Posts by Hilary Stace
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Ben, I can't remember on which thread you mentioned it, but I hope your son is recovering well from the surgery.
-
For my story, above, I blame my flatmate. Otherwise I would have stayed at home reading Dostoevsky and dreaming of Aspergic hero Prince Myshkin.
She was (and still is) very attractive to men. She once rang up to check the train timetable and ended up going on a date with the man who answered the phone.
-
This is why standards are not what learning is really about. We've just been to the concert Oscar's music teacher organises for his students each term. It takes place in a peaceful suburban church with pleasant acoustics. A dozen students cover a great variety of ages, abilities and even instruments (he's a clever teacher). Each student plays their choice of music on their choice of instrument. Oscar has progressed to the ukelele after several years of guitar. (And fortunately he has moved on from his beloved national anthems). Others play the flute, recorder, electric guitar etc.
The teaching and learning is evident in each student's progress from last term - such as confidence and skill.
Comparing them with each other or expecting them to play the same piece of music on the same instrument to some particular standard would be irrelevant and demotivating. And not nearly as enjoyable. -
Edmund, sorry to hear about your grandmother, and hope you get to give her a good family send off.
I heard about the death of someone today that I didn't know well, but had long admired. He was a great role model, a staunch disability activist and a great Facebook communicator. Sacha rang to tell me and it is the first time I have ever talked to Sacha. He has a nice voice.
Sometimes this space here is a real community.
-
Stephen - all schools are required to do legally is report to their school community. Entirely up to schools themselves, from the board down, what and how.
-
Stephen - the school probably reports like that because that is what the parents have asked for. I would guess that is also a high decile school.
Most schools in my experience have very good reporting to parents. The best was my son's primary school whereby twice a year on the child's birthday and six months later, there was an opportunity after school to talk to the class teacher in detail (for up to an hour) about your child - strengths, weaknesses and how home and school could work together to improve things.
Have you seen the proposed reporting template to parents in the new scheme? From what I have seen it's a plunket type graph and some comments about the assessment, and a suggestion about an activity you can do at home. That's all.
-
I've been interested in what MP Kelvin Davis has been saying about this as he has had years of experience teaching in Northland which is an area of quite low achievement on a national scale (because of various reasons ethnic, socio-economic etc). He is not anti- standards as such but says they are only one tool of dozens that teachers use, and as with reporting in plain English, don't by themselves actually change or improve anything. What does is the quality of teaching and Tolley's plan does not seem to provide anything to encourage good teaching, such as an investment in professional development.
A quote from Kelvin Davis From Scoop
“Student learning occurs through excellent teaching. The Minister should be supporting teachers to be the best teachers they can be, which means an investment in their professional knowledge and skills and providing the conditions and resources whereby excellent teachers can weave their magic.' -
School board nominations open 15 March and voting has to be done by 7 May. I think there is some school flexibility in there.Unlike for standards.
I see my humans post on standards and their potential negative effects on autistic and other kids who learn differently, now has a reply from the Ministry.
I can't understand why the Minister is so stubborn about this one tool. It has nothing to do with achievement. It is just one way to make a particular measurement at a point in time, and is pretty meaningless when you consider the diversity of our kids and their learning needs. Raising achievement is another thing altogether. Main problem for me is that it will label the kids as failures when it is really the system that is failing them.
-
PAS has even been the subject of an academic paper this year - by Kerry W. She asked for comments from contributors.
-
When I was a very young librarian with my hair in pigtails, I had a brief relationship with a truck driver (well that’s what he said he was – and I’m still not sure what his real name was), who was an associate of various Wellington gangs. We met through my vivacious musician flatmate who was going out with a handsome young Black Power chap (gangs seemed much more benign then, and with full employment they all had to be at work at 7 am the next day). Their local was the public bar of the Royal Tiger Tavern in Taranaki Street, and it was all a bit of a revelation to me.
He didn’t have his own motorbike so we went to parties on my Honda 90 stepthrough. One night we were alone in a room discussing our cultural differences when several people burst in, and someone took our photo. There was a bit of arguing but I didn’t think any more of it until I was at work a few days later when a young woman - who didn’t look like she was interested in historical research - stormed in and said she was going to cite me in their divorce case. I was quite concerned as in those days Truth published details of co-respondents which could be quite embarrassing and career limiting. So I secretly read the library copies of Truth but never saw my name. Since I didn’t know their real names (everyone went by nicknames) I wasn’t even sure who I was looking for.
Later I heard he had gone organic gardening up the coast somewhere.