SIX MONTHS OF SILENCE!

I always thought I'd never be one of those people who would start a professional blog only to write a few entries then leave it dormant for SIX MONTHS. But I often make assumptions about my own behaviour and get it very wrong (there's a lesson lurking in that statement!).
BUT, I do have several reasons for my silence, so allow me to attempt to condense six months of work and holidays into one brief, informative blog entry.


Great Barrier Island:

My initial lapse in writing was due to a five week trip on Great Barrier Island. I accompanied 29 Year 10 students on a program run by what was then the Outdoor Pursuits Centre and is now Hillary Outdoors. This trip consumed all of Term 3 - I was at school for the first three weeks of term and entirely focussed on preparing my remaining classes for my absence. The last two weeks of term were all about supporting the Year 10s upon their return and catching up my other classes.
In my naievty I had intended to blog once or twice from the island. There was no time for that! While away I was mother, nurse, teacher, slave driver, friend, coach, chef, cleaner, photographer... And still managed to spend plenty of time fishing, snorkeling, tramping, reading and watching Blackadder!
The five weeks was not devoid of writing - the class's form teacher provided them all with journals in which to record their experiences and a printer to keep up with all the photos. I devoted a lot of time to this project as well in order to preserve my memories of this hectic time. Below is a photo of one page of this journal.
This year I am very fortunate to have the 2014 GBI group as my form class, and I will again teach the 2015 GBI class for English. While I could go on and on about this amazing experience I will save my stories for the future and dish them out in moderation.

A journal entry. The photo is of a beach that Sir Edmund Hillary used to play at, taken by my colleague Nigel.

Returning to school last year:

Just like the students I found the return to school very challenging. I had already decided I would not dean in 2015 and felt demotivated and sapped of energy - not by my time on GBI, but from being back at school. One significant way in which our perception had changed was that we all noticed negativity much more readily. I, like the students, longed to return to our paradise. I knew that I would adjust in time, but did not expect it to take all of Term 4 - it is only now that I am starting the year fresh that I am feeling back to my old teacher self.


The holidays!

These summer holidays we chose to stay at home almost the whole time which has been a first for us. We had two very good reasons - firstly we just bought our own house and secondly we got married mid January. This summer was perfection - full of swimming in the sea and the river, gardening, nesting, family time and the best party ever. I refused to talk about school and avoided reading anything about education online! Without a doubt those six weeks have enabled me to return to work itching to get back into the classroom.

Those are my three very good reasons for not blogging until now. A five week island retreat (yeah right!), a two month period of soul searching, buying a house and getting married!


Term 1, 2015:

Well, a lot is different this year. I am back to a full teaching load and can focus solely on my own classes and being a supportive and productive member of my department. I have two Year 9 classes, one of which is a BYOD class, the Year 10 English class who will go to GBI for 5 weeks, an internal Year 11 class and an exam Year 12 class. I think my next entry will be about the texts I intend to teach. I have lots of new ideas, but for me it's always about trying to limit the amount of new texts I teach otherwise I make it too hard on myself.
The second major thing that is different this year is that I am post-GBI, where I did learn a lot. As I wrote above, I struggled to remain positive upon my return. And so that is my main goal for this year: to remain positive. It is a struggle. So often we want to vent with our colleagues. But a significant component of my training at NZGSE was an acknowledgement of the 'culture of complaint' prevalent in most workplaces and the need to deal with it. I'm not suggesting that my school has a 'culture of complaint' any worse than any other New Zealand secondary school, but I am saying I will try to be more positive this year.


A new year! A new me! A new you? I'm looking forward to the adventure!

 Whāia te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei

Pursue excellence – should you stumble, let it be to a lofty mountain

The mystery of professional goal setting

After two weeks of professional development, both formal and informal, I have a serious need to re-focus. I am going to Great Barrier Island for five weeks at the beginning of Week 4 and I need to clarify what I want to have achieved by the end of this year. When I get back to normality, Term 3 will be all but over!
Sure I have my professional development goals that we develop as part of our professional learning at my school, but I'm talking about those very personal, career focused goals that are specific to your own unique trajectory.
I talk to my students a lot about SMART goals and get them to write their own. I often demonstrate how to write these goals. But I've never truly modeled this skill by sharing my goal setting with them. That's because I don't walk the walk - I very rarely articulate my goals in a formal manner. I write to-do lists and I make progress in my professional life, but I am really starting to feel that it's all a bit helter-skelter.

