This is now 4 years old... ...how time just disappears.


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H. Hello and welcome to another post...

H. The letter H has different pronunciations depending on where you come from. In Argentina the sound of the letter H is silent. In Spanish, when people laugh using text, one types in: "Jajajajajajajajajajajajajajajaja" in English, it is: "Hahahahahahahahahahahaha" The letter "J" in 'español' has the same sound as the letter "H" sound in 'ingles'. The word "hola" is "hello" but one pronounces it "orlah" and not "Horlar".  When it comes to the indigenous language of the Indigenous Australians or the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (Aboriginals), the language has a complete "Englishnasation" applied to it (Is there such a word?). I don't believe this has been a fair process, but since the British conquered this country and took over it despite the efforts of the Aboriginals first here, imagine if the Spanish or the Portuguese had arrived here first? What a disaster that wo...
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V. V is for Victory... ...a need to pick my battles.

V. I have had some victories at school as a practice teacher. I have been placed at Cambridge Park High School (CPHS) near Penrith and only 23 kilometres from home. In communication with other teachers, I have been asked whether Cambridge Park is somewhere near Cambridge in the UK and if there is a connection somehow. The association is immense and it will be an important accolade to be connected to such a great location in the world of education. On their website, it says: The mission of the University of Cambridge is to contribute to society through education, learning and research at the highest international level. What an excellent example of resilience, considering it has been a place of knowledge since 1209: The University of Cambridge is a collegiate research university in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's fourth-oldest surviving...
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Y. Y is for why on earth...

Y. I asked myself "why on earth" are the professors experimenting with how the course at University is delivered? Why are they changing things? Recently, I gained a "credit" pass for Action Research only to learn of how the mode for delivering the material was new and we were the guinea-pigs to the new course as previous students had complained and were not happy at the high failure rate and the high levels of low achievements gained.  What is important to understand is how we as teachers need to learn to also to adapt and change how we deliver our teaching when things don't work out as we had planned and we will be asked to modify our lessons when things don't work out.
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T. Teaching strategies begin with the setting of goals.

T. Teaching strategy - the setting of goals: For Module 5 - Professional Practice 102792 at WSU - instructions : Draft three clear goals.      You might like to align them with the teaching standards. Goals are about pedagogy, good teaching concepts, the understanding of theory and applying this knowledge to suit the students in your class and at school.        Goal 1 Being an effective teacher that makes a difference to the students: It is more than just presenting content.     Passing on knowledge of the content so that students remember.          Killen (2016) suggests that ‘effective teachers spend a considerable amount of time transforming raw content in forms that make it comprehensible to students” (p. 25). Australian Professional Teaching Standard 1 makes clear mention of this but needs to triangulate education to incorporate the “ability to teach” – as knowing your students and knowing how they learn is ...
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U. Universal Design for Learning at University

U. Way back when I began this career of teaching, I read somewhere back in 1998 how UDL or Universal Design for Learning was a new, radical way of teaching. I wish I could remember the book I read which said UDL needed to be used with caution as it was new, untested and required further investigation. In contrast, today, it has become one of the leading forms of communication between the teacher and the student. What is fundamental about UDL is explained by Novak (2019) in her introduction to Murawski and Scott's book on 'What Really Works with Universal Design for Learning': UDL is defined as the design and delivery of curriculum and instruction to meet the needs of all learners by providing them choices for what they are learning, why they are learning it and how they will share what they have learned. This idea follows 'Choice Theory' first proposed in 1998 by the great William Gasser, MD, from Ohio. Somehow, I have the original book called: Choice theory in the ...
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Z. Z is waking up my sleepy memory cells on something that happened a long time ago.

Z.  Back in 2003, I had a job as a senior designer at Snap Printing, Hornsby. At the time, this print shop was one of the biggest little instant printing facilities in the northern suburbs, with a staff of more than twenty and a comfortable turnover of $16,000,000 per year. It was a lucrative enterprise owned by Mr Geoff Davies and his business partner, Mr Miller. My task was to manage new business clients and develop new business opportunities for them through graphic design and creative services offered via the design studio, with a view of providing associated print services once I found creative solutions to their marketing.  In the design studio, I worked with Oliver, Sandii, and Chris. Anthony was the studio manager. Anthony was a great people person and was an expert in communicating with clients to facilitate and enable the business offerings we made. One element Anthony incorporated into our business model was to provide work-experience to students whose parents had a...
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J. Jajajajajajajajajajajajajaja is the best medicine.

J.  Sometimes, when there are three Js together, or even two Js together, I think of music. Some people see the letter J and think of Jar Jar Binks. I also think of the new-old word popping up everywhere considering the vaccinations: jab. However, when I see a single letter J, I think of laughter and how little of this medicine we have left, considering the last year we just had. If nineteen is a number you would like to forget it's important to think how a lot of the issues with a lack of laughter in our lives is dependant on attitude and people's point of view and the lack of open-mindedness or a positive frame of mind. Turns out that critical to the pandemic has been our preparedness in handling mental health and the sentiments that plague our community ahead of the dreaded Covid-19.  Will the vaccine cure the concerns created by the pandemic? Will the little "jab" finally fix mental illness that has plagued people in lockdown? This is why I feel that laughter is a...
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S. Self-Reflection

S. Self-reflection or as we are being taught at university, the importance of reflecting on our upcoming professional experience is the requirement of graduate teachers to be able to 'critically reflect' on practice and on our own progress. AITSL instructs professionals in the business of education to continue the process of continual development through "self-reflection and self-assessment" (p. 3) by applying the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers:  The Standards contribute to the professionalisation  of teaching and raise the status of the profession.  They could also be used as the basis for a  professional accountability model, helping to  ensure that teachers can demonstrate appropriate  levels of professional knowledge, professional  practice and professional engagement. The structure in place enables teachers to accomplish growth over a period of time: Graduate - 3 years; Proficient - 5 years; Highly Accomplished - 2 to 5 years; Lead...
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A. Annotations to becoming a reflective teacher - my A to Z of things...

A.  Teachers who on a regular basis think about why, what, and how they teach, are reflective educators (Killen, 2016). There is no better way to start my reflection than by looking at Roy Killen and his views on education. His vision from four years ago still resonates and drives me to become a better teacher.  But, let's not put all of our eggs in the same basket. There are others who have influenced my thinking about education and teaching as well. The best thing about my learning has been the discovery of teaching-ideals from Dr Roberto Parada at Western Sydney University. All of the knowledge he has passed on to preservice teachers, such as the fundamentals of pedagogy and the notion that all of what we learn at university, will only become real in the staffroom of a school and not in the classrooms with pupils. Why is this the case? Well, as Roberto tells us, all theory is good in theory, but what we learn in the classroom from the students themselves is what will shape ...
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X. X for xterminate

X. It has been ages since I have visited my blog. The issue has been this virus that has been going around and the problems that it brings. They have closed all schools and the city of Sydney is in lockdown. Students have been forced to stay at home, attempt 'online' education, and learn things on the internet. The real issue is not the students and the children attempting to go to school via the internet but the teachers trying to deliver learning in this way. How can teachers say they have succeeded as teachers when they are required to teach online?  Here I am, after three years in a Masters of Teaching course at one of the most advanced institutions in the world and not one single course on how to teach children online. It makes me wonder if the education system that we have is out of date and set in the dark ages. When I was teaching graphic design at Martin College in 2016, our parent company, Study Group, who are based in the United States, made a decision to place the c...
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