I am a looser

A week or so before school went back, when saying goodnight to Ben (aged 9) I saw he'd written "I am a looser" on his drawer. He's always been a "glass half empty" kind of kid, so I'd been expecting this kind of thing at some point. Still, my heart broke a little bit.

A bit of probing suggested anxiety about going back to school and being bad at stuff. The particular stuff he flagged was drawing, but I'm guessing it was sort of a generalised fear of publicly sucking. Still, drawing was an excellent example. Sucking at drawing is quite different to sucking at spelling. No-one hangs your spelling list on the walls in the classroom. In fact, even the person sitting next to you is pretty unlikely to look at your spelling. The things Ben sucks at are dancing, singing and drawing*. Everyone in the class is gonna know you suck at those things. Therefore, there was absolutely no point in attempting the whole "You're not that bad at drawing", because if he was already feeling bad, condescending to him, when he knows the truth, was only going to make it worse. Further, pointing out what he's good at doesn't help, because his talents don't stop it feeling awful when his stick figures are hung up next to a perfectly detailed scene.

I was going to go with my go-to solution when feeling bad about not being able to do something - "If you want to be better at it, you just need to practise" - but he hates drawing. At which point, the answer become obvious. Ever since he was tiny, he's had no interest in drawing, colouring, or pretty much any visual art. Which, of course, is why he's crap at it. He's never done it. I explained to him that I could get him books that show the basics of drawing, and he could do lots of practice and his drawing would improve, BUT, he doesn't want to. Outstanding talent aside, the main thing that makes a kid good at something is interest in it. He was looking pretty skeptical, so I switched to his talents. He's good at science. He protested that he doesn't practise science, but he does, and has done since he could talk. He asks how everything works. He's been building and refining his model of the world since he was two. He's been practising incorporating new information into his models and beginning to identify dissonance for years. Kids that don't share his interest in that sort of understanding (possibly because they're too busy capturing the awesome beauty of the world), find science much harder.

After an hour or so of chatting, he was prepared to rub off "I am a looser" (once again, see footnote). It's quite empowering to realise that the main reason you're bad at something is that you're not all that interested in it. It's an unfortunate illusion created by those early years of school, that ability is innate. The practice is invisible, because it's just what the kids like doing. Kids see differentials in abilities, but they can't see the effort that went into it. If they focus on those examples, instead of the ones where they see the practice (like learning an instrument), it's easy for them to believe that if they don't pick something up straight away, they will never be able to do it. Ben has a tendency to ignore the visible practise, as did I when I was a kid. It took until I was much older before I realised that if I stick at things for long enough, I can be capable at them, regardless of whether I'm any good at them to start with. I believe many beers and games of pool may have finally illustrated this point to me. I'm hoping that I can keep this message explicit as the kids grow up, and make it very clear that if they are really bad at something, that's probably their choice, and that is a completely valid choice. There are only so many hours in a day.

Of course, he's still going to have to draw stuff. We talked a bit about how he can draw in a cartoon style that requires minimal effort, but looks both ok and intentional. Along with the deep and meaningful, he's gonna need some survival skills until he doesn't have to draw anymore.

* and spelling, as it happens, but that doesn't seem to stress him.

4 year olds and belly dancing

There's nothing like starting your day with an über tantrum from your 4 year old. I shared my exasperation with Twitter:

Honestly, there was screaming and gnashing of teeth for well over twenty minutes, because her brother had opened the flavoured straw she was holding. There was another, identical, unopened straw right next to her on the bench. It was, apparently, not an adequate substitute. When the screaming had finally abated, she reluctantly suffered through the identical straw and announced she was coming to belly dancing with me. She was still in her pyjamas and I had to leave in 4 minutes. Again with the totally rational requests. 

To her credit, she hustled and got dressed quickly and we only left ten minutes late. I love belly dancing, and I'd love to share that with Elissa. I tried to take her to some lessons last year, but the study made making it to classes impossible. She was very keen to go back this year, but my teacher didn't seem as relaxed about the idea as last year's teacher had been. So I was feeling more than slightly nervous, bringing my recently screaming banshee of a daughter into the class of a woman who was concerned she might disrupt the rest of the class. However, as 4 year olds are wont to do, she was the picture of delight. She did the stretching exercises with us, played with her toys a bit, and then danced her own dance in the corner until it was time to take off the coin belts. Nobody seemed perturbed, and she got lots of compliments. The relief was palpable. My day was looking up. 

Then we got back to the car park and I remembered the enormous huntsman I'd seen dart inside the front passenger door frame as we'd rushed to make the class on time. Have I mentioned I'm hopelessly arachnophobic? I have been known to call friends to my house to rescue me from spiders at 6am on a Saturday (eternal thanks Cate!). I'm very proud to say that I bought a can of spray from the chemist and dealt with the 8 legged horror (and many of his variably sized compatriots in other hidey holes in the car) on my own. Of course, this last part of the story has nothing to do with the point of this post - the best and worst of 4 year olds, but I felt the need to share. 

