More VATE conference reflections

VATE 2010

The VATE conference reached my expectations this year; provided stimulus to kick start my thirty second year of teaching.

1. It was really good getting away from school for two days.
2. I had a like-minded colleague – and driver - to hang out with.
3. Saw a couple of my writing idols, Shaun Carney and Catherine Deveny.
4. Participated in an intimate master class led by Deveny.
5. Got some new insights into Elia Kazan and On The Waterfront.

1. The end of the school year is invariably fraught. The senior students, in many ways my raison d’etre, have gone. I’m left with my small dose of year 7 and 8 students, most of whom are yet, through no fault of their own, to reach ‘the age of reason’. I have to watch myself to avoid encounters like this:
Scene: I’m showing the DVD of Holes using laptop and data projector. The DVD is damaged – unbeknown to me prior to starting the lesson. The DVD keeps freezing. The only remedy is to eject it, insert it and try again in a different place. Kayla, a sullen, usually benign 14 year old, is telling me, repeatedly, how to fix the computer, as only a 14 year old who knows everything can. Like I’m an idiot. Other students, from their vantage point of strength in numbers in a dark room, join in the meddlesome, unhelpful chorus. I’m equally frustrated by the faulty DVD as I’m leaning over my laptop, peering at the dimly lit keyboard, vainly trying to find a solution. The patronising adolescent know-it-all non-advice is getting right up my wick. I lose my temper. Oh-oh. I ask the stupid question. “Kayla, do I look like a complete moron?” “Yes,” she titters, delighting her friends.

And then there are the replacement classes which one picks up. Mostly hell. Reports are being finalised. People are leaving, some against their wishes. Positions of responsibility are being assigned for good or bad for the following year, and at our place, some bad decisions have gone down. It’s good to have time out at a conference.

2. My “driver” – KD, a colleague - picked me up at eight for a nine o’ clock start. An effortless drive, well, for me anyway. As he negotiated the peak hour traffic for an hour, I allowed my inner monologue out and KD listened and contributed appropriately. This luxury seemed to add to the whole package. He probably had to hug a tree at the end of it all, but what the hey?

3. My writing idols. Too much to say. It’s a personal thing.

4. Perhaps Catherine Deveny was, for me, the most stimulating person at the VATE conference. I attended her master class on Tuesday morning. I saw a different person from the person I’ve seen before. (I’ve attended Deveny’s book launch, seen her God is Bullshit show and have relished her writing in The Age until her infamous sacking.) Suppose it was a more intimate and personal setting. She was enthusiastic; full of passion and good ideas; extremely generous and personable. “Perfection is the enemy of good,” she said, amongst other things. This is her exhortation to just get on with one’s writing. She’s rarely satisfied with her writing, she says, but it doesn’t stop her getting on with it and getting it out there. Wish I could be more like Deveny. She bounces back. Things that would have made me livid and ready to attack or retreat don’t seem to faze her. Deveny spoke on a panel following the master class. She was witty and commanded the audience. Obviously riled some participants including ‘Dr Glenn McLaren’, another panel member. “Unlike Catherine,” he said, beginning his speech, “I want to make people think.” Prick. He certainly made people bristle. Such an insult – from an adult - would have rendered me impotent. I’d have been unable to function. But not Deveny. She evidently registered the remark but continued to listen respectfully, even throwing in a ‘hear, hear’ when he mentioned something about increasing teachers’ salaries. I’m so impressed by this resilience; this boldness that allows her to damn the torpedoes and get her ideas out there.

5. The final session I attended on the second day was led by Rachel Kafka. It was called Kazan’s America. This woman had a tough gig. People are tired after long days of concentrating. Some don’t even make it to the final session. I was just about keeling over with exhaustion. Happily, this presenter was great; erudite, lively, well prepared, passionate about her subject. What’s more she generously emailed her PowerPoint the next day.

I'm not sure I write so well when I'm being positive. Seem to do cynical better. But it's only fair to pay credit to VATE when it's due.

Random thoughts on VATE 2010

Arriving at Deakin Uni, my colleague, KD, and I headed straight into the keynote. No time for coffee. First, the inaugural Ian Maxwell address delivered by his grandson, Roland. Nicely nostalgic and anecdotal. And brief. Breathed a sigh of relief thinking this was it. But this was the Jubilee Conference; a self-congratulatory name-dropping conference, it seemed, when our revered speaker took the podium, striding out confidently in frock, blazer and high heels, despite the prodigious weight of her CV. Down hill from there. Aunty Doreen’s quasi-religious gumleafy earnest Welcome to Country had already given me a push. It’s just me. I’m irreverent.

The incredibly well-credentialed keynote speaker read, and misread, a tedious potted history of VATE. Her misreading and subsequent apologising was almost punctuation. Couldn’t see from my seat whether or not she was wearing reading glasses. If she wasn’t, she should be. If she was, time for an upgrade. Was a bit surprised that she seemed to have written in her speech “And now perhaps with my principal’s hat on”. Thought those remarks were off the cuff. Apparently not.

It was about this time that someone in the control booth turned on the massive slideshow so we had Deakin Uni spruiking its stuff behind her. Maybe she flicked a switch herself to wake us up. It was a bit hard to concentrate, even though I know it’s important that VATE has achieved all this stuff. At this point I opened my notebook and started focusing on the woman in front of me in her puff sleeved beige patterned shirt with a Christmas decoration pinning up her hair. Quite diverting watching her fumbling to get a rattly Eclipse mint from her little tin without making a noise. KD was playing with his iPhone and around me people were poking through the contents of their show bags.

The only way to proceed after this was up. I wasn't disappointed. More later, perhaps.

Writing a memory

I teach a Year 7 creative writing class and occasionally I write while my students are writing. I was using Andy Griffiths' Swinging on a clothesline and the word 'parka' in one of his pieces sparked my memory.

Parkas were in fashion in 1969. Eventually, I got one, probably after lots of pleading. We bought it one Saturday morning at Victoria Market. This was the only place to get a bargain, or so it seemed, back then. There wasn’t the plethora of markets and shopping precincts that we have now. This was before Highpoint, before the late Moonee Ponds Market, now a sleek overpriced shopping complex. This was way back. Shops closed at 5.30 on Friday nights and at noon on Saturdays. Absolutely no trading on Sunday; a day of rest, church for lots of families, followed by Sunday roasts. So Saturday morning was a bum’s rush of driving from Avondale Heights to North Melbourne through Kensington - no freeway back then - Spanish donuts, sacks of potatoes and spruikers of vegetables. And my mum worked full-time , so this shopping time was precious. It would have been an extra effort to fit in a shop for a parka for her middle daughter, but somehow she managed it.

The thigh length parka was navy blue with criss-cross quilting. It had a zip detachable hood with a white fur edging, side slit pockets and long sleeves. I loved it. It was winter so I wore it to school. I was in Form 2 at high school. An outer overcoat was forbidden over our grey gym tunics, grey jumpers and blazers but nonetheless I was wearing it one recess in the B Block corridor by the grey metal lockers. We were hanging around inside at the end of B Block where the Form 2 girls’ lockers were, outside the needlework room and opposite the laundry where I had my violin lessons. (No dedicated music rooms back then.)

Somehow the girls and I got into some stupidity that involved me tucking the sleeves of my parka inside, making a straight jacket of sorts, and putting the jacket back on and getting back into my jacket with my arms pressed to my sides. One girl then zipped me up to my neck. Still in the mood of hysterics, giggling and teasing, they decided to put me in a coat locker. How small I must have been.

