IE Magazine: Issue 2 / Vol 44 / 2014

the professional voice of the Independent Education Union

issue 2|Vol 44|2014

The 3Rs: Recognise, Respect and Reward issue

Executive Editors John Quessy Deb James Terry Burke Managing Editor Tara de Boehmler Editorial Committee Cathy Hickey Michael Oliver Gloria Taylor Tara de Boehmler Sue Osborne Journalists Tara de Boehmler Sue Osborne Michael Oliver Design Chris Ruddle About us IE is a tri-annual journal published by the NSW/ACT, VicTas and Qld/NT Independent Education Unions for members and subscribers. It has a circulation of more than 65,000. IE’s contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the IEU or the editors nor imply endorsement by them.

Email NSW: ieu@ieu.asn.au VIC/TAS: info@ieuvictas.org.au QLD/NT: enquiries@qieu.asn.au IE online www.ieu.asn.au/publications/ Contributions Contributions and letters from members are welcome. Printing does not reflect endorsement and contributions may be edited at the editor’s discretion.

Email iemagazine@ieu.asn.au Advertising Chris Ruddle (02) 8202 8900 Advertising is carried in IE in order to minimise costs.

Advertising does not in any way reflect endorsement of the products or services.

Subscriptions IE is available free to members of the IEU, or by subscription.

Kayla Ordanoska: (02) 8202 8900 Print Post Number 100007506 Printing Print & Mail: (02) 9519 8268 ISSN 1320-9825

P10 3Rs Love Bites

Big Brother at school

P20

P30

Editorial Kaleidoscope Australia wide

It’s about Respect

P4

Robyn Williams

P4

news from the states and territories

P6

Reconciliation

Teaching science from

an Indigenous perspective

Sustainability Feature

Decision making in a sustainability context

P8

P9

3Rs Recognise, Respect and Reward

P10

Professional and industrial

Teaching + learning

Olympic inspiration

P16 Peer observation: How to make it work for you P18 P20 Love Bites: Encouraging healthy relationships

Understanding with the head and the heart

P22

Is your workstation harming you? Six tips for safety

P24

The role of the Primary Coordinator

P26

Legal Technology Diary|Giveaways Talking point Review

Under surveillance: Students recording teachers Big Brother at school

P29 P30

Doing the rounds

P32

Top teaching tips

P33 P34

P15

Maths problem with no easy solution

Seduced and Abandoned

independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|3

Recognise, Respect and Reward Unions often talk about the right to be treated with dignity and respect and, as a movement, we have assisted many workplaces to ensure they are providing dignity and respect to all employees.

Sometimes this is through anti-bullying, anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies. Regularly it is by representing and supporting our members when employers get it wrong. But when we ask for respect we are requiring more than just the absence of inappropriate behaviour.

Unions NSW defines respect as including: respect for the environment; respect for other people’s privacy, their physical space and belongings; and respect for different viewpoints, philosophies, religion, gender, lifestyle, ethnic origin, physical ability, beliefs and personality.

For IEU members, we also add: respect for your strong professional commitment; your contribution to current and future generations of children; your right to a work/life balance; and your role in enhancing social progress.

A campaign being spearheaded by members of the NSW/ACT branch of the Independent Education Union calls on employers to Recognise teachers as professionals, Respect the work you do and Reward you appropriately. Read more about the 3Rs: Recognise, Respect and Reward campaign on p10 of this issue.

While on the topic of respect, we feature on p20 a groundbreaking Queensland program, Love Bites, which teaches students about respectful, healthy relationships.

On p26 we get an update on an article on primary school coordinators contributed 20 years ago by John De Nobile. Find out what has changed and what more needs to shift.

Finally, on p30 we also catch up with Big Brother, coming to a school near you or maybe he’s already here. According to UK civil liberties group Big Brother Watch some 40% of British schools were using biometric technology at the start of the 2012-13 academic year and Civil Liberties Australia fears our own schools are in danger of becoming “mini-surveillance states”.

Enjoy the read and, if you would like to contribute, provide feedback or suggest a lead, please email iemagazine@ieu.asn.au.

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Kaleidoscope

Robyn Williams Radio National science journalist Robyn Williams attended seven schools before he turned eight years old and was never destined to be short on life experience, writes IE Journalist Tara de Boehmler.

Describing his schooling as “very complicated”, even his first education memory was formative.

“The first thing I remember is being rather nonplussed by the fact that most of the young kids couldn’t read, because I could read from when I was very young,” Robyn says.

“I was in primary school in London and the teacher had a competition. She said if we could read the little plaque she held up, we could leave. She held up the word ‘piano’ and I said it first and left.”

Things were less straightforward when Robyn found himself at another school “somewhere in Hyling, Ireland” at the age of six.

“I attended a boarding school for kids who were sick because I had bad asthma. They said I was not supposed to be able to read before I was seven-years-old, and I was therefore not allowed to have books.”

An “infuriated” Robyn was known to borrow hymn books in order to have something to read.

Kaleidoscope

It was regulation – the idea that you had to have reached a certain stage by a certain age and, if not, you weren’t kind of fitting.

I seem to remember an awful lot of not fitting in properly.

“It was regulation – the idea that you had to have reached a certain stage by a certain age and, if not, you weren’t kind of fitting. I seem to remember an awful lot of not fitting in properly.”

The sense of ridiculousness regarding school rules and of generally feeling out of place reached a whole new level at about seven years of age when Robyn’s family moved to Vienna, Austria.

“I was immediately placed in a primary school where nobody spoke English and I spoke no German. The challenge in the first few weeks was to become fluent in German.”

Not only did Robyn struggle at first with the language meanings, spelling and structure, he was shocked to find that all his classmates wrote in perfect order, with dead straight lines on blank paper while his were “all over the place”.

“In that school, when the teacher entered the class we had to stand up and bow,” Robyn says. “Everything was strictly organised and obedience was the name of the game.”

By the time Robyn was eight he was fluent in street German, Viennese and was picking up bits of Hungarian. He had also gained some new insights.

“The German tradition of discipline and respect and those strict rules were for me immediately uncongenial – whereas the other pupils had grown up with it.

“I developed a rather skewed idea of what discipline should be and also what standards were because I had so many different standards in so many different schools.”

After a stint at a grammar school in Vienna, Robyn’s family returned to England where at 11-years-old he was enrolled in a London grammar school.

