Friday 25 April 2008

Blogging at School


This week I've been teaching blogging to my students and it's been surprising seeing which students have really taken to it. (We're using edublogs.org - its meant to be safer for the kiddies, but I have to say that blogger is much more intuitive!)

The task they have is to create a fictional blog to demonstrate how blogging can give a voice to someone who may otherwise not have that voice. It's a response to reading The Baghdad Blog by Salam Pax (a fascinating insight into an Iraqi perspective on the Iraq war, but much too complicated for my Year 11 students).

One of my students, who is less than motivated at the best of times and refuses to read ("I don't read, miss")has spent hours considering what he is going to write about. He's discovered that this is an opportunity to express what he's going through at the moment and perhaps work towards some solutions.

Other students are letting their imaginations go, planning to give perspectives on life from bulimics, addicts, gangsters (the Melbourne ganglands wars are a big topic at the moment, thanks to Underbelly), a person with multiple personality disorder, someone with autism (inspired by The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime), even the life of a cannibal (entitled the skin's the best part). I'm actually looking forward to marking this work!

On the down side, when I explained to the class that they needed to "draw on" their understanding of The Baghdad Blog, one student, who always speaks the obvious without thinking, said, "We have have to draw?" Her class mates just turned around to her and stared. I myself, had to cover my mouth with the handout I was reading from to hide my smile. It didn't work.

Saturday 19 April 2008

Parents and students

Two weeks into term and I'm again exhausted. But I still love my job. It is exhausting physically and emotionally, but there are moments when I know it's where I'm supposed to be.

This week was parent teacher conferences, an evening of smiling and nodding and looking for positive things to say about students that drive me up the wall on a regular basis.

However, parents are unpredictable creatures and it is worrying how often I become the advocate for a student. I spoke to a parent who is actively encouraging her child to leave school at 16 because he's not achieving very highly. However, he's an intelligent, creative kid who is one of the best creative writers I've taught and loves acting. Her great idea is that he joins the airforce! She was so critical of him, looking for every chance to find fault and even when I defended him, she didn't want to hear it.

But at least she turned up. Some parents are simply not interested.

The positive side of the evening was that parents thanked me for the amount of effort I was putting into helping their kids. It's amazing how just a few words of acknowledgement makes you feel worthwhile.

On another note, this week one of my students told me that she has a tumour in each of her breasts, one is frighteningly large. She had surgery yesterday to remove the tumours, they will also do a biopsy to see if they are malignant. I can't imagine what she will be going through, it would be difficult for me at 30, let alone a girl of 16.

This is part of being a teacher. I have become so much more aware of the day to day trials of people as these kids share with me snippets of what they are going through. I am able to be a support and encouragement in so many different ways on a daily basis. I know that lots of these kids won't remember me when they are living their adult lives, but I hope that they will go out into those lives having learnt at least a little from their time with me (even if they still can't spell.)