Reflecting on the year so far...

One thing I’m looking forward to over the next few months is finishing work.

I feel guilty saying that. I really love my job - I feel like it’s important and rewarding and intellectually stimulating, and therefore it gives me lots of satisfaction. And my job at my current school is really great - it’s a lovely school, with lovely kids, and very smooth systems.

But it has been exhausting this year. No school in Christchurch has been exempt from post-quake disturbances. Even a state school with a ‘good reputation’ that parents all across Christchurch are clamouring to get their children into cannot escape the disruption and upheaval; last year, for the second year in a row, we had a CAPNA. And then this year there needed to be further budget cuts. So, Assistant HODs, such as myself, were no longer teaching 4 classes, but 4 and a half. Fortunately, I’m sharing a lovely, top-stream senior class with a fabulous colleague. Having said that, an increase in workload is still an increase in workload. So my colleague and I had to decide how to split our time teaching this class, and we agreed to do it term by term (which is much less disruptive and disjointed for the students than taking 2 periods each a week). I decided to begin the class off for the year - so I took them on for Term 1 (a 12 week term this year).

And then, exactly 3 weeks into the term I discovered I was pregnant. A week later, the horrible morning sickness kicked in. I felt so incredibly sick all day (especially in the mornings and evenings), every day, for well over 6 loooong weeks. But even if I hadn’t felt like vomiting all day, I think I still would have found the jump back up to teaching five classes really, really hard. I had not taught five classes for over three years and, to be honest, I forgot how bloody hard it is. Five classes meant I had 20 hours of ‘contact time’ a week. And then there’s all the planning and marking  and report-writing for 5 classes,  and formtime and meetings and duty and extra-curricula activities that make up way more than 20 hours a week and aren't counted as ‘contact time’.  Five classes is just so many. Too many. I don’t think any teacher should be on such a huge workload, whether they are unit-holders or not. Four classes/16 hours ‘contact time’ a week should be the norm for all non-unit holding teachers, I say.

I felt pretty guilty about how sub-par I was being as a teacher, yet I still kinda had to put myself first. I regularly ate in class (which my students now think was a wise decision - they’d rather their teacher eat in front of them than spew in front of them). I was exhausted and often made students come to me at my desk, instead of wandering around the classroom and checking on who might need help. I didn’t set my extension class enough homework. I didn’t make my Year 13s re-write their really crappy essays, when I really should have.  I even forgot to turn up to class one day - I’ve never done that before. Fortunately, I walked past my classroom 10 minutes into the period and saw my class, as was all “OH ****!!” inside my head, but then nonchalantly apologised for being so late and began the lesson - not a good look when you just lectured the class on being on time the day before.

Anyway, I survived that first term, somehow (I haven’t even talked about the horrendous anxiety I felt the whole first trimester, but that probably goes without saying), and so did my students. And term two was…better…? Mostly. It began well - I was back down to 4 classes (Yahoo! Though I had to catch up on a huge pile of admin stuff I didn’t do in Term One), and I felt like I had energy to do my job (no more sickness, yay). By the time I told my students,many of them had guessed, and 99% of those who guessed had not let on that they suspected, which I really appreciate. And now my students are super-cute about opening doors and picking things up for me and offering to push the sets of laptops around. Whoever said teenagers aren’t thoughtful and don’t have manners? They are all so much more polite than the goober  teacher who asked me, “Was it planned?”

But now that I am getting further and further into the second trimester, I must admit that I am getting more and more exhausted again. Term Two is always a biggie - so many assessments! (So much stress and agro amongst the teachers, and sometimes parents too! Ugh!) And whilst I don’t feel super huge yet, I am slowing down  - I had to leave the staffroom with a good 6 minutes spare to ensure I get to my classroom without rushing and pulling a ligament/slipping on ice. By each Wednesday I felt like the week should be at a close. Sleep has begun to evade me - terrible dreams + sore hips + foetus kicking my insides (+ horrible noisy road works) = very little quality sleep, even though I go to bed at 8:30pm at the latest and don’t get up until 6:45am. So the end of this second term was rather challenging, and I am a little alarmed at how thing will go next term; no doubt ERO will come see me period 5 and observe a forgetful, overly-tired zombie attempting to engage a bunch of Year 10 students in an English classroom.

So, for the sake of my health (physical, mental and emotional), I look forward to finishing work. And I am REALLY looking forward to not spending 8 hours of my weekend doing school work.  