I kinda like four. The extremes are exhausting, but amusing too. Watching the bourgeoning capacity for logic, while weathering the episodes of total logic fail. Seeing the desire for independence translate into a real reduction in work for parents weary from a whole year of three. To quote Olivia's mother, Elissa, you really wear me out, but I love you anyway.

Can a leopard change his shorts?

This afternoon this 1979 radio interview with Tony Abbott came into my Twitter feed, via @wiredjazz. It's interesting listening, but my gut reaction to it being tweeted about today, and posted in 2010, is that it's a long time ago and it seems disingenuous to criticise Abbott for (albeit horrific) attitudes he held over 40 years ago, when he was at uni. Or is it? To be fair, I was at uni a decade later than Abbott, but my core values haven't changed yet. However, my position on lots of things has. I tried to think back to what I believed in the early 90s and it's quite tricky. I suspect I wouldn't like to be confronted with an interview I did back then.

For starters, I definitely believed that men and women think differently. I know this, because I spent some time doing gender based research with respect to physics education. I still think that men and women have broad tendencies to difference (although I suspect I see it as much messier than I did then), but now I focus more on how that comes to be, and on how to cater to difference without worrying about how it lines up in terms of gender.

I've learned a whole hell of a lot about marginalised, oppressed groups of people. I've always held equality dear, and always felt that the Government has a responsibility to make equality and equity happen, but I've radically changed my views about how that's best done. No doubt I will continue to change my views as I learn more, hear more points of view and have more of my assumptions shaken out.

It's a little difficult to tell from an eight or nine minute interview the nuances of whether he's demonstrating deep seated values or his then current views on the best ways to achieve the fulfilment of those values. The former are, I would say, still relevant, whilst the latter would (should?) have been modified extensively over 42 years. The clear, strong commitment that Christian values should guide politics is probably the one thing that stood out for me in that interview. That sounds to me like the kind of belief that doesn't change, ever. I also think there's plenty of recent history evidence to back up that claim. The banning of RU486 is a stand out, but there's plenty more.

The other slightly chilling part of the interview was his obvious disgust at uni students "who seem to think of themselves as women, ... homosexuals or what have you" rather than "students". I don't know whether he's managed to crawl out from under this mountain of delusion that there is nothing that makes "women, blacks, migrants and homosexuals" any different from him, but as a serial student, and a member of communities, I still "seem to think of [myself] as a woman". In 1979 Tony Abbott was wary of and alarmed by people like me. Is 40 years long enough for that kind of leopard to change his shorts?

Happy New Year!

I know it's the end of January. It's taken me this long to recover from the B Teach last year, and then a family holiday in Fiji, and then Christmas. Then I played a lot of mindless games for a while. Today the boys went back to school, and I feel a little more inspired, a little more in control and ready to actually implement my word for the year. My word this year, as I mentioned on Twitter, is Community.

After a year of sitting in front of a laptop, I'm keen to get involved with people again. I'll be joining the band committee at my son's school, because the band has been tremendous for him, and I'd like to give something back. I'll be trying to catch up with the people who live close by more often - people I've met through the kids' schools and neighbours. I'll also be trying to reconnect with the online communities I've been involved with in the past. As well as writing some blog posts, I hope to be reading them too! So, if anyone is still reading, say hi, remind me where your blog is if you have one and grab me on Twitter (username Shonias) if I'm not already following you.

No doubt I'll also be getting my ranty pants on - so much fodder recently! I've written dozens of posts in my head, hopefully I can some of them out and onto the page.

An invitation to National Parliament

I'm training to be a high school teacher, and my prac timetable at the moment includes that most infamous of beasts, year 9 last period Friday. In any given lesson I'll need to tell people to sit down a dozen times, break up two or three play fights that have crossed the line, remind people to do something resembling work several dozen times and repeat myself ad nauseam to elicit any kind of common courtesy and respect.

I would like to invite our national representatives to visit my year 9 class last period Friday, as I believe they could learn a lot from them. For all their notoriety, year 9 last period Friday are more civilised, more on task, more respectful and more productive than our politicians are right now.

So please, honourable representatives, drop by. I believe that one day you could aspire to the lofty heights of year 9 last period Friday.

--

PS Don't get me wrong, I actually really like my year 9s. They have personality, they can produce great work and be engaged and inspired. The last period Friday thing is an anomaly, and I don't think only students are implicated in its causes.

Open letter to the convenors of my course

Last week I was in a lecture in which the students were embarrassingly rude to the guest speakers, which prompted our tutor to give us (a subset of the rude audience) a lecture about common courtesy. I've been thinking a lot about this - about what I can take from it as a potential teacher, and about what the convenors of the BTeach course can learn from it.

