Category: Behaviour

The perils of report writing.

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After being a teacher for twenty-six-and-a-half years, I’m surprised that it has only just occurred to me that the effect of report writing on the body is much like pregnancy cravings.

I’m working away, absorbed in the delicate task of crafting a finely constructed, highly expressive report of the achievements and needs of each student when all of a sudden, my body speaks to me.
“Sugar. I need sugar.”
I think of ice cream, then of oreos. Ice cream with oreos. Awesome.

I’m about to get out of my chair and go foraging, but then I remember that I have an enormous amount of work to do and I don’t want to get too distracted. Instead, I look for sweets in the drawers beside my chair. An almost-empty packet yields two licorice allsorts which are consumed in quick succession, shortly after which I decide that this may not have been a good idea, even if the choice of licorice did seem healthier than the unholy amount of chocolate consumed while writing Year 10 English until 1.45 am. Feeling a little queasy, I continue working.

“Mmmm. Pickles. I’d love a pickle.”
Subsequent investigation in the kitchen leads to the conclusion that there are no pickles in the house and then to the discovery that a couple of large slices of tinned beetroot makes a fabulous substitute. Who knew?

Feeling surprisingly sated, I return to my work and let my creative juices flow.
The industry with which the words flow from my mind to my fingertips and onto the screen is impressive. This lasts for at least fifteen minutes, until the dilemma of how to write about young Miss Elsie Whosiewhich’s failure to submit any work at all for the entire semester leaves one wondering if there are any cheese and onion flavoured potato chips in the house.
These thoughts are set aside with determination to at least finish writing half of the Year 10 history reports before I take another break, but before long the jar of coffee on the counter is calling out to me and I’m powerless to resist. Caffeine will keep me alert and help me concentrate, right?

I walk into the kitchen to make coffee but get distracted by thoughts of a peanut butter sandwich. Suddenly it’s all too much work, so I pour another glass of Coke Zero and head back to my study. It occurs to me just how freaking awesome cold coke tastes and feels. Delicious, ice-cold bubbly goodness delivering caffeine to my brain with every sip. Then I realise that I am a bit hungry and I should have grabbed that peanut butter sandwich while I was up. Dammit. I hunt for one of my Reese’s cups that I’ve hoarded in case of an emergency, and almost cry with happiness when I find it. Oh, that delicious peanut-buttery goodness…

Oh, wait. The caffeine was supposed to help me concentrate, wasn’t it?
Right. Back to it then.

Broken.

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You did… what?
That was you?

I’m stunned. I am horrified.
I don’t know what to make of this.
I never would have believed that of you.

You’re the one who speaks of unity and trust.
You’re the one who is supposed to look after us… to look after me.

You’re the leader. The protector. The mentor. The guide.
At least, I thought you were.

How can I trust you now?
There are shards and splinters of faith scattered all over the place.
The fine, toxic dust of of doubt is still in the air, settling slowly, tainting everything, choking the life out of the relationship between us.

You lied. You cheated. You schemed.
You took every opportunity to work things for your own benefit.
How carefully you wove the web of deceit, trying to camouflage your actions and to conceal the heart behind them.

As for unity… you chose to break that, too.
It was no accident. You knew exactly what you were doing.
At some point, you decided that your own interests are more important than our interests… that your future takes precedence over any shared future that we might have had.

Maybe you hoped that you could do what you did without anyone knowing.

Maybe you hoped that you could evade the consequences that were always going to be inevitable.
Maybe you thought that people would just trust you to do the right thing, and  that you wouldn’t face any questions.Could you really have believed that such betrayal could go unnoticed?
It’s impossible to imagine how.
Maybe that’s a confirmation of just how different we are.

Don’t tell me I don’t know anything about it.
Don’t tell me that it has nothing to do with me.
This has everything to do with me.

This has everything to do with how I look at you, how I respond to you, how I respect you.
Only now am I beginning to realise how little I ever knew you.
I always assumed you were genuine. I never questioned your integrity, or my loyalty to you.

That’s all changed.Everything has changed.
I don’t even want to be in the same room as you.
I don’t want to hear you try to rationalise what you’ve done.
And you certainly don’t want to hear anything I have to say to you.

Don’t tell me everything will be okay. It won’t.
Things will never be the same again.

