I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request (Barbossa)

My current Year 10 English class, which I started teaching this week, have spent some time tracking my on-line presence. Of course they have!

Because of the filters on their devices, they don't have access to my Linkedin, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, or Facebook pages, but they can Google me and look at my blogs - this one in fact!

Consequently, they've been asking me about Purdzilla and Baggy Trousers!

It's natural to wonder about your teachers private life - I get that.

I can still remember the moment I walked into a record store in St Lukes, while I was at Mt. Albert Grammar, and saw a teacher from school. Stopped me in my tracks it did! I'd never considered that any of my teachers had an existance away from school before!

Weird. These days the students are a lot more savvy, that's for sure!

All things are ready, if our minds be so (Henry V)

Work this past week has been at the campus and I've been a lot happier.

Seems I'm not alone. Although most of the staff continue to work happily from home, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers, have pitched up at school to find the return to proper boundaries makes us feel good.

We'll remember with advantages what feats we did that day, then shall our names, familiar in the mouth as household words Purdzilla the Principal, Walding and Cooper, Te Pou and Smith, be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.

We've been busy too, with only 6 students it would seem an easier life but whether 6 or 160, duty and online teaching combined with classroom supervisions have made the days go quickly!

Hopefully, NZ progresses to Level 2 of the Lockdown in the coming week and we happy few will be joined by the whole rock steady crew and they can share in the honour and say from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remember'd.

Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World

As I sit here today, having worked from home during NZ's Level 4 lockdown, along with my teaching colleagues, and now from the campus as we've transitioned to Level 3, I feel pretty good that education and teachers have been labelled 'essential services'.

Consider the fate of professional sportspeople in contrast. Not essential. Not employed.

Every night on the news for the last few weeks the Australian Rugby League (NRL) people have presented a comical soap opera of daft desperate decisions to restart their season.

Teachers have taught on, while overpaid big burley hirsute blokes* in shorts have become more and more impatient to get back to playing games of 'footy'.

* Very few news stories have focused on female sports teams in comparison.

As The Donald would say, 'SAD'.

And yet, in a few weeks time they will have their wish and be providing entertainment for the masses of Aussie and Nu Zild couch potatoes while underpaid teachers, the 'essential workers' remember, will continue their work in relative obscurity, and definitely in relative poverty.

It's a bizarro world!

A circumstance beyond our control, oh oh oh oh (The Pretenders)

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Have I mentioned that I don't enjoy working from home (WFH)? I have? Okay. But it bears repeating. I don't wanna be a WFHer.

My brother has done this for 23 years. Twenty. Three. Years.

After 5 weeks, I've had enough.

Funnily enough I seem to be in a minority (hahaha) - given that most of my teachers are keen to WFH.

I have coped. Just.

My four top tips for coping? HYG.

1 Even though I no longer have a 50 minute commute I wake at the same time (4.45am) and follow my usual getting ready for school routines. My commute time? Reading. As in books. I 'arrive' at work at my usual time (around 7.00am) and check emails before the first Zoom meeting of the day - usually at 8.15am). Routines man, routines.

2 I dress for work. In my case, as a school principal I always aim for a professional look, as in - I wear a tie to work, so I put my tie on. After my dress shirt.

3 I'm doing urgent important work pretty much exclusively. I don't know about you, but the email flow has gone ballistic. Rather than check my emails 3 or 4 times a day, I've upped that to about 10-12 times a day to keep up. Those emails often generate 'work' so that has taken up a large part of my day (along with Zoom meetings, calling into zoom classes and phone calls). That 'work' often generates sent emails - so I'm part of the problem as well. Anyway. I digress. Needs must is the order of my day. Needs must.

4 At the end of my work day I remove my tie, change clothes and aim (aim) to avoid checking work emails until the next morning (fear of them mounting up is why I included the stress on 'aim').

Teacher, I love you (Elton John)

Great teachers in more relaxing times

Sometimes teachers question what they are about. 

We suffer from a lot of guilt generally, on a daily basis - am I doing enough for ----, I wish I'd tried ----, if only I had ---- and so on.

This site should help - coming to you via Diane Ravitch's blog, it features prominent educators explaining why and how teachers made a difference for them.

Good time to reflect on those teachers who have affected your own life.

Riding on a long blue paper plane (Status Quo)

Photo by Sebastián León Prado on Unsplash

'Building the plane while flying it', is a saying I've heard a lot lately. 

As an aviophobia, I've never been a fan of the phrase (surprise surprise).  

To me, the idea of making it up as you are going along implies instability, freakish luck, impending disaster, unpredictability, precariousness, frailty, fragility, amateurism, a lack of confidence. 

In short an unhappy time.

I get what the concept is about, though.

The idea aligns with Ajaz Ahmed and Stefan Olander's phrase in their (awesome, brilliant) book - Velocity.

As I've discussed elsewhere in this blog, their view is that it's easier done than said.

That is, intuition, gutsiness and iteration (as in a sequence of operations which yields results successively closer to a desired result) are rewarded.

In my opinion, a better phrase would be their idea of GET GOING, THEN GET BETTER.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (The Who)

Photo by Kiana Bosman on Unsplash

As you know, I'm a big fan of Seth Godin. I even used one of his quotes as my positive close yesterday (when someone tells you what you need to hear, instead of what you are hoping to hear, you've found something priceless).

A recent post of his was very on point, given our working from home situation. 

He had this to say:

There are three ways to tell if people are hard at work in an office:

1. the boss can watch them go to meetings. And they can watch each other in meetings as well.
2. the boss can watch them sit at desks in an open office.
3. we can make promises to each other and then keep them.

It seems as though only the third one is a useful, long-term way to allow us to do our best work together. The first two can help along the way, but if a meeting or an open office exists as a convoluted way to do surveillance, you’re probably wasting precious energy and trust.

And while transferring our work to home makes #1 even easier and #2 irrelevant, I’m still lobbying for #3.

This aligns to one of my core beliefs: that if you employ good people - get out of their way and let them do what they are good at.