“It was a boys school and the first time I’d been deprived of girls and women. I found this very strange,” Robyn recalls. “It had pretensions. The older boys wore boaters. The headmaster was posh – or at least he thought he was.”

Given the impressive first appearances, Robyn was surprised by his classmates’ lack of experience.

“I was rather bewildered by the fact these boys hadn’t been anywhere. I’d just grown up in Central Europe and these kids didn’t know the next suburb.”

Robin made a lifelong friend and the two of them became part of a “faction of naughty boys”.

“The strict discipline of the school meant I was forever rebelling. My gang and I had not only a cultural life but a social life. The idea of not being in female company until we were 18 or 19 struck us as ridiculous so we spent our lives with girls and activities and political protests. We actually made a virtue of mucking up and laziness, where we could get away with doing the minimum.”

The tradition at the grammar school was for students to be told, at 12 years of age, whether they would do arts or sciences.

“When I was told I would do science it was a bit irksome because I had come near the top in English and I had the languages as well. So here I was, struggling with physics, chemistry, biology and maths in a class that had astoundingly clever people who seemed to do it without taking their fingers from their noses,” Robyn says.

“They could just give you the answer and if you asked how they did it they would say something unintelligible. I found it deeply frustrating and there was a tendency to want to give up.”

Robyn recalls a maths exam where second place went to the student who got 99%. With 85%, Robin came 16th and he wondered what the point was.

“It struck me that managing competition was something you really needed to think about carefully.”

In post-War London, poverty was rife and school was seen as a rare privilege, Robyn says. And while some of the significance escaped him at the time, its value has stayed with him.

“The post war British attitude to education and social reform had delivered us the 1944 Education Act which transformed the nation,” Robyn says.

“At the time I didn’t fully appreciate something that was then lost with the abolition of grammar schools in the late 1970s/early 1980s. We had an amazing battalion of Oxford graduates with first-class honours degrees who were our teachers.

Whatever you think of educational standards, having that quality of teaching was in retrospect quite stunning.

“I’ve often thought about ways in which someone who is hard to manage, like me, can get on in a world where you need some kind of order and yet you also need some means of allowing creative free spirits to find out their own level.”

Robyn interviewed a professor at the University of Newcastle in Britain who had placed computers in the walls of an Indian slum and observed the children selforganising their learning.

“At the end of the program they did wonder how much children who are locked into the new technology and screens – even though they are working together and discussing things with each other – are free to grow up as children with socialising, experimentation and the freedom to explore.

“I did an awful lot of exploring at the expense of other things so it’s something I find very interesting indeed. The place of discipline and technology is unquestionably exciting but you cannot under-resource education in the long run.” independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|5

NSW Fairer rates for prac: Universities come on board The NSW/ACT IEU has had a major breakthrough in its campaign to get a better deal for members supervising university practicum teachers.

Australian Catholic University became the first to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Union in early April.

Under the MOU, the University will work towards a competitive pay offer in line with the Union’s expectations to be in place for 2015 and will also explore with the IEU: • closer relations between the two bodies

• ways for teachers to make prac supervision count towards personal PD requirements • developing accessible and time effective courses for delivery to members of the IEU, and • better support for experienced teachers supervising the practicum.

Soon after, the University of Notre Dame and Southern Cross University also signed MOUs with the IEU. The Union’s campaign to improve the deal to prac supervisors was launched against the backdrop of ever-decreasing placement opportunities for student

teachers. Increasing workloads that leave little time for supervision, additional demands on the prac process and a pay rate that has been frozen since 1992 have all contributed.

From Term 2, many NSW schools refused to take prac students until the universities agreed to improve pay and conditions for supervision.

Schools are now accepting prac students from universities who have signed a memorandum of understanding with the Union.

Victoria Spotlight on support staff As a result of the negotiation of a new industrial agreement between the IEUVicTas and the Catholic education employers, education support staff in Victorian Catholic schools have a newly constructed classification structure.

The new five-level structure replaces the previous seven-level one. The structure combines a number of previous levels together, removing the need for many employees to have to apply

for reclassification to a higher level. It introduces a new additional level on top taking those employees up to a current top rate of $95,648.

The structure is a rewrite of the previous model of ‘Typical Duties’ for each occupational strand and ‘General Work Descriptions’, which include level descriptions of competency, judgement, independence and problem solving, direction, supervision and qualification

and/or experience.

The Typical Duties are now more contemporary, and more accurately capture the skilled work of teacher aides, counsellors, youth workers, school administrative staff, library, laboratory and ICT staff. The Union has developed a Reclassification Guide for education support members and is running a number of seminars for members on reclassification.

Tasmania Putting a stop to HALT The introduction of a Certification of Highly Accomplished (HA) Teachers and Lead Teachers (LT) began in April 2012 when all of the state and territory education ministers endorsed the concept at the Standing Council of School Education and Early Childhood (SCEEC).

Certification was a component of the National Partnerships on Improving Teacher Quality. The nationally consistent process was developed by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). In each State and Territory there would be one or more bodies (certifying authorities) managing the certification process. Not all states

6|independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014

however have taken up the certification scheme. Victoria, for example, has not adopted the process.

Initially the credentialing process involved a reward payment funded by the Commonwealth Government.

The Commonwealth subsequently removed the payment funding and teacher employing authorities became responsible for any payments to be made to a successfully certified teacher.

The certification process involves a multi-layered evaluation of the applicant against the Highly Accomplished and Lead Teacher levels of the Australian Professional Teaching Standards.

Tasmania was one of the first jurisdictions to train assessors and called for expressions of interest in 2013.

However, the interest has been extremely low and the Department of Education the Catholic Education Office and Independent Schools Tasmania have recently advised the Teachers Registration Board of Tasmania that Tasmania will discontinue participation in the Certification of Highly Accomplished and Lead Teachers.

This means that the certification process will no longer be implemented in Tasmania.

Australia wide

Queensland Campaign for practicum reform The Queensland branch of the IEU is launching a campaign to redress the inadequate remuneration and recognition of teachers who give their time and experience to pre-service teachers undergoing practicum.

The current allowances given to teachers who supervise pre-service

teachers is as low as $12.45 per day. This rate has remained unchanged since 1992.

Members report that the amount of time and extra work associated with practicum supervision has had a sizeable impact on workload and the current rate of remuneration fails to acknowledge this.

