Beyond a Blackboard

Each morning, I open my can of energy drink in the secrecy of the staff room. This is smuggled inside of my bag and often drunk alone, the evidence carefully stashed in the staff recycling bin. I then move stealthily to my classroom, energized for the day. On this journey I will publicly advertise the fruit or health bar that I have brought for breakfast.  This spruiking of healthy ideals continues  during fitness, when I run the laps of the field with my learners, in silent reading, as I read alongside my learners, or at morning tea when I proudly take out my lunchbox filled with nutritious goodies.  As I teach at a health-promoting school, I am constantly discussing well-being with my learners: We have conversations about the benefits of physical activity before fitness each morning, while the school rules make special mention of the unacceptability of soft drinks and lollies within the grounds. The rules about sustained sile nt reading and book logs...

There are some things that we ask our learners to do over and over, so that they might improve. Each week we ask children to start a new piece of writing, 'moving on' from the work that they previously completed. Perhaps we put their best pieces on the wall, or bring out their books so that their parents may flick through when visiting. Is the teachers red pen an authentic audience? I can see why children become frustrated with this system, when they are writing their tenth story of the term, going through the process as their previous work sits unread in their writing book or worse, crumpled in their tote trays. I have even seen children recycle their own pieces of work. Of course, I understand that in order to improve in writing, children must write. It is the same with reading and maths.  I know that the intrinsically motivated child will continue to write until they see progress or feel like they have mastered a particular genre.  But can't we give them an a...

You never forget your first job. My professional journey began as a waitress in the hospitality industry, fresh out of high school and new to the working world. But before I headed to University to study education, I was already having experiences that would appear in my lesson plans. On my first shift, I was completely shocked at the amount of food that was wasted. We were serving a buffet lunch and dish after dish of half eaten platters were removed from the buffet table and dumped in to the rubbish. Even more mind-boggling was the fact that there was a homeless shelter only a few minutes' walk away. Yet when I asked my supervisor why food could not be donated, they explained that the company would be held liable if anything were to go wrong.This is the same argument that supermarkets make regarding the unsold food that they throw out.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_waste_in_New_Zealand I was intrigued when I learnt that France was proposing a ban tha...