Low-cost, low-quality education coming right up...

I haven’t written a blog post in over a year. It’s not that I haven’t had things to talk about I - I‘ve considered posting on what it’s like teaching full-time again and parenting (to summarise; it’s hard, and not very enjoyable), or the weird change in social status as you move from full-time teacher, to full-time parent, back to teacher-but-also-a-new-parent, again (it’s weird, and also not very enjoyable).

I didn’t manage to write about any of that because I haven’t really had time. Or, I suppose, the inclination (I guess I could have ‘made time’, but that means de-prioritising something else, and I just don’t know what). 

Anyway here I am, blogging again, after a fairly long hiatus, and it’s all because of the hideous National government and what they are planning for the NZ education system. So I’ve made time to make this post. Please excuse the rushed-ness of it – I’m writing at the end of the weekend, when I should probably be doing more schoolwork.

So, what is the government planning to do?

Well, firstly they have created a proposal to reintroduce bulk funding for schools. Ugh. Any form of bulk finding for schools sucks (the government says it’s not bulk funding but it actually is) because it means principals have less $$$ allocated specifically for teaching, and thus they are more inclined to spend the cash on other areas that add less value to students' learning. 

And then this past week the government announced that it would introduce ‘online schools’; these can be schools, tertiary providers, or ‘private providers’. So, more charter schools, essentially. Online charter schools. Sounds….alarming. (That’s a big FU to the Key Competency of ‘Relating to Others’ in the NZ Curriculum…as well as the NZ Curriculum in general, I guess). O National, y u hate teachers so much?

Also, from what I’ve managed to read (in the last hour or so) these ‘online schools’ are intended to pretty much take over from the Correspondence School. That’s interesting....the Correspondence School serves a huge number of students of all ages and backgrounds across the country. I guess the government hates it too, and all its horrible miscreant students.

Anyway, I don’t have time to go into the ins and outs of online learning - yes, some kids don’t do so well in the mainstream system; but no, a laptop and a hovering parent cannot replace a professionally trained teacher (imagine having your teenager studying at home EVERY DAY, ALL WEEK with you!! Ha!) - but the whole thing is horrid.

I’ve had numerous conversations with quite a few people over the past week about Hekia Parata and the National Government and while some think Parata is ‘stupid’ and ‘uninformed’, others think she is ‘quite smart’ and ‘evil’. I don’t really know what to think about her personally...she’s possibly all of the above?

So, to summarise, the current National Government continues to dismantle the state education system as best as they can in their seemingly endless run of power. When will it end?? When will we stop voting them back in???

And that is all I have time to write. Over and Out.

Back 2 Skool

I’ve been back in the classroom for over a term and half now and was expecting to find teaching super-stressful after a 17 month hiatus, but actually a workload of three classes has been perfectly manageable. I guess I forgot I have 10 years of teaching experience, and that really helps when you have a minimal amount of time in which to do a stupid amount of things.

I was also expecting the transition to childcare to be really hard for both myself and my daughter, but she settled in pretty quickly, and she seems to really enjoy all the activities she gets to participate in, as well as the inside resources and outside playground she has access to. She even naps better there than she does at home these days! She’s in good hands.

And of course I was expecting to get very little sleep… that did happen for the first term, as my daughter was exposed to what seemed like every single little virus going around the toddler-world (she’s not one of those kids that sleeps well when sick…), but Term Two hasn’t been nearly so bad, now that we have hardened immune systems of steel. I have definitely been a zombie-teacher on occasions, but it’s much easier to zombie-teach two or three periods a day than it is four or five.

Anyway, this post is really meant to be about the pros and cons of being a part-time teacher, as I have experienced it so far.

The Pros:

• I have 2 to 3 free periods a day in which I can plan and mark. This is SO much time compared to a full-time teacher! 
• I hardly do any work at home. It’s almost impossible to get anything done with a toddler around, so I just try my best to be super-efficient during all those free periods I have during the week. This is in huge contrast to how my life used to be, which involved planning lessons at home in the late afternoon, plus 2-3 hours of schoolwork on Saturday morning and then another 2-3 hours again on Sunday morning…I don’t miss those days at all. 
•  I only have to get out of the house super-early three times a fortnight because most of my classes are after interval. 
•  I don’t have a form class. Form time is unpaid contact time for full-timers that takes a precious extra 15 minutes of your time every morning. 
•  Only one half-hour duty slot per week. I get to sit down and eat my lunch in the staffroom on a regular basis. 
•  I share an office with a much larger group of super-lovely teachers. There’s always someone to bounce ideas off/get advice from/grumble with. 
•  It’s been very interesting returning to the lowly role of a part-time assistant teacher. Previously I was middle-management…and as one of my colleagues said, now I’m mingling with the “commoners”, hah. 
•  I get paid extra to attend PD and occasionally do some relief teaching.