There are a couple of reasons why I don't set goals in this way. The first and most obvious reason is just laziness - who can be bothered? As I said before, I get (most) stuff done anyway, so why bother? 
The second reason is a little less comfortable: who likes failure? If I articulate a goal, especially a SMART one, what happens if I don't achieve it? Time to do away with that kind of thinking, conscious or otherwise. 
The last reason I've been pondering on is one that I suspect many of us share, so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. I have a theory that not setting goals in a committed fashion is a very Kiwi thing to do. To commit to goals and 'declare' them, if you will, is to communicate the assumption that you will achieve these goals. It's a bit tall-poppy-ish. I mean, I don't want people to think I'm precocious or an upstart! (Oh wait, too late...) So it's time to do away with that kind of thinking, too. Whāia te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei - there's a reason I include this at the end of every blog post.

And this is why I used the word 'mystery' in the title of this post. Professional goal setting is a bit mysterious because (if we do formally set goals) we often write them on our own or in consultation with one mentor and we aren't in the habit of announcing these goals for all to see. It's time that we did. It's time that we shared our goals, both realistic and lofty. Think of the conversations that could be sparked, the professional development that colleagues might be prompted to engage in. Imagine if everyone at your school had a series of goals that were public and celebrated, from the beginning teacher through to your principal. Don't you want to know your principal's goals? Your head of department's? It's time to do away with the mystery!

On that note, below are the four goals that I have clarified today. I have just started using a to-do list app which will see each goal broken down into tasks and mile-stones. The process of my first and most time-consuming goal, to apply for an eFellowship, will enable me to determine my overall professional development goal, my current 'mission statement' if you will, which is what this goal setting is all about. What's important for me to remember is that I have not chiseled this in stone. I might read the application for the eFellowship and decide that next year is a better time for me to apply. I might add more goals or tweak the ones I currently have, and that's not cheating. It's ensuring that goals remain achievable and relevant.

Goals	Specific	Measurable	Achievable	Relevant	Timely
1.   By September 8th I will have applied for the 2015 eFellowship through CORE Ed in order to ‘inspire transformational educational practice through inquiry’	·   Apply for eFellowship	·   Application can be found at CORE Ed's website ·   Specific milestones created and tracked through Todoist	·   Six weeks until due date, 3 of which will be spent on GBI ·   Support will be sought from HL, GU, HS, NO, RFO, AP	·   Will encourage me to focus my professional development	·   Due 8th September
2.   Write a blog entry minimum of once a week (excluding summer break) in support of Registered Teacher Criteria	·      Weekly blog post	·      Review at end of year by looking at frequency of posts ·      Set as weekly task on Todoist	·      Posts take an average of 1 hour to create	·      Accumulating evidence for registration ·      Encourages reflection ·      Raise professional profile ·      Informs my practice	·      Due end of Term 4
3.    Spend minimum of 1 hour a week reading blog posts/articles/Twitter feed & reflect in writing submitted to blog (excluding summer break)	·      Professional reading ·      Weekly blog review	·      Review at end of year by looking at frequency of posts ·      Set as weekly task on Todoist	·      Contain time spent on professional reading so that it is focused and purposeful	·      Accumulating evidence for registration ·      Encourages reflection ·      Raise professional profile ·      Informs my practice	·      Due end of Term 4
4.    Participate in live Twitter chats	·      #edchatNZ #engchatnz	·      Storify live chats & review own participation	·      Scheduled weekly/bi-weekly at specific times ·      Unable to do while on GBI	·      Accumulating evidence for registration ·      Encourages reflection ·      Raise professional profile ·      Informs my practice	·      Scheduled weekly/bi-weekly at specific times

What are your reactions to my thoughts on goal setting? Are you having a similar experience? Or perhaps this is a strength of yours, your department or your school? If you have held back from sharing your goals, what is it that has stopped you?