The Queensland Branch of the IEU will be campaigning to increase this rate to one that recognises the extra work of teachers as well as the value of the mentoring and knowledge imparted to pre-service teachers.

ACT casuals spotlight professional learning access The IEU hosted a meeting for ACT casual teachers at its Canberra office to discuss concerns about the ACT Teacher Quality Institute’s (TQI) professional learning requirements.

These include achieving the required annual learning quota of 20 hours, ensuring that professional learning was relevant to casual teachers’ needs,

access to the TQI online portal and concerns that casual teachers are often excluded from professional learning where the employer incurs a cost for their attendance (whereas permanent teachers attend for free).

The Union has established a subcommittee and has presented a variety of scenarios of casual teachers’

work and access to professional learning to the TQI for consideration and comment.

The Union also suggested potential resolutions to the TQI, for example a prorata arrangement for casuals regarding the annual 20 hours PL matching the leniency offered by other jurisdictions such as NSW.

South Australia Early childhood teachers ready for change IEUSA’s newest item on the agenda is the Goodstart Early Learning Centres – formerly the ABC Child Care Centres, now run by the Brotherhood of St Laurence.

Before the National Quality Framework reforms, SA childcare centres were staffed with untrained or certificate trained childcare workers. United Voice has a strong presence in these centres due to their Big Steps Campaign.

IEUSA’s foray into the Goodstart Early Learning Centres, a non-government education service provider, is focussed on the teachers, who, by virtue of their tertiary qualifications, cannot be represented by United Voice.

The Union’s visits have been met with keen interest and gratitude as we engage in conversations about professional issues – pay equity,

programing time, the new teacher registration requirements, the new AITSL referenced teacher standards, professional development and representation at the next enterprise agreement negotiations early in 2015.

It’s early days yet but if the reception the Union has received so far is any indication, teachers in the early education sector are ready for change.

Northern Territory Lutheran sector negotiations IEUA-QNT members in Northern Territory Lutheran schools are set to commence negotiations for a new collective agreement.

Employees within the NT Lutheran sector have yet to receive any wage

increases since August 2012 because of delays and inactivity from employer representatives. This has placed them significantly behind the wages and conditions enjoyed by employees in the NT Catholic sector. To redress this,

members have produced resolutions calling on the Lutheran Schools Association to provide an immediate wage increase, backpayment of wages, and to commence negotiations in good faith.

independent education| issue 1|Vol 44|2014|7

Towards reconciliation

Teaching science from an Indigenous perspective Students must be able to consider science from the viewpoint of a variety of cultures and ways of knowing, NSW Premiers Copyright Agency and Innovation Scholarship winner Nicolette Hilton tells IE Journalist Sue Osborne.

There’s a big difference between delivering Indigenous knowledge and delivering lessons that are culturally responsive.

Science Teacher and IEU Member Nicolette completed a Masters degree at the University of New England on Indigenous and gifted and talented perspectives on the science curriculum that lead to her winning the $15,000 scholarship.

With the money she left her Armidale home to travel around Australia, New Zealand and Canada, meeting with teachers and academics who specialise in the field.

She learnt about programs developed in the northern territories of Canada, including the ‘rekindling the tradition’ program and about ‘knowledge keepers’, who work out of the Saskatoon Public Schools Office.

They are Indigenous people who travel to schools and work with teachers who may not be confident about delivering Indigenous content.

She also studied the work of Dr Duane Hamacher of Macquarie University, who has written a PhD on studying astronomy from an Indigenous perspective (see http://bit. ly/1jvQDm5).

At Flinders University she learnt about using ochre as a practical way of teaching science with an Indigenous perspective.

“You can talk about the chemical composition of ochre, its different colours and the perception of these colours in different light,” Nicolette says.

“I would want to find out how painting, dance and storytelling act an vessels for information sharing in science.

“Teachers can complete an open-ended inquiry into ochre from a scientific viewpoint, but of course you need permission from your local community to deliver cultural knowledge, as it is a very sacred entity.

“By promoting an innovative atmosphere students are able to learn in a way that is meaningful and allows them to express their knowledge and understanding in the creative ways that they are comfortable with.”

The Australian Curriculum now mandates Indigenous history and culture as a priority.

Nicolette found in her Masters studies that many high school science teachers identified Indigenous culture as an area in which they

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felt they needed extra resources and support.

She also found not all teachers understood that they were required to teach science with an Indigenous perspective.

“There’s a big difference between delivering Indigenous knowledge and delivering lessons that are culturally responsive.

“In order to deliver knowledge in a culturally responsive way, we have to encourage a collaborative approach, perhaps with students teaching other students, because that’s how traditional cultural knowledge would normally be passed on.

“The pedagogy changes. The science being taught is the same, it’s just how it is delivered.”

Accessing Indigenous people from the local community is crucial to any study, Nicolette says.

Developing relationships was important, so that students could get to know real people.

“There’s a danger of presenting a stereotypical view of what contemporary Indigenous culture is if you don’t work closely with the local community or just teach out of a textbook, although starting to do something is better than doing nothing.”

In Canada the knowledge keepers fulfil this role, and Nicolette says Canadian academics she met admired the Australian system where Australian Aboriginal Education Workers are situated in many schools.

“The Aboriginal Education Workers can fulfil a similar role to the knowledge keepers in Canada. They provide the links with the local community.

“Whether they are actually used in that role at every school is another question.

“There is no single model that can be rolled out that will apply to every school in the country. The situation is unique for each individual community and the schools have to make the initial connections with community and take the time to develop it.

“If the school does not ask the community what they want for their children and provide opportunities for them to make contributions, implementation of Indigenous perspectives will not be beneficial to the students.”

Sustainability

Decision making in a sustainability context In this article Phil Smith, Sustainability Education Trainer, and Jenny Hill, Educational Leadership Consultant, argue that humans can make decisions that help create a positive future.

We understand sustainability as healthy people living in healthy communities on a healthy planet. Anything that contributes to or blocks the achievement of such a world is a part of the sustainability context.

Sustainable decision making requires us to acknowledge that our choices and actions fit within a bigger, dynamic picture.

