Thinking about teachers and learners....

We are facing another poorly thought through idea about how to improve the teaching and learning in our schools  - the suggestion is to reward our best teachers with more pay. Great.....that is just like giving the best  kids in the school a big shiny badge that says 'prefect' so all the other kids can work out very easily who they have to thump when they are waiting in line at the canteen.

Improving the outcomes of students in our government schools is a really tricky business for all school leaders.
The idea of paying our best teachers more money will create a two tiered, us and them pay system.
Which I believe will be detrimental to the collegiate and supportive educational systems we are trying to achieve within our schools.


Who are the best teachers in our schools? How will they be identified? Are they teachers who work well with the disengaged and disenfranchised youths who are now enrolled compulsorily into our systems until they reach 17? Or are they the teachers whose examinations results are consistently high? Are they teachers whose students rank in the top achievers of the state and are selected into the new scholarship schools for the gifted and talented? Are they the teachers who build important safe learning environments for our student who have been drug addicted, abused and neglected? Are they teachers who work in remote and hard to staff schools year after year without seeing much change or improvement amongst their students who are often indigenous, or who work in low social economic communities, with newly arrived, traumatised refugees who may speak two or three languages, none of which are standard Australian English?


Answers to these questions should help to establish what school's really value - and help to decide who are Our high quality teachers.

The proposal to pay excellent teachers more money also suggests that there will be a group of more lowly paid, middling to poor teachers - this group may become more economically  viable for some Principals to employ, particularly in some regions where the financial constraints on a schools resources are such that teachers who are middling to poor quality will be a better use of already stretched resources. These regions can have more of those kind of teachers for less or about the same amount of money as having just one or two top quality teachers ...  .... tempting if you are, in a remote area, have difficult to manage students or are in need of a new roof or classroom instead of a quality teacher. 


I see this as segregating a profession - the middling to poor teachers perhaps can have the middling to poor students? Or they can teach students who are not destined for university programmes? Or have the students who are not as intelligent as .....hmmm all sounding a bit uncomfortable now...!  


Will the two tiered pay system really have an effect on providing quality teaching?



Shira Leibowitz recently commented on an article that appeared in the 'connected principal' website. I found her comment really interesting , she asked us to consider a brief reflective activity - originally proposed in a book by Palmer, they are questions about who we consider to be teachers who made a difference to us through our educational experience.

(Connected Principals ) 
 Have a go at doing this activity now

1. Remember a teacher who made a difference in your education / life.
2. Consider what it was about that teacher that made the difference for you.
3. Now consider what it was about yourself that made it possible for this teacher to make a difference.


I liked the idea that defining what made the teachers able to make a difference to us was in fact something held within us, the learner, not external to us, as in within the teacher!


So by rewarding teachers externally (with more pay- if you are a good one) it is really only rewarding a person for something that they are only partially involved in creating - the learner is really responsible for creating the 'space' inside themselves to learn ....

 - as they say in facebook;     Like.

The Oats Factory - Carlise - giving emerging artists a red hot go!

Melody Smith is running a great new gallery space just near the Carlise train station and over the road from the poly technic west campus on Oats St  ...and who'd have thought 25 years ago there would be anything like this along the railway line out to Armadale! All so close to my beloved East Victoria Park - how exciting!

So I was thrilled to attend an art exhibition opening at the gallery space on Friday 3rd June, of paintings by Roxanne Cox, an emerging Perth artist.

On arrival offered a decent red and provided a detailed artist statement about what the exhibition was aiming to achieve and a price list of the paintings. But that is where I was left .....hanging....so to speak..... in an art space on a Friday night .....and it is not such a comfortable situation to be in. Don't get me wrong, Melody Smith is a smooth operator, talented artist in her own right, and she is running a serious contender for the "great new gallery space near Jacsbac's house" award  -so it is a boon for the artistically inclined in the local area. But I was left hanging waiting for the "Art exhibition opening night speech?.

I love those speeches! Let me hear the journey, let me hear about the paintings from the artist (or nominated patron)

If I am going to part with some of my hard earned art investment dollars - (as I have been known to do.... much to the fear and puzzlement of the beanie-wearing defacto-ed one; "you bought what? For how much?") then I feel I need to hear about the exhibition from the mouth of the creative artist themselves (or a nominated patron as I keep saying - that is fine too - I don't want to force any artist who is greatly daunted about speaking publicly to do so) - but as a live event, I want an opening night  exhibition speech! I want to hear about the artworks on the night - particularly as this was Cox's first exhibition - who is she? Why should I care about her paintings? give me an insight that I can't get simply by looking at  the paintings on-line? Talk to me about your special brand of creativity!

An opening night art exhibition speech also is important to set the opening of an exhibition apart from any other of the exhibition dates. I realised fairly quickly into the Friday night gathering, that without an opening night speech, I could have stayed at home under the feather doona and visited the gallery - sans wine and nibbles - on-line! Which I like to do too - but sometimes the need to see and attend to the works in real space, is also vital to their appreciation.

An opening demands a separation from the rest of the exhibition run - and I think this is done via an opening speech for the exhibition!

Whilst we were treated to a lovely array of nibbles and wine - all enjoyed while surrounded by other guests, including gender blurring artist Mathew  Jackson, dressed as a cross between the flying nun and an aging Balinese hawker - I really hope for his exhibition opening he finds a better outfit! Call me, Mathew - lets do lunch - we can go pick outfits together afterwards. He seriously needs some good girlfren' advise!


Anyway....all I am saying is that I think the exhibition needed a good opening night speech - something to bring the gathered together, something for us to ruminate over and perhaps bond with the paintings through, all wrapped up in the shared intimacy of a Friday night art exhibition opening event.

....so apart from the lack of a rousing speech or even a proud friend's enthusiastic words at the opening  - everything else felt like a real art exhibition opening. I hope to make a few more exhibition openings at the very swish Oatsfactory - just next time I will not expect a talk, from anyone
 - just some serious post-modern milling about!