I had ceased enjoying the experience but was trying not to show it. I protested but I was still pushed into the grey metal hole. I was helpless in my straightjacket.

I was distressed, almost crying but trying to play along bravely as if I didn’t care; I felt, well, trapped and humiliated.

Friends were very important and one could be ousted from a group on less than a whim.

I begged to be released. And then the bell sounded. Still laughing, my friends grabbed books and headed to class. We were more afraid of authority in 1969. Lateness was forbidden.

The corridor had cleared a few minutes later, when our young and highly respected history teacher, freed me. She didn’t rebuke me. She didn’t need to. I was a combination of relieved and deeply embarrassed to appear such a fool in front of a teacher I held in such high regard.

I wonder if I would have been so embarrassed had I been a thirteen year old in 2010.

Holiday. Celebrate.

Interesting how many of my English teaching Facebook friends have posted about doing piles of marking during the holidays. I have an aversion to this particular holiday torture, but despite working double time for the last week of term, I inevitably end up with at least one pile of marking that needs my attention during the break. This time I had two, unfortunately, but I dealt with them by putting my school bag at my bedside and doing a few hours marking on the first Saturday morning of the hols. My thinking was that if I did the work before I got out of bed, it wouldn't impinge on my holiday time. That is, my holiday wouldn't commence until I got out of bed on the Saturday. Mental. But who wouldn't be after thirty years of this?

Our school has also got with the zeitgeist of making the year 12s do their trial exams during the break. The idea is that the dedicated teachers will dash in, tongues hanging out, to collect the exams and get a head start on term 4 by beginning it with all the exams marked. Well, they can stick that up their jacksy.

Or are you one of those teachers who take extra lessons during the school holidays? I was a little that way inclined back in the day. Not now. If I haven't taught the course effectively during term time, with all those classes and all that extra-curricular counselling/tuition that I do, not to mention 24/7 availability on line, I'm evidently not efficient enough. As such, I get a little miffed when inevitably, at briefing at the start of the new term, 'prin class' thanks those 'more dedicated' teachers who gave up their own time to run classes during the vacation.

For me it's been a bit of travelling/cycling and some light holiday reading. Just finished 'Petite Anglaise', an appealing looking true story that I found amongst the remaindered items in a local book store. It's about an expat English womah blogging, famously (and I thought inappropriately) about her life in Paris. Oh to have a personal life to blog about. Clearly, she's not an English teacher.

Actually, it's not that bad. I did manage to steal a little carefully organised leave this year, without inconveniencing my students too much. Spent a blissful five weeks cycling in France.

Ultraflop

Seventy plus teachers and ancillary staff head to various computer rooms for Ultranet training. And thus it begins, entirely as expected. No one can access the Ultranet. But like dutiful children, we persist. No doubt, so do the other thousands of teachers across the state, trying to log onto the system at 9.05 this morning.

Eventually, IT guy gives us a twenty minute break for coffee and asks us to meet in the library for a bit of a lecture on the capabilities of the wonderful Ultranet. During the lecture, which is very hard to follow because we can't access the system, I - and everyone else illicitly checking their in-boxes - receive an Edumail message from DEECD IT support informing us that the Ultranet is not functioning. Hilarious.

Our collective inability to access Ultranet continues for the rest of the day.

IT guy informs me that as the organiser of the day, he'd been directed to forward both his plan for the day with a functioning Ultranet, and a contingency plan, should the system fail.

We all knew it would fail. The My School website crashed on launch day. Myki still isn't working properly.

In the messages from the IT department, reminding us throughout the day that the system wasn't functioning, we were directed, like children when it rains on sports day, to do some other busy work task that didn't rely on the Ultranet.

To borrow from the abbreviated textings of many of my students: LMFAO for much of the morning. But at 1.30 an email arrived from the IT service department telling us the Ultranet was now fully functioning and that we were invited to get on it and do our stuff.

That's when I became frustrated. Because initially I still couldn't get on it. And when I finally accessed my home page, I couldn't move from the home page onto any other site. Like a good girl though, I kept on trying until 3.45.

Meanwhile, our English department has a perfectly well functioning wikispace that already meets all our on line needs. In all the time I've been using it, wikispaces has never failed me. Nor have any one of loads of sites I frequently use that have millions of worldwide users.

But apart from today's Ultranet fiasco, I'm not thrilled with the Ultranet. As head of my department, I've already done some training and have had a play on the site at home. I find it slow and hard to negotiate. When I started using Facebook, I found it easy to navigate. Same with Blogger. All the help readily at hand; really simple to use. So what's the story with the Ultranet, given all the monetary resources that have been thrown at it??

On the positive side, had we not had our abortive Ultranet training day, I would have had a full teaching day, followed by a meeting. And the catered lunch was good. Otherwise, it was an unforgivable waste of time, affecting every state school teacher, and every family with children in state schools. Pretty disgusting all up.

Teaching's not all bad!

I often commemorate the crap on this blog. But it's not all bad. In fact it's quite often uplifting, or I wouldn't have pursued this vocation for the past thirty or so years. Here's part of an email I just received from a student's mum:

...Also thanks for going through Em's
story the other day, she really does appreciate your thoughts,
comments. I think that she would really benefit from being in your
class. I am really hoping she has you next year & you can steer her in
the right direction, Em seems to respond well to you. Your the only
teacher that received a gift from overseas - couldn't wait to buy you
something. You must be a fantastic teacher."

This particular student had a burgeoning talent as a writer; something I tried to nurture when she was in my Creative Writing elective. That was eighteen months ago, so I was quite surprised when she turned up at the staffroom the other day with her latest piece of writing, wanting my advice. I didn't know I'd made a difference - thought she'd bought everyone a gift after her overseas trip.

Something to remember when it seems overwhelmingly negative.

Ultrawhinge.

I'm feeling overworked and a bit like packing it in, today. First, yesterday's news.

A stranger was lurking with a clipboard in my classroom yesterday. "I'm just auditing," he said, by way of explanation. Just had to trust that he was official, and not about to filch my purse or my laptop from the office. He seemed congenial.

"Hope I don't have to move out of my room," I told him, as if he cared. "Think I'll have to retire if that's the case."
"Not to worry," said he. "Just an audit!" Yeah, whatever that is.

I did freak a bit though, and shared my paranoia with my office companion. "Not to worry, Jude." He didn't raise his eyes from his Age. He's used to me catastrophising.

Three-thirty, the same day, one of the Assistant Principals wanders into our rooms. "You've got to pack up all your things and clear out of your office and these rooms by Friday," he told us. And FARK said the crow, me.

The department has decided that our asbestos-y ceilings must be replaced. They're pulling the ceilings down and replacing them. Yes, I'm glad I'm being protected from asbestosis - hopefully I haven't picked it up in the last seven years that I've lived and breathed in my poisonous classroom and office. But I hate chaos. And this all comes in the middle of marking and cross-marking the first Creating and Presenting SAC, which I organise for all the year 12 teachers. I'm also on countdown to a well deserved short stint of Long Service Leave. Prior to departing for a bit of swanning along the Danube on a bike, I have to organise the whole faculty to operate smoothly during my brief absence: reports, exams, my senior students, my replacement teacher.

It's fraught, but I know I'll cope, despite a bit of pain between the shoulder blades.