Forever, humankind has faced two fundamental questions: How are we to live and how are we to live together? A quick glance at the news and a millisecond’s thought show that such questions don’t have agreed answers. On top of not being able to find agreed solutions to these first two, we are, this century, confronted with a third question: How are we to live together on a single planet? The need for social justice, and the threats of serious damage to the ecological services that bring us fresh water, clean air and healthy, fertile soils, coupled with the capacity to wipe ourselves (and many other species) out, require us to develop sustainability decision-making processes.

The ‘standard’ steps in decisionmaking processes include: identify and isolate the problem; find alternative solutions; choose a solution; take action; and evaluate outcomes.

The problem with this process is that sustainability challenges are not only in flux, but integrated and complex.

Everything’s connected.

Ever since the Greeks, we

have assumed that humans are rational, logical and deliberate. This idea underpins Plato, Descartes, Freud, Kant; it is the basis for economics and science. But according to Jonah Lehrer “it’s wrong”. Using recent research, Lehrer shows that whenever someone makes a decision, the brain is awash in feeling. Even when a person tries to be reasonable, emotional impulses secretly influence judgement. Good decisions require us to use reason and listen to our emotions. If we accept Lehrer’s assertion, then we need decision-making processes that invite people in through reason and emotion; processes that spark ideas, and engage and inspire others to be thinking and acting sustainably.

Where to start?

For decisions to be authentic not fabricated, dynamic not fixed, agreed not forced, we can start anywhere. Start anywhere with these things in mind and heart: • Expand our conception of ‘self’ from the narrow, individual body to a global self that embraces others, other species, inanimate nature, the Earth and the future • Act on understanding of the ecological principle of connectedness • Value benefits beyond economic • Make decisions on evidence and values • Hold a compelling vision that’s been created through inclusive dialogue • Agree on a set of sustainability indicators • Trust in self, others, our creativity and critical thinking.

The process is organic and messy.

Commitment, focus and perseverance are necessary. As actions take hold and become accepted, new pathways and further possibilities open up to the next decision and action.

This is part one of a two-part article on decision making in a sustainability context. In the next issue of IE we consider the implications for schools and school leadership.

Reference Lehrer J 2009, The Decisive Moment, Text Publishing, Melbourne p 4-6 independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|9

Kerry Seadon

Joan Bradley

3Rs: Recognise, Respect & Reward An employer attack on the wages and conditions of staff in NSW and ACT Catholic systemic schools has sparked outrage among members. In the dying days of Term 2 the Catholic Commission for Employment Relations sprung on members a ‘draft’ proposed agreement threatening to increase hours of faceto-face teaching, scrap restrictions on class sizes, abolish all promotions positions, take away the right to a half-hour meal break and reduce sick leave. That’s just for starters, writes IE Journalist Tara de Boehmler.

Support staff proposals include the removal of automatic progression, a dramatic reduction of overtime entitlements and slashing salaries of new staff by between $6000 and $17,400.

IEU members throughout NSW and ACT have met to endorse industrial action and are putting their weight behind the IEU 3Rs: Recognise, Respect and Reward campaign.

NSW/ACT IEU General Secretary John Quessy says the themes of the campaign are universal to teachers, whatever system they work in. But right now, for staff in Catholic systemic schools, they are particularly poignant.

“With their insulting and arrogant proposal, Catholic employers have effectively replaced the notion of consulting with employees with that of insulting employees.

The 3Rs campaign spells out the increased workloads that staff are dealing with and sets out the conditions and resource improvements that must be made to facilitate the new demands.

“This is about Recognising our teachers as professionals, Respecting the work that they do and Rewarding them appropriately.”

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All in a week Joan Bradley, House Coordinator, Merici College, Canberra.

When it came time to interview Joan she had two students waiting outside and just a few minutes to spare in a typically busy day.

“Because I’m one of the House Coordinators I have a lot of pastoral care responsibilities and I also teach four lines of English. That’s about 12 lessons per week and two of those classes are seniors,” Joan says.

“In a busy College you never know what’s going to come in or when a student’s life is going to go pear-shaped and you’ve got to step in and help solve the problem, give support and make contact with the parents.

“It’s the nature of the job but, along with the teaching, marking and planning, it does make for quite a heavy, complex and unpredictable workload. I can’t just put a student down and go and do something else.”

Joan has worked at Merici College for 22 years of her 42-year teaching career.

“Once upon a time I was just going to work and teaching,” Joan says laughing. “Of course, I’m in a promotions position now so

Feature

It’s like our employers are going back to the dark ages and it is worrying that, in this day and age, they think what they are proposing is okay.

there’s a bit more administration involved with that, but just generally there is an awful lot of accountability that has come into the role of teaching. You seem to need to account for absolutely everything you do,” Joan says.

Before Joan’s week kicked off, she spent the weekend doing Year 12 marking.

Monday On Mondays Joan runs an assembly for the 200 kids in her House.

“We’ve got a big charity fundraising month coming up and we do a lot for SIDS and KIDS so it will be a very busy time for us,” Joan says.

“We’re also involved in social events with other colleges.”

In addition to Joan’s pastoral care duties she teaches four three-hour classes of English each week – for Years 8, 10, 11 and 12.

From about 4pm to 6pm Joan attends the Lit Link awards ceremony run by the ACT Teachers Association of English. Last year she entered five girls in the competition and they all had their work published.

Afterwards Joan plans to do some senior marking but is “too tired after the event”.

Tuesday The school has an excursion and a student takes the opportunity to go elsewhere.

Joan has to ring the parents and have a conversation, with another meeting and consequences to follow for the student.

The school has an information evening for Year 7s but Joan will meet with them at a later date. “As one of the House Coordinators, we have an awful lot to do with the new students coming in at the start of the new academic year,” Joan says.

After school Joan is off to the gym and then does some marking for Year 11.

“If I can chip away at it I might get a free weekend in a few weeks,” Joan says.

Wednesday After a busy workday, Joan holds a meeting with pastoral care staff. These usually take from 45 minutes to an hour.

Thursday After work, the school has another information evening, which may run until 7pm.

“I’ll be going to this one as it’s for Year 11,” Joan says. “The Principal will give a talk and there’s an opportunity for parents to chat to the teachers.”

Friday Joan attends part one of a two-day professional development conference on Positive Education.

“We’ve got to register with TQI every year and do 100 hours over five years. In a 40week year that’s one PD thing every fortnight, which is quite a lot,” she says.

Afterwards she attends drinks and nibbles at the new John Paul College in Gungahlin.

