The Weekly Rot

Term Three means dull grey cloudy cold days, rain, clingy mud, smelly soggy kids, fog, rugby practices, yes, I know, soccer, netball, hockey, basketball and volleyball too, tedious platitudinous cliché-filled reports, sickeningly cheerful articles for the school newsletter, snarly memos from the bosses, aggressive teacher-hating PTA meetings, staff meetings to discuss plans for silly ideas, mid-year exams – no, I mean assessments, marking, marking, marking, lesson plans (yeah, right), short days and long nights and tired grumpy kids and grumpier teachers and grumpiest bosses, d

Someone was expressing some angst about the number of foreigners coming to teach here. ‘Expressing angst’ is the politically correct way of saying ‘whinging’, but Kiwis don’t do that – we leave that to the … well.

Teacher-student exchanges with Indian schools. I don’t think Lyn means swapping our old raggy maths teachers for a dozen or so hard-working, vegetarian, spin-bowling Indian kids (unfortunately). It’s probably about exchanging teaching strategies, classroom management techniques, curriculum models and assessment philosophies – all as useful as a cricket bat without a ball. Forget that stuff – go for the food.

Dis week is dyslexia awareness week. As if any teacher needs to be made any more aware of dys-anything. In the past few years I've had excuse notes from various parents and doctors and psychologists and car mecahnics requesting I make due allowance for Johnny, Rupert and Sky for their dyslexia, dysgraphia, dispraxia, dysentery, dyspepsia, disrespect and dis little piggy went to market and dis little piggy stayed at home and oops, dis-tracted.

Luckily we have education research. Recently researchers showed there is a strong link between academic achievement and eating a breakfast comprising several different food groups. Apparently it didn’t matter which food groups – as long as there were several of them, but more food groups means better academic achievement.

It’s been one of those weeks in our school and so we’re drafting a code of conduct – with unruly parents in mind. Personally, I’d widen the target audience to ERO inspectors, NZQA memo writers (although they rarely visit our school in person), Ministry of Education executives and the latest wave of visitors, nutrition consultants.

“Any conduct that brings, or is likely to bring, discredit to the profession.”

I suppose that means things like MPs doing dodgy deals to help their tile-layers get visas, or government department bosses having PhDs from LSE but not really, or like their bosses knowing about their dodgy qualifications and not doing anything about it.

Not worrying about mixed metaphors, is this like smelling a rat that’s leaving a sinking ship hit by the tip of an iceberg?

I was wondering about how little schooling has changed during the past 150 years. Teachers at the front, kids sitting at rows and columns of desks, textbooks, notes-books, pens, lines. Detentions. School rules. Aloof and distant PhDs in Education making the decisions.

I have to quit. There’s so much stuff I don’t understand now that I spend all my time gawking at wikipedia and there’s no time left to teach kids. Teachers have to know and understand everything.

Attention all Commerce teachers. Not inspired by NCEA? Think the International Baccalaureate and IGCSE might be better? Tired of your staffroom’s brown glass cups from The Warehouse? Yearning for big fat slice of chocolate change cake?

A friend of mine, Mr Andrew Short, has asked me to ask you all if you’d like to teach Economics, Business & Management, and Sociology (which may or may not involve trust falls and cushions and deep and meaningful discussions about why society should love its criminals more).