But I am nervous about finishing work too - what will it be like, after 9 years in an all-consuming job in which I interact with well over a hundred people every day, to suddenly be at home with a single, tiny human being who can’t talk (initially) and will rely on me for the basic necessities of life?!? It is a truly freaky prospect. And then I think about returning to work in 2015 and having to teach AND parent…

Never mind. I’ll deal with that later. Only 7 weeks of school to go!

Road Rage

I like to think I’m a pretty patient person (although some people might disagree, I suppose…). I’d argue that most people who've lived in Christchurch for the past few years are also pretty patient people...but there’s nothing like the reconstruction of city infrastructure to test my (our) patience. In this post I summarise my personal experiences and frustrations over the past few months the on-going improvements to the roads in Christchurch. I suspect pretty much everyone else in this city is also pretty irked by constant road works,  but this is just my wee story (rant).

Imagine a cacophony of house-shaking, ear-piercing, teeth-grinding noises right outside were you live, 6 days a week, from 7am until 5:30pm. It is indiscriminate - it doesn't care if you are on holiday, or are sick in bed; the aural disturbance goes on and on and on. For almost the last four months (it began about two weeks before Christmas, if I remember correctly) the council has been installing a new water pump station in (in - not on) our street. This has involved digging a large hole in the middle of the road (just outside the neighbour’s house) and then ramming enormous metal rods into the ground, then installing the pump station, and then removing the enormous metal rods, amongst a variety of other tasks of which I have very little understanding, and that require lots of huge machinery. Fortunately, there was a two week break over Christmas and New Year’s. Unfortunately, the break was only for two weeks. The noise doesn't even stop at night - a temporary pump hums away, removing any excess water from the ground and transferring it into the drains; I’ve slept with earplugs in most nights to ensure I actually get some sleep. Various other senses are also battered. At times, it looks like a bomb-site outside my gate (piles of dirt, dust blowing over everything). There is water flowing along the guttering, resulting in a bright rust-coloured stain along the edges of the road; this water smells faintly of sewerage (and we’ve seen the local stray drinking from it, which made me feel a bit retchy). Our street is temporarily out of action as a thoroughfare - we are required to drive around the back and via a very munted Drive to reach the main arterial road to anywhere- which wouldn’t be so bad except the cats now bound across the road with reckless abandon, forgetting that at some point cars will again frequent the street.

And then there’s driving to work. My route, pre 6.3, was a pleasant 20 minute drive across the local bridge crossing the Avon River, and along the northern motorway into west Christchurch. This year, the bridge was closed for repairs in the New Year, and will remain closed for 8 months. So, I’ve been taking the detour, the longer route, across another bridge further east, where motorists have been asked to “expect delays up until July 2013”. And then a couple of days ago, on my way home, as I attempted to turn right onto my new route, I realised the road was blocked off. So I detoured further east and along yet another bridge. And then I realised that the main arterial route to my house was also closed, so I had to take yet another detour. SO MANY DETOURS. Ugh.

My only other option right now, in order to get to and from work and home is to traipse it through the ‘city centre’, across to the Westside, and then back again in the afternoon. But traffic sucks so much in Chch right now that I don’t really know if that will be any quicker. And before anyone suggests I bike to work, let me just remind you that the roads are very munted, and very busy, it’s over 15kms to my work (excluding detours), I leave my house in the morning whilst it’s still dark and I'm neither skilled at nor interested in cycling (and even if I was I am an overworked teacher that does not have a moment to spare on frivolities such as exercise on the way to work). Neither is moving cities an option, obviously.  Thank goodness the school holidays have just arrived!! No more driving to work for two whole weeks! Oh. For a moment there, I forgot about the roadworks outside our house.

So, there we go. It’s not the end of the world, I know; it’s just another thing that tests my patience (mental health?). But infrastructure repairs must be done. We’ve been told the work outside our house will be complete in another two-ish weeks. And the road works across the city won’t go on forever…will they? So, I am hopeful that deadlines will be met, and normality will return soon...whatever that might be.

"You don't win friends with salad..."