I was neither the worst offender nor completely innocent in the lecture. I certainly shared my colleague's boredom. This was the second or third time we'd seen this content, and it wasn't too riveting the first time around - especially given we can't actually access most of the website we were (re-)learning about. I exchanged a few comments with the person sitting next to me, and mostly played Angry Birds (badly) until the last 5 minutes of the lecture when we got to hear something new and relevant.

Nevertheless, these people were guest speakers, and this was a room full of adults behaving like 12 year olds. No wonder we got told off. But our tutor didn't ask why. When I see such incongruous behaviour, my first question is "why?". I'm also reasonably confident I know some of the answer. In this BTeach course, we are routinely treated like children. Rolls are marked in lectures, a great deal of busy work is set and lecturers feel the need to mention such startling revelations as "When you are a teacher, you need to turn up to work on time." No? Really? The truly unfortunate thing about this lecture was that the convenor of this course is one of the few who don't treat us like children, and I felt that as a group we'd let her down.

So what does this tell me as a teacher? That if I want students to behave in a mature manner, I need to treat them as mature people. Further, that I can't do this on my own. If there is a critical mass of other people treating teenagers like primary school kids, I will really struggle to turn the tide alone. It also tells me that if I'm teaching something that's likely to have overlap with other subjects, I need to get myself over to those other subjects and find out what they're teaching, because dear lord doing the same material over and over will try the patience of the most dedicated learner. It tells me that I need to advocate for a school wide view of the curriculum and how it's taught. It tells me that I probably won't ever achieve any of this, because I'll probably never be involved in a school to that extent.

As for the convenors of this course - I know there are a lot of dedicated people putting courses together within this BTeach. I've been privileged to learn from some inspiring people. However, the overall tone of the course feels more like it is aimed at high school students than at people planning to teach them. Lectures are not recorded. Worse, attendance is compulsory. We are not free to engage with the material in a way that suits us. The assessment load is enormous, and only about 50% feels valuable from a learning perspective. And the repetition. Seriously, we have now covered classroom management in no less than four separate subjects (have I mentioned this is a 1 year course?). We've covered learning technologies in 4 or 5. We've covered issues of inclusivity and diversity in 3. It's really hard to maintain a mature, engaged approach to learning when it all feels so infantilising and pointless.

This program consists of 12 subjects as well as 2 blocks of prac teaching. The whole 12 are focussed on teaching. Small wonder that there's massive overlap. This semester I think a whole lot of people have hit their threshold of too much work and not enough learning. Some of the content is fascinating, but there's just not enough time to engage with it, because we're busy jumping through hoops and reading about Choice theory for the third time. Resentment is an inevitable consequence.

But to end on a positive note, I also want to acknowledge the people who have set sensible workloads, who engage with us as adults, who model good teaching and have truly provided me with inspiration and concrete ideas to take to the classroom. These are people I will genuinely miss next year, and I hope their influence eventually makes this course what it can be.

Labels: post- official labelling of middle kid

I've mentioned before that I'm label averse, so what gives with me getting my son an Official Label? It's prompted some reflection, I can tell you.

As well as being label averse, I'm a champion justifier, and I think I've justified this quite well. I don't think I accept that Aspergers is a real label. I certainly don't accept that it's a "disorder". It's a different way of being, one that the world we live in doesn't make much room for. This is, obviously, a description that applies to a great deal of things that are referred to as disabilities. I've been slowly shifting my perception of a lot these issues for a while now, but there's nothing like living with one of them to push you that bit harder.

Charlie needs this label, because the world he lives in is so bloody intolerant and inflexible that spending a morning of kindergarten (prep) class filling a page with musical notes will generally get him a much less attractive label of "uncooperative" or "doesn't follow directions" or some such. It didn't, as it happens, because he has a most wonderful kindergarten teacher, but he's not likely to carry that luck all the way through school. He needs a piece of paper to say "Please let me be me, because I have a label you have to respect". That's a pretty sad indictment of our school system.

I need him to have this label to access some help for parenting a kid like him. His behaviour doesn't fit the standard parenting manuals, and why would anyone want to broaden the ideas presented to cover children with a "disorder"? A parent will clearly need specialist help with that. Of course, kids like him are very common, and always have been, but their parents have largely muddled through, finding things that work by trial and error. I wonder how many kids' parents couldn't find the right path, and how badly some of those kids suffered as a result. I wonder if Charlie's uncle might be one of them, but we'll never know. I wonder how many of them might have been helped if conventional wisdom had included some diversity in the patterns of kids' behaviour.

So I'm seeing this label as a way of demanding respect and caring from a world that finds him inconvenient, but I'm also not really accepting it as a label. It's a diagnosis, or something. It's a means of being understood, until such time as the world moves on and accepts that we don't all think alike, or socialise alike, or even perceive the world alike. Hopefully one day he'll just be Charlie again, not because he's changed, but because the world has.