Let the games begin!

When you say 3.8km, 180km, and 42.2 it is short and not that painful. When you add swim bike and run, once again not that painful. I guess putting them all together on a Saturday in March with 1220 other competitors will be the proof of the pudding! 5 days to go!

Journeys

Starting at school begins a journey in the education system some of us loved or loathed.In a child's life they will deal with a minimum of 10 teachers in their primary years and 5 a day at high school for up to 5 years.You got to hope they will find someone in there who gets them. I mean they are our precious little angels and we understand them, don't we! I often worry about the relationships that form or don't form between the teacher and the student.These relationships create the fabric on which all learning is based.I mean if your teacher knows you, they will be able to assist your learning by providing material that suits you. Where do you fit during this journey? Are you the ticket collector? The driver ? My take is that you too are a another passenger and should develop the same sort of relationship with the teachers as well.

Fear!

I get scared! Yep big old tough Mr Mullan gets scared. Recently it has been while face down in a lake knowing I have 2kms to go or if my achilles tendon will snap before I finish my adventure.But these fears are irrational! We must concentrate on what we can control. I see all the new students arriving at school or attending new classrooms and fear is obvious. Will my teacher know I cant do some things well or will I make friends. Will mum or dad remember to pick me up at the end of the day??? These a biggies for some. Think about the parts of these things that you yourself can control. Having control in your own mind will help ease all your fears.

A new year, a new view.

Starting the year gives you a whole new brings a whole bundle of new energy. The children are so passionate about coming back , just spending 5 minutes in the playground with them is a great booster. We have so many new faces around school it is gonna take a while to get to know them but thats the aim over the next few days. We have new teachers that also arrive with new energy and new ideas and it stimulates and boosts the staff. I love it!!! I have 5 weeks to go until my adventure begins. Am I ready? Well the kids are studying survival for the year so I guess I have to model that!! During the break I ventured to my old Primary school and realised in visiting the impact it had on my life. You don't know just how much school affects you until you are getting up to your used by date. At this school I learnt to read and write but also developed my love of sport and music and all these passions can be seen reflected in my own children today. Wow!!! Big impact!

Unthinkable.

On Saturday a good mates son committed suicide. What do you say to something like this how do you approach it. I must admit it is a hollow feeling and the idea that he was at the start of his life. 17 last year at high school world at his feet. How is it that we can feel so lost and helpless that we do things like this? What was going on for this young man that he thought this was the only way? How can I help?

Today.

Thank you Tom Latham for making the start to my day just brilliant. Thank you to to the Weather gods who made the sun shine and to the students who have just performed so wonderfully today. Joe brought me his dictated story and read it to me. he was awesome. Maisie and Eden are now on chapter books, their stories have 31 pages this is so cool when you are only 5. Lorenzo was on fire in Maths with Mrs Graham so to were Carter and Erin. Just a great day to be in charge of a school!!

Help.

How do we get more of you in to our evenings? Threats? Torture? Wine and Cheese?We really need to have more of you in to listen to the latest and greatest of what we are trying to do! So how do we do it?

Crossing the line.

I guess its great when parents gets involved in their children's education, I mean thats what we want them to do.They also get involved in their sport, once again we want them to.Where though does the line get drawn? Where does it become a line that is being stepped over. As teachers we are becoming accustomed to parents arriving in our work spaces and being told how to do our jobs. have you tried that with your GP? Or your mechanic? If you are going to do this can you please tell me when and I am sure our PTA will be able to sell tickets to this event.

Real life learning

Nothing like an injury to let you know you need to step back and have a wee look at what you are doing. It's called real life learning and if we want to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves we may need to look at the steps we take to achieve them. At the moment, in education, the drive is collaborative teaching and so we need to look at the steps we take to get to this or do we simply experiment with it. I mean we have only been experimenting with your children since teaching started.Education for the masses really started with the industrial revolution with factory managers needing large holding pits for the children of their workers who were still too young to work for them.Have things change much from those days? I would like to think a hell of a lot. Numbers are still not the greatest, powers that be still fund us at 1 to 26 in the senior school and 1 to 16 in the junior school and that still is too many children in a space.Now , though we want to put 50 kids into a space with 2 teachers. Good or bad? I guess this dependent on how it its managed and timetabled. What do you think?

Time to reflect.

I go away every term with a group of colleagues and I reflect. Do we have fun as well? Why yes we do! They challenge my thinking and they make me look at myself. They challenge me to do my job better! What did learn this time? Well I had it reinforced in my thinking of how important those relationships we have with the students are. You have to make a connection, you cant go through the day and not show a student in some way that you understand where they are coming from.

Bully!

Its a title that no one wants but will earn at some stage in their lives. Okay that may be an exaggeration but so kids through assertiveness or clever words or just playground antics will be labeled a bully at some stage. It might be from their peers,but most likely it will be from the parent who wasn't there or didn't see and is only getting one side of the story. All schools will have a degree of bullying physical or verbal. I would never trust a principal who said "We don't have bullying at our school!" There have been a few who have used this line. Before you, the concerned parent,label a child on hearsay, or put the word out in the community take time to reflect on your own actions. What does that action make you!