Ah school holidays; time for a non-school-related post. Following many conversations with friends this summer, and a recent article that reckons half of the population of this wee country is a member, I’ve chosen a topic I know we all have an opinion about - the good and the bad of Facebook.  I’d just like to preface this post by saying it’s all personal opinion and experience (as opposed to my posts about education where I like to think I at least have some credible research that supports what I’m saying). You might find that I don’t actually discuss things about Facebook (FB) that really piss you off, for example, advertising.Yeah, I’m not going into the issue of advertising because I really don’t notice it that much (I have an amazing ability to ignore ads AND I dislike shopping). Anyway read on at your peril; hopefully you won’t be offended J

Things I love about FB:

1. Living vicariously through other people’s travel photos. I especially like seeing nicely-composed pics of exotic locations and my friends enjoying themselves in said exotic locations. You do not have to use a fancy SLR camera, although I think the photos need to be at least not blurry most of the time for them to be effective. Travel photos are a bit of a tease, as there’s probably no way I’m going to be able to travel to and see everything that my friends have seen in my lifetime, but that’s life and thus I just simply enjoy viewing those of you who get to snuggle tigers in Thailand/swim in the Dead Sea at Christmas.
2. Cute/funny pet photos. Apparently this is not everyone’s cup of tea, although HOW ANYONE COULD NOT LOVE A KITTEN PHOTO IS BEYOND MY COMPREHENSION. I am happy for my newsfeed to be inundated by these. Cats, dogs, bunnies (can you cuddle a horse?) - post away.
3. When friends post links to cool websites/music/videos. This happens less often that I’d like, unfortunately. Some of my friends are great at this; I guess it takes a bit of time/energy…also, other social networking sites allow for such things in an easier way e.g. Tumblr, Pinterest.
4. Amusing status updates. Some of my friends are very smart and witty and should be encouraged to post more often. It’s hard to be funny though (I’m the first to admit that) and sometimes you get people who think they are funny but aren’t. But that’s OK - I reckon just assume you are funny (unless you are offensive - then see R below) and post away. We will either be laughing with you or at you; both are good.
5. Controversial status updates, and the comments that get made on them. This doesn’t happen often, which is probably just as well because conflict can be a bit stressful, and I generally try my best to avoid getting involved it in it; but when it’s between two of my friends then I am more than happy to observe. A bit of debate is healthy (whatever ‘healthy’ means). I may occasionally participate, although I try to save my energy for young people with more impressionable minds, hah.
6. Political posts. See F above. Also, see R below. I’m pro-political posts; as long as you are happy to discuss/argue, then post away.
7. Cute/funny kid photos.  This is a could-go-either-way one. Kids are awesome and tend to do lots of funny things. Also, kids + pets is a winner. I do think though that there are some consent issues with pics of children; in 10-20 years time is your child going to be happy that you posted a pic of them in their undies on the internet? I probably wouldn’t be… And like V, these things can be overdone.
8. Dissection and recommendations. For example, books, films, music, food. Pics are good; food items, especially desserts, can be beautiful. Also, if you’ve found something so tasty/mind-blowing that you think everyone else should get in on the action, then please say so - recommendations are always a great thing.
9. Being able to see what you friends on the other side of the world are up to, because you don’t know when you’ll get to see them again. 10 years can have gone by since you last saw them, but you know they are still alive and well, and still listening to Guns N Roses. Yay for them!!
10. Organising fun dates/catch-ups with friends via the messaging system. It’s actually useful!
11. Funky home-made businesses run by friends. So much talent, so many cute, unique items! Also makes shopping for presents easier.
12. Keeping in touch with ex-students. I love seeing what young people do with their lives. Can I just say though, that I am so glad that FB and Party Buses didn’t exist when I was 20…
13. Games. Scrabble, Tetris Battle, Mindjolt’s Combine and Bomboozle 2 are fun ways to spend your time.
14. Random things that I don’t have any special skills (or possibly interest) in but allow me to appreciate your skills/unique interests, for example, gardening. I can’t seem to tame nature in any way myself, but it’s always impressive to see it when other people can grow beans, or some random plant that originated in the Chatham Islands. Making clothes = awesome. Making cakes = awesome. Building stuff = awesome. A random part of a computer you built that is amazingly powerful = awesome.
15. Specialist groups like ‘I fucking love science’. I fucking hated science at high school - I really struggled with it (although I partly blame crap teachers and my school for that) but I fucking love science’s posts are pretty cool and I actually read stuff as a result of looking that them. The other day, I found out why the centre of our galaxy “smells like raspberries and tastes like rum”; they get 10 out of 10 in the ‘ability to appeal to an English teacher’ category.