Which leads me to what made me feel like opting out of this teaching lark altogether. At our staff meeting this afternoon, with the sky darkening, wind howling, trees thrashing the windows, IT guy told us, in his dulcet tones, about the Ultranet. Now I've rolled with all the changes incurred in secondary teaching since 1978, including the biggie: the introduction of VCE in 1991. I've adapted to the introduction of ICT when I can still remember us all oohing and aahing over a computer mouse in 1984, wondering whether it would ever catch on. But this whole expensive Ultranet thing really got up my wick.

It sounds as though the department wants us to be drones, accessible to parents at their convenience, not ours. Everything - curriculum, assessment records, comments on students' work - must be on line to allow parent scrutiny whenever.

I'm deeply concerned about teachers' rights and teachers' workload. It's just taking some of the spontaneous joy out of what has been a demanding but worthwhile career.

Hope I'm just negative because I've been up to my elbows in dust and cockroaches clearing out my office. Hope the Ultranet really does improve teaching and learning.

Time to connect with my old man and see what he's got planned for Europe. Lucky one of us has time to plan the trip.

Wiki wiki wiki!

I'm running around the students, with their laptops, like a blue-arsed fly. My year 7 creative writing class numbers twenty-four. Sitting these kids in front of their own computers quickly identifies the really tech savvy, the competent and the passive aggressive borderline personality disorders.

The litany from the sulky kids: "My computer won't work!" (Have a cry, I think.) "I don't know what to do...My computer won't let me log in." Whinge, whinge, slump at the desk, rest head on heel of hand and look miserable. Meanwhile, one female student has logged on and edited my wiki homepage in a way that I don't particularly like. Other students are using the discussion board: "dont u think patrick is sooooo cute!??!" As I rush around the room students, quickly click out of forbidden sites. The creative writing lesson I've planned fails to eventuate except for five students. The lesson is about me trying to appear competent when I'm not. I'm okay on my own; it's a bit trickier managing the entire class. Despite this, I book in for another lesson.

People who teach with laptops and computers may find this pathetic. Me? I pop a couple of paracetamol tabs before my next class, which is, happily, back in my regular classroom.

Between classes I type in all the kids email addresses and invite them to join the class wiki. About four comply, given that if they join they have to do so from their home computer. Sounds too much like homework to the rest.

I consult the IT guy at school to see if there's a better way to achieve what I want: getting all the students signed up to the wiki and publishing their writing on line for the pleasure of the entire class. (BTW, I'm the only one reading the class wiki. Reminds me of my blog!) He suggests I get the remaining students signed up during class and tells me an easier way to do this involving students signing up to wikispaces.com, then requesting membership of the class website and me pressing my 'refresh' key. It is easier.

Kids begin posting links to their work on one page on the wiki. This doesn't work. It's too much of a convoluted process for me to click on the link, open their writing in Word, correct and assess it, then reload the modified work onto the wiki.

IT guy tells me to set up a page for each kid in the class, which I do.

Next lesson in the library computer area, I dole out the laptops to the students, carefully recording which laptop each student has taken, to help prevent vandalism. (Funny how they like to prise the keys off the keyboard and slam the computers around, or carry them around by their lids.) The students log on. They retrieve their work from the 'student share' area and begin writing. They're entering the Write Across Victoria competition and most are keen to participate. They write away happily and then when it's pack up time I tell them to copy and paste their work to their page on the wiki. This is when the internet drops out. Suddenly there's a scramble for USBs - for those students who have brought theirs to class. The rest line up while I pass around my own USB so they can save their work. I'm then the one who ends up emailing all the kids' stories later.

See how cleverly I've increased my own workload?

But wait, there's more.

I was feeling quite pleased with my ICT enterprise. All my kids had published their work appropriately on the wiki. Time to assess it. The process went thus: log onto the class wiki; click on each student's page; when page opens; click 'edit'; wait a few seconds for page to load; mark up and underline student's work; make comments in caps in brackets; type encouraging remark and grade at the bottom of the story; click 'save'; wait a few seconds for page to load; click on next student...

Twice during this process, the internet dropped out due to the weather, or whatever! I was craving 'hard copies', highlighter pens and hand-writing. So much easier.

Assessing on line took bleeding ages!

But back for more next week.

Professional Learning Team. Not.

Once a fortnight, in that precious time between 3.30 and 4.30 in the afternoon, when everyone's worn out, after the day's teaching, prep and marking, we teachers assemble for another mandatory inevitable meeting. This one's called, oddly, Professional Learning Teams. I say oddly, because I'm yet to do any professional learning through this forum.

This year, I'm on the Information and Communication Technology team. Sounds good, but it's not. It reminds me of my own Form Six Politics class back in the early 70s, in that I didn't learn much in that class either. The teacher was disengaged and so were we. My loss, I know. Suppose it's the same with this PLT.

This afternoon it is even more hysterical than usual. Outside, winds of unprecedented strength for Melbourne, whip up anything that isn't lashed down. I wonder how I'm going to cope on my cycle home; whether I'll beat the storm. (I didn't, but it was fun anyway.)

And what's more, we rely on the internet in this PLT. But the internet at school hasn't functioned for three days due to storm damage, or some such. Needless to say, we are all led into the ICT room anyway. (No way could we be allowed to spend that hour preparing for classes. No, we must 'meet', dammit, and tick the box for 'professional learning', even if few are learning. Thus the school can report to the region that we have a 'culture of professional learning' and that all staff members are on PLTs.)

Our convenor, hands us reams of printed notes - the photocopier still works, apparently - interpreting VELS for ICT for the assembled group of teachers - about ten of us. Naturally, I began to read the document as soon as I got it. Bad move. Should have waited for our convenor to read it aloud to us. Should have seen that one coming. And wasn't that rivetting.

Our convenor, BTW, is sitting in a zen-like cross legged configuration on his desk top. He's earnestly trying to engage us, with his breathy, cultivated tones, but nobody's listening. I'm trying to be good, but I can't. The whole process just seems like sketch comedy.

One of my colleagues, is leaning back in his chair, eyes serenely closed, balancing his wrist watch along the line of his nose. The rogue art teacher is being deliberately provocative, as is his wont. He's an eccentric man-boy with the emotional maturity of a thirteen year old in his lanky fifty-something frame. He talks over the convenor and contradicts everything. Another colleague is reading an Artemis Fowl book. Others talk amongst themselves.

A colleague gets a call on his mobile. Unapologetically, he drifts out of the room for a couple of minutes and returns to interrupt the proceedings. Can I make an announcement? he says, taking the floor. His wife has called to tell him that the city of Melbourne has been evacuated. It's the end of the world, it seems. There's a brief pause while we process the information. No one seems particularly perturbed. I think it's probably an overreaction, given my husband works in town and I haven't heard of any drama from him. I consider that knowing my old man, he'll probably evacuate from his city office to the local pub. (He does.)

The time ticks slowly towards 4.30 and my cycle home in the 'cyclone'. If I could have skipped the meeting I'd have beaten the storm.

The ICT team again learns nothing. Whose fault? Mine? Yeah, I suppose. I'm an oldie and I should know better. Funnily enough though, I've always pursued my own professional learning without anyone telling me to, even during the eleven years when I was only teaching one evening class for three hours a week. It's what I do. But this school based 'professional learning team' that's been imposed on me, and my colleagues, just doesn't seem to work. Except for a bit of ironic entertainment value.

My space.