As I wait for another meeting with the MOE it gives me a chance to think. I recently have spoken to a number of parents and the question they always ask me is what is going on in my child's class. Well were do you wish to start. There's reading, now that normally takes shape in groups and the groups are ability grouped. The groups have a reading book that that they work on,a number of tasks are worked on that relate to the book.These task are normally comprehension related or give the students to take a different path with their thinking. Writing is involved as it is a huge part of the literacy process.Every so often the students will be tested to ascertain where their reading needs work.Its not about constantly climbing up the levels.The measuring is to assist the teacher it has however it seems to have become a competition for families and their kids and versus other families. Why?

Novopay, pain and beyond.

After the most wonderful non PC day at school yesterday, lolly scrambles and water fights!(Thanks Spud for the loan of the fire engine)I ventured to school to assist Tanya with the Start of Year staffing pay organisation. We arrived at 8.30am to let the builders in and then started. We have had no staff changes, nothing at all. Its all the same, its the same people so it shouldn't be an issue, eh. So why then 2 hours later we gave up. We had been on the help line and actually got through to a real person. After 30 minutes of her explaining the bloody obvious to us that we had already tried, she, the help line lady, decided it was an IT issue and our problem would be logged and they would ring us back later on during the week. We then established, with the lovely help line lady, that we were on holiday and email may be the better option.It took a wee while for that one to sink in. I can only hope that we receive some help before the start of the year as it will take a great deal of time to set up the simple, extremely simple, online process to get our staff paid.

No S$%t Sherlock

When stating the obvious a friend of mine uses the the saying in the title, so when I read this headline in the paper I had the same reaction. http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/schools/8059539/Pupil-teacher-relationship-critical" REALLY. What in depth researcher, hidden away for years and paid copious amounts of money decided that wee gem. Well done ERO, in the Mastermind category of stating the bleeding obvious you take out first prize!

Experience.

What is experience? In this case it is knowledge or practical wisdom gained from what one has observed? Is it always age related? The older we are the more experienced we are perhaps. Not so much!!! What if after all this time and all these experiences you are still doing the same things that have lead you down the wrong path time and time again. THis means you have experienced what you should do but are not experienced enough to change your ways to make you a better teacher, leader or human being.

Consultation.

I sat in a meeting last week an watched as colleagues were advised they were to relocate merge or close their schools. I learned new educational terms, consolidate and rejuvenate! These words were placed beside schools that are to close?? How is that you can rejuvenate something that is closing? The word rejuvenate means to restore to a former state; make fresh or new again: to rejuvenate an old sofa. How the hell can you close a school and call it rejuvenation? Big brother, I know you will be reading this as you tend to check up on principals, so can you add a comment and explain to me how these weasel words explain to communities and families that what you are doing is good for education. Oh and by the way, where exactly was the consultation?

Craftsmanship.

I was involved in a conversation recently that described true teaching as a craft. We are not a production line designed to stamp out hundreds of clones who think act and feel the same. To be a good craftsman you have to know your craft. You must read the latest techniques. You must invest in you craft. Time and resources. Good teachers don't start and stop when the children arrive and leave school. They continue the development outside the work environment. A great craftsman knows all about the items they are working on. They know the tools and how they will enhance the finished product. Do you?

Another Blow to Education.

It's happened again! We wonder why males don't get involved in teaching and now one low life has probably taken away the career path for some good future male teachers. Why didn't the school act? They were warned by the police! Good Male teachers don't need this.

What a Day!!!

I'd like to thank Israel! No not the country but the young 5 year old from room 6 who brought me his writing today. He made it all worthwhile. Without even trying he made me realise what my job is all about. IF you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: He came to me with his writing. He shared the joy of jumping in puddles on a wet day, and playing Shark tag. When an adult had lost the plot and lowered the tone of an educational environment this young man was a beacon of hope. If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: I don't go to work to be abused or accused or in a poor weak attempt, physically intimidated. I go to look for that beacon, that ray of light that children have. If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!' The cynicism of teachers who believe children don't try or parents who believe you are not working for their kids, can get you down.The constant whispering and back stabbing. All the playground advice that never comes to your face! Thanks Israel, cos of you I will continue to look for these days these gold nuggets that make you remember why you took up this job! If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, ' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! (Thanks Mr Kipling u rock!)

Joe Bennett on measuring teachers.

I liked this had to copy it and blog it. Good teaching, then, is easy to recognise. But it is hard to measure. Exam results are important, but they are not the whole of education. And if you judged a teacher solely by exam results, then they would teach solely to the exams. Which would squeeze out the good stuff, the real stuff, the stuff that just happens. And that's often the stuff that sings home like a well-fired arrow. What will happen, I suspect, is that the mandarins of education will try to do to teaching what they have already done to learning. With the NCEA, they reduced a subject like English to thousands of discrete bits of knowledge, or skills, that they could then assess one by one. But that's not how English works. The NCEA brings down the net but misses the butterfly. And it will be the same with teaching. They will spend vast sums of money coming up with boxes to be ticked, boxes called Key Performance Indicators or some similar consultant jargon, in a bid to define good teaching. And although any kid in the school will tell you instantly who the good teachers are, the Ministry of Education won't manage it. The simple butterfly of human truth will elude them.