Teaching
There were six of us and we were around 10 years old. We had come together for Alice’s birthday and pretty much left to our own devices.
It was Alice’s idea to go to their attic. Attics were something the Secret Seven might explore - they did not exist in the houses I frequented. So Alice had already scored points with this plan. Little did I know the experiential gold that awaited.
Safely up the ladder, we clustered around her to see the reason for our ascent. There, in several old filing boxes, was at least a decade’s worth of Playboy, carefully stored away by Alice’s taciturn father.
Continue reading "The internet makes Playboy look like a Penguin Classic" »
It’s Dominique Goode’s first day of school. She’s wearing a pretty fuchsia dress and her brown hair is in a bun decorated with a sparkly butterfly clip. She walks into her kindergarten class with twenty six new students, one line of boys and one line of girls. Inside, Dominique puts on a bright orange name tag.
“Hands up if you can see Miss Goode’s name tag around her neck?” she asks the children who sit cross legged on the floor before her. All the hands shoot up.
Today is Miss Goode’s first day as a teacher as well as her students’ first day of formal education. She graduated from university last year and this is day one at Sacred Heart Primary School in Villawood in Sydney’s West.
Latest 2 of 16 comments
View all comments-
6clegs says:
Enjoyed the story. but i look at Ms Goode, and i can’t help but think about the poor sods who drew the short straws and have to deal with the tribe of unruly brat-children that live next door to me? I certainly hope [for new teachers across Tassie] that the… Read more »
-
Jon Dee says:
Great article Leigh - I really enjoyed reading it. It reminded me of the first day that my oldest daughter had at school. That in turn reminded me of my own first day at school - it’s funny how the milestones that your children achieve remind you of a similar… Read more »
In the mid 1990s the teachers credit union Satisfac came up with a kindly and seemingly innocent idea to celebrate the excellent work of its teacher members.
The credit union, which historically had served teachers but like many other institutions now has a wide customer base, decided that to recognise the role of the teaching profession in its own development it would establish an annual awards event called The Best Teacher Awards.
But when the awards were initially proposed the reaction from the teachers union was one of outrage and dismay. Satisfac was told in no uncertain terms to shelve the idea, with the union arguing it was the height of impertinence for a credit union – or anyone else for that matter – to declare that some teachers were better than others.
Continue reading "My School brawl exposes unions’ culture of mediocrity" »
Latest 2 of 57 comments
View all comments-
angryteacher says:
Without the time to read every comment, the idea of performance based pay for teachers will not work for one simple reason: no two schools, no two classes, no two students are exactly alike. How could the performance of a Year 1 teacher in a leafy inner city suburban primary… Read more »
-
Jolanda says:
Greg the keeping of my kids down was by the Selective Schools Unit (SSU) not by individual schools. The SSU tampered with their test marks and school applications in order to discredit them and me (as I was making public complaints to the media and the Minister) about the neglect… Read more »
The release of My School data as part of the Rudd Government’s ‘Education Revolution’ begs the question about a key issue in improving classroom performance – teacher standards and school-based professional culture.
We should pay teachers more and be seeking to attract more of our best young people into teaching. But we also need to address what is usually un-discussable industrially: poorly performing and unprofessional teachers in some schools.
When the Education Minister, Julia Gillard, reviews the data on classroom performance, more funding should not be the only response to target underperforming schools. Helping Principals shape high performance professional school culture will be just as important.
Continue reading "Why should teachers remain unaccountable?" »
Latest 2 of 81 comments
View all comments-
deb says:
First of all, I think that anyone who seeks teaching as a career should be held accountable for the students’ progress. There are many great teachers in the schools, but there are also many teachers in schools for the wrong reasons. There should be high expectations of teachers regardless of… Read more »
-
Maria Rattray says:
I can’t say I have read all these responses, but I’d like to steer the debate away from teacher-slanging and accountability if I may, and perhaps open another perspective to the debate. . Let me preface this by pointing out that today’s classrooms are a far cry from those experienced… Read more »
Great news today with Australian born molecular biologist Professor Elizabeth Blackburn being awarded the Nobel prize for physiology and medicine.
Professor Blackburn becomes the first ever Australian woman to be awarded the prize in any category and the 36th woman ever out of 789 individuals to win the award.
Like most Australians I had never heard of Blackburn or her amazing research before today, but it now appears we are in clambering with America to claim her as one of our own.
Continue reading "A Nobel win for Blackburn and the US universities" »
Latest 2 of 14 comments
View all comments-
Amused says:
The other side of the coin as far as the “brain drain” is concerned is that a lot of people with talent just don’t consider a research career. Why would you? You choose the hard science route, you’ve got four years undergraduate, three years PhD (at least) and then a… Read more »
-
Dr G says:
Dr M, Agree completely. I made the move to England 5.5 years ago as the only R&D opportunities available to me was in mining (not my interest), academia (lower salaries), or to move to the US or the UK. Granted, I work in a sector that doesn’t reward its people… Read more »
Facebook Recommendations
Read all about it
Punch live
Up to the minute Twitter chatter
Recent posts
The latest and greatest
ICB: If I could offer you only one tip for the future…
Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit, an irregular regular column on calumny and codswallop.…
Six prominent Aussies with a case of the dreaded “yips”
The yips. It’s an old golf term which refers to golfers who lose the ability to putt. They stand…
The humourless hysteria of the holier-than-thou
In I Spit On Your Grave, a young woman is gang raped in a remote woodland. She is beaten and tortured…
Nosebleed Section
choice ringside rantings
From: Punch on: Open thread 09/02/2012
marley says:
I'm one of the older ones, so I've certainly seen a few changes in my time. When I started school I learned to write with a nib pen, dipped in an inkwell (no, I'm not kidding). My mother became a dab hand at getting inkstains out of my clothes. Flicking ink at one another in the classroom was an essential… [read more]From: I’d rather have a piece of toast than listen to crap lyrics
Erick says:
Led Zeppelin are responsible for my all-time favourite mixed metaphor: "There you sit, sit and stare, like a book on a shelf rusting." (Misty Mountain Hop) I laugh every time I hear it. Hmmm, I believe I've decided what to play on the way to work today. [read more]Gentle jabs to the ribs
No wuckin forries. These nuckin futs are tuckin fops
Well, puck me with a fitchfork. The F-word is apparently an acceptable part of Australian speech. That’s… Read more
Latest 2 of 47 comments
View all commentsAdd your comment