Today, I think, has to have been the longest day of my life. Certainly since coming to New Zealand.

I have felt like I’ve been trapped in some educationally-bent episode of 24.

The following takes place between 8pm (the night

before) and 12pm the day of the ERO visit.

If I could do the tick-dum, tick-dum noise I would:

8pm (last night) My Prinicpal calls for a quick chat about the run through of the day, beginning with “You know they’re coming a bit earlier, don’t you?”

9.pm (ish) last night, I am reviewing some plans for the ERO visit. Running through the day in my head, checking the resources et al.

11pm-1pm Still running through the events of tomorrow while relieving my bodily system of dinner. I wonder if I ate something funny, I’m not laughing- that’s just great.

2.30am Son wakes me with news he needs the toilet- what a fine time for him to be trying to get out of the ‘overnight nappy’

3.30am finally manage to get to sleep (did I mention, my boy fell asleep whilst on the loo about 2.34am)

6am Woken by son saying – “I can’t go to sleep!” Probably has something to do with you having slept 11 hours I manage NOT to say. Anyway I’m up heading toward the day

7.03am I’m out the door for the $10 ride to school – It takes me 30minutes – 36 km but I measure in the cost of fuel now, not distance.

7.30am (give or take the logging truck I followed up the Taihape road) I arrive at School. Final prep for the visit – remember they are coming in early- I want to check the students desks – if they ask to see an example of the writing matrix in the students books I want to have every confidence that I can open any students desk without the fear of having my digits chewed off by any lurking rodents.

8.25am First bus arrives and I begin my mantra for the morning. “Have checked morning routine, do you have your writing kit out, sharp pencil, been to the loo, cut your toe nails, removed the boggies from your sleeves.

8.40am ERO due any minute, students appear ready and I struggle to find them extra stuff to do to keep them off the computer games (they are maths games- most can be found on my delicious account so its all educational stuff, but not a good first impression I guess)

9am Still no sign of ERO, call comes via the secretary, they’ve gone to the wrong school- That poor principal, just imagine ERO turning up on your door step, no warning just a friendly “Hello, we’re the ERO team come to inspect your school.” – ERK! Apparently they did not actually arrive at the school before they realized- but saying they did paints a much more amusing picture.

9.30am The Board begin to arrive, some earlier than others but all looking a little nervous- Funny that, I was nervous meeting the board for the first time, so where does that put me in the pecking order?

10.05am ish Inspectors arrive. They meet the board and we in the class are finishing up writing and heading toward fitness- I’m actually very disappointed they missed the writing lesson as the principal and I team teach it in a very inter-reactive way (if there is such a word).

10.10am We’re in doing Reading- Big book is on the IWB. Wish I’d printed it out to show then later but hey ho.

10.45am ERO appear in my room as I am mid flow with a reading group. Lots of positive feedback about classroom displays looking great and ‘feel of the room’ being directed toward student learning. Yippee.

11.00am Morning tea. I walk into the meeting one of the inspectors is having with the chair of the board. Oops! Then they have to leave the staffroom on account of my presence- Double Oops!

11.20am DEAR time in the classroom. Observation begins. I hate the few minutes at the start of the session while students prepare themselves for their learning. It always appears chaotic but in reality on lasts a few minutes (despite it feeling like an age when the inspector is right there).

11.42am Been working with a maths group and have set them off on an independent task. One inspector is now working with them. Not sure if it’s a good thing or not, so I head over to check. Everyone is smiling so I return to the individual kid I’m working with. With my current maths group numbers being 2,1 and 2 it is hard to argue that the learning isn’t personalized.

12.30am Lunch- I’m on duty so I sit and eat with the kids- We get into a great conversation about middle names, whose got one, who hasn’t. Then they spend the next 7 minutes trying to guess mine…. And succeed I have to add. These kids are not worriwed about our visitors. And rightly so, I’ve never met a group of kids so supportive of one another and clued in socially and educationally. These kids ROCK and I’m so happy to be called their teacher.

I’m going to leave it there for now but the afternoon was equally eventful. 10.32pm I’m signing off.

This foam was a result of the storms around 30 July 2008. This picture does not do it justice but cars were disappearing into the foam. mothers were taking pics of primary kids with only their heads visible.

If this is the level of their explanation in oral form then why are we expecting them to be able to WRITE a recount evidencing “mainly simple and compound sentences but attempting complex sentences, varying the beginning and length of their sentences”.

T- Tell me about what happened in Duffy Assembly this week.

S- We got them on Wednesday, the Duffy book …….******* Wednesday.

T- What happened?

S- We all got our books in…… we got to go outside and have our picture done and then we get to go home.

T- Who came?

S- ssssss …. Ummmmm…… My mum? ……*******

T- Was there a special visitor?

S- Yes…. There’s a ********

T- Pardon?

S- …. And a lady.

T- Could you say that a little clearer?

S- A penguin and a lady

T- And what did they do?

S- they look after the penguins… They look after all the…. They look after the polar bear and the penguins.

T- And where is she from?

S- ummmm…… I forgot where she come from. We got our Duffy books (My teacher) said….I thought (My teacher) said my name but it want my name.

T- It wasn’t your name?

S (shakes head) It was Mark’s! …M..A..R..K..Marrrrrrrrk!

T- Is there anything else that happened? That you want to tell me about.

S- Ted does!

T- No, I’m asking you.

S- We…we…we … orrrrr….got our parents and then we went outside to have our picture…then we had to hold up our books.

T-Thank you very much.

Today was the day for two training sessions.

Firstly, I ran ‘Digital Storytelling" workshop, sharing the online platforms of Voicethread, Teachertube, and Slideshare.