The Cons:

• The money is rubbish. I get 46% of what was my full-time salary for what is essentially a 60% workload. That’s because part-timers are not remunerated for their non-contact hours like full-timers are. It’s something the PPTA is currently discussing, and hopefully something will be done about that soon, because it is appalling. But even with PD and relief pay, I’m not earning much at all. 
•  My timetable is not part-time-teacher-friendly. We’re on a 10 day timetable (so you have Monday A and Monday B, etc) and as I said earlier I teach my classes later in the day which means that I pretty much never get to go home early. The one day a fortnight that I do finish at 12pm…well, my daughter goes down for her nap at that time, and we are big fans of routine, so I just stay at school and work. I’m at school 9am-3pm, every day. 
•  I’m paying for childcare petty much full-time, 5 days a week. Almost half my pay goes on childcare. The quality of childcare is very high and is well worth the money I do pay, but that is a significant chunk of my meagre income, and that alarms me.

I’m lucky because I’m not the only earner in the household, and that has allowed me to go part-time this year. And I’m so glad I’ve been able to go back to work, because I really do enjoy my job!

Here, Baby There, Momma, Everywhere Daddy, Daddy....HAIR!!!

As a teacher, I’m expected to reinforce the rules in the school I teach in. And I do, because it’s my job. But it’s not to say that I like all the rules, and I do tend to vocalise my displeasure with my colleagues about rules that I think are stupid and unnecessary. Not that that gets me anywhere, because schools are really quite powerful when it comes to setting and enforcing their own rules; and I think that’s why there’s been so much discussion about Lucan Battison who was recently suspended from St John's College, in Hastings, for his hair-do. So here we go, this is my (very quick - baby will only sleep for an hour and a half max.) take on the hair-saga. I kinda can’t believe I’m writing a blog-post about this, but, sadly, I kinda can too...

OK, so being suspended is serious business – students at my school are suspended for drug/alcohol use on campus, or violent/bullying behaviour. These are serious safety issues, clearly, and ones that impact on students’ learning. And that’s what suspension is for, right? To remove studnets from the school environment when they are behaving in a way that compromises the safety and/or learning of others. St John’s College, however, suspended the student for his hair-style, and he was off school for over a month. He’s in Year 11 and he’s in his first year of NCEA, and thus that month will have a significant impact on his Level 1 results. 

But the thing that kills me is….the school SUSPENDED him for HAVING LONG HAIR! LONG HAIR!!! He didn’t have a Nazi symbol shaved into his head. His hair wasn't a variety of different colours (not that that should matter.) He didn't have dreads (not that that should matter either). In fact, from what I can gather he was actually following the silly rule about having his hair off the collar and out of his eyes (which is so pedantic – what kind of mayhem might break loose if your hair should touch your shirt collar?!?). But he had long hair, which he refused to cut, so he was SUSPENDED. What is wrong with the principal?! I just think that is crazy behaviour. Did he have nothing better to do? Are there no other pressing issues in the school that need dealing with?? If only the rest of the schools in the country were so lucky...

Anyway, I come now to the argument that it seems like everyone who agrees with the principal’s decision has been making: That “schools make their rules and if you don’t like them don’t go to/send your children to that particular school”.

Well, I think that’s an antiquated and vaguely dangerous argument. Rules in New Zealand schools do not have a history of being particularly inclusive; for example, it was against the rules to speak Maori in school only decades ago. (In fact, rules and laws and New Zealand in general don’t have a history of being particularly inclusive, I guess because colonisation happened, and racism, sexism and homophobia exist, amongst a smattering of other prejudices). New Zealand high schools are not the pinnacle of tolerance and inclusiveness that I would like them to be, unfortunately. Can I just point out that most high schools in Christchurch still insist that female students wear skirts/dresses - NOT pants - as part of their school uniform. Throughout winter. In Christchurch. Where it’s -1 degrees outside on a frosty morning. So stupid. And sexist.

I'm all for rules that help students stay focused on the learning. But following rules for the sake of following rules is mindless idiocy. Thus I think that silly, discriminatory rules should be challenged, and consequently abolished. It’s a shame that the school principal at St John’s College can’t see the difference between meaningful rules and silly ones; a bit of reflection would have saved the school quite a lot of cash, and a teenage boy a month of lost learning.

And finally, I think that we, as a society and as members of the education profession, need to move away from this idea that boys should look like “boys” and girls should look like “girls”. It’s old-fashioned, gendered, and increasingly redundant. Some/many guys love wearing long hair. Some/many (most?) girls like having cozy warm legs in winter. If you are worried about the blurring of gender boundaries…well… get a bloody grip of yourself! If you can’t handle it when you can’t tell the gender of the person in front of you, then you need to get over it because their body is their body and, ultimately, none of your business.  

And most importantly, as we all know, there are far more pressing issues in education than how a person looks.