I spend fourteen seventy-five minute periods each week in one battered portable classroom, that's happily not going anywhere. I say that because last year, every other movable classroom was actually rounded up and moved down to one of the 'playing fields'. These relocated rooms are too far from toilets and running water for my preferences. The whole set up is often referred to as Siberia, as in, shit I've got an extra in Siberia. One has to allow a good five minutes to get down to Siberia if one is teaching down there. And in our sequestered days, counted out in minutes, that can really add to one's load.

I wanted to write about my work space: what's good about it; what stinks, literally.

My portable classroom is actually half of a double set, with offices and poky storerooms in the middle. As I said, it's battered. I've been teaching exclusively in this room for about six years now. The walls of my room are dirty off white. The room was painted in 2004 because some thoughtful maintenance person found some tins of paint somewhere and my room was next in line for a spruce up. But that paint has flaked off where students rock back against the walls on their green plastic chairs. They also kick them occasionally, as one does I suppose. I've also stopped one student idly picking the paint off the wall with her long finger-nails.

The carpet in my home away from home is putrid grey-brown and pocked with ground-in Blu Tak and chewing gum. There's an unsettling whiff of urine about the room; human not cat. It's concerning. The carpet is allegedly cleaned annually, yet the stench remains. Hope it's not me.

The desks, which I've arranged in an educationally unsound - according to the zeitgeist at our school - horseshoe shape, have brown hacked and scraped wood-grain laminex tops. They're gouged and scrawled upon, despite my regular efforts with methylated spirit and elbow grease. The problem is that other teachers use this space for the six periods that I'm not in there, and they have less of an anal retention problem than I. The desks are also of two different heights, so the whole effect is higgledy-piggledy crap.

My office adjoins my classroom. The office is little more than an overstuffed small rectangular box. All my office furniture is mismatched throw out stuff, appropriated during renovations of other areas of the school. There's a hole in the ceiling that allows access to the occasional wasp. Bit of fun on a hot day. The windows also admit the afternoon sun. No blinds. No air-con. If it's over 25, the office becomes stifling; unuseable.

Even so, I like it.

It's handy having one's office attached to one's classroom. None of that lugging of materials to various locations. I've also got a lockable storeroom for my bike. Very convenient.

I'm working towards the positives - and they far outweigh the negatives - of this space.

Lots of other rooms in the school have been modernised to be open spaces, not unlike fishbowls. In these fresh rooms, the new colourful tables must be grouped in 'islands' to facilitate better teaching and learning. ('Prin class', as they like to be known, get shirty when you move the desks to fit a lecture style of teaching.) In these rooms, the teacher doesn't have his or her own desk because today's teacher should be moving amongst the students, engaging them. Fair enough, but sometimes one needs to allow the students quiet time to actually get on with their own work, without the teacher bothering them, especially in a creative writing or senior English class. (I don't like people watching over my shoulder when I'm trying to write.)

So my room, with its broken mismatched blinds, and politically incorrect desk arrangement, has escaped the desk police. Apart from students and a couple of teachers, no one comes near my learning space. This means I'm missing out on the refurbishments that seem to have happened elsewhere in the school, but at the same time, I'm left alone to do my own teaching thing. Which is good because I know what I'm doing and I do it well.

To Sir With Love Revisited.

It was probably Christmas Day, 1968. I’d just finished my first year of secondary school. At Maribyrnong High School, actually, in case anyone’s interested. My family had joined with another family for Christmas lunch, which we’d already eaten. I was in a group in the suburban back yard, excitedly discussing the film, To Sir With Love, which one of the neighbours, a girl my age, had just seen. Lucky her. She was allowed to see it. I wasn’t. (Nor was I allowed to see The Graduate. Unsuitable for teenagers, according to my parents. It didn’t stop me reading through the racy paperbacks amongst the classics on my parents’ bookshelf.)

Back to the hushed discussion in the back garden. Vicky, the friend who’d seen the film, was telling us about this shocking scene in the film. Mr Thackeray, the Sidney Poitier character, walks into the classroom and finds that one of the female students has put something unmentionable into the fire.
I remember being somewhat incredulous and awestruck at the horror of it all. Periods were strictly women’s business back then.

Fast-forward forty-one years. A few weeks ago, To Sir With Love was on television and I idly watched the last half of the film, as you do sometimes on a weekend. I’d shown the film to students in the early 1980s, but hadn’t thought about it for years, apart from when Tina Arena released a cover of the title song.

Subsequently, I thought it might be interesting to show the film to my current year 8s. I’m always telling them ‘back in the day’ stories, and I thought it might interest them. I’ve shown them two ‘instalments’ of the film so far. (It’s a bit of a bribe that’s working well. If they work well for the first forty-five minutes of the afternoon session, they can spend the last half hour watching this film.)
It’s been fascinating watching these kids watching the film. It’s also been most interesting contextualizing certain scenes for the students. The pause button is handy here.

“Oh my god! Did you hear what he said?” says one of my students. “That is so racist!” Mr Thackeray, meeting his teaching colleagues for the first time, is calmly bearing the brunt of racist jibes from a jaded old teaching colleague. This led to a discussion on racism, and whether anything has changed, and what it was like back then.

Back to the film. To me, it seems almost silly; so dated. The clothes, the dancing, the accents, the attitudes, all seem so twee now. Yet my own students have watched it with considerable engagement. I had to press the pause button to explain the scene where the female ‘unmentionable’ is being inappropriately incinerated. In the film, Thackeray quickly exits the boys so he can talk frankly to the female members of his class, who should be learning that women should have more dignity. I explained all this to my mixed class, who were struggling to understand what was going on in the scene, given that those times are happily well and truly over. Took me right back to the days of the incinerator in the girls’ toilets, back in the day – not a place one wants to go.

The times have changed considerably since those grotty sexist times. Hurrah.

I didn’t expect that the film would generate so much interest. I honestly expected the kids to reject it, and demand something more contemporary. Initially, having a half hour of ‘film study’ Wednesday, last period, really was just a way of trying to engage the students at a time when they are usually totally disengaged. But showing this oldie has been surprisingly ‘educational’.

The Secret River and Encountering Conflict.

Some brief thoughts after second, or third reading of the text. Nothing special. Just some stuff I'll share with my current students to stimulate a bit of discussion and writing, I hope.

The most significant conflict in the text was incurred because Thornhill, and the other settlers, took land that belonged to the aboriginal people. This is so fraught. What else could they do, given who they were? They were ignorant, uneducated convicts, transported to Australia at a time when the average human hadn’t evolved much. (The average person’s mind still functions at a base level and is racist, territorial and often morally savage. Can’t pretend to be nice and all embracing of my fellow humans. This is just the truth for me.)

Thornhill struggles to recognize the humanity in the aboriginal people even though he sees their intelligence and their similarities to himself. (This isn’t a text response essay, but think of him noticing the shape of the poisoned child’s skull; consider him pondering the ease with which the blacks found the food they needed yet still had time to play with their children. Think of your own prejudices and be honest about them. I’m not going to confess my own here, but I had to bite down on a racist reaction to a woman who won a lot of money on Deal or No Deal during the holidays. BTW, speaking of dumb, I’ve only watched it once in my life – my son had to explain how it worked – and I was recovering from flu.)

Given who Thornhill was, and his lack of opportunity in England, he couldn’t return. He had to stay on his land, even if it meant being involved in the slaughter of the aboriginal people who lived there before him. (And how gormlessly did he go along with that?? Pity he wasn’t more like his son, Dick. But there you go. He didn’t have his son’s perspective. He couldn’t have it.)