“Our previous Principal moved there and she’s invited us over,” Joan says. “It’s nice that there’s always something happening.”

Saturday and Sunday Joan spends Saturday completing the second day of the two-day professional development conference and on Sunday she finishes her Year 11 marking.

Joan says the workload increase has been gradual.

“If you put a frog in a vat of hot water they’ll feel it. If you put them in cold water and slowly increase the temperature it may be a long while before they feel the need to jump out,” she says. independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|11

“I’ve been doing this for a while and you learn how to be economical with your time.

But essentially, if you’ve got 50 essays to mark and can only do three or four in an hour, that’s a lot of extra hours if you want do a good job.”

Of her employers’ proposed new enterprise agreement, Joan says it is “so insulting”.

“I think we’ve just got to ditch the whole thing,” Joan says. “It’s like they’re going back to the Dark Ages and it is worrying that they think, in this day and age, that what they are proposing is okay for teachers.”

She says a proposal to scrap guaranteed lunch breaks could increase stress and lead to poor mental health, as would plans to increase class sizes and face-to-face teaching time.

“On top of this we’ve already had a huge increase in the requirements for teachers to constantly be upgrading their qualifications,” Joan says.

Despite the pressures, Joan is passionate about her job.

“You do get regular feedback in lots of ways to say thank you for what you’ve 12|independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014

done,” Joan says. “It’s not that I need them but when we do get a thank you from parents for helping their kids on some way, I can tell you that is all you need to feel you’re doing something right.”

Making a difference Kerry Seadon, Middle Leader, St John the Evangelist, Campbelltown.

When Kerry took time out of her busy day to reflect on her week there was much going on around her. It was a NAPLAN week, staff had just received a presentation on their employer’s proposed enterprise agreement and the school was gearing up for its centenary celebrations. On top of this, Kerry was grappling with the usual daily challenges and trying to find the time to list her accomplishments to apply for accreditation at Professional Leadership.

“This is my first year here but I’m in my 17th year of teaching and have been a Middle Leader for about 10 years,” Kerry says.

“I’m also in the midst of trying to work on my accreditation at Professional Leadership and am finding it an extraordinarily difficult

Feature

They keep saying ‘It’s not necessarily going to happen but we’re just at the beginning and it’s exciting to be moving this way’. I know education is changing and I fully support that, but it doesn’t have to be at the expense of life.

process. The main challenge is finding the time to sit down and write about myself, talk to referees and collect all the evidence.

“I need a good few hours but after work I am planning and preparing for the next day. I was allocated five days off to work on it but I’ve had trouble accessing them.”

Monday At 8am Kerry meets with Bakers Delight to ask them to participate in a breakfast program she is helping to develop.

In addition to Kerry’s busy days teaching 28 Year 5 students spanning early Stage 1 to Stage 4, her Middle Leader duties include Mathematics KLA, Science and Technology KLA, Year 4 Grade Leader, spelling, student leadership, school administration and DALWOOD, SPAT and NEALE (teacher inservice and individual plan interventions for Years 3-6).

After work Kerry usually spends about an hour planning and preparing the next day’s work, catching up on work emails and responding to what is happening at school.

“We have a busy calendar.

This year the school celebrates its centenary and I volunteered to give a presentation. I’m excited about it but it does take time.”

Tuesday Kerry has an 8.15am start for playground duty and then joins Prayer from 8.30am.

As this is NAPLAN week, Kerry has sacrificed some of her Coordinator time so she can administer the test to her students. “I wanted them to have me rather than a casual teacher,” she says.

After school she participates in a coordinators’ meeting from 3.45pm which can run as late as 6pm.

Wednesday Kerry arrives at 8.10am for staff meeting at which the Principal presents a CCER slideshow outlining employer proposals for a new enterprise

Struggle for respect Schools and the Union have been part of Dawn Glase’s life for more than four decades.

She started her career in primary teaching in 1970, and has fulfilled various roles, including 21 years as an Assistant Principal.

She’s now taking Year 4 at Holy Family Primary in Ingleburn, Sydney. Her daughter and husband are teachers too, so Recognition, Respect and Reward for teachers are crucial to her family.

A committed IEU member throughout her career and a Union rep for seven years, with three years on state Council, Dawn says she gets “very worried when she hears a young teacher, having approached her to join the IEU, say, in all innocence, ‘What does the Union do for me?’

“It shows a lack of historical understanding of the continual struggle of unionists over the years to get recognition, respect and rewards for teachers.”

In order to maintain this, certain conditions and standards that were hard fought for by the Union must be maintained, Dawn says.

“The regulation of class sizes has been a boon for teachers. I recall classes of 35 to 40, with no support for special needs. A teacher is required to differentiate their program to cater for each child’s specific needs.

This takes much professional energy and expertise. In the last few years I have taught classes of 22-23. It does make a difference, particularly when doing reports.

“Relief from face-to-face teaching (RFF) is great. Every teacher I know utilises every second of this time and appreciates the opportunity to whittle away at their ever-increasing workloads. No teacher needs to have what they do in this time imposed on them.”

Dawn says she does not understand the point of Teacher Performance and Reviewing Performance.

“Perhaps it is to appease those, usually outside the profession, who reckon teaching standards are crumbling away.

“Despite some of media that ‘teacher bash’ or who portray us as selfish unionists, teachers make a great contribution to the future of their students, this nation and the wider world.

“We urge them to respect all peoples and to acknowledge those who are disadvantaged in some way and the poor. I am also very aware of the discrimination, past and present that is applied to girls and women. I miss no opportunity to speak about it.

“Our Union has worked tirelessly to ensure that women are treated equitably. I remember the heady days of affirmative action for women. There are now many provisions in place to ensure women and men can be involved in rearing a baby, or taking care of aged parents or sick family members.

“Belonging to the Union means we can work collaboratively and collectively to advance our working conditions and support each other when necessary.

Otherwise we have no strength.”

Sue Osborne independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|13

Feature

agreement. Kerry feels scared about what she hears.

“From what I read it looks like I will lose my leadership position at the end of my contract.

This means I will lose money and could lose my home,” she says. “They keep saying ‘It’s not necessarily going to happen but we’re just at the beginning and it’s exciting to be moving this way’. I know education is changing and I fully support that, but it doesn’t have to be at the expense of life.”

After school Kerry attends the weekly staff meeting, which runs until about 5pm.

