At the end of every school year, I feel it: the compression. Teachers are finalising reports, marking exams, writing references, and preparing next year’s curriculum and timetables. Parents are emailing. Students are burning out. What should be a celebratory end to a fantastic year starts to feel like siege warfare. Everyone is trying to get […]
When I left school, we weren’t told to find our purpose – we were told to get a job! I wasn’t sure that would go down too well as the central theme of my own Closing Address this year, so I tweaked it a little bit and ended up sharing the three hopes that I […]
I’ve recently had two wildly different – yet strangely connected – conversations with teachers. One teacher expressed frustration after asking his Grade 9 class to write 400 words—by hand—in their exercise books. Within minutes, students anxiously asked, “Can we bullet-point this?” or “Can we use our laptops instead?” The idea of sustained writing felt overwhelming. They’re struggling with basic […]
Princess Leia Organa, arguably the greatest rebel of them all In search of a perfectly average teacher Driving to the airport on the way to an overseas recruitment trip last week, I made a fairly innocuous comment in a conversation I was having with my kids about a teacher who had recently left our school. […]
I am trying to decide whether I have read a lot of books this year or not. Not that it matters, of course. I’m not counting. It’s just that I know that reading is a great place for me to “be well”, and that does matter. As much as I would love to have a […]
“Who’s doing the washing up?” The answer to this question might be significant. If it’s you, you might behave one way. If it’s not you, you might behave another way. Take, for example, my friend’s domestic predicament. He and his partner have a long-standing rule that when one cooks, the other will wash up. They […]
There’s an old English saying that I often mutter when I’m being worn thin by seemingly excessive demands: “Do you want the moon on a stick?” This week alone, the question has crossed my mind on at least five occasions in conversations I have shared. They (parents) say They (teachers) say They (parents, teachers, students, […]
Sitting down with a glass of wine this week, half-heartily trying to read (Politics on the Edge), I noticed my son was utterly absorbed by something he was reading on the computer. Even from where I was sitting on the other side of the room, I could see he was on Wikipedia. Curious, I asked […]
If I’m hearing correctly, educational standards are worse than ever. Teachers are saying that kids don’t just dislike reading more than a few words; they can’t. They don’t just hate writing more than a few words; they can’t. And even when they do write, you either can’t read it, or the grammar and spelling are […]
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