Things I have learned

Thank you BCIB, you rock my world.
I had an awful gut feeling about this Abortion Bill bruhaha and you've articulated what I haven't had the brain-space or knowledge to say (or possibly the nance to research properly): its a crock. The angst about late-term abortion is completely disproportionate to its presence in society. It would be like the US banning Australians because Phillip Island has drugs. I wish I had enough energy to do something more. Will I have enough energy to provide a diplomatic, amoral response to my students when they ask what its all about during our discussions about democratic processes..? Will I flinch and wonder if their parents understand what's going on...

The energy for this post, however, is fall out from previous whining. I found BCIB's thoughts when hoeing into my feeds and I was sill itchy after lamely nyer-ing at the Melbourne Herald Sun about their inflammatory, misleading, old-white-man title for an article that says no such thing: Too stoned to study. Even the online title - while less rude - isn't even that indicative. Not only that, the article isn't news, isn't cute, isn't new - and it with two supporting articles filled 3/4 of a page in today's paper. Barrel scraping, HS; weak. (I even emailed MediaWatch asking if there's some sort of threshold for article/title relationships. When I'm old, I plan on writing letters about the stamps that are too small for my bad eyes. I practice now.)
Are titles created by another department at the HS? They're two kliks away from bolding all the nouns. Hacks.

No I'm not dead...

...just teaching. It's a busy job.
Rather than say 'more later' here's a bit now...

I thought most teachers I knew voted against the new agreement but no, they didn't. Hmmm. Disappointing. Although I got a raise - which I could do without BTW - what I have now is an inconvenience: Our curriculum days are ALL prescribed, with three of them using the first three days of Term 1.
Whole staff training would need to happen on one of these prescribed days, rather than a day that suits our school.
Whole staff training that needs a trainer or incursion would also need to be organised for one of these days. Schools will have to compete with each other to getthe trainers for one of these three days. That is, all the government primary schools will have to compete with each other to get someone in this 3-day window. head-desk

Go ing in sa ane

OK. I've recorded the 37 grades for each of my 29 students. Used way too much deliberation, and was probably too generous.

I've done comments about their achievements, areas for improvmeent and what is coming for 17.3 students.

I've just started to tip over the edge.

On Friday I was giddy with denial about how much I had to do. Yesterday, with only 3 students' comments done, I sat in this chair from 8-6 and again from 8-11 and beat the crap out of another batch. Since I began teaching my brain has been waking me up about 7:30-8am, but today it slacked off and got me up at 9:30 ish. Four hours later - with 11.6 students' comments to go - and I think I can see a teeny tiny sparkle somewhere on the horizon. But its on the otherside of crazy.

Seriously; I'm wiggling in my chair bw each set of comments going "ee elaa, laa, laaa, bup-bummm, mmmm". And there's no escape. I have to sit here till I get this Done. And then I need to proofread the lot before I descend into the kind of nutty that goes with reading screens in poor lighting after daylight.

Tomorrow I'll be giddy with report-writing-freedom and panic from a lack of planning for the coming week.

Go ahead. Tell me how I brought it upon myself.

Progressive Points

I'm doing reports. See last post.

In the English domain there are three dimensions to assess: Reading, Writing and Speaking & Listening.
In the Communication domain there are two dimensions: Listening, viewing & responding and Presenting...

Guess which English dimension overlaps with both Communication dimensions? I could make a big fat Venn diagram of how LV&R practically doubles-up with the listening elements of L&S and how Presenting doubles up with the speaking elements.
BUT I STILL HAVE TO CAREFULLY CHECK THAT THE STUDENT HAS DEMONSTRATED EACH COMMUNICATION ELEMENT SO I CAN DEFEND IT TO THEIR PARENT IF THEY ASK ABOUT IT.

WHY there isn't more separation bw them I don't know.
Why they don't have a single communication dimension what is only about the bits that don't overlap, I don't know.
And why they don't just rename English as Literacy and consolidate Communication with that, I cannot begin to explain (though I could have a good stab at it).
But it's frikkin shirting me no end.

And while I'm at it, thank you VCAA for requiring Year 5 & 6 teachers to assess against the entire curriculum. It's awesome to have to vouch for all this knowledge and all these skills while safely delivering 29 students to high school. Cheers.