Thursday Every second Thursday Kerry and her colleagues usually attend a voluntary blog meeting. “But we are all feeling snowed under so we’re not doing it this week,”Kerry says.

As with most days, Kerry plans to spend time after work on lesson preparation.

“The RFF system here is different to anywhere else I’ve worked. We get 10.10am-11.10am on Thursdays and then select two days to take throughout the term. We get a casual but we have to plan the day for them.”

Kerry says she’s seen a lot of change in education over the past few years, “particularly where we are required to implement plans responding to each student’s individual needs”.

“This is great and we’ve seen some good results but it takes time and we need to be provided with the RFF to do this on top of our other work. We also need school support officers for this, but their time has already been cut back. As a result we have even more to manage ourselves.”

Support for the future

Any campaign demanding more respect from employers and the community is welcome, Bob Green says.

Bob started his career in 1969 as a primary teacher in the Newcastle region north of Sydney and he still teaches casually today.

Over the years he has been a Coordinator, Assistant Principal and Acting Principal, as well as IEU Rep. Bob takes pride in talking to young teachers about the union movement and all it has achieved for teachers over the past decades.

He says young women are often shocked to learn that female teachers used to earn 75% of male salaries, prior to union activism.

“Society, and the media, seem to find teachers an easy target for all of society’s 14|independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014

Friday At 8am Kerry visits a local fruit shop to ask them to participate in the breakfast program. This is followed by Parish Mass before classes begin.

“I’m helping to organise the breakfast program in my own time,” Kerry says.

“Here, we have students outside from 7.45am but supervision doesn’t start until 8.30am. Some of them haven’t had breakfast and their next eating opportunity will be 11am so this will make a difference.”

Saturday and Sunday Kerry estimates she spends about four or five hours each weekend planning for the week ahead, getting on top of her Middle Leader duties and gathering and preparing class resources. She and her colleagues are also asked to attend sacramental programs.

Each week is different “depending on what is going on in school life”, Kerry says.

“In Week 9 we have parent-teacher nights where we’re expected to stay later and I also do representative sport.

“This year I’m the MacKillop Coach for boys softball, which involved 8am starts in March and will entail a week in Lismore for the sports carnival in September,” Kerry says.

“I love teaching and making a contribution to students’ lives. I also enjoy taking on new challenges and helping to make the school a better place for students to learn and grow, like through the breakfast program.

“I love that the Catholic school system is about developing and supporting the whole child.”

ills, and that may have gotten worse over the years. The talkback radio host may have something to do with that.”

Changes to curriculum that were forced on teachers without consultation, and were unpopular with the community, left teachers in a ‘piggy-in-the-middle’ situation, Bob says.

Bob’s first year of teaching coincided with the first ever teachers’ strike which was seen as ‘treasonous’ at the time, and he says the lack of respect shown by employers then has not changed today.

“Look at the latest enterprise agreement offered by the CCER. That doesn’t show much respect for teachers. The Federal Government’s budget cuts to education shows where it stands too.

“It’s great that the Union has a Recognise, Respect and Reward campaign for teachers to support them into the future.”

Sue Osborne

Teaching and learning

Olympic inspiration

As the second summer Youth Olympic Games plays out in Nanjing, China, many Australian students will already be familiar with the athletes, the values they encompass and the history of the Olympics thanks to a raft of new web resources, writes IE Journalist Tara de Boehmler.

From 16-28 August 2014, about 3,800 athletes between 15 and 18 years old will be giving their all as they compete in more than 220 events. With 28 sports represented, from handball, gymnastics and taekwondo to diving, fencing and wrestling, there is likely to be something to interest most tastes.

But according to the Australian Olympic Committee’s Olympic Education Manager, Frances Cordaro, these events have much more to offer young people that entertainment alone.

Education resources now available online provide cross-curricular lesson plans and opportunities to engage with and learn about athletes using social media, video and traditional means. Meanwhile a series of awards encourage students to encompass Olympics values.

“We have the Pierre de Coubertin annual awards programs for secondary students who have represented their school at regional or state level but have also demonstrated the values associated with the Olympics movement such as fair play, respect and excellence. At primary school level we have the BK (Boxing Kangaroo) Medallion for students demonstrating these values not only in sports but also in the classroom,” she says.

Of the education program, Frances says the program is “based on the Olympic games but it is not just about PDHPE”.

“It is very much cross-curricular and we have lesson plans that support it. Many are for primary schools and we’ve recently published a secondary digital resource predominantly for Years 9, 10 and 11 that looks at the history of the last century and how significant events have impacted on the Olympic Games, for instance the Cold War.” Primary students were invited to send in artworks to help decorate the Nanjing

Olympic Village. For previous games they sent letters, sock puppets and cardboard skeleton sleds.

In the Learn from a Champ program middle and upper primary and secondary school students can explore more than 50 videos featuring Australian Olympians talking about the highs and lows of sport and life. The resource is themed around the A.S.P.I.R.E. values: attitude, sportsmanship, pride, individual responsibility, respect and express yourself.

Chat to a Champ uses online video conferencing to put primary schools in touch with Olympians, a program that ran every day during the Sochi Games.

“Using Google Hangouts technology allowed the Olympians to speak with three schools at the same time during the Games and we streamed it live to the internet so anyone could watch it,” Frances says.

“Those schools had already been following the progress and training using the technology.

They developed a really nice relationship and when it came to games time there was a great understanding of who that athlete was and there was a lot of support for them, which the athletes were quite grateful for.”

Resources Australian Olympic Education http://education.olympics.com.au Learn from a Champ http://education.olympics.com.au/ programs/learn-from-a-champ/learn-from-achamp Australian Olympic Youth Team http://nanjing2014.olympics.com.au

independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|15

Maths problem with no easy solution The number of students taking high level Maths is on the decline, with experts warning of serious consequences down the track, IE Journalist Sue Osborne writes.

The lack of students studying high-level maths is “an issue of national importance”, according to Australia’s Chief Scientist Ian Chubb.

Less students taking high level maths equals fewer maths graduates and more demand for them. Maths graduates can command large salaries in industry jobs straight from university, and are unlikely to opt for teaching.

In 2013 NSW produced 3000 fewer calculustrained students than in 2001. Without calculus, students struggle with maths, engineering and science at university.

