Category Archives: For parents

Dear Parents/Guardians, Welcome to the VCE!

Posted on by
Reply

Welcome to VCE, the two most important years in the life of your child. In many ways I think it’s such a pity that they remain such a make or break part of an adolescent’s secondary education – but until attitudes change and the powers recognise that our children could be so much more if we were not all subjected to the same test, on the same day, at the same hour and all just to get a number which isn’t even out of a nice round number like say…100. No, the highest ATAR score any child can achieve is 99.95. All well and good. BUT this number or ranking has a massive lead into period, only to be valid for just a short time while universities get their acts together and make an offer. After that the rating is invalid – no one really ever asks again, do they? Then there are other students who work their way through an equivalent course so as to gain a VPC certificate. They don’t sit VCE exams and therefore do not gain an ATAR score. They go onto apprenticeships and/or TAFE courses. Some students add in VET combinations that can enhance both VCE and VCAL courses. A number of Victorian secondary schools also offer their students the Baccalaureate. All are invaluable experiences that I hope the students appreciate and take full advantage.

This is all great news but what I really want to focus on in this post is what you as parents or guardians can do to assist and support your children as they enter and complete their last two years of secondary education with an emphasis on VCE/VET certificates leading to an ATAR score.

Make an effort to eat dinner together as a family unit where possible. This will give you an opportunity to ask about their day but don’t just ask how their day was, be more precise. For example, ask them what they enjoyed about school today, what was their ‘ah ha’ moment, what challenged them, what surprised them.

Encourage them to share their learning with you. This can be done while you’re cooking or walking the dog. My eldest would read her essays aloud to me while I was preparing dinner. It helped her grasp her thinking and attend to any errors. I didn’t even have to say anything. If you think they could improve, ask them to tell you more about this or that – this will help them articulate their thinking and be more insightful.

You might like to read their English or Literature text so you can prompt them or at least know what they’re discussing in those essays.

If they are unsure, have questions, or don’t seem to grasp the concepts, encourage them to seek assistance from their teachers, if not that, remind them that there are other teachers who also teach the same subject. They might have someone else they trust.

Remind them that there is more to life than that ATAR score. The final years of secondary education should have balance. You’ve heard it all before, make sure they are getting enough sleep, eat well, interact with friends and family, do things they enjoy, watch a movie, go to dinner or a concert, work part-time – balance is key here.

Don’t pressure them, let them know you’re there, communicate, love, encourage and celebrate. Oh, and get them to write often, with a pen! You’ll thank me later!

All the best.

Thanks for reading 🙂

What is teaching ready?

Posted on by
Reply

Over the last few weeks I’ve been marking Teaching Performance Assessments (TPA) submitted by my 4th year pre-service teachers (PSTs). I have to say nothing in marking has given me more pleasure than reading and assessing PART 1 where they share their context, student group, lesson plans and mentor feedback, and write about their experiences on placement, and what this may mean for their future learning. In a few weeks this latest group of PSTs will complete their studies and hopefully most of them will be out there making a difference to children’s lives.

Every TPA I read was unique, every student had their own way to present and every subject & topic was different. I was enthralled with some of the strategies they used to engage the students from primary, secondary, international, and special schools. This cohort of PSTs are what the Chief Examiner calls ‘bipedagogical.’ They have experienced both face to face and online teaching (no need to explain why). They have experienced the same trials and tribulations as many of my colleagues, moving from one to the other sometimes within hours due to sudden lockdowns. It got me thinking…

The ‘bipedagogical’ teacher

What does it mean to be teaching ready?

Lots and lots and lots of hard work.

Today, it’s not just about the subject or unit you’re teaching. Expertise in these areas is, of course, important but before you get to share this, it is imperative to establish a safe and secure learning environment where you can build relationships with students and understand the contexts from which they come. I’ve shared some ideas about building relationships before here and here. My PSTs on the whole recognised how context affects learning. It means you need to prepare and cater for a diverse range of learners, your learners, in this classroom or in this learning space. It’s pretty daunting coming into an online space with a group of students you’ve never met before from a school you may or may not have visited in person and work with a mentor whom you’ve only recently met.

I often mention to my PSTs that they need to always be carrying a great big bag around (metaphorically of course – as we teachers know, we already have enough ‘stuff’ to cart around), which they can fill with strategies for teaching, learning and reflecting. Every time they see, hear, feel and think of an idea they can use in teaching and learning, they have a place right there into which they store it for that off chance they just might need it in the future. And they will. Even I bagged a few new ones for myself as I was reading through their TPAs. 

The strategy bag

Though these strategies might already be in that bag, somewhere, I might not have used them in a while, or it might be that my PSTs thought about it differently or presented it more creatively than I have thought to do. 

I wanted to share just two that I really liked. 