So this conflict, however terrible, was unavoidable for the types of people involved, with their very human nature. It changed the world, decimating a race of people. And how many times throughout history has that happened?? It wasn’t so much survival of the fittest as survival of those with superior weaponry, cunning, and immune systems.

Dealing with a difficult parent.

I dutifully returned the call of a parent concerned about her fourteen year old son’s progress in Year 8 English. The previous week, parents had received their child's ‘interim’ reports. Every six weeks, in addition to parent teacher interviews and formal reporting, our school prepares these reports for close to a thousand students. (That's a lot of reporting.)

After telling me she was concerned about her son’s unsatisfactory progress, the call proceeded thus:

Her: My son is only getting Ns in your class.

Me: What are you implying?

At this stage of my career, I’m sick of parents ringing up and thinking they can malign my teaching competence in this way. It’s something I have never done when addressing the teachers of my own kids. It’s simply rude. It’s even more rude given my status within my school and my excellent reputation - no false modesty. But I suppose she’s not to know me from a bar of soap.

Now of course I understand just about the entire psychology of parental investment in their children. Yes, it’s probably an unfathomable body of work, but I’m getting a bit long in the tooth and I know what I know, based on protracted, sometimes excruciating years of experience as a moderately intelligent teacher, and parent of a couple of occasionally ‘ne’er do well’ children to boot. I know how terrible it feels when you know you’ve put in so much as a parent and your kids won’t come to the party and satisfy your parental needs with 'braggable' ENTER scores and virtuosity in the performing arts or rocket science.

I take umbrage at the implication that it is my teaching that is making her boy fail.

This mother assured me that she wasn’t implying anything; she just couldn’t understand why her son was passing in every other teachers’ classes and failing in mine. Again, the castigations.

She wanted more from me, more than the blood I’m already giving.

She was demanding time that I don’t have to spare, given the fact that I’m just about always in the classroom, either teaching, or counselling and consoling year 12 students, or dealing with the occasional recalcitrant who needs a bit of a talking to at the end of a lesson, away from an audience. If I’m not in the classroom, or guarding the yard, I’m in a bleeding hour long meeting after school three afternoons a week. Or on the phone taking shit from caustic parents. I suppose she and her ne’er do well son could catch me for a spot of private tuition after I’ve done my weekly five hours of assessment and correction in bed on a Sunday morning.

The conversation became quite terse:

Her: Well, if you haven’t got the capacity to assist my son…

Me: I beg your pardon. Have you any idea how rude you sound?

But ultimately, despite twenty minutes on the phone, generally biting my tongue and being my political best, I was unable to ameliorate the situation.

And unfortunately, after I hung up the phone I burst into tears of frustration at the unfairness of it all, in front of two of my colleagues, one of whom is only twenty four, a new teacher in the area I coordinate and just embarking on her career. I felt pathetic.

Next day, the parent has followed through with a facetious open email, which borders on harassment, to the school office, which was then forwarded to me and the head of the junior school.

Fortunately, the junior school and year 8 coordinators are well apprised of my abilities as a teacher and have assured me I will not have to communicate with this parent again.

The irony is that it doesn’t matter how many successes I have, it’s these incidents that have the power to overwhelm me; hence the need to vent on a blog that is rarely read, to put it out there to float around unnoticed in the ether forever. But it has more chance of surviving than my volumes of self-absorbed journals, which my daughter, a writer herself, has assured me she will compost as soon as I’m in the nursing home, if not before.

Time for a chardonnay.

Sometimes it all falls into place

Today has been a magic day at school. It's good to acknowledge these days. My plans came to fruition.

Since December last year, as I'm sure have many of my colleagues around Melbourne, I've been planning for our VCE students to see a performance of Eagle's Nest Theatre's production of The Crucible.

Big deal, some may say. But I hate organising such events - or 'incursions' as it says on our school's official forward planning form. (Nothing like a raid to get the heart started. ) And I always feel responsible for the success of such ventures. A couple of years ago, I took a group of students to see a performance of Stolen at the Malthouse. Our team of Year 12 English teachers had spent a good six weeks or so battling against our students' racist attitudes prior to the performance. The performance in itself was excellent, but the ensuing Q and A was a disaster. One of the performers 'paid out' somewhat on the non-indigenous audience and it was just the spark our students needed to reignite their racist flames. That young performer perhaps undid in a couple of angry comments - and fair enough - all the effort we'd put in to quell the endemic racism of many of our kids back then. It was really disheartening, and I, as the organiser of the excursion, felt that somehow I'd let the side down.

But today, everything worked, despite the limitations of the space we were able to offer the performers. They basically had to work in our 'theatre', which is really just three converted classrooms, one of which forms an endstage. I'm thinking there must have been twenty actors on that stage, many of whom were lined up, seated, not quite out of sight behind the curtains. There was no special lighting on the stage; no sound effects; no son et lumiere tricks. No, just a group of enthusiastic skilled performers who generally embraced their roles with gusto. The house lights were left on during the performance, which may have assisted with students' behaviour. But I think our kids were seriously engaged.

We've been studying The Crucible since the beginning of term. The students have already completed two pieces of writing on the Context. They've also watched the film. So today, they were generally looking forward to seeing a live performance.

For me, it was extremely rewarding to see about a hundred of our Year 12 kids suspending their disbelief and really getting involved. During the scene where Abigail pretends to see a bird in the rafters, many students stared around in horror to see what all the players were looking at. I even 'teared up' a bit at the poignant ending.

But the greatest part of the entire performance was how I felt about our kids. These students generally have not been exposed to any live performances, other than rock concerts and Big Days Out. They haven't seen any live theatre since an anti-bullying production in Year 8. Yet they were an excellent audience. I think I told one kid to put his foot down off the seat of the kid in front of him, which he did without demur. And the production took the best part of three hours. Our students missed their recess and three quarters of their lunch break, yet they quietly, respectfully watched the entire production. It was terrific to hear the genuine applause as the players took their bows at the end. Furthermore, the actors approached me at the end of the play to tell me our students had been just about the best audience they'd had since they'd been touring the play around the schools. I felt really proud.

Last period I taught - I use the term loosely; I was a bit worn out - one of my year 12 English classes. The students were full of chat about the production, quoting memorable lines and laughing at how they'd all jumped when Abigail started screaming. It was very gratifying for their teacher. Me.

Too old for this??

I've always quite enjoyed disruption in my school day. Others bemoan interruptions to their chemistry classes, their routines. Not I. I welcome little diversions in the order of the school day. Bring on the fire drill! It's a chance to get out in the fresh air and have a break. I like a bit of excitement, like the Year 12 coordinator interrupting my class twice today. It's a different face. Someone else to banter with.

So when the newish principal decided we would alter the arrangement of the school day I thought, what the hey? I've always worked in schools with six 48 - 50 minute periods per day. Change would be good; as good as a holiday.

So this altered timetable was more or less rushed through after about six months serious planning last year. Now it's careful what you wish for.