Universities have instituted short bridging courses to try and deal with the problem, but drop out rates are high.

John Raftery is a Maths Teacher at Bethany Catholic College, south of Sydney, and IEU Rep on the Maths Curriculum Committee at the NSW Board of Studies, Education and Teaching Standards (BOSTES).

“The numbers of maths graduates have gone down steadily over the last 10 years and the number of jobs has risen, so the number of people who have a good understanding of maths in schools is shrinking,” John says.

“A lot of excellent teachers who don’t have a strong academic background in maths are teaching the subject.

“In primary levels you often have people forced to teach maths who did not like maths or did not feel confident with it when they were at school. These people do their best but they face a very difficult task and do not receive the necessary support from educational administrators.”

John says education administrators have not reacted quickly enough to this problem and there is a desperate need for them to show leadership and provide high quality fallback programs for staff.

“At my school we have a PE-trained teacher teaching a couple of units of maths. At other schools the situation is worse, with many teachers with little or no maths background being expected to teach maths classes.

“These teachers are often outstanding

16|independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014

classroom practitioners, but without a strong background in maths they find it very difficult to prepare the more academically able students for Stage 6 higher level courses.”

John says non-maths trained teachers understandably take a “safe” process-based approach when teaching the subject, rather than a problem solving approach.

“This can give maths the unfair reputation of being a boring repetitive subject when it is really one of the most creative subjects students can study.

“It would be unfair to blame the teachers for this, but the inspiration that is going to get our students to take higher level maths is not there.”

John says school administrators need to bite the bullet and spend the money that would provide high quality scope and sequencing and programs written by maths experts to support teachers. This would free many teachers from a strong reliance on textbooks.

John is not an advocate of more mentoring of teachers by teachers, unless adequate release time is written into their teaching load, as they are already under pressure and need to concentrate on preparing interesting work for their students.

The situation in NSW at least, where taking a less demanding maths level in the final year exams can lead to a higher overall university entrance score, was also discouraging many students from taking more challenging maths courses.

“In countries which are excelling in international tests, such as China, Finland and other Asian countries, maths is a compulsory subject for matriculation to almost all university courses.

“Society depends on people being maths literate and students need the motivation to study maths, as it can be quite challenging.

Making maths compulsory at higher levels of education could be a start.”

A recent survey by the Mathematics Association of NSW found 80% of high school maths teachers believe universities should reintroduce prerequisites for undergraduate

Teaching and learning

There is an urgent need to develop new strategies to increase the number of qualified secondary mathematics teachers and attract more mathematically able students into the profession.

degrees that require high-level maths proficiency.

The survey results confirm that thousands of students are learning maths from teachers who do not hold formal qualifications in maths.

“The shortage of qualified maths teachers is particularly alarming in regional areas”, the survey says. (Read the full report at www.mansw.nsw.edu.au).

“The Mathematical Association acknowledges the outstanding work that the ‘out-of-field’ teachers are doing to fill this void and we will continue to support them through ongoing professional development across NSW,” Association President Catherine Attard says.

“However, there is an urgent need to develop new strategies to increase the number of qualified secondary mathematics teachers and attract more mathematically able students into the profession,” she says.

Radio and TV personality Adam Spencer has recently been appointed as a Maths Ambassador for the University of Sydney.

Adam has a first class degree in pure maths from that University.

Adam is known as a champion of maths and science from his radio and TV appearances, such as the show Sleek Geeks which he did with Dr Karl Kruszelnicki.

“I’m the first ever Maths Ambassador so what I do is up to me. But essentially I’ll be publicly advocating about maths and science in issues to do with curriculum, policy and funding.”

Adam is part of the Institute for the Innovation of Science and Maths, which is a new body made up of 150 universities across Australia aiming to find solutions to the problem of declining maths knowledge in the country.

“It’s a big issue that we have maths teachers that are not qualified, and it’s got nothing to do with their intellectual capacity, it’s about their passion and enthusiasm for the subject,” Adam says.

“It’s about being able to make kids see where it’s relevant and important, finding maths everywhere and exploring the curriculum in innovative ways.”

Adam says one specialised maths teacher in primary schools taking all the classes for maths, rather than every teacher trying to do their bit, might work.

“One of the best models I’ve seen

was a primary school in Western Australia where a dedicate science teacher taught all the classes and had his own lab to do experiments. You could do something like that with maths.

“I think the fact STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) is becoming a buzzword means we have acknowledge the problem and are now trying to do something to address it. We have enough good maths people out there to provide qualified teachers for our schools.

“If you want the world’s best cricket team, you need thousands of kids playing cricket, or wanting to watch cricket, love it and support it.

“If you want to be a world class country in the field of maths and science, you need lots of people doing it, supporting it and valuing it. It needs to be part of our culture to appreciate maths and science. Cutting back on government spending on science at this stage is not the way to go.”

Peer observation

How to make it work for you Peer observation is often considered a dirty phrase because it most frequently forms part of a performance appraisal process, IEU VicTas Officer Steve Whittington writes.

Performance appraisals might be attached to a high-risk outcome such as passing probation, securing a promotion, or jumping through the time-consuming and administrative hoops that are annual staff appraisals.

However, a carefully designed and wellimplemented Peer Observation Program (POP) can prove a useful tool for professional and personal growth when those involved move past the ‘my classroom, my rules’ perspective and invest in the process.

In order for this to happen, its purpose must be clearly delineated from any concept of evaluating teacher performance, and schools must provide participants with the skills and resources for feedback to be meaningful and beneficial.

When this occurs, teachers are able to take greater ownership of their own professional

learning in an affirming and non-threatening environment that has been shown to support teachers in enhancing their skills and positively impact on student achievement.

According to Teachers for the 21st Century: Using Evaluation to Improve Teaching (OECD, 2013), 63% of Australian teachers are regularly involved in an appraisal process.

Unfortunately, many of these will be familiar with the most common problematic format of such processes: • formal and compulsory, probably as part of an appraisal process • conducted by a manager, supervisor or head of department • little if any prior consultation about the format, tools or data to be collected • hit and miss: infrequently held – possibly annually or worse – and therefore not representative of teaching at all levels at all times • subjective feedback using ill-defined metrics (‘engagement’, ‘activity’) • isolated, with progress unlikely to be tracked over time, and • frequently associated with high-stakes consequences.