I always enjoy running these session because I find teachers bring just as much to a session as I do. We began a voicethread… My first really proper one and it is oh so basic but I am hoping that others whole attended the session will be adding there thoughts about it. The cough at the beginning of my talk is not me but an attendee who shall remain nameless.

Cliotech was good enough to allow me to share some of the input from her slideshare .

Second up was Stop motion animation. Some folk from this morning stayed into the afternoon. We played around with webcams for a while and discussed the usefulness of animation creation to support not only the literacy programme but also it solidfy learning in other areas, for example creating an animation to illustrate life-cycles in science. We even had one uploaded to www.teachertube.com by the end of the session. It’s entitled "Mr Mouse" Enjoy!

ps. It was also great to know about a couple of sound wikispaces today. One of the attendees has been struggling with establishing her class wiki on wikispaces. I would have loved to sit down with her and assist in creating her class wiki, but that would be another 3 hour session so I pointed her in the direction on Wonderfulworldof.wikispaces.com and encouraged her to look through the material there before she gave up. Often I find its better to have the pointers than to be able to ‘Fix it’ then and there. Thanks Chrissy

pps. Thanks Derek for sharing this . What a powerful illustration of Storytelling in the 21st Century

But that is not why I’m posting today. It is the middle of the school holidays and I have Breathe Technology Staff meeting in the morning. I’ve spent a lovely evening with my boss, her partner a colleague of mine and the Easiteach trainer. More of that tomorrow I guess. Sometimes it is really difficult to get out the conversation about Education but we did hit upon the topic of internet dating.

From what we talked about it seems to be;

a) a) a lot more common now and

b) b) a lot safer.

I was wondering if that were true or not or whether it is just our perception of it? If anyone has facts and figures on such things please comment.

My other question was surrounding cyber safety and the ‘internet dating’ thing. I fear that the Internet-dating will be the sex-ed of the cyber safety education programme. I remember the thoughts of:

‘Let’s not talk about sex in the classroom.’

‘If we start talking about it, more students will experiment with it and we’ll have a bigger social problem than we already have’

So my question being where in the ‘cyber-safety curriculum’ does internet dating appear?

I would love to tell you of the great tales he told, but I really couldn’t do them justice. He first tried writing when he was 16 or 17, trying to impress a girl. Then he leaves it alone for a decade until he finds some old notes he made…. Now 23 chapter books later and still writing, in fact we were honoured with the first public reading of his, yet to be published, next book.

If you ever get the opportunity to invite David Hill to your school, take it. He is well worth listening to.

Those of you who have the patience to follow my blog will know that for the past little while now I have been tripping around schools. Doing some relieving here and there.

One such school I happened across asked for me to come in and cover some member of staff for a little while. During the course of my time there I have got to know some of the students and one in particular made me wonder. There was something unusual there, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

I decided, the only action I could take was to speak to the Special Needs Co-ordinator. Not knowing who I was to speak to I approached the DP and asked the question: “Who is your special needs co-ordinator?”

A fairly easy question, I thought. But perhaps I caught them off guard, their mind on other things, maybe the answer was more complicated- “there used to be one, but…” or “So and so was but now they are….” Or perhaps that’s the English term and Kiwi’s call them something different.

Whatever it was I got this blank, scratching “I don’t know” head and directed to my syndicate leader. Or perhaps my Syndicate leader WAS the SENCO- (but that was not revealed to me)

Hmmmm. It just bothered me. Member of staff needs to be aware of who’s responsible for what, who to go to for what.

1. Five year olds in this European city are not due to start school until they are six, in fact ON their sixth birthday. This five old I heard about is very, very bored at kindy and mum and dad want her to start school early. As part and parcel of the procedure for that to happen the kid needs to be assessed by a some Educational Psychologist or similar, there are a raft of result coming through regarding the kid but what stands out is the IQ of 140. The kid begins school immediately and is put in the Y0 class, where she spends the first week learning the number ‘1’. Are her needs being met?

2. Intermediate kid, he has special needs that I am unable to disclose. The school has streamed maths and literacy programmes. His ability is somewhat below even the lowest of groups in the lowest of classes. His class contains 29 students. The teacher sees him for focused teaching time, with 4 others three times a week. Are his needs being met?

The recent push in education towards ‘personised learning’ is merely rhetoric. The reality of one teacher personalizing the learning of 33 students on a continual basic is beyond the time and energy of any regular teacher. It is why Primary (Elementary) teachers have been organizing ‘differentiated’ groups for a long time now; it is the realistic balance between ‘personalized learning’ and ‘whole class teaching’.

When my kid finally hits school I want to know what is really happening in the classrooms. I don’t want some Principal talking to me about their ‘personalised learning plan’ when really its ‘differentiated learning’ in a new coat of paint.

Let’s keep it real people, let’s call it what it is.

“Through my taxes ALL students are catered for, their learning needs met and they are upskilled to become economically productive citizens.”

Then I happened to awake from my utopian dream and discover that in the real world our students are not really leaving education skilled for the workforce.

Not only that but “free” obviously has a broader definition in government than I realized.

Once a student begins their educational journey in the state system a few “voluntary contributions’ are due:

‘Stationery’ $72

‘Shows and trip’ $40

‘Logoed uniform’ $150

Trip by trip donation $2 each

Music tuition $70 per term

Drama club $10

Rugby/Netball ‘subs’ $5 per away game

Technology for the year $20

And this is from a decile 1 school with maximum funding allowance.

“Fund raising in the higher deciles is expected. Our kids are expected to wonder the streets selling chocolates or doing car washes.

Don’t call it ‘Free’ education. It gives the impression that…well… you know…its free.