The new day is possibly killing me. I can feel the future years dropping from my life span. This is the thing. The periods are seventy five minutes long. That's four seventy five minute periods per day. Yes, the students are well and truly getting their 300 minutes of tuition each day, and there's less movement around the school and blah, blah, blah. But when one has first 'three on' it's hell on wheels, especially when one gets an emergency yard duty thrown into the mix, as I did today, and as frequently happens. Today it was morning assembly, Advance Australia Fair and all that, then into class for a 9.05 start. Double year 8, recess yard duty, year 12 after recess, and no break until 1.15. It's crippling me. After lunch I find it difficult to use my spare period effectively because I have that hit-over-the -head-with-a-housebrick feeling. Pity my colleagues with their four-on days. Happily, I'm spared that.

And I've got to do it all over again tomorrow morning.

The other problem is extras. Under the old system, one would rarely get an extra on a five on day. Now, however, most people have an average three periods a day, so when they get an extra, it's a full on day. And seventy five minutes is a long time to be taking an extra.

Oh for some real forward planning.

I hate parent teacher interviews

While I was talking to the first parent, the room started to shift around her. I felt spacey. It was probably the lighting in our school gym where we were all lined up in exam like rows. And the dread of the ordeal facing me. So to focus, I concentrated on her protruding teeth and her badly dyed blonde hair; her eyes were wrinkled around the edges from self-deprecating obsequious smiling.

“How’s her spelling?” she asked. “I can’t understand why she can’t spell. I never had a problem with spelling.”

How many parents tell the teacher – me, or me at ages 21 to 51 – except for that blissful ten years when I taught adults and didn’t have to wade through this necessary shit – what they were like as students? Or they tell their kids off in front of the teacher, as if that will have more effect, or to show that they are serious parents and it’s not their fault that their kid is recalcitrant, or whatever.

I asked Fart Boy, when he made his appointment, how he thought his parents would react if I told them how many times he disrupted the class with his explosive bowels.

“My dad will think it’s hysterical,” he boasted. “He taught me everything I know.” And then I meet mum and dad; middle aged, ordinary people. Fart Boy has preempted anything I might say to his parents. They allude to it. I tell them he says his dad thinks it’s funny. Dad looks embarrassed. Clearly, small conservative bald dad isn’t full of the bravado that his son is.

At my most recent parent teacher day/evening, between one and eight pm, with an hour break, I spoke to forty four families. Mostly the interviews were positive, but three were appalling. How can these ignoramuses possibly think that it serves their kids well if they give the teacher a serve?

They just don’t pay me enough for this torture.

In one interview, this harassed looking thirty something is restraining a struggling toddler on her knee. Another of her children stands quietly, its nose level with the edge of the table. Her daughter, my student, stands quietly behind her mother and father while the woman attacks me because I’ve given her daughter an ‘unsatisfactory’ on her interim report. She challenges every aspect of my teaching, makes me explain all my teaching methodology and then still won’t accept that her child deserved the grade. And she’s shouting and waving her free hand around while the toddler squirms to free itself. The woman is dressed in business clothes. Looks like she’s come straight from work. Her babies are driving her batty and perhaps she feels inadequate because she hasn’t paid enough attention to her daughter’s progress. So I have to pay the price and sit passively and wear her aggression because the customer is always right in these market driven league table days. She even slaps at the sign hanging on the front of the table which says I’m the English coordinator. “Coordinator. Hmmmph!” she says.

Furthermore, what does a kid’s grey unshaven father think will be achieved if he abuses the teacher on the basis of some spurious allegation made by his daughter, possibly to avoid a beating? This unkempt down-at-heel father sits in front of me. Because I’m dazed by the lights and the thirty something families I’ve already interviewed, I don’t immediately perceive his rage. He glares at me. Why have I made an example of his daughter because she didn’t have her text book? What?? That’s not true, I manage, but he’s not listening. A small crowd waits behind him. He’s right up in my face, eyes blazing, lips a thin line. Breathing at me. I tell him I won’t speak to him unless he calms down, which enrages him further. His daughter sits smugly beside him while he explodes. I stand and tell him the interview is over and begin to walk away.

“I demand to see the head-master,” he says. “Where is he? Where is he?”

“It’s a woman,” I say, and begin to walk away but he blocks my path. Meanwhile, my colleague intervenes and tries to direct the man away from the masses of parents witnessing the assault on the hapless teacher.

I head into an office with my heart beating rapidly and steady myself for about twenty seconds before I return to the hall and sit to interview the next parents. The mother immediately puts me at ease.

“It’s all right,” she says. “I understand. I’m a teacher.”

Reflections on my Saturday at the VATE conference

I didn’t get much out of the 2007 VATE conference.

Perhaps it’s best to examine it in context.

Let me go back a day.

I didn’t attend the Friday session of the VATE conference for a couple of reasons. First, it’s so bleeding expensive now it’s almost extortionate. I’m the English coordinator at my school and funding is scarce. To send teachers to the conference, not only must we pay for registration but we must also pay for CRTs to replace the staff who attend. Second, I would miss double year 12 English and it didn’t seem right to leave them just so I could have a PD day. So I sent two of my colleagues and satisfied myself with attending only the Saturday session.

When my year 12s told me on Thursday – the day before the VATE conference – that they would be away on a careers expo the next day I was a bit put out. The two replacement classes I was given didn’t help. But this is the teaching life, isn’t it?

Last period Friday is Year 10 English. Even on a good day, most of my year 10s are inclined to hyperactive bestiality. They can’t help it. And it’s not my fault. They were like that before I met them. Actually, after the occasional morning session with them, when I’ve put the chair and the whip down, I almost feel that I’ve made some slight progress with them, even after Swearing Emo Girl has effed and c-eed her way through the lesson and Fart Boy has punctuated every five minutes with his effluent wind section ejaculations.

But Friday, they were insane. Not worth describing. My strategy for coping with such behaviour is to tell myself that even if they’ve learnt nothing they will not leave the room until the floor is tidy and the chairs are put up on desks. Pathetic, but it generally retrieves some of my sanity at the day’s end. It almost happened according to plan, but when that bell sounded I was rushed at the door. I managed to intercept two students to make them finish off the job with the chairs.

Blonde Boy was compliant and even wished me a good weekend as he cheerfully left the room.

However, Aggro Girl was not so compliant and tried to barge through me in the doorway. Unfortunately, I have an inclination to resist such students. I caught her by the wrist as she pushed past me and ordered her back to clean up her area.

“Don’t touch me,” she snarled. Of course, I let go of her wrist.

“Because you are not an animal,” said I, “you will go back and pick up your chair.” (Sounds so pathetic when you write this stuff down, doesn’t it? In the scheme of life it’s less than crap.)

Anyway, she complied. I thanked her and wished her a good weekend. Honestly.

So imagine my surprise when fifteen minutes later I’m summoned to the AP’s office because an irate father has demanded to know why the English teacher has assaulted his daughter.

Dad is livid. “It takes a lot to make my daughter cry,” snarls this parent – an imposing dust covered bearded lumberjack of sorts. Aggro Girl is looking smug but won’t meet my eyes. There’s this other kid in there as well, who turns out to be the younger sister. She, too, says her piece, without looking at me. “She ad no right ta touch er!” Who are you? I’m thinking, and why has my esteemed leader allowed you to be present at the interview?

Finally, Dad is satisfied with my recount of events and my assurance that I had intended no physical or emotional assault on his daughter. But it left a nasty taste and made me realize how vulnerable I am – we all are – as teachers. We are at the mercy of such students. And how I wish I had a dollar for every parent who has said to me over the years that his or her son or daughter does not lie, when clearly kids do.