Things I dislike about FB:

16. The whole ‘look at how great my life is’ thing/keeping up FB appearances. The while online persona thingy is quite complex. No one wants to look like crap/be a whinger. But personally, I find it quite refreshing when friends are NOT pretending their life is super-happy and together and beautiful. You were on the train and someone projectile vomited into your mouth? That is gross and horrible (but kinda funny) and therefore a welcome break from hearing about how fabulous life is. This is a tricky one though, because I often post photos of holidays and usually I look pretty happy in them - so am I guilty of this? Generally, I look happy because I really enjoy going away on holiday (and who frowns for the camera?)…but sometimes life is stink and depressing and I think it’s OK to talk about that on FB if you want. I guess part of life is learning to balance those ups and downs and I’d like FB to reflect that process. It’s tough to talk about horrible things though. 
17. Constant posts by people about one single topic. I’m thinking specifically of my two personal non-favourites: The Rugby World Cup and The Hobbit. FB actually grouped posts together for a while there, which is how I survived the RWC, but The frickin’ Hobbit did my head in. About a third of my friends who posted about this topic are Peter Jackson haters (I’m in this camp), a few are Peter Jackson lovers, and the leftover majority are undecided, which is a fairly good spread I suppose. I can’t blame people for posting about what they love/hate...so my question is, why doesn’t FB group same-topic posts anymore?!?
18. Finding out a friend is racist/sexist/homophobic/prejudiced in some other particularly horrid way. I am a fairly generous person so I will make allowances - you used a homophobic  term and you are under 25? You probably just haven’t really thought about your use of language carefully enough...maybe that’s a bit too lenient/kind of me though; I have pretty much no tolerance for racism or sexism, which this leads to an unfriending. Double-standards? Probably. But you pick your battles, and your opponents, I guess.
19. Show-y PDA posted publicly on FB. For example, Wife à Husband: “Happy 4^th Anniversary - you are the best husband ever!!” That’s great you think that (although I don’t really understand the criteria…they seem to vary from marriage to marriage) but you could have just told them that in person (and not made all the single people who would like to be in a couple feel a bit stink). Also, assuming FB is around for a while, do I have to see this post every year??
20. Too many check-ins. I don’t generally want to stalk my friends, but if I did, you are making it very easy for me. Also, if you check in at a fancy place every day for a week then I am actually able to calculate how much you spent on your holiday…having said that, if you post a pic of awesome place/food item then this is a kind of recommendation and I’m OK with that.
21. Unfriending. Once you’ve friended someone, it’s actually really hard to unfriend them unless you can guarantee you’ll never see them ever again. So you can’t unfriend family (although I noticed that a relative unfriended me a while ago, so maybe it’s OK…?). What is useful about FB is you can always put someone on a ‘Restricted’ list and then hide all their posts from your newsfeed, which means you pretty much can’t see each other’s stuff. But some people are dicks and I just don’t want to be connected to them any more.
22. Too many baby-photos. This is a touchy one (and closely linked to G), but I’m going to make a call and say that there can be too many. Babies grow super-quickly, and I know you want to capture their development in as much detail as possible. But I’m not sure everyone else does too. We don’t all have cute little ones running around to dote on (for various reasons) and babies don’t actually DO much. Consent issues apply here too (see H), and actually, you can make albums just for you and your partner (or whoever you want to include). NB: It’s totally OK to post heaps of pics if there are lots of kittens in the pics with the baby. Or the baby is in an exotic location each time.
23. ‘Life events’. Yes, buying a house is most likely a life event (there’s nothing like the prospect of 25 years of debt to change your spending habits). Having a baby is almost definitely going to be a life event. The death of your partner/child is also definitely a life event…but no-one’s gonna put that on FB; it’s just not fun/beautiful enough. And as for other stuff - it’s actually really hard to know what will be a ‘life event’ until you’ve seen the impact it’s had on your life. So I kinda hate this option on FB. But it exists, so I encourage people to use it for whatever they want, e.g. getting the hire-score in a game, buying a new car etc.
24. Hastagging # on FB. It’s not Twitter, you know! No, you are not referencing pop-culture - you are just being unoriginal. Please write a proper sentence!
25. ‘Insiprational’ posts. More often than not they are just irritating. I’m not inspired personally by sports-people. Likewise, I find most ‘inspirational’ quotations simplistic and lame.  I’ve come to the conclusion that inspiration is pretty subjective. Just be yourself (unless ‘being yourself’ is posting lots of inspirational messages) and you’ll possibly inspire me in some way without actually trying.
26. Why has nothing better than FB emerged yet?

