Happy New Year

Happy New Year. This year I’ll eat more green vegetables and less red meat and less chocolate, chocolate cake, chocolate pudding, and chocolate cheesecake. I’ll drink less beer and less red wine and more chilled cucumber juice.

I’ll do more vigorous exercise, like walking briskly to work. I’ll take up a sport – golf perhaps, swimming, or maybe surfing. I’ll smile more. I’ll be kind, maybe even sympathetic, to ERO people.

This year I’ll go to bed earlier and I’ll read more fiction. (The Book of Unholy Mischief by Elle Newmark – as gripping as it was delicious.) I’ll be more tolerant of others’ differences and I’ll be more patient. I’ll accept silliness and laugh it to one side. I’ll not watch the TV news.

I’ll construct detailed schemes of work, or curriculum maps or unit plans and reflect on lessons and make notes for improvements. I’ll work with colleagues to develop cross-curricular units and I’ll stay late after school to help with an on-stage extravaganza. I’ll develop dynamic and stimulating lesson materials that combine PowerPoint with Web2.0 and twitter.

No I will not.

This year I’ll eat more superb four-chocolate cheesecakes, more black forest gateaux and more blue cod and chips with wedges of lemon and tomato sauce –but it has to be in newspaper and if the pasty pale food fascists won’t let the fish & chip shop people use newspaper then I’ll do it myself. Ninnies. And no tartare sauce in dopey little cuplets. Tartare is for tarts. I’ll eat more paua patties too – but homemade ones only.

And more sleeping in on Saturdays. Brunches are better than breakfasts. Cinnamon and raisin toast with marmalade or peanut butter or both. And then scrambled eggs and black pudding and fried leftover potatoes. And sausages. And tomato sauce.

And way way more red wine from Central Otago. With chocolate of course but forget about the Australian stuff. Get the Swiss stuff. More pies this year. Mince and cheese is past its chic-by date. It’s satay chicken now, with apricot. More blue cheese. More squishy camembert and dried figs on fresh baguettes.

If I go too pear-shaped I’ll have my belly stapled too.

As for school I’ll do more sick days and less planning. The world is faster these days and students need me to demonstrate spontaneity and thinking on the go and if ERO don’t like it I’ll refer them to Schon’s work on Reflection in Action.

There’ll be more sarcasm from the back row of staff meetings and more rabid rants at news reports about how schools and teachers are the root of all evil.

And so here we go again.

— Peter Giddens