Husband Father Teacher Pilgrim

Party food. Help!

   

It was my birthday on the weekend. There are plenty of left over yummies from the party. Fat city here I come.

So i encourage my boys to eat as much as they can. They are active, growing and will burn it up. We also give food away to others who might be able to use it.

Now that I am officially old (Thank you son!) I have to stick the more healthy alternatives.

Controversial student encouragement

  

Many student management systems ignore the well behaved students.

For all our good intentions, most of us get caught up in dealing with bad behaviour.

I no longer play that game. Kids like sweets stickers and other tokens. I seek opportunities to encourage good behaviour and ignore the bad behaviour.

The bad behaviour goes away and the good kids get constant acknowledgement.

I have plenty of critics who think that I should not be giving kids sweets. They argue for reward systems that involve paperwork and end of term prizes.

I say forget it. Kids live in the moment. Let them enjoy the moment.

New School Term

Students arrived back at school today for the beginning of the Term 4.

This is the last term of the school year.

  

  

Term 4 begins...

I arrived this morning to an empty school. Our students start tomorrow. Today is a professional development and preparation day.

Strenuous planning meetings at the local coffee house.

Followed by a long debates about the state of education over lunch.

A long afternoon of teacher stuff, to leave work as the sun goes down, as I will no doubt many evening s to come in the weeks ahead.

If only education could be like this...

I subscribe to a blog calls 1 to 1 Schools In the next few years the school that I work at will a 1 to 1 school. That is, each student will have their own laptop. In anticipation I am soaking up as much wisdom as I can from those who are already in 1 to 1 schools.

On the 1 to 1 blog there was a link to this video in which middle school students express their opinions about education.

Many of the wishes expressed by these students I am either implementing or working on implementing in my teaching practice.

There are two over-riding concerns that govern my thinking about my teaching practice.

1. First, As much as I am able I have to provide my students with a firm foundation for senior school mathematics
   
2. Second, I have to satisfy the assessment requirements of the educational culture in which I work.

Senior school teachers will (rightfully) expect their students to arrive in their classes with a requisite skills set and an understanding of the particular concepts that underpin the work that is about to be undertaken. There is no point providing my students with a rich mathematics education if they are not ready for the particulars of senior school. It is this very issue that has undermined middle school experiments here in Western Australia in the past. These experiments have failed to prepare students for the particulars of senior school. As such they have been seen as complete failures.

Good assessments are the key to a successful curriculum. Good assessments provide everyone with the feed back required: students, teachers, parents and the various governing bodies. Good assessments are assessments that can be trusted. At his point in our history the only assessments, in school mathematics, that are trusted by all stake-holders are pen and paper assessments performed by students on their own isolated from their peers.

So, don't give up on me, kids. I am working on it. I see things that you can't see yet. It's more complicated: there's more to it that just making it fun and engaging for you.

If the changes that you are seeking are going to be sustainable into the long term, then everyone involved in your education will have to be satisfied.

.... perhaps with the introduction of 1 laptop per child in our school in the coming years, we can move a little faster towards the kind of education that you say you are looking for.

Holiday Tax Time.

This is where I spend much of my non-teaching time.

I do get away from it to exercise and to do some of the things that normal people do.

Last week I actually spent two days away from it. (I suffered heavy withdrawal symptoms.)

Right now I am gluing myself to it to get the "paper work" sorted out for the annual tax return. It is one of my least favorite jobs. I usually put it off and off and off. Last years tax return was not done till the night before the absolute final deadline.

But this year I am determined to get it out of the way before I go back to school next week.

Its slow work. As you can see I have tweet deck open. I often also have a video running in the background. Although these are distracting, I wouldn't be able to stay at the task at all without them.

So, back to it.

Our First Trip on the Bunbury Hwy

Carolyn and I went down to Boyanup for a couple of days to get away.

We relaxed, caught up with some reading and simply enjoyed being there for each other without distraction.

C

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On the way home...

We came home via the new Bunbury Hwy.

The image to the left is looking north out of the Shell Roadhouse just outside Bunbury.

Once you leave this roadhouse the road goes through no towns and is 110 - 100 km/hr road all the way into Perth City. Thats a distance of 160 km.

The road does cut about half an hour off the trip from Bunbury to Perth. From that perspective, its great. You no longer have to travel through the 60 km/hr zones and string of traffic light in Mandurah

However, one serious drawback is that there is nowhere to stop. There are a few places where you can pull over and stop. But there is nowhere attractive enough to want to stop. There is certainly no privacy on the side of the road.

The old Roadhouses that have been there for years closer to Bunbury are still there. You could stop there for a toilet break if you had the presence of mind to do so. But after that it is one long stretch of open road.

Carolyn and I were alone without kids. So it wasn't that bad. But I dread the thought of driving that road with young kids in the car. I hope that decent rest stops will be built in the not too distant future.

Below is the file report in the new road from the 9 News network. The link that I got the file from is given below the clip.

New Bunbury Hwy

Meeting the learning needs of all my students

Glen Canyon's Blog: Off The Hypotenuse.

Glen's recent post on algebra readiness in middle school was a great list of the various positions adopted by people involved in middle school maths education.

I left a comment on his blog. I thought that the topic was big enough to move that comment across to this blog and turn it into a post.

What to do about algebra readiness in middle school students is the subject of a constant ongoing debate that (IMHO) will never go away.

At my school we refuse to stream kids until Year 9 and then we take the whole year to sort it out: moving kids around over the year as they display their potential or lack there of.

We even keep the door open for late developers into Year 10. In fact the choice is always open, though students have pretty much settled down by the end of Year 10. There are very few surprises after that.

We are a pastoral care focused school and refuse to compromise this for the sake of looking good in the eyes of the academic hawks.

I agree about being crystal clear with parents about who we are and what our goals are. Parents can get very demanding about he "needs" of their child: particularly the parents of "gifted" children.

The task is difficult enough - holding all the various views and expectations of the teaching staff in tension - without caving into the demands of "helicopter" parents.

Each child's learning needs do need to be met but only in the context of meeting the learning needs of everyone in the school community.

Plato was wrong.

Celebrating Stuart's Birthday

Fish and Chips in Freo

My middle son,Stuart, turned 14 today.

For those interested in counting years, that means (according to our method of counting birthdays) Stuart has completed his 14th year of life. Remember all the debate about celebrating the end of the millennium?

Anyway, its Stuart's birthday; no time to revive that old chestnut.

We went down to Fremantle to have fish and chips at Sweet Lips. That is the fish and chip place on the corner near the park close to the old jail. Know the one?

Ma and Pa bear had to be patient while the three bear cubs wrestled and frolicked over the park and the streets of Fremantle. I think Ma bear has a harder time with it than me. I've learnt to let it flow over me. Either that or I have just become numb to it.

I think Stuart appreciated it. Its Carolyn's (Ma bear) birthday tomorrow. We'd better make sure we make a fuss of her.

Flicker, Flicker, Flicker ....

There is a flicker of a hope that I might be able to start blogging again on Husband, Father, Teacher Pilgrim.

Just a flicker, mind, but more than I have had for a while.