Happy New Year/Life

Here we go! This my first blog post of the year. Also, it's my first blog-post since I gave birth to my daughter in late October. And it's now over 3 years since I began this blog. So it's a bit of a milestone :-) I've been wanting to write a post for ages, but it's been a little hard to find time to do so...

Anyway, I'd just like to start off by saying that it's just as well that I read all those novels before baby was born. Likewise with watching stuff. However, people who were all, "you'll never read again," were wrong; I picked my Kindle up when my little girl reached 9 weeks, and I've read every day (even for just 15 minutes) since. Funnily enough, my life as I knew it is not completely over since having a baby...which is nice.

But my life as I knew it as a teacher is - temporarily anyway - as I'm officially on leave until January 2015. This seems like a long time, but considering I've been on leave for over four months now (and exhausted my crappily short maternity pay entitlement; you suck New Zealand parental-pay scheme), I'm going to hazard a guess and say that this year will probably go very quickly, and before you know it I'll be back in the world of planning, teaching and marking. But I don't want to think about that because it freaks me out...teaching AND looking after a baby! ARGH!!!!!! So instead I'll just focus on the now, and enjoy being the 'Parent As First Teacher' for my daughter.

So yeah, as my daughter's 'first teacher', I've just gotta say...how the hell did new parents ever cope without the internet?!? It must have just been so much more baffling being a new parent pre mid-90s.There's so much no-one tells you about coping with a newborn baby. Don't get me wrong; my antenatal classes were good; I learned stuff. And yes, I do have books, and I read a fair bit beforehand, but a few books, as graphic as they may be, aren't quite as comprehensive as millions of web-pages at the touch of a button. I don't know where I'd be without the ability to search for information quickly in the comfort of my own home. I've joined various groups on Facebook (mostly breastfeeding and sleeping groups), and I google stuff every day - e.g. "how to make baby sleep through the night" (I didn't find an easy fix, unfortunately...).

But the other thing about the internet is it means I'm not completely isolated from other people. One of my worries about being at home with a baby was that I'd be lonely and bored. I do feel a little cooped up at times, but overall I'm definitely not lonely and I'm not bored (yet) either. I have lots of friends and family who are also at home with babies, and I keep in regular contact with them, messaging and emailing regularly to compare notes and offer sympathy, heh.  The internet is also quite entertaining, however, I need to build up a bigger bank of sites that I visit regularly (I used to have a huge list, but for some reason that list has dwindled over the last few years).


And now I just have to compare having a baby to teaching... I always wondered which would be harder, and I've discussed it many times with friends who have kids, and friends who don't. I may have even been guilty of saying on one (or more) occasions, "surely having a baby isn't as hard as this job!" Ah, how naive. So, here's my comparison of the two jobs so far:

Sleep Deprivation

The sleep deprivation of having a newborn is much much worse than the sleep deprivation caused by teaching. Teaching can and does result in sleep dep - the anxiety of anticipating all the things you have to do keeps you up at night, and then there's the not being able to wind down after parent-teacher interviews/Open Evening/anything else that requires you to stay until 9pm situation, and of course the staying up late to get planning/marking/report-writing done. But it's not comparable to the sleep dep of waking up every 2-3 hours to feed a baby (and for those of you who don't know, feeding a baby can take up to an hour in itself). Baby sleep dep is really brain-munting and body-tiring, and it doesn't let up. I've been riding the baby sleep-dep train for 18 weeks now, and it's like a roller-coaster that seemingly never ends (I hate roller-coasters so this simile works for me).

Freedom

It's for life, and your life is no longer about you. I knew this going into it, which is why I waited so long...but I haven't even seen the Banksy exhibition yet!! Ugh! At least with teaching you do get periodic breaks and you can book yourself a holiday somewhere and then just leave all your schoolwork at home. And if you are super cynical and jaded and over teaching altogether, you can leave the profession (this doesn't seem to always happen though, admittedly...) No such luck with a grumpy baby.

Stress

I know many parents find having children very stressful and anxiety-inducing (I have surprised myself in how un-anxious I've been - who would've thought! But then I have a pretty un-stressy life in general, apart from the job). So, in my opinion, the stress of a teacher's workload (which, as we all know, is astronomically huge) is slightly worse than the stress involved in having my baby. I say 'my' because I can't speak for all babies parents here. I don't mean to label babies (just make some comparisons of the situations that their parents face...), but I think I have an 'average-to-good' baby; she feeds well (although feeding has not been without its issues) and she sleeps pretty well (albeit in fairly small chunks still), and she doesn't have any serious health issues; nor is she colicky. I have friends who have had/are having much more challenging baby experiences. But then I also have friends who seem to have cruisy-ier babies than me (oh how it would be lovely to have a baby that sleeps through the night).

So, in summary, I'm going to admit I was wrong and say that parenting is, overall, harder than teaching. But it's also enjoyable and amazing, and totally worth the stress, lack of freedom and sleep deprivation :-)