I don't want any more pets.
Love them as I do, I'm not sure I want the pets I have.
I'm not meant to nurture living things.
If my children didn't know where the peanut butter is they wouldn't make it through some days.
I wish, instead of dogs & cats & turtles & children I just had siamese fighting fish.
At least when they go postal at each other all the mess stays in one bowl...oh, and you're not allowed to flush your nine-year-old down the toilet when you're tired of him or he's torn off his sister's head.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Nyah nyah! My school's better than your school...
If you have a child in school, there’s a good chance you were one of the thousands of parents who helped crash the www.myschool.edu.au school comparison website last week.
How’s that for a show of parental competitiveness and involvement – so proud!
There’s a lot of concerns about this site, especially in small, country towns like mine.
How can an average government school of 50 kids – from Reception to Year 12 - square up alongside a private school with more than that many kids in a single grade?
Well, myschool tells us it just can’t.
The myschool site is confirming all country school parents’ greatest fear that:
numbers = resources = results = more resources & more numbers
Little country schools have an awful lot of red shaded rectangles showing up on their pages and yes, it is disappointing, maybe even demoralising, for those students, teachers, families busting their butts to find out that…well…it’s still not good enough.
But when we’re talking about resources I think it’s important to point out that the most important resource in education is people. Real live, sweating, bite-my-tongue-and-get-down-to-work people.
For instance, in schools where just one or two local teachers stick with a single grade over several years, their teaching ability becomes very clear in the NAPLAN (National Assessment Program Literacy & Numeracy) results.
And, at my school, I’ll make you a bet that that same Year 3 group that’s doing better than the school’s other grades will score equally high next year with the same teacher and different kids.
How’s that for an uplifting example of just one person making a real difference?
But it’s not just teachers who make the difference.
While a larger school, with bigger, better music or sports programs may be able to hire the best – in some smaller communities, equally wonderful people are donating their time, and getting great results too.
Maybe it’s about pride and ownership? And if so, then the big question is how do we get our students, teachers, communities and governments to take more pride in our schools – our small, country, red-shaded schools – and invest more resources?
I’d suggest we need to celebrate our successes better.
Support our teachers and school teams more.
Get off our arses and help out – before and after our own kids leave our local schools. It’s not just parents who have something to give to their local school communities.
But, you know what?
People in small country towns know that their kids are disadvantaged for resources and rich in great people. We’ve always known that.
But, conversely, not every city school is going to have better results or be better suited to your child than the small, underfunded one he or she is currently attending.
I’d rather have my hormonal pre-teens surrounded by people I know, who know me, and who care about all of us…and who are too embarrassed to lose their temper because they know they’ll have to front up to me on the netball court the following Saturday.
I want teachers who are invested in my kids, and schools that are working for better results.
I want a school whose team looks at those results on the (constantly crashing) website and says ‘bugger that, we’re better than that and we can prove it’.
So – I think www.myschool.edu.au should be the making of a lot of schools.
The ones who dismiss the figures (& pretty red and green boxes) as irrelevant, are fooling themselves.
Schools are quite happy to hand out reports - what's wrong with them occasionally receiving one.
This site isn't negative - it's just statistical. And we all know the old saying about statistics don't we? (You don't? Really? Well what did YOU learn at school?)
The idea that we shouldn’t be able to publicly publish those tables in the media is ridiculous!
We publish the top five holiday destinations, we publish the five most dangerous cities…crap, we’ve published the five favourite sex positions in 25 countries.
We publish who is better than who – every year, every week – on the footy field. And if we put in as much support, money and pride into our schools as we do our sporting teams then all our kids would be kicking goals academically.
For those who say you can’t compare schools…I say suck it up. Of course you can. Parents want to.
We are a nation of comparison shoppers and we want the best.
Now the challenge is to be the best.
And that’s not just about SACE results – it’s about nurturing, community involvement and opportunities - as well as academic success.
But let's face it, if you're falling down in the academic arena and you're a school - well, you better have one hell of a good music program going for you.
