I wrote these words in July of 2018. Seven years later, as another cycle comes to a close, I’m publishing them. As someone who works in education, I could tell you of many things. On this blog, I have at times tried. So I won’t tell of you of many things, but instead a story. And not even the full story, but merely the ending of a chapter. I have formally resigned from my position as a leader in a school. My final day here will be on July 13th, 2018. ...
We gathered today as kaimahi of National Library of New Zealand in an all staff hui to pause and acknowledge this time of Matariki mā Puanga. Each of the Directors were asked to reflect on the past year and to share their hopes for the future. As my role is disestablished on 30 June, I took the liberty of treating it as a farewell address of sorts. I had told my team that I would be using the core of the words I shared earlier in May, and made a remark that sequels are never as good as the original. ...
Anne Helen Peterson’s latest midweek edition of her newsletter talks of what it might be involved in being ready, or not ready for the resolution of the pandemic. She makes the point: “… few people are actually making room for an actual strategy. Americans in particular are very, very bad at grieving. We don’t allocate space for personal tragedy and we don’t allocate space for national tragedy, other than brief displays of televised political grief theater, generally with lots of flags. ...
The drive to lift and shift the “business as usual” of public education into the home as a result of COVID-19 and potential lock-down situations is a completely broken and shameful response to the reality of these times By any measure, these are extraordinary times. Jacinda Ardern said “Be strong, be kind, we will be OK.” At no point did she say, “We need SSO credentials to deliver the NZ curriculum into every home, with an app and a Blockchain enabled website to support parents while teachers will need to redesign their pedagogy to deliver lessons via Zoom.” ...
Last week at the Lab I volunteered to do a 3x10 talk. I spent about an hour revamping an Ignition talk I’d done back in 2014. This time with GIFs and to reframe it for our context, in the public service. The presentation was then a complete fail, as I neglected to do the right thing and check the tech before my talk started - so I was a bit dark at myself, but decided to rework it into a blog post. Mainly because of all the effort I took in collating the GIFs. ...
In 2005, in my third week of teaching, I had a student join my classroom. This student had a range of high needs and unique characteristics. One of these was that they enjoyed discreetly masturbating during silent reading time, particularly when looking through National Geographic magazines. I must admit to being a little concerned about how to manage this behaviour appropriately, considering the mana of the student and with a desire to maintain a safe and inclusive classroom culture. ...
This Wednesday August 15th, for the first time in over 20 years, primary teachers are scheduled take legal strike action, as part of a campaign to lead, teach and learn. It’s a campaign I support - there is a teacher shortage, there are enormous workloads on teachers and school leaders, and there is a need to align and strengthen the career paths for people in the school sector. Articles such as this one from Charlee Jobson, a Facebook post picked up by the media has been getting some traction and shares over the weekend ...