Acc-cen-tu-ate the positive, e-lim-in-ate the negative…

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I was reading a newsletter in my school staff email this morning when one paragraph really caught my attention.

“Can you remove yourself from people who are negative or holding you back?
The quality of our lives will depend on the quality of people with whom we surround ourselves… It is a sign of our maturity to identify any negative effects of others and then have the courage to remove ourselves from that influence.” (Vital Staff, 2015, 14)

This is a truth that many people don’t realise.

I’m not just talking about people who don’t like your haircut or the way you dress. I’m not even talking about people who don’t share your views on politics or religion. I’m talking about those people who bitch, backstab, undermine, conspire and manipulate so that people they perceive as “powerful” will see and treat others in a negative and often quite destructive way.

I know the effects certain negative people have had on my life in the past, both personally and professionally. I’ve seen friendships and relationships eroded gradually until they no longer exist. I’ve seen different people nearly bring down a church, a school, a family. It’s ugly. It’s an incredibly awful thing to experience.

I’ve also experienced the benefits of removing those people from my life. It hasn’t been easy, nor has it been painless, but it has been totally worth it.

Negativity is a cancer that attacks and weakens from within. We often can’t detect it working away under the surface, threatening to overtake and kill the very thing it’s feeding on.

When we do realise it’s there, the best way to treat it is to cut it out and leave it behind. We can’t afford to allow it to continue to grow, because it will gradually choke the joy, and then the life, out of us.

I can hear some of you thinking, “But wait. You’re a Christian. Aren’t you supposed to love and forgive and all that?”

Sure. Love and forgiveness are at the top of the list of ways in which we’re meant to treat other people.

However, that doesn’t mean we have to allow people to continue behaving in ways that are hateful and harmful to themselves and others. How is it showing love to someone if others just let them destroy every relationship they have? How is it forgiving or restoring them if there’s no stand against the behaviours that will eventually destroy both them and other people?

So, when it comes to my friendships, relationships, and interactions with other people, I will continue to choose to surround myself with the positive and constructive, and excise the negative. I can, and will, continue to remove the negative people from my life.

There’s no compulsion for you to follow suit. There’s no obligation for you to keep me in your friends list if you think I have a negative effect on you.

I know not everyone will like me. I realise that even the people who like me don’t like everything I do or say. It would be naive of me to think otherwise.
You know what? I’m entirely okay with that. I don’t need to be liked by everyone. I don’t need a fan club. And I am more than happy to accept that there are some who will be much happier without me. That’s life.

I do not desire to be everything to everyone. At some point earlier in my life I did, but I have long stopped trying to achieve that, because I found out the hard way that it simply isn’t possible. That’s a sure-fire recipe for heartbreak.

What I do desire is for the people close to me to continue to be positive and constructive in my life.

I relish the freedom to choose who and what will speak into my life and influence my thoughts and actions, and the freedom to be who I am without always looking over my shoulder, afraid of the judgement and negativity of others.

Lesson from ‘Othello’: How not to be a husband. 

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My students have obviously learned something from studying Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’. 

A student wrote the following assessments in this week’s essay: 

“Desdemona is Othello’s wife; the least he could do is talk to her, but apparently that’s too much to ask of our protagonist.”

“Othello is a dirtbag husband that took advantage of Desdemona’s love for him.”

Spot on, I say. 

Just making sure we knew.

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LMC: (to the visitors). What’s the time? Oh, wait, I will check on my iPad…

Me: you just asked that so you could say you would check on your iPad in front of everyone, didn’t you?

LMC: Yeah….

At least she had the dignity to blush. 

Hubris.

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Abbott.
Hockey.
Turnbull.
Morrison.
Pyne.

They dare to accuse ordinary Australians of having a sense of entitlement.
Enough said.

And so, we wait.

Things kids say in the library #3

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Two boys ran to the door of the library and looked in to see which teacher was on duty.
One says to the other, “Ohhhh rats, it’s the mean one! She doesn’t let us play games on the computers!”
Both looked at me with a mixture of misery and disgust on their faces, then walked away.

Go me.

Singing With The Radio.

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This morning as we were driving, the radio played Meatloaf’s “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad”. By the time we got to “I’m crying icicles instead of tears” all three of us in the car – plus the one on Skype – were singing along.

We discussed the idea that there are some songs that it’s almost compulsory that people should sing along with. They are classic, infectious songs that unite generations and have stood the test of time.

