zealand. New Plymouth picked me, and I had to pick New Plymouth.
While there seismic events (marriage, a baby, my mother's death) eventually led me back to Auckland. By so doing, a pattern was established.
I have accomplished a lot via the challenges I've met along my path, but I sometimes wonder 'what if I'd stayed in New Plymouth and met challenges there for the last 40 odd years'. Cecile stayed in Pittsburgh all her life (she passed away last year) and managed it admirably.
Food for thought.
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Artificial Intelligence is reshaping our world in subtle, and not so subtle ways.
Currently, I am noticing how my students are using AI more as a tool, rather than as a quick fix to meet a deadline.
They'll use ChatGPT to reshape instructions (so that they can understand them better), provide images, generate ideas, and use Grammarly and other AI platforms like Gemini to improve or check work.
AI is continually in the news as well. Recently, there was a well publicised story of an experimental AI model breaking out of a supposedly secure digital enclosure to launch a hacking attack on another AI company.
An autonomous machine world is a scary proposition, but that's the way we're heading (there's a 50% chance of that happening in the next five years). What will the world look like in ten years' time, I wonder.
The U.S. and China are the world leaders in AI research and it's hard to know which country is the lesser of two evils.
Trump's chaotic, vindictive leadership gives me little hope that reason and common sense with prevail in the U.S. in the short term, and China already has a totalitarian regime.
Help us, Obi-Wan. You're our only hope.
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If I were to apply this quote by the famous baseball player, Hank Aaron, to an educational context it would be - you can only exploit the good will of teachers for so long before you will reap the rewards of that exploitation - an empty pail. The consequences of that exploitation will be dire ones for my cherished profession.
The myriad changes to grading student work are doing my head in, and I am someone who has taught School Certificate, Sixth Form Certificate, University Bursaries, NCEA Levels One to Three, GCSE and A Levels while in the UK.
Recently, I graded some analytical essays by my current (quite frankly freaking awesome) Year 10 class using the NZ Government's new progressions that go from Emerging > Developing > Consolidating > Proficient > Exceeding. Cool. Okay. I actually like the progressions model with its need to articulate the student's next steps. This makes sense as I want students to move up those progressions during the year, right? Growth over time and value added are key measures of achievement,
However, next year (yes - next year) this class will be graded using the current NCEA Level One standards-based system - from Not Achieve > Achieve > Merit > Excellence. According to the government, this is a failed system.
The Year after that (yes - the year after that), as Year 12 students they and their parents will have to get their head around a third system that seems modelled on the UK's GCSE grades - E>D>C>B>A>A*.
Ssshhheeeeeesssssshhh!!! As a National Party flunky said recently on a different matter - What a shitshow!
My prediction? I can see a lot of teachers, including me, holding empty pails!
Teach Them To Write is Dr. Ian Hunter's latest book. It's brimming with good advice about how to solve the problems settling around student writing.
Basically, we need to return to The Composition period: 1800 -1920. 'Composition' meaning training in the principles that govern sound writing - which Dr. Ian Hunter can help with via his Writers' Toolbox (Write That Essay) ideas.
Along the way he busts a few myths. The biggest shock for me was that reading a lot doesn't improve writing. Shock, horror, probe! He puts up a good myth-busting case and concludes with 'Reading ability and writing skills are not connected'.
The takeaway: Good readers practise reading. Good writers practise writing.
If you're worried that I've summarised the book, and you don't need a copy - think again!
You need to buy it! If only for the chapter on boys' writing which had me laughing out loud. He knows boys! And writing!
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One of the Pirate Code guidelines in my classroom is to remain positive at all times (accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, don't mess with Mr. Inbetween).
Some of my students (and colleagues actually) struggle with this concept.
I get it: it's easy to complain, to throw the hate word around willy nilly, to vent your negative feelings. On occasion, when I ask them to reframe their negative comment into a positive comment/ thought they really struggle.
I'll keep at it, because positivity is the only way forward in my classroom.
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Leroy 'Satchel' Paige
That's good advice from Satchel Paige. His full quote is:
Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.
It's a vast generalisation, but I would say that nobody went into teaching to make a lot of money. Actually, I don't even think teachers are motivated by money. Yes, a fair pay is important to pay the bills, but I'm glad it's a salaried position rather than being paid by the hour, even though I'd probably get more money that way.
That helps me to work like I don't need the money.
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| Photo by Alfiano Sutianto on Unsplash |
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.
Currently reading
It's really as simple as that. Read and you shall prosper.
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| Photo by Michael Kucharski on Unsplash |
What a great quote with which to kick off term three. Monday morning! I'm ready!
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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.
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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.
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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.