And for this I gave up the VATE conference? Perhaps though, it was a good reminder. Never touch a student. (Let’s face it, I shouldn’t have grabbed her wrist.) And students have no loyalty. But I’m sure that the next time one student starts smashing into another in the canteen queue I will still grab them both by the shirt front and march them to the coordinator’s office. Do you let them beat each other senseless while you stand back vainly blowing your whistle?

So sandwiched between that and a four hour pile of marking today, I had VATE on Saturday.

I felt dissatisfied with my VATE experience this year, apart from Ross Huggard’s presentation on Year 12 Creating and Presenting. He never fails to deliver. However, just one day didn’t do it for me this year, and the negatives obsessed me. I am utterly sick of those delegates in the audience who feel they have to contribute their own anecdotes whenever they get an opportunity; who hijack. I was in a small room with about twenty people and really wanted to hear what Susan La Marca and Pam McIntyre had to say about their new book, Knowing Readers. Yet I was surprised when Dr McIntyre spent too much time reading two picture books aloud to us like she was auditioning for Play School. I found the subsequent class activity twee and useless. It would have been enough to quickly relate Aidan Chambers theory from his book Tell Me, and trust that we’d be able to apply it in our own classrooms. But it took up time. As did three persistent audience members who felt they had to contribute their unoriginal thoughts on everything that was said. Unfortunately, both presenters happily listened, even encouraged these interjectors who were contributing such wisdoms as ‘kids say that they don’t like writing book reports’ or ‘it helps if you share your own love for books with your students’. Well, hello.

The presenters didn’t get through all their material, but three old teachers left the room feeling good about themselves and their invaluable contributions. I wasn’t one of them.

The forum, “Good English for Good Citizenship” was stimulating and one speaker, Mark Lopez, was provocative. I’m paraphrasing, but he said something which suggested that some students feel that they can’t confidently express their traditional, conservative or politically incorrect views to their English teachers, who are PC and left leaning. This was based on his experience as a tutor. It was infuriating to listen to, knowing how I’ve been shouted down by racist, homophobic students who think because there are more of them than me that they are right. He certainly stimulated responses, if not applause.

But the chair of the forum irritated me intensely, especially when the woman next to me mustered the courage to walk to the microphone to make a contribution and he made her stand there waiting while he told his own pompous little anecdote. And then I was trapped while the same chair received his life membership of VATE and I was forced to endure the accolades and his acceptance speech.

Just my opinion, of course. But VATE – and I know how much good tireless work this organization does – often seems to me like an exclusive little self-congratulatory Sunday afternoon club to which I’m certain I wouldn’t want to belong.

Next year, I expect I’ll return to the conference, but I’ll attempt to go for full immersion, instead of one day. If I survive the year 10s.

The art of the pathetic professional development presentation.

First, pay your audience to attend.

Last week. First week of term two.

Principal: I’d really like you and Helen to attend this Literacy PD.

Me: I did get the email about that PD but I didn’t think it would be appropriate for me as I attended a Literacy Coordinators’ conference for five days not so long ago at great expense to the school.

Principal: But they really want people to attend this PD. Maybe they haven’t had many takers because they’re prepared to pay schools to cover the cost of emergency teachers.

Me: But that will mean I’ll miss teaching my year 12s. Ahh, I suppose they’ll cope. They’ve got plenty of work to do. But Helen doesn’t normally work on Mondays. It’s her day off.

Principal: Do you think she might go anyway?

Me: Well, knowing Helen (very dedicated; always goes above and beyond the call) she won’t mind. Perhaps you could pay her the CRT money for working on her day off.

Principal: No. (Laughs nervously.) Well, I’ll put you both down for it.

Me: (Thinks. Hmm. Probably won’t be too bad. Two days off campus followed by Anzac Day on the Wednesday. It’ll be like a holiday week with a bit of learning thrown in. Pollyanna. Fool.)

The PD

A literacy resource has been created for literacy leaders in both primary and secondary state schools. This has been compiled by some hard-working seconded teachers who work for the department of education. The resource is actually useful in that it provides theory and teaching strategies and it’s linked to the Victorian Essential Learning Standards. The department is evidently keen to get it out there into schools. One requires a bit of time to get one’s head around this multi-layered resource; bit of time to read the dense text and work out all the interfaces. The PD time-out could be used very effectively to allow teachers to wrap their minds around it with a bit of planned direction.

But no.

Find a presenter who thinks very highly of itself. (Let’s protect this person by giving it anonymity, after all, this is just about me venting.) Give your presenter free rein to be spontaneous; to have a vague notion of where the day might serendipitously head. Allow the presenter to waste time by talking itself up and advertising its own private enterprise.

Find a presenter who claims to be a master of its field and who spends time explaining how clever it is and how much longer than everyone else it’s been teaching. Allow the presenter to bring in silly hats, bells, whistles, squeezy noise-makers, rattles and wigs. The presenter encourages us to play with and wear these toys. Isn’t the presenter a wag? Isn’t it jolly? Isn’t it so hilariously funny? Aren’t we all so stimulated to learn by this puerile patronizing adult play?

Spend the first forty-five minutes of everyone’s precious time getting them to introduce themselves around the room. That’ll get our presenter half way to morning tea break. Keep reminding the group of the time line for the day, rather than actually teaching them anything.

Tell the group they’re going to do a ‘jigsaw’ activity to share their expertise around the group. But first ask if anyone’s unsure what a ‘jigsaw’ activity is. Everyone knows, according to the lack of raised hands. But go on. Explain what the activity comprises anyway. After all, that’ll take up more time.

Now, give your captive teachers a vague task. They are required to read some brief theory about a literacy guru then share it with others in this jigsaw activity. “Right, you’ve got ten minutes. Right, stop. Time’s up,” our presenter says before we’ve had time to digest the material. Off we go to our allocated tables to try to sound intelligent. Somehow, we manage.

During the morning, we are encouraged to write our responses to the session on post-it notes and stick these to the whiteboard. Our presenter wants lots of notes. After lunch, our presenter – “I’m being very brave”, it says. “I’m not going to go home and cry” – reads out the negative comments. One reads. “This is vague and directionless. I have learnt nothing that I can use back in my school. It’s a waste of time.”

So, we’re made to ‘workshop’ this, and other negative comments, in groups. We’re required to valiantly turn the negatives into positives. We’re amazingly tolerant and kind in our responses. “Now wasn’t that a good activity? You can do the same with your own classes when they’re being negative!”

The post-it note activity takes around forty minutes. What had our presenter planned to do had five people in the group not been brave enough to write some honest comments?

And while all this transpires, our presenter drifts around the tables in a variety of wigs and hats, stating the bleeding obvious and big-noting itself, completely oblivious to the negative body language in the room despite being a self-proclaimed and no doubt masters-degreed expert in neuro-linguistic programming.

And I’ve got another day of it tomorrow. I regaled my hapless pharmacist with the story when I popped in to get another packet of Codral Day and Night tabs after the day had ended. Ironically, I would have had to stay home sick today had I been required to teach. His suggestion for coping with the second day of the presentation? When you get there, take two of the night time tabs.

I’d prefer to set my Year 10s on our presenter. They wouldn’t spare our presenter’s feelings.

Cheating

As a teacher of VCE English Units 3 and 4, I spend lots of time dealing with cheating in School Assessed Coursework. The fact that as teachers we can’t trust more than a few of our students really spoils the intent of the VCE English course.