Whāia te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei

Pursue excellence – should you stumble, let it be to a lofty mountain

Myth & Magic - Conference Reflections Part 2

We had two further keynote speakers: fantasy author Michael Pryor and New Zealand Children's Book of the Year winner Ted Dawe. These two speakers were as diverse as Joe Bennett and Dame Fiona Kidman, but of course in entirely different ways. Michael spoke of five kinds of magic and Ted of the round about way he discovered writing.

Michael Pryor

Michael spent the whole week with us in Rotorua as he had traveled all the way from Melbourne. He arrived two nights before the conference began and joined us for dinner after 12 hours of travel. It was immediately apparent that he is charming, kind and sincere - his popularity was instant!
Michael spoke of discovering magic in C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew and I was immediately hooked. When I first read the novel, Polly was the first character with my name who didn't do silly things like sitting in cinders or eating crackers.
What engaged me the most was when Michael spoke of world building in fantasy writing. I had never considered the investment needed to fully flesh out a new world before delving in. Michael mentioned one writer friend who had spent years creating a huge map of his fictional world before he even began to write about it - this of course put me in mind of George R. R. Martin who is clearly adept at world building. Listening to Michael speak about world building - climate, currency, units of measurement, fashion, diet - put me in mind of Philip Pullman, C.S. Lewis and Sheryl Jordan. It made me appreciate their adroit world-building even more deeply as I can still picture Mr Tumnus' burrow down to the rocking chair by the fire, the detailing of Iorek Byrnison's sky-iron armour and Elsha's firestones all these years later - and that is truly magical.

Ted Dawe

Ted was much more a man of mystery. He arrived in time for our conference dinner and after delivering a workshop and his keynote swooped out of the auditorium like Bond himself.
As I said above, Ted came to writing unexpectedly. While living in the UK he wrote regularly to his grandmother. At first his letters were stilted and dull, but soon he found himself writing screes back home to New Zealand. When he returned home and visited his grandmother he discovered she had bound all his letters into a book proudly placed on the coffee table. Once again, not a dry eye on the building.
What I really appreciated about Ted was his no-nonsense approach to writing. After frustration with boys in his classroom who did not want to read, Ted took it upon himself to write something for them, even coercing them into reading chapters in order to gain valuable feedback about swear-words, among other things. This resulted in the very successful Thunder Road. And who buys it most? Teachers and librarians. He writes to fill a niche, address a lack, and it works.
Ted is perhaps infamous more than famous as a result of his last novel, Into the River, which has been controversially classified as R14. While you might think 'that won't stop students from reading it' do bear it mind that it definitely discourages librarians and teachers from buying class-sets. I am yet to read the novel myself but have just bought it and will write about it here when I have finished it. And would you believe the classification office also reviewed Fifty Shades of Grey and did not place it under any restrictions?


All four speakers were edifying, thought-provoking and gracious. Joe Bennett even wrote about his conference experience in his latest column. Capital Letters 2015 have already confirmed three of their keynotes: Glenn Colquhoun, Bernard Beckett and Karen Melhuish Spencer - who I've never heard about but her blog is entitled Disrupt and Transform, sounds promising!

Whāia te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei

Pursue excellence – should you stumble, let it be to a lofty mountain

Myth & Magic - Conference Reflections Part 1

Last week my English department, alongside the English department at John Paul College, Rotorua, hosted the national New Zealand Association for the Teaching of English conference. Phew. I thought I would arrive home and launch into writing about the speakers I listed to and workshops I attended, but I definitely needed some vaguely non-English time!

It was a busy week to say the least, and not what many people want out of their holidays, but I love our annual conference. Next year's is in Wellington and I've already registered! Yes, I think there is something wrong with me.

This year our theme was Myth & Magic and we asked our four keynote speakers to address this theme in their presentations. These speeches were inspiring, eloquent and diverse.

