Smiling in my room, you know you'll be inside of my mind soon (Jefferson Airplane)

Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash

I like this from musician and comedian Tim Minchin on sharing what you know:

"Even if you're not a teacher, be a teacher. Share your ideas. Don't take for granted your education. Rejoice in what you learn and spray it."

(Courtesy of James Clear. The source: 9 Life Lessons)

Basically, that's what this blog is all about - sharing ideas from others and from me. And, even more basically, that's what teachers do with each other - share ideas with each other. It's a crucial collaboration that I've been reminded of this term. 

Huge thanks to the English department at Hastings Boys' High School. My colleagues rock!!

Holiday, celebrate (Madonna)

Wahoo! Holidays!!

For me that always means doing the jobs that came along during the term and I thought (to myself) - I'll do it in the holidays.

So far, that means redesigning my music room - a.k.a. Abbey Road Three (ART) or The Vault. 

As a kid I'd love redesigning my bedroom into various configurations. It's a great way to do a big tidy up, and conduct a 'Ray clean' - you know, vacuum all those out of the way areas and dust stuff to an exacting detail 

  (BTW, 'Ray clean' references Seinfeld in The Statue episode).

In this case, two days have been devoted to reorganising my prized possessions.

Holidays are also great blogging times. My Wozza's Place blog is currently contemplating the start of my teaching career and life during my first three schools: New Plymouth Boys' High School, Macleans College, and Waimea College.

While doing this I've been reading old school yearbooks and digging around the photo archives. Some great memories with a load of great people that I've had the pleasure to meet (and teach) via my career.

I realise what an honour this is - to pass through many people's lives and maybe have an influence.

I. Love. Being. A. Teacher!

Saturday afternoon, when your head is feeling fine (Jefferson Airplane)

Teachers have it easy. All those holidays. You finish at 3.15 in the afternoon. Pushing a pen - easy peasy!

Teaching's not a real job.

Everybody thinks this. My family certainly did when I was growing up.

Sidebar: My father, who I loved and who loved me, never ever gave me any indication that he thought teaching was worthy. I heard from others that he was really proud of me when I became a Principal, but not from him directly.

No. Teaching's not a real job.

I heard it when I decided I wanted to be a teacher when I was 12 years old; during my initial university years when I got a teaching studentship; and when I was finally a teacher in 1983, age 26. And I have often heard it since from people, often when there is PPTA strike action but not restricted to that.

I still hear it.

On Saturday I marked student work for my senior students from 9am until 9pm. I stopped then because I could feel my brain overheating and starting to turn to mush. Soft right?

On Sunday I finished the marathon stint off with another three hours. Total during the weekend - 15 hours.

The previous weekend I'd spent a day reading Year 12 reports and writing my Dean's comments.

The weekend before that I'd spent Saturday writing report comments for my senior classes. It took 5 hours.

That's a fair chunk of my supposedly 'free' time.

I don't mind. It has always been like that. It's the life of a teacher. It's not peculiar to me. One of my colleagues has a young family, has a larger teaching load than me and struggles to carve out her marking time. I feel for her, but for good or for bad, it's teaching.

Yeah. Teachers have it easy.

I'm feeling the stagnation but it's just a fabrication born out of complications with my primary vocation (The Phoenix Foundation)

Recently, I was telling Awesome Greg about a teacher I knew back in the day who was nervous in front of classes - he became so bad with it that he came to hate teaching and took sick leave to see him out until retirement. By that time he'd been a teacher for about forty years. Astonishing.

I love teaching and I can't fathom why anyone would want to keep doing a job they hated.

I know you won't believe me but that song by The Phoenix Foundation in the title (called 40 Years off Happy Ending) was coincidentally playing as I typed that first paragraph. Weird but true!!

I came across this cool list of questions teachers should ask themselves daily. It was by a teacher called rather improbably - Starr Sackstein. Wow - parents were Beatles fans! Cool!

Anyway - here are the questions and embellishments (I've edited Starr's explanations - mainly I've taken out her personal reflections - hope that's okay)

1. Am I excited about going to school today? Rather than call my job, 'work', I look forward to the endless possibility of learning every day. This is not to say there are days where I don't feel well and that bad feelings make it challenging to get up. I am a human being and therefore bad days happen. However, if a bad day turns into many and for whatever reason it becomes a chore instead of a labor of love, it is time for me to seriously consider a shift in my career.  
2. Do I still believe that I can learn new stuff about my content?  To me, learning through my students' experiences and perspectives makes every day full of possibility and learning. My students offer context that I could have never noticed and in doing so help me to see things differently and together we collaborate to develop new ideas.  
3. Are my students needs at the front of everything I do? Let's face it, I'm not a teacher for me, I'm a teacher for my students. They know more about themselves than I know and therefore I need to teach them to trust their inner voice. It starts by allowing myself to trust them when they share.  
4. How do I implement student voice and choice in my decision making for learning? Students have great ideas and I must be open to hearing them. Once empowered, students will rise to a number of occasions you didn't think possible. Step out of the way of student awesomeness and cheer them along being a great supporter and facilitator of their learning.  
5. What risks can I take today that model the growth mindset? I can't expect students to take risks if I don't take them myself.  Each risk I take runs the risk of failure, but that is okay. The tenacity and fortitude developed through this process is invaluable in the learning and reflecting cycle, so we must model what we expect.

I really like these questions. They are questions worth asking on a daily basis!

Ah - sweet sensation (Midnight Oil)

I'm super amped at the moment. 

A social studies teacher at school is beginning her unit on THE SIXTIES. During her unit she gets the students to think about interviewing someone who was around in the sixties. Makes sense. I'm one of the people she suggested the students could talk to.

But that's not why I am AMPED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She told me about the following conversation:  

When she mentioned me she asked the students - what is Mr Purdy passionate about?

And do you know what their FIRST answer was?

Teaching!...T E A C H I N G !!!!!!

Oh my giddy aunt - what a moment. I can die happy.

Their next two answers were ALMOST as cool - music and football.

They get me, they really get me.

WOW.