Tag Archives: journey

Dear Parents/Guardians, Welcome to the VCE!

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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 🙂

Aspire Day – my first face to face in 2 years

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Back to school

This week I nervously fronted up for my first face to face experience in over two years. It was a session with approximately 100 Year 11 students who were taking part in what the school called Aspire Day. My task was to inspire them into thinking about where they want to be and what steps they might take to get there. Students have been in lockdown for the best part of two years, dealing with issues at home, with their own sense of wellbeing while also trying to keep up their education via online learning. That meant no practical classes as such, no experiments, except perhaps watching you tube videos, no physical education classes, no team sports and definitely very little time spent in person with their mates or other family members aside from those they live with.

So too did teachers.

Since returning to onsite learning this year, many schools have continued and even bolstered activities to do with wellbeing for both students and teachers. Aspire day at this particular school was one such way to bring students and their homeroom teachers together to celebrate, reflect and plan for the future. 

2022

While I was nervous for the first few minutes, once I got into it, well, it’s like riding a bike as they say. I so enjoyed being with the students, moving around the auditorium (at a distance of course). It almost felt a little unreal. So many faces looking at you directly, at least for the most part. At times some of them would close their eyes, flop down into their chair, become distracted around their mates, but hey, so would I after so long in front of a screen. It didn’t bother me as I had most of them in my sights, lots of nodding and smiling and recognition amongst the 100 strong crowd. Some even giggled at my jokes every now and then and raised their hands to respond to questions I asked. And, just because their eyes were resting, didn’t necessarily mean they were not listening. I’m an optimist after all. Plus, I asked them how they were feeling and they did say they were tired. All good.

 

Year 11 responses

I also asked them where they see themselves in five years’ time. This is a tough question for many of us, let alone a bunch of very tired 16-17 year olds. Still, it was interesting to read their responses. Among one or two, ‘no idea’ responses we did see some very positive forward thinking: ‘successful’ (whatever that means), ‘builder’, ‘owning my own business’, ‘university’, ‘business marketing’, ‘having a full time job’, ‘rich’ to list a few. My favourite was ‘in New York’! Along with these, there were also a few concerning responses. Not surprising but worth following up by their teachers. I won’t share these here.

That said, I was reassured that after what we have all been through, and will continue to experience, our students are a shining light. They have dreams and hopes. We never gave up on them and all that hard work trying to keep them on track has and will continue to pay off. After all that’s why we teach, yes?

I so enjoyed the session and am looking forward to many more opportunities to visit schools and work with both staff and students. 

Thanks for reading 🙂

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

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

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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 🙂

Day 7: Our 25th Wedding Anniversary – London calling

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Our 25th Wedding Anniversary was pretty much all organised by our eldest daughter, who had spent the previous 6 months studying at Oxford Brooks University in Oxford, UK. I left her there after our visit to the Holy Land. After a week together in London and Oxford, checking it out to ensure she would be ok, I returned home on my own. That, I have to say was tough.

“Rather teary farewell but she’ll be fine and in no time we’ll be off again to London to reunite as a family. This will be a great experience for Nikola, one which I would not take from her. … Can’t wait to hug Jules and P xxx … A presto Nikola ❤️”

Anyhow, she organised it all. We just had to get to London. My husband, our youngest daughter Julia and I arrive in London on the 18th.

18 December, 2011

“We were lucky when we got to our hotel at 7:30am or so cause our room was free, so we went straight in … we arrived to a temp of -0.5° C!!”

“Our road, Penywern, is actually prettier than our street from last time”

We stayed at London Town Hotel. Penywern Road is mostly white buildings that light up in Christmas blue at 4 pm – which is pretty much already dark.

While Nikola traveled on the bus from Oxford to London to meet us, we had breakfast.

“She arrives about 9:30 am. She looks good but sounds different … She’s become very independent like even more than she was at home!!”

All together again, 2011

Our anniversary apparently begins today. Off to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, then Surprise number 1 – Madame Tussauds. 

Day 1 over, we return to Earl’s Court, Nikola catches the bus back to Oxford. She has an exam the next day!

19 December, 2011 – While Nikola sits her last exam we experience Surprise number 2 – Tower of London

20 December, 2011 – Our 25th Wedding Anniversary

“Slept in, missed breakfast LOL! Dressed and off to Westminster Abbey. Porridge, danish and hot chocolate out front. LOL!”

After a tour of the Abbey and celebratory pre-Christmas ritual, Nikola meets us again outside and off we trot to Surprise number 3 – London Show of Billy Elliott at Victoria Palace Theatre!! Wow, wow, wow.

Finally, that night, we travel in a black cab to Surprise number 4!

My journal, 2011

The whole time I was secretly hoping Jamie would come out to say hi, but alas, he wasn’t there. That aside, the meal was D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S. Our mains consisted of fritto misto, tagliatelle, chicken liver tortes and squid risotto!

“… and dessert, OMG they had BOMBA on the menu, same dessert served at our wedding back in 1986! I told the waiter who promptly brought a piece out with a candle – on the house! Only thing better was if Jaime himself had served it hahaha. Waiter blew me a kiss when we left. Great day – Thanks!”

Thanks for reading 🙂