"How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain."

Yesterday, I went to the Protest Rally in Christchurch. I wrote this post beforehand. The Rally was good and thus I’ve decided to post what I wrote. I can’t not say anything, after all.

Just over two years ago, Christchurch was the ‘second-largest city in New Zealand’. And over the past two years I’ve watched it crumble and shrink, just like everyone else living here. As a resident of east Christchurch, and as a teacher, the shrinkage (heh) is obvious. Swathes of houses in my suburb are currently being demolished - every day after I get home from school, I go for a walk and watch as a bulldozer pulls down yet another once-was-home. The weird thing is, it’s hard to picture each individual house in my mind after it is gone; I can remember how the street looked, but individual houses and their details seem to escape me. As a teacher in a west Christchurch school it’s obvious to me that, even in the more affluent suburbs, families have left for better lives elsewhere. In every class I’ve taught over the past two years, at least one student has up and left because their family decided to move elsewhere -  to Auckland, Wellington, Tauranga, the Gold Coast. And I must admit, I’m always a little bit jealous (except for the ones moving to the GC...). My school has a falling roll, and it’s most likely going to go through a CAPNA for a second year in a row. Yet, we are one of the lucky ones.

Schools have proven to act as a strong support network during hard times in this city. Many set up as (official and unofficial) welfare centres after Feb 22. Schools provided children with stability during a time of massive upheaval - many of the students I teach have moved two or three (or more) times since Feb 22. Schools have also dealt with a considerable amount of anxiety and emotional stress in young people; all over Christchurch schools have experienced a heightened level of disruptive behaviour this year. At a time like this, what Christchurch schools and communities need is more support; not school closures, or the prospect of seemingly-impossible mergers.

So there’s nothing like a shock announcement in week nine of term three to knock you when you’re down (such impeccable timing and delivery...). And the government’s proposal for Christchurch schools was really shocking. I’d heard rumours about possible school closures, and I know to never trust a National government to pour money into public education, or to even consult with teachers and principals about sweeping changes, but still, they were shocking, and hurtful too.

I’m definitely not a conservative; I argue against preserving the cathedral (much to everyone else’s dismay). And I’m not someone who thinks that schools are perfect as they are - there are definitely things that can be improved in the NZ education system. As I said earlier, I have witnessed the declining numbers. But I just don’t see how culling and merging schools is a progressive step for this city.

Closing (or merging? It’s a little unclear…) schools like Phillipstown - a school that provides not only a quality education for its local students, but also food if the kids need it - is just cruel. I live just around the corner from Avondale Primary - the government’s plans are to merge it into a ‘cluster’ with Woolston Primary, Chisnallwood Intermediate, and Aranui High School. That’s a pretty weird plan - Chisnallwood is right next door to Avondale (although it’s very different in terms of school culture), but Wainoni and Aranui aren’t that close by at all. That’s a fairly large catchment area across all four schools, and a huge range of age groups to cater for on one site. And what site would they all be located on exactly…? The whole thing seems preposterous. It fairly obvious that the proposal has significantly increased the level of uncertainty and anxiety that already exists in so many Christchurch communities.

So, why would the government make such ridiculous plans? Money. It’s blatantly obvious that Christchurch is simply being used as an excuse for the Right to slash and burn. Instead of investing in children’s education, the government wishes to remove as much funding from public schools as possible. Same old shit. Oh except they might chuck in a charter school somewhere along the line - eastside, I’m guessing. Ugh!

As for the future; I look forward to a new central library, to a new 50 metre pool, to strolling through the extensive green-belt of the new city centre and stopping for lunch at a delicious new eatery. But now also hope that we can save the local schools. I've come to realise life in Christchurch is not going to be about sitting it out and waiting for things to happen; it’s also going to be about fighting to preserve the good things we already have - at least, it will be for the next two years... We’ve got to ensure that walking to and attending the local school does not escape our collective memory.

Shitty, shitty life.

These last few months have been very difficult; at times I’ve felt like I've been living in the vortex of unluckiness. Three months ago today I was in hospital waiting to see if I’d be released on not; I had learned that I’d miscarried exactly a week before.

