The Supreme Ordeal

When I started teaching I started teaching at a difficult to staff school in Pilbara. It wasn't quite the middle of nowhere, but on a clear day you could see it. There were three staff members in the department.

I was given the barest minimum of programmes and by day 1 I was expected to teach it. Whilst help was available if I asked for it, it was pretty much me from then on in. I had to figure out the purpose of the topic, I had to teach myself the topic, I had to resource the topic, then go ahead and hope I didn't fail my kids too badly.

It was difficult, but it made me the teacher I am today. I like creating my own stuff; I like to be an expert in what I teach; I am not afraid to try something new knowing it may fail spectacularly.

 But I think the most affective result is that I now love programming and doing my own thing. And as I am borderline Sheldonesque, I have trouble thinking that anybody could possibly be different.



Anyway. I have just spent the last week typing up my vision of next year for my staff. It's all based on the Australian Curriculum and designed to give the teachers as much scope for their own styles and approaches as possible.

I'm going to attach the documents I sent out for years 7-9 teachers. I've also included what are the two options I see as generic grade descriptors.

Tech note: I saved them as PDFs then converted them to JPEGs. Only idea I had. Anything better?

Let me know what you think.

The Revelation

A review of the assessment in The Return, simply because there's something else I want to talk about, but it wouldn't be fair to proceed without addressing how that went, especially considering the deluge of response I received.

This task scared the Bieber out of the students. It forced them to go in front of other students without notes and improvise. And in some cases, they had to put up with (non-serious) abuse.

I learnt, or was reminded of, a couple of things:

1) Often, it's the quiet ones who shine in talks where they don't need to be themselves, and it's often the loudmouths who do the most poorly. (I have a slight bit of smug satisfaction when I see that.)

2) The biggest problem students (or at least the ones at my school) have with new tasks is not the fact that they're new to the students: it's the fact that students refuse to read the friggin instructions!

3) These teenagers have no idea about politics. They know about "The Ranga", "the old guy with the eyebrows", and that's about it. They have no idea about Question Time, Door Stops, Right Wing vs Left Wing, extreme vs moderate, what tax avoidance is, or why it's bad for a politician to be caught cheating on their spouse.

4) But they all know what a bunga bunga party is.

Overall, it worked. It was far less boring than a normal talk or a panel discussion.