In past years we allowed students to bring notes into Text Response and Craft of Writing SACs. To ensure consistency across classes, we specified that the notes had to be in the students’ own handwriting and that they were only allowed to bring in, say, two A4 pages. Of course, as specified in the Study Design the work had to be completed mostly in class and under teacher supervision. Seemed clear. Unfortunately, this allowed for cheating. Under such conditions, one student produced a film review vastly superior to anything that he had written, or that I believed he was capable of writing. Yet I’d supervised him, and the other students, closely during the SAC. He only had the permitted notes which I thought he’d produced largely under my supervision in a previous session.

At the next opportunity, I asked the boy to remain behind.

“Harry,” I said, “I don’t think this work is your own. You’re going to have to redo the SAC.” I can still see his open affronted mouth.

“I wrote that, I swear. You can ask anyone.”

“Look, Harry,” I said. “You’ve been getting a D average for the past two years. I know this isn’t your own work.”

“I swear to god it’s my work.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Harry, but I can’t accept it. I’m giving you the opportunity to repeat the task. You’re lucky to be given this opportunity. Many teachers would simply fail you.” I thought I was being extremely generous.

Just out of curiosity, I googled his work and, lo and behold, found the exact film review that he’d painstakingly hand-written on his two A4 sheets. He’d then evidently copied these a second time during the SAC.

Two days later, the principal summoned me. He questioned my supervision of SACs; demanded to know how I could have allowed this cheating to take place. You see, Harry had run home and told mum that his wicked teacher had accused her precious child of cheating. (By the way, how stupid was this kid??)

I explained exactly how Harry had managed to conceal his cheating and produced the article that the boy had plagiarised. Principal ordered me to ensure this never happened again. I must tighten up the procedure for SACs.

But mum was not mollified. Her hatred of me was put into writing for the record. How dare I suggest that her son wasn’t capable of producing A plus work? She trusted her son. Her son would never cheat. The teacher – me - was unprofessional and shouldn’t be allowed to teach let alone teach Year 12. And here’s the rub. Even after being shown the plagiarised documents she still didn’t believe that her son had cheated.

This incident prompted a review of our procedures for SACs. Students would no longer be permitted to use prepared notes during SACs.

Dictionaries would, however, still be permitted.

This year we’ve had a few incidences of students writing essays in their dictionaries. This happened in one of my classes. I was immediately suspicious when I noticed a student studying what appeared to be the Z section of his dictionary as soon as the SAC had begun.

In another teacher’s class, a student had meticulously typed an entire essay in about a 6 point font and had pasted it flawlessly throughout her dictionary.

Another of my students had his bag under his desk and for the duration of the SAC was taking surreptitious glances down at a page of prepared notes in his bag. I was very grateful to the student who dobbed him in because I had no idea, even though I was closely supervising. I just didn’t see him. He cheated so deftly and looked so innocent.

Another student, according to the posse that dobbed her in to the Year 12 coordinator, allegedly wrote parts of her essay on tiny scraps of paper concealed amongst the pencils in her pink pencil case. This one couldn’t be proved – the cleaner had emptied the bin where she’d allegedly disposed of the evidence - and the student had to be given the benefit of the doubt.

Now all bags and pencil cases must be placed at the back of the room before the SAC begins. Dictionaries must be surrendered to the supervising teacher at the start of the SAC. This hasn’t stopped kids writing essays on hands and arms. One desperate student had an intro on her palm and a topic sentence on each finger!

The craft of writing SAC is a joke. Our current practice – necessitated by the rifeness of cheating - is to ask students to produce a draft of each piece that they intend to complete in the SAC. Teachers comment on this first draft and make suggestions as to how it might be improved. Students must then reproduce this piece under exam conditions. Students with good memories can then vomit up what they’ve remembered. As if writers produce ‘finished’ pieces of writing in 90 minutes under such conditions.

We spend lots of time theorising about ‘Teaching and Learning’, and what is ‘powerful to learn’, thinking of all these wonderful ways to inspire learning. But this is the reality of the pressure of competition, disadvantaged desperate kids and the ENTER score.

What’s not working for me in teaching: meetings.

School Council Meeting. I’m wedged between two largish people at a long table. The table groans under its weight: plates of party pies and sausage rolls, hard cheese, soft cheese, three types of dips, rice crackers, sandwiches, with various tempting fillings, cut into little triangles, plates of sliced carb rich fruit. Squeezed amongst the plates and cups and saucers and brightly coloured paper napkins are drifts of papers to which people will talk as the meeting proceeds. I’m starving but food at this time is prohibited for me because I have Type 1 Diabetes. (And no, I don’t want a plate of carb free food at this juncture. Perhaps I’ll blog on the joys of diabetes some other time.) Besides. My father’s disdain for church ‘bun fights’ rubbed off on me a long time before I was diagnosed with diabetes.

So I’m the only person at the meeting not slavering with glee at the repast spread before us. The abundant food adds to my torture. My nose is almost in a plate of food but there’s nowhere to which to remove it. (My nose or the plate.) The chairs around the table are remarkably upright and close. I can almost feel the ample flesh of two enormous upper arms – one on each side of me – not mine – especially as they reach delicately across me for party pies before tucking them into their pie-holes. (One grasping hand has fake red manicured finger-nails at the end of sausage fingers adorned with too much bling.) The person on my right has gappy protruding teeth and talks with food in her mouth. Pastry has flaked onto her left breast and down onto her enormous navy polyester clad thigh.

I shouldn’t be noticing these details, a hidden agenda, I should be focusing on proceedings. But if I do I will fall sideways, probably onto the cushiony arm of the person on my left. In fact, it’s an appealing thought. I’m unutterably tired and the meeting is so god-awful boring that I’m nearly sick with stifled yawning; my eyes, barely open, are blurred with exhausted tears.

I should just pack it in. But I’m an elected staff rep at the beginning of a second two year term. I feel I’ll be disappointing my constituents if I resign. Laugh out loud.

Earlier. Same day. Curriculum Committee Meeting. I loathe this one. Our Leader lacks emotional intelligence and a sense of humour. The members of committee must mind the eggshells. (I wonder what it’s like to have people walk around one on eggshells.) The meeting, as usual, is repetitive and unproductive. Intelligent people with great ideas repress them lest Our Leader take umbrage, roll her eyes, and sulk for the next three weeks. My two worlds almost collide when we are taught how to blog on this very site. (Big scary adrenalin rush, but my secret is still safe.) We are to have an on-line ‘conversation’ – “these professional conversations – spotto new buzz word - are the most important aspect of Teaching and Learning”. Not a bad idea, but woe betide anyone who upsets Our Leader on-line. I clench every muscle that will clench for the duration to avoid letting Our Leader have it.

At the previous meeting Our Leader sanctioned me for making some innocuous quip, which got a laugh from those who dared to. The minutes possibly recorded my loud “It was a joke! Fuck!” Very unprofessional, I admit. (Another committee member later suggested that, for the benefit of our dour Leader, we should hold up smiley faces on poles to indicate levity.) Anyway, for the rest of the meeting I recited the lyrics of American Pie in my head to calm myself. (By the way, this works very well. I recommend it.)

The meeting ends eighty minutes after it began.

I’m dying with fatigue and I’ve still got to get through School Council.

I should just pack Curriculum Committee in. So much stress is not good. But I enjoy other aspects of being English Coordinator. Curriculum Committee is simply penance for The Fraud.

Same day. Six on. Double Year 12, double Year 7, double Year 10.

And I haven’t even started on the oxymoronic Professional Learning Teams.