How’s that for a show of parental competitiveness and involvement – so proud!
There’s a lot of concerns about this site, especially in small, country towns like mine.
How can an average government school of 50 kids – from Reception to Year 12 - square up alongside a private school with more than that many kids in a single grade?
Well, myschool tells us it just can’t.
The myschool site is confirming all country school parents’ greatest fear that:
numbers = resources = results = more resources & more numbers
Little country schools have an awful lot of red shaded rectangles showing up on their pages and yes, it is disappointing, maybe even demoralising, for those students, teachers, families busting their butts to find out that…well…it’s still not good enough.
But when we’re talking about resources I think it’s important to point out that the most important resource in education is people. Real live, sweating, bite-my-tongue-and-get-down-to-work people.
For instance, in schools where just one or two local teachers stick with a single grade over several years, their teaching ability becomes very clear in the NAPLAN (National Assessment Program Literacy & Numeracy) results.
And, at my school, I’ll make you a bet that that same Year 3 group that’s doing better than the school’s other grades will score equally high next year with the same teacher and different kids.
How’s that for an uplifting example of just one person making a real difference?
But it’s not just teachers who make the difference.
While a larger school, with bigger, better music or sports programs may be able to hire the best – in some smaller communities, equally wonderful people are donating their time, and getting great results too.
Maybe it’s about pride and ownership? And if so, then the big question is how do we get our students, teachers, communities and governments to take more pride in our schools – our small, country, red-shaded schools – and invest more resources?
I’d suggest we need to celebrate our successes better.
Support our teachers and school teams more.
Get off our arses and help out – before and after our own kids leave our local schools. It’s not just parents who have something to give to their local school communities.
But, you know what?
People in small country towns know that their kids are disadvantaged for resources and rich in great people. We’ve always known that.
But, conversely, not every city school is going to have better results or be better suited to your child than the small, underfunded one he or she is currently attending.
I’d rather have my hormonal pre-teens surrounded by people I know, who know me, and who care about all of us…and who are too embarrassed to lose their temper because they know they’ll have to front up to me on the netball court the following Saturday.
I want teachers who are invested in my kids, and schools that are working for better results.
I want a school whose team looks at those results on the (constantly crashing) website and says ‘bugger that, we’re better than that and we can prove it’.
So – I think www.myschool.edu.au should be the making of a lot of schools.
The ones who dismiss the figures (& pretty red and green boxes) as irrelevant, are fooling themselves.
Schools are quite happy to hand out reports - what's wrong with them occasionally receiving one.
This site isn't negative - it's just statistical. And we all know the old saying about statistics don't we? (You don't? Really? Well what did YOU learn at school?)
The idea that we shouldn’t be able to publicly publish those tables in the media is ridiculous!
We publish the top five holiday destinations, we publish the five most dangerous cities…crap, we’ve published the five favourite sex positions in 25 countries.
We publish who is better than who – every year, every week – on the footy field. And if we put in as much support, money and pride into our schools as we do our sporting teams then all our kids would be kicking goals academically.
For those who say you can’t compare schools…I say suck it up. Of course you can. Parents want to.
We are a nation of comparison shoppers and we want the best.
Now the challenge is to be the best.
And that’s not just about SACE results – it’s about nurturing, community involvement and opportunities - as well as academic success.
But let's face it, if you're falling down in the academic arena and you're a school - well, you better have one hell of a good music program going for you.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Rumbling tummies & wandering minds...
After a day of sightseeing with visitors TheKids were starting to lose interest and tummies were grumbling.
I realised it was time to go when BoyChild - standing in the sand just 20m from a sealion as it reared up like a furred, magnificent, Jabba the Hut - looked the creature up and down contemplatively and said simply:
"Hey mum, what do you think they'd taste like?"
I realised it was time to go when BoyChild - standing in the sand just 20m from a sealion as it reared up like a furred, magnificent, Jabba the Hut - looked the creature up and down contemplatively and said simply:
"Hey mum, what do you think they'd taste like?"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)