It was my 12-week scan and I was SO excited about seeing a tiny, live foetus inside me. Unfortunately, as soon as that ultrasound machine touched my stomach, a series of rather devastating events followed. I learned it had died a while ago (it was a ‘missed miscarriage’). I made   a decision about what to do. There were complications; I stayed in hospital for two days (and met a racist nurse; “Do you want to bring in your own food? Oh, that question is mostly for the Indians and the Chinese. I don’t know how they can eat that stuff…”). The nurses were actually lovely (except for the racist one who seemed super-nice until that moment when I realised that a) she was racist, and b) she thought that over-cooked, salty, flaccid hospital food was somehow superior to any other sort of food). I now have a renewed appreciation of the free health system (with the exceptions of the food and that nurse), though I wish I didn’t.

Grief is a really overwhelming process. To add to the mess, my body continues to behave in random, unpredictable, and frustrating ways. Quite a bit of my confidence, along with my innocence, has been slain. I wrote about it, numerous times, and each time I decided against posting what I wrote. But I’m posting today because eventually horrible stuff needs to be talked about, and because I’m trying to focus on recovery.

These are the things I have found that have helped, in no particular order:

• Talking. It doesn’t really feel like it helps sometimes, but I’m fairly certain it does. Sometimes I feel a bit ‘pay attention to me and my horrible experience’ when I'm talking about it. I have talked about my experience with friends who have also experienced miscarriages - with some friends in more detail than with others - and it has been helpful. I realise that every miscarriage is a really different (though often devastating) experience. Talking to friends and family who haven’t experienced miscarriages has also been helpful; after all, I appreciate any form of support I can get, no matter how much someone might not be able to comprehend what I’ve been through.

• Crying. It’s so dehydrating and not a great evening-wind-down strategy, but I always feel just a little bit better for crying. It is a release, if nothing else.

• School. School has been great, because teenagers (and teachers) are rather self-absorbed, and so I’ve had a daily opportunity to not think about what happened to me, to us, and just focus on the teaching and learning of young people. My students were pretty alarmed at the fact that I disappeared for over a week, with no explanation (my two favourite questions were: “Was it an STD, Miss?”, and, “Was it mental?”), but they were very happy to have me back which made it so much easier to be there. I love my job; it gives me purpose when nothing else seems to.

• Facials. These are definitely the most enjoyable thing that's helped. I initially booked my first facial because my skin was so incredibly terrible; I had massive under-the skin-pimples as a result of my body’s hormones being all over the place. The facial was amazing. Not only was it incredibly relaxing - my scalp, face and shoulders were continually cleansed and massaged - but my skin looked so smooth and shiny and clean afterwards. Then some lovely friends gave me a voucher for a facial. I’m hooked.

• Support of a loving partner.

• Exercise. I’d like to say that it’s been super helpful (and it has, in theory) - the problem has been that my miscarriage coincided with the onset of winter, which, as usual, has resulted in many rainy days, colds, and an inability to warm up without injuring myself. Continued exercise is one of my long-term plans though, and I am looking forward to the end of winter when I can really get stuck into my swimming, walking and weight-lifting. It’s good to know my legs, arms and core can increase in strength when it seems like my body is working against me.

So there we have it; the last 3 months of my life briefly summarised in approximately 900 words.  I guess you might ask why I bothered posting this. My answer is, I want to move on and write posts for my blog without feeling like I’ve avoided something fundamentally life-changing. I also don’t want to remain silent on what seems to be a fairly common occurrence (although, NB - it’s not actually a reassuring thing to hear that miscarriages are “common”. Neither is “at least you can conceive”….maybe I should write a ‘what not to say to people who've had miscarriages’ page. Oh wait - it’s been done already).I guess I just want people to know how I’ve been feeling, and why. Finally, I hate not talking about stuff. And anyway, it’s my blog, and I’ll cry if I want to.

Reading is cool (but misuse of data and ghettoising of students is not)

NB: I wrote this post about 2 weeks ago but never go round to editing and posting it. I'm currently almost completely brain-dead, so here it is,  only vaguely edited and very, very late.