Joe Bennett

On the first morning we heard from Joe Bennett and it was so appropriate that this rousing, rambunctious man spoke first. Joe was unapologetic-ally funny and woke us all from our mid-morning lethargy. Joe spoke about being from two tribes - writers and teachers. Don't all teachers secretly wish to be writers? (Case in point...) Mr Bennett, you had us at hello.

After regaling us with many a tale - all sans notes and bouncing around the stage - Joe brought us all back to a very serious note. He recalled the teacher who had the greatest impact on his world view and told of visiting the elderly, ailing man. As Joe told us that this teacher ignited a torch in him that he hoped he had passed on to just some of his students I doubt there was a truly dry eye in the auditorium.

Dame Fiona Kidman

That afternoon Fiona Kidman graced our stage, and I do mean 'grace'. She spoke of her early childhood stuck in a hospital and learning to write. Fiona promptly learned about the power of the written word when her first letter home, demanding collection from the hospital, was heeded by her parents. Fiona's delivery was the polar opposite of Joe's: calm, typed, measured. 
And yet, intriguingly, both Joe and Fiona wound up at the same conclusion. Fiona spoke of an attractive young Irish teacher who would float around the school playground arm in arm with an equally attractive colleague. Fiona and her class-mates hoped that the two were an item and would one day marry. The same Irish teacher introduced her to many an Irish poet and Fiona referred to one of her most cherished:

Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

Those words! Dappled, brinded, stipple, plotted, fallow, fickle, freckled, adazzle, dim.

Years later Fiona was being interviewed and recalled this teacher who kindled her love of poetry. She mentioned that she still wondered if the two teachers had ever married and had children. Somehow, the teacher herself heard Fiona's recollections and reached out to her - the young couple had indeed married and 'lived happily ever after' - and Fiona was able to communicate her gratitude.


Joe and Fiona both tugged at our heartstrings and reminded us why we do what we do. The effect of our work may not be known for months or years, but we can rest assured that the effect is great, meaningful and formative.

 Whāia te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei

Pursue excellence – should you stumble, let it be to a lofty mountain

My Flipping Blog

Robert Frost's words “I am not a teacher, but an awakener" resonate deeply with me. Before starting my teaching diploma I was not entirely convinced teaching was the best career for me. I thought I was too extroverted, not conventional enough, and I didn't think I would find it all that satisfying. It turns out the introversion and difference don't matter at all, and it's rare that don't have moments of immense satisfaction during my working day. 

The moments that satisfy me the most are the moments when I awaken my students; some literally, most metaphorically. I open minds and spark inquisition. I provoke reflection and advocate for the devil. I love to see students debate, puzzle of a concept with determination, pen an essay that articulates their unique perspective.

But there is the flip-side. The moments of boredom, discouragement, apathy. And unfortunately, these moments are all too prevalent. 

But! I am an optimist! In the classroom, anyway. Many students find me irritatingly upbeat and try to bargain with my unfaltering high expectations. And I refuse to give in. I'm the adult! I'm a professional! This is my job and I will do it well.

But... teenagers are persistent. The never-ending struggle between our high expectations and their lack of expectations can be mind-numbing. And that is why the current focus of my professional development is on my small Year 10 class. There are around 15 of them, but I usually only have 10 or so each lesson. There reading comprehension is a little low, but not terrible. Their writing skills are a concern. Their behaviour and focus is difficult to manage. But the main reason they are in such a small class is not because they are 'cabbage' or 'foundation' or naughty. It is due to their complete disengagement from their own education. They have shutdown. My job mission is to awaken them.

With the support of several highly skilled and knowledgeable colleagues, my goals are as follows:
1. By the end of the year each student in the class will care about their education.
2. By the end of the year each student in the class will have made measurable progress in their comprehension and writing skills.

Once our plan for these students has been developed, I will be able to make a goal as to how much 'measurable progress' each student ought to make in that time and how it will be measured.

These goals may be lofty, but it is our responsibility to practice what we preach and have high expectations of our own capabilities.