Apr 26
I didn’t think I’d feel the need to write and reflect after the first day of term but now I feel like having a stiff drink to go with it. Last time I wrote in this state was my (in)famous goosebump story years ago in a different school. This morning, I got punched in the …
Apr 23
Yesterday, I took our two boys (aged 6 and 3) to a place where they could be their best. Not the only such place but a great one nevertheless. The place is called Naturescape, free and right in the heart of Perth’s Kings Park. It is an impressive place with a particularly impressive (if not …
Apr 05
Meet ‘Ricky’. He is Aboriginal, Noongar his people. He’d be a poster boy for many of the statistics and labels entrenched in public psyche about this group of people, particularly when young – low literacy, poor school attendance, lazy, the only good thing he can do is kick a footy, use hands, drawing and art …
Feb 14
This isn’t a ‘flipped classroom’. This isn’t ‘disruptive’ pedagogy or ‘disruptive technology’. This isn’t (just) about what is often understood as ‘critical thinking skills’. I had tinkered with it and applied it in pieces in a mainstream school. Only in dosaged pieces because at the heart of it, this thing goes against the purpose embedded …
Dec 01
I get to play at school. No, really. And so do our students. This time, we gave birth to an idea of converting a couple of broken plastic desktops destined for the rubbish tip into a giant Monopoly set (not a new idea). And this was not going to be just an extraordinary set in …
Nov 01
This is ‘Billy’. He is 15. He allowed me to post this photo of him from a visit to the local animal centre yesterday. This is one of my favourite photos. It means so much. A couple of months ago, Billy was in a bad, dark space where no young person (or adult for …
Oct 28
Most edu-bloggers, myself included, predominantly rain down on our keyboards to share our successes, ‘what works’, fire the odd rant and share musings on how things could, or even should, be. Well, I am writing today to share a struggle, possibly a failure. Excuse the odd expletive in there but they are part of the …
Sep 23
OK, another language warning. This morning alone, I was called a ‘dumb cunt’ by one student, told to ‘fuck off’ by another. Both after a small thing. But it turned out great. Here is the latter one. In a by now pretty standard way, I simply turned around and told him in a serious tone …
Sep 09
I have shamelessly re-purposed the title from what has to be one of my new favourite TED talks, alerted to by @malynmawby (Thanks Malyn!). See it below … Did you catch those points? Failure is normal. Nobody knows ahead of time how long it takes anyone to learn anything. Work your ass off until you …
Aug 29
I got some very kind replies on Twitter about this ‘golden moment’ so I thought I’d expand and tell the full(er) story. Quick background: Our class (well … group) is in the middle of (re)designing our room. We have come up with a design, we’ve found and from today already have a large, lovely second-hand …
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