I always find it really hard to decide what to write about on my blog - not because I can’t think of anything to write about, but because I find it difficult to decide which topic to explore. It’s also quite challenging accurately estimating a topic I can explore and discuss in one post without spending over one and a half hours writing and editing it…


So, this post’s potential topics of discussion were:
a) streaming and how it sucks
b) John Hattie’s work and how it’s actually valuable despite the fact that it’s been twisted by the National government to serve their selfish, stingy purposes
c) Literacy and how it’s really important yet really complex


‘a)’ This would be a reactionary (but very well-informed) post in response to working in a school that streams its students. Just to clarify, streaming is when you rank students from top to bottom (usually on English, Maths and/or Reasoning Skills) and then place students in classes accordingly. This means that there is always a ‘bottom stream’ classes (or maybe classes) and ‘top stream’ classes, and everything in between. This year I teach one of the two bottom stream classes; they are my form class and I teach them English. My class can be challenging to teach, but every student in there is an individual with so much potential, and so much to offer. They might be, academically, at the bottom of the cohort, but I am confident that, with the right guidance, they can all do very well in school, and do very well in whatever they choose to do with their lives. So I’m glad I teach them, even though I hate streaming. So, if I like my class so much, why do I hate streaming? 


• Because it labels them. The students in my class have been labelled ‘bottom-stream’ and ‘low-ability’ since day one at high school. I never told them they were one of the 'bottom' classes. They figured that out themselves. Many of my students have low self-esteem, and the streaming isn’t helping.


• Because it disadvantages them. Teachers know from Day 1 that they are a bottom stream class and they set their expectations accordingly. To add to this, students in bottom stream classes are not sitting in classrooms where they have high achievement modelled to them by other students.


• Because streaming in itself has not proven to actually raise the achievement of students in streamed classes.  Many schools stream students - often making the lower-stream classes slightly smaller than a top-stream class- and then expect these ability groupings to somehow raise the learning and achievement of these students.  Very little extra support for the students and teachers is provided. And that’s stink. Teachers need training and support if they are to lift up the literacy and numeracy levels of students who have been working well below where they should be for quite some time. The teachers of these classes are not simply ‘teaching content’ (not that I would argue teachers of any classes are - see the NZ Curriculum - but some high school teachers still believe that is their primary role). Also, just to bring it back to the research,  John Hattie’s work has shown that streaming has a 0.05 effect size. BOOM. Which brings us to b)


b) Teachers love to hate on John Hattie. Don’t get me wrong - I can certainly see why. His research has essentially been used by the New Zealand government to increase class sizes in schools across the country. My largest class this year has 29 students in it. Some of my friends (in other schools) are teaching classes of 35. There’s no need to explain how hard that is, eh.


Class sizes are determined by the amount of funding each school receives from the government. Thus, more money = more teachers = smaller class sizes. So it’s obviously going to result in a big thumbs down from teachers for any research that supports a government taking money away from schools and making their workload significantly larger than it is already.


But I’m going to defend Hattie here, kinda. He’s not to blame for how the government has used his data. Hattie’s research looked at the most influential factors in relation to student achievement. Feedback was at the top of the list with a 1.13 effect size (and I don’t see the government pouring training into professional development on Feedback…). He NEVER said that class sizes don’t matter. He just calculated that class size has a -0.05 effect size (see Physical Attributes of the School). He was looking at student achievement, not teacher workload, teacher stress or teacher mental health. Obviously, this is not a particularly holisitic way of looking at education, but student-centred research is certainly valid - after all, aren’t we in it for the students? (Aside: if you haven’t read Russell Bishop’s student-centred research then you should - it’s all about student voice, using student narratives, and it’s super valuable; I don't have a link, sorry. Anyway, the National government then took that piece of Hattie’s data and de-contextualized it for its own purpose - to provide less money for schools. BLERGH. And now onto c)


c)  Literacy is my passion. To summarise, literacy is the ability to read confidently, to write coherently, and think critically about the written word. I know that ‘literacy’ is a pretty broad term in that it can also include the ability to understand all forms of communication, but I guess the literacy I’m most concerned with is the skills of reading and writing. A large proportion of students I teach have relatively low literacy levels. Students should, according to the NZ Curriculum, be reading and writing on the cusp of curriculum levels 4 and 5 when they enter Year 9. Many are in fact reading and writing well below this. And this has huge implications for these students’ achievement, and their happiness, at high school and beyond. Therefore, literacy is all connected up with self-esteem. And it’s also all connected up with privilege and socio-economics, and power too. That’s all pretty heavy stuff, so I think I’ll leave this topic for another day…


So it appears that I have (briefly but fairly satisfactorily) explored two of the three biggest educational issues swirling around in my head right now. 


To conclude:


• I actually really love my school but as long as it streams students and then does very little else for those students in the bottom streams, I don’t think it is working towards better learning and achievement outcomes for students.
• Teachers need to stop the hating on John Hattie and instead look at the research and what it actually means and question how it has been manipulated by the Right (although I always encourage suspicion and questioning of those held up on a pedestal).
• Literacy is so important that I’m going to have to write at least one or more post on it. 