The first is around questioning for feedback. Think about how you ask your students if they had enough time to finish their task and the connotation that has on them as a learner. “Have YOU had enough time? This type of question might make them feel inadequate or slow if they haven’t completed the task. But what if we turned the question on its head? 

“Have I given you enough time?” What does this question say to our learners now?

The second strategy is an ICT tool called ‘Pear Deck’. Have you heard of it? I hadn’t but it sounded good, so I looked it up. The tech allows you to turn presentation slides like PPTs into interactive activities for your students or anyone else for that matter, so they can actively engage with the learning. Here are 20 ways to use it. My PST used it in his Year 10 English class to have students work as a group or individually at their own pace, responding to questions. Their responses come to your screen where you can give immediate feedback, and can also be shared anonymously on the slide projector for the whole class to discuss.

So, what is teaching ready? Well, for me there’s a list;

  • it’s building relationships,
  • being reflective
  • understanding context,
  • learning how students engage,
  • having expertise in your teaching areas,
  • planning explicitly for teaching and learning
  • understanding how to give and receive feedback for learning,
  • be willing to learn things yourself and …
  • loving it all!

Thanks for reading 🙂

 

Day 10: Berlin – the process of coming to terms with your own history.

Posted on by
Reply

Let’s wrap this up eh?

Shall we do Berlin today?

I think so.

Travelling from Verona, via Munich, we arrive at Berlin TX on the 8th July, 2016. From there a bus and train ride to Alexanderplatz, the centre of East Berlin where we were greeted by a summer downpour ☔️ which lasted only as long as it took to run into a convenience store to buy an umbrella! We stayed at the Park Inn overlooking the plaza where there was a wine and food festival happening. We ate and drank very well that week!

Our interest in WW1 and the Western Front was covered in a couple of posts earlier here and here, but we are also very much interested in all things WW2. While in Berlin we booked multiple walking tours to find out as much as possible about Berlin, and about the Holocaust. We were not disappointed. I highly recommend these walking tours. We used Insider Tours but there are many others. 

Berlin Wall, My journal, 2016

At the wall, 2016

It has not always been pretty for Germany. Memorials to those times are prevalent all over Germany, the Topography of Terror, is one that bears witness to these. Germany is the only place that is ‘working through a process of coming to terms with its own history’ still. Kollwitz’s Pieta’ (AKA ‘Mother with her dead son’) provides the focal point within a monochromatic room behind the columns of the Neue Wache building, otherwise sparse, the open sky peeks through the circular opening directly above it. The eerie Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, consisting of 2711 grey slabs ranging in height from 20cm to just over 4.5 metres. As you walk through you are engulfed in the grey, you feel lost and alone and melancholic. You just want to run, run, run, to escape, but where is out??? Is it enough to dedicate such a memorial? Will anything we do be enough? 

Memorials of the Holocaust – My journal 2016

Hitler’s bunker now filled with concrete and covered by a dirty, unkept carpark surrounded by public housing  – is that enough? Visiting the many concentration camps, not only in Germany but in many other places, to remember, to pray, to weep. For those who have visited them you know there is not much to say. You arrive with angst and anticipation, courageous even, and while you think you’re ready – you are most definitely not. I wasn’t. I was overcome even more so than at the Western Front. I could hear their screams in the silence. I could hear their silence.

Sachsenhausen Concentration camp

Nothing prepares you. It is after these particular experiences that my journals save me. Once I get back and even sometimes on the way home to our hotels, my journals are where I put my emotions. I tear paper, sections from brochures, I scribble and draw, scratch and write down things I heard said, feelings I felt and memories I must never forget. It calms me. Then I can sleep and be prepared for the next day. Without my journals I am spent.

It is only then that I can find sanity in amongst all the madness.

Museum Island, Berlin – Queen Nefertiti (c. 1340BCE)

After the madness

It was after one of these walking tours that we decided to spend some time on Museum Island. There were two specific exhibits I needed to see with my own eyes. Queen Nefertiti, ‘the beautiful one has come’, stands in the centre of the room at the Neues Museum, surrounded by glass and visible down the centre of a series of open doorways. I fell in love with her. 

The second was the Ishtar Gate, I mentioned in an earlier post. “Simply stunning” is all I wrote next to an image in my journal. I was obviously overwhelmed at its impact. You certainly are dwarfed and to be able to walk right up to it and view its detailed stone work was worth it. It was getting very late and they were closing but I was happy to have seen these most wonderful pieces of history.

Last drinks in Berlin, My journal, 2016 – Cheers!