Is this list something that will grow much, or is there an elite set of songs that really are a step above all the others?
Feel free to suggest one or two of your favourites if you wish.

Songs Everyone Should Automatically Sing Along With:

Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad – Meatloaf
Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
Dancing Queen – ABBA
Summer of ’69 – Bryan Adams
Hotel California – The Eagles
American Pie – Don McLean
Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd
Sweet Caroline – Neil Diamond
Hey Jude – The Beatles
I Will Survive – Gloria Gaynor
It’s A Long Way To The Top – AC/DC
I’m Gonna Be [500 Miles] – The Proclaimers
Piano Man – Billy Joel
Imagine – John Lennon
Love Shack – The B-52s

It’s official: Australia’s Prime Minister is a real winker.

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Australia’s Prime Minister has proven to be a real winker… or something like that.

I was listening to 774 ABC Melbourne radio in the car on my way to work this morning when a woman named Gloria phoned in. In introducing herself, she told the Prime Minister that she was a grandmother with several chronic, life-threatening illnesses who had to work on a phone-sex line to make ends meet.

When she said that, Tony Abbot smirked and winked at the radio host, Jon Faine.  Obviously, I didn’t hear that on the radio, but it was all captured on film, since the station had the video camera rolling as well. Not surprisingly, outrage immediately flooded Twitter, Facebook and every other social media site people could get their fingertips on.

Apart from the fact that it’s kind of creepy, it’s totally inappropriate.
Gloria didn’t call to be sensational or give anyone cheap thrills.
She called to let the Prime Minister and all of Melbourne know how she feels about the way things are for her now, and the ways in which they’ll be worse when the Government’s latest budget is implemented on July 1 this year.

He acknowledged she was doing it tough and then started talking about how repealing the carbon tax would give her an “extra couple hundreds of dollars a year” more.
I was dumbfounded.
For someone in her situation, is “a couple of hundred dollars a year” more going to make a significant difference? Is it going to release her from having to work that part time job on the phone lines?
He didn’t even sound sympathetic. She was just another opportunity for him to tell the world how good he thinks he and his Liberal Party Government are.

I’ve got news for you, Tony Abbott. You’re getting harder and harder to believe all the time.
Gloria was right. You don’t give a stuff.
And I don’t feel very nice about you either.

The reasons I love my job.

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I really love some of the people I work with.  I need both hands to count the awesome people that I consider to be my friends as well as my workmates.  I don’t need to name them. They know who they are.

There is a lot to be said for knowing that there is always someone who you can always turn to for advice, a shoulder, or a laugh.
It’s refreshing to know that when someone smiles at you, they mean it.
When they ask if you are doing OK, you can be honest because they actually want to know.
I can tell them when I’m struggling, and I can share my joys and victories with them.
They see humour in the things that make me laugh, and they will cry with me, or for me, on those days when that is really my only option.
They know, too, that I will do the same for them. It’s really great to know that I can make the difference in their day that they make in mine.

Some of the greatest joys in my working life come from knowing who those people are and sharing part of my life with them. I am thankful for each one of them every day. To be honest, those people are often the difference between me actually being happy to go to work or not.

Don’t get me wrong: I love my job. I love working with my students and seeing them grow in confidence and knowledge. I thrive on classroom interaction and banter.  I have positive  student-teacher relationships with most, although not all, of my students. They know I do my absolute best for them.
When I am teaching, I know I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing.

There are times, though, when being at work and functioning properly is a really tough challenge.  Some days are just plain, hard work both emotionally and physically.
I hate it that I’m so weak and vulnerable. I hate it that my body lets me down. I hate it when my students see a glimpse of my pain or my inability to cope with it.
I hate the guilt that goes with all of that.

One of my greatest fears is that someone will decide I’m not up to it anymore, or I’m not good enough, or that I’m too broken to keep on teaching.
So I suck it up, put my sassy pants on, and keep going. I choose to invest my time and energy into my students and my friends. The days are much more rewarding and enjoyable that way.
A long walk up to the staff room doesn’t happen any more often than absolutely necessary, and that’s OK.
I’m not isolated because I am blessed to share an office with some of my friends. Others make a point of catching up with me through the day or by email or instant message.
It’s hard to feel sorry for yourself with friends like mine.

I really do love some of the people I work with.
Others… not so much.