On 22/2/12

I haven’t written a post for ages; the start of the school year has been insanely busy. I have thought of a few things I’ve wanted to write about, and so this afternoon I made the decision to write a post about the 22nd of February, 2012. It was either that or a post about how much I hate inconsequential punishments like detention…and whilst the latter topic is much more in line with the general theme of my blog, I think the former is more personal, and it’s definitely more topical, and therefore possibly (hopefully) more interesting.

So, here we are, one year on from the 22^nd February 2011, and really all ‘one year on’ means is that the earth has completed one full orbit around the sun.

Yet we recognise one year as a celebratory anniversary for many events – a year of life (which is definitely a great achievement, for a baby or young child especially), or a year of marriage/partnership (also quite a cool achievement, assuming that things have gone well in the relationship of course). But when it’s a year of being without someone close to you, or some big horrid event that screwed over a large number of people, it’s not a celebration, obviously, and therefore it’s not fun, or enjoyable. And so about two weeks ago I realised that I really didn’t really need the media hype around the 22^nd of February 2012.

The impending gloom of it was obvious – the mass media love a good grief-fest, and it’s not like we’ve been living in The Land of Chocolate down here. So this week, I tried to avoid the news (which is very hard these days when you have Wifi and a typical, modern-day, mild internet addiction). When I flicked onto Facebook on Wednesday 22^nd February, I flicked away again very quickly. And I didn’t really need, or want, two minutes of silence at 12:51pm, along with 2800 other people in my school. Having said that, the embarrassed, smirking faces of the 13 year old boys in my class during that two minutes was actually quite comforting – it made me feel like I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t really into standing there and being coerced into reflecting on stuff that I’d already thought about over and over again.

If two minutes silence and memorials and ceremonies work for people – to help them ease the pain, to remember those who were lost, to remind them of the plight of those left behind, to think about the future and be hopeful - that’s cool, but different people deal with stuff in different ways, and at different times. And when you are living in Christchurch, it’s actually really hard to forget what happened. Personally, I don’t need to be reminded. Because every day I drive along munted streets, past munted houses and businesses, and I miss the flat, boring normality of pre-quake Christchurch. Every week I swim in an overcrowded, 25 metre pool, dodging children that streak across in front of me and occasionally yelling at kids who stop and hang out on the lane ropes. I miss the large 50 metre pool that I could swim up and down in at my leisure – those were days when I, occasionally, got a whole lane to myself (which is ridiculously luxurious, I know…there’s nothing luxurious about Christchurch pools now). Every time I pull into my drive and hear the clunk-clunk of the loose slabs of driveway under my car I am reminded that my property needs work and that I am most probably stuck here in Christchurch for quite some time, because who knows when EQC will deliver, and who wants to buy a slightly-munted house two blocks from the red zone in east Christchurch in the next 10 years anyway? Don’t get me wrong – I love my house and I (we) had planned to stay here a while, but when you buy a house and the land that it sits on (and you buy insurance too - I thought we got it in case I left the stove on…), it’s very hard to comprehend the possibility of thousands of 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, a handful of 6s, and a 7 attempting to rip their way through your property over the course of 18 months, and then consequently being stuck in it for the unforeseeable future. And, most horribly, every time I go to the doctor these days, I am reminded of my old doctors’ surgery, The Clinic, that relocated into the CTV building not long before the 6.3. I’d been a patient there for over 8 years because the doctors and nurses were so empathetic and people-focused. It’s hard not to think about those who are gone when I sit in the waiting room, waiting for my new doctor to call me in.

Everyone in this city has a story and has been affected in some way or other – some much more than others, I realise that. And I’m one of the lucky ones in terms of how little the quakes have affected my life. So I would hate to tell people what to feel, or how to deal with what they are feeling, or even when to grieve and reflect. And that’s what irked me about February 22^nd 2012.

But I want to end this post on a positive note. One thing that I did appreciate about February the 22^nd was the flowers-in-road-cones thing. I came across an Avonside Girls’ High girl on Tuesday evening putting together amazing posies of ferns and flowers in the road cones just up the road. The road-cones were transformed from ugly, muddy, sand-covered, plastic points into vibrant vases of beautiful flower arrangements. Sometimes – no, often – teenagers are really awesome.