And so it ends

Alas our 10-day holiday journal adventure has come to an end. Without my journals, my travels would be a litany of endless photographs of people and selfies, artworks and architecture, streets and villas, monuments and landmarks. Pictures and photographs are worth 1000 words. They can be interpreted and discussed, and prompt the most wonderful of stories. Using visuals is a wonderful creative process that I use constantly in my teaching, but the journals are a culmination of the emotions experienced; nothing could replace them. 

Thank you for reading my holiday posts and a special mention to those who took the time to engage with comments and clicks. I do hope you enjoyed the travels. I know I took great pleasure in traveling through my journals again, especially in this time of uncertainty. Perhaps I could do it again some time soon. I have many things I did not share. Some I never will, but still…

Thanks for reading 🙂

Day 9: I think Verona & Venice are the go today

Posted on by
Reply

Joe and I outside the Arena, 2016

In 2016, Joe and I joined our colleagues at the Western Front for the 100th anniversary, but before this we made a couple of pitstops including Verona and Venice.

Verona

So on the 6th July we left our family in Calabria, taking off from Lamezia to Rome and then onto a connecting flight to Verona. We got there okay but our luggage decided to have a sleep over in Roma!!!

Luggage tags – don’t ever throw out your luggage tags. This was the only way I finally got my bags back!

We loved Verona, we stayed at this beautiful B&B (Art & Breakfast), literally around the corner from the Arena. We bought tickets for AIDA the next morning because another couple also staying at the B&B had been the night before and recommended it. Best show they’d ever seen! They were so right. “Spectacular sets, amazing lighting, great atmosphere! [Aida] is Amneris’s slave, the king’s daughter and is secretly in love ❤️ with an Egyptian General named Radames. ❤️He loves her too ❤️”

Aida at the Arena di Verona, My journal 2016

During our stay in Verona we invited friends Mauro and Franca, who drove from Casole d’Elsa for the day. We stayed as their guests in the town on a previous trip. It was great to catch up with them! We had lunch at Romeo’s place – yes really, that Romeo, Juliet was just around the corner 🤣❤️ We saw her just before lunch. I really loved Verona and all it had to offer.

Lunch, My journal 2016

Venice

The first time we visited Venice was on our family trip in 2007. Venice was just a last minute addition.

“I cannot believe that I had not put Venice on our list. If there is one thing everyone must do, it is to go there and have a gondola ride. It was magnificent, very beautiful and peaceful. Everyone loved it and at €100, was worth it!”

24 April, 2014

“A very comfortable taxi ride to Milan Central €12:50 and then a couple of hours in a Frecciabianca and we found ourselves in the ❤️City of Love ❤️.”

25 April 2014 – ANZAC DAY

We’ve been to Venice a few times and it never ceases to amaze. That morning, we paid our respects to our own diggers in Piazza San Marco at the raising of the flags ceremony.  We then boated out to Murano, Burano and Torcello Islands. We watched glass blowers creating amazing work on Murano, lacemakers weaving their magic on Burano and visited a tiny little church from the Middle Ages at Torcello!

“Brightly painted houses, legend says that the town of Burano – a fishing village, once had its houses painted in different colours so the fishermen would be able to easily find [them] … when returning … in the dark. Well known also for its beautiful lace and yummy biscuits called bassolá.”

 

My journal 2014

“I liked Burano the best.”

I do hope you’re enjoying the holiday journal. Just one day left. Hmmm, I wonder where we’ll go for our final stop? Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading 🙂

 

Day 8: In Martone, Italy, we meet family & friends we never knew we had!

Posted on by
Reply

My Journal, 2014

One of the happiest and proudest moments I think my husband experienced on our travels together was when we visited his mother’s birth town of Martone. 

8 May 2014

While visiting family close by, “we took the opportunity to visit Martone. This was a 10-minute drive up the hill with the most gorgeous views over the water and little townlets (sic) built into the mountain side. Martone is a little place at the top. After parking the car we walked up to the church. … We went over to a group of people sitting outside to ask if they knew where [my husband’s] mum’s family home was located. This was the beginning of a wonderful sequence of events that led us to find cousins and friends who remembered not only his mum (who left the town when she was 15) but who also still kept in contact with Zio Peppe’! [his mum’s brother in Australia]. An elderly gentleman took us up to the house- not 100 metres up the road and then we were invited into a bar [Osteria ‘La Via del Vino’] owned by a cousin*, Carmela, where she offered us chinotto and where we spent the next hour talking of old times and of people they remembered. It made Joe [my husband] very happy. He wanted to take photos of the street, the people and the church, as if I hadn’t already done so. We met Carmela’s son, Giorgio, and after fond farewells went to the cemetery to pay our respects to other family members who had passed. Joe was soooooo happy and excited to have seen the place. It was terrific!”

Joe in Martone, 2014

*not Joe’s cousin as such but related somehow to the family (twice removed) – you know how it is… 🤣

Thanks for reading 🙂