#edchatnz

Today was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Of all the musings on the Ashley Maddison leak - and believe me, there are many interesting ones - the Herald, today, ran this as their lead story: 

Email addresses from 65 New Zealand schools are in data leaked from controversial adultery website Ashley Madison, prompting calls for an investigation into whether staff were using the website during school time.

From where these calls are coming, the article doesn’t say. What the Herald is proposing, however, is essentially that every school should undertake a witch-hunt of how its teachers use the internet. That same demand could, of course, be made of Ministry of Justice officials, politicians, or, you know, people living in the Bay of Plenty. But the Herald has, once again, chosen to target its whipping boy-du jour, our nation’s teachers. 

Take a peek of the Herald’s education section. Go on. Here’s just a selection of the latest headlines from the past week:

“Tensions boil over at troubled boarding school”

“Auckland Grammar teacher facing seven years in jail for fraud”

“Teacher censured over sexual relationship with student”

...and my personal favourite:

“The school that started with a murder”

The issue with this wall-to-wall coverage of teacher misdemeanours is that it inevitably seeps into our collective psyche. There’s only so long the average New Zealander can retain a high perception of teachers when our nation’s most influential newspaper is telling them what deviant miscreants we are every single day. 

Perception also breeds reality. There’s only so long we, as teachers, can read about how scurrilous we all are before we begin buying into the narrative, too. A demoralised teaching force is the last thing our students need. 

I was looking at formulating data to help direct the optimal teaching time and saw a Twitter Chat taking place today, with the # primednz.  I submitted a question in regard to it the focus of my TAi was unsure about the value of the feedback that I was likely to receive, as the chat was taking place during the holidays in the second week.   It was not amazing, as I received scant replies with one professional reading suggested.  The figure of seven/eight minutes came up; relating to the time that adults can understand information from; this is something I've been looking for and trying to locate, several people have mentioned it to me as a fact, however I can't confirm this nor can I find an adjusted for students.

I have been reflecting on my instructional time at Auroa.  This year, at the start of the year I was still in my previous mindset, which was the students needed to have everything explained.  Once I realised that I would be looking at it for my TAI the times really came into focus.  I had an excellent discussion with Dianne Handley about it.  Her advice was time everything and check everything.  This was something I had contemplated but I was really surprised how out i was.  I have been giving verbal instructions with the students and making statements about time but not following up to ensure the timing was accurate.  I wont put in here how far out I was getting but lets just say that it was significant (such as "you have ten minutes to complete this task").  

The next step is that I want to try this again but use the Teacher Ed Chat which takes place on Thursdays, during the term time.  There's a significant number of educators and teachers who contribute regularly to that.  It could be a valuable source of potential readings and material as well as the opinions of other educators.

This is probably the most helpful from todays discussion.  I will update when I have viewed the professional reading.