POPs, as implied by their title, are quite different. The focus should be on a far more collaborative, transparent and objective process that seeks to provide a context for informal and self-directed reflection, goalsetting and professional dialogue between practitioners. With the retirement age set to rise to 70 years by 2035, it is essential that teachers find ways to constantly refresh and re-invigorate their classroom practice.

In addition, many schools are increasingly seeking ways to promote high achievement to a more demanding clientele in a tighter economic market. Continual professional learning therefore forms the backbone of longevity in the profession and organisational capacity growth. Peer observation plays a critical role in this.

Essential criteria

Individual and collaborative The process must be teacher-driven, allowing for a high degree of personalisation so that it is specific not only to the participant but also the institution. As such, there should be substantial collaboration prior to the observation that seeks to clarify the goals, tools and process used beyond merely the day, time and class to be observed. Greater input leads to increased ownership which in 18|independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014

Teaching and learning

turn increases the likelihood that feedback will shape future practice.

Flexible and informal As with conferences and workshops, POPs should include a range of options by which participants can tailor the format to best suit their development needs. These may include: • choice of peer, day/time/class • immediate (in person or via Skype) or delayed (video footage) • frequency: annual, semester or term observations • reciprocity: pairs of colleagues observe each other in turn, and • intensity: whole week (job shadow), whole day, whole lesson or whole activity.

The informal nature refers to the way in which feedback is sought and presented.

Feedback should take the form of a coaching conversation rather than that of a decision being handed down by a mentor or manager.

Far from being the ‘soft option’, such conversations are more empowering and lead to increased innovation.

Voluntary and incentivised Contrary to most existing appraisal schemes, where the school sets minimum benchmark standards that teachers are expected to attain, POPs encourage teachers to set goals around aligning intention and practice. As this results in better student outcomes, teachers should be rewarded for undertaking such professional growth. Recognition, such as creating ‘mentor/leading roles, and additional release time for sharing learnings can be tangible incentives.

Frequent and ongoing Performance improvement over time can only be measured if the sample taken is representative (spread of days/times/ year levels etc.) and sizeable (number of observations). Most POPs in the US comprise two to four observations per year to provide an accurate feedback on impact on teaching practice. Teachers should retain any written information and be responsible for tracking progress towards the goals they set.

Data-driven The observer and participant must agree on the specific aspects being observed in accordance with an agreed model, eg Bloom’s taxonomy, E5 Instructional model etc. The Teacher Learning Network (TLN) in Victoria has produced an excellent Ed Coach Questioning iPad app which collates data relating to six question types and proposed coaching questions as a follow-up for objective, qualitative and quantitative feedback. Further versions focusing on other aspects of professional practice are in development.

Well-resourced Creating an environment that is conducive to soliciting and providing honest and constructive peer feedback is central to the success of any POP and was highlighted as one of three critical areas for action in a 2012 study conducted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Schools must decide whether they take a whole-school roll-out or appoint some early POP Champions.

Either way, participants and observers alike need training in the coaching model and its requisite skills: Empathy, critical listening, using open questions, demonstrating support, knowledge of teaching models and trustworthiness. The AITSL website has a number of resources on coaching as part of professional learning.

Finally, staff involved in POPs need time release from existing duties to prepare, conduct and conclude observation activities effectively. They also need sufficient time and adequate training if they are to provide high level observation and coaching support.

Teachers should take control of peer observation as a useful way of contributing towards the professional growth by sharing outstanding practice with colleagues. It is therefore far removed from performance appraisal systems. Indeed, it turns the conventional model on its head, providing an ideal opportunity for school leaders to model to their staff a shared understanding of teaching excellence and guide the school culture to support peers in achieving it on a daily basis.

Benefits of peer observation • Greater personal and professional growth • Increases organisational capacity • Enhances peer to peer collaboration • Improves professional conversations • Utilises and retains existing internal expertise • Re-invigorates day-to-day practice

Features of successful peer observation programs • Individual and collaborative • Flexible and informal • Voluntary and incentivised • Frequent and ongoing • Data driven, concentrating on between five and eight key parameters • Well-resourced: People, time, systems and processes.

References Craig Jerald 2012, Ensuring Accurate Feedback from Observations: Perspectives on practice, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|19

Combatting the rough side of ‘love’ One in three women in Australia have experienced physical violence. One in five have experienced sexual assault. Love Bites is a program is designed to increase Year 9 and 10 students’ understanding of respectful relationships.

It offers the skills to create respectful relationships and raises awareness of how to seek help and ultimately contribute to the prevention of male violence against women. IE Journalist Michael Oliver talks with Love Bites Coordinator Phillipa Johnson.

Love Bites is a school-based domestic violence and sexual assault prevention program under the auspices of The National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (NAPCAN). The program is based on best practice standards as recommended by the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse and other leading academics in the area of violence against women.

Phillipa Johnson is the Community Educator for the Ipswich Women’s Centre Against Domestic Violence and Coordinator of the Love Bites program in the Ipswich area.

Over the last several years she and teams of facilitators have visited thousands of students in the Greater Ipswich region to talk about their views on gender, assault, rape, relationships, love, equality, respect and dignity.

She says that some parents and teachers could be surprised to hear about some of the ideas a number of 14 and 15-year-olds have about gender roles and what a healthy relationship looks like.

Common ideas held by young people about what boys are/should be include: • Men are the ‘dominant sex’ • Men should ‘be in power’ • Men can ‘beat the shit out of anyone’ • Men should ‘control their woman’ • For men, sex is an achievement and the more you have, the better man you are • Girls provoke and therefore deserve violence. Common insults include ‘Don’t be such a girl’ Common ideas held by young people about what girls are or should be include: • Women ‘have to be pretty’ • Women should be ‘slim, with big boobs’ • Women ‘make the sandwiches’

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• Women ‘break down easily’ • Women are ‘always the problem in the relationship’ • For women, sex means you are a slut, being a virgin that you’re frigid • If girls are drunk or dressed in a certain way, they ‘deserve’ sexual assault • ‘You can tell how much someone loves you by how jealous they are’ • It is easy for women to leave violent relationships.

While there is a matrix of influences sustaining and creating male violence against women in our communities, it is the constant pressure to conform to the gender norms of our society that is a significant contributing factor. These norms, around which young people are invited to shape their lives, have profound effects on the how they engage in relationships.

“We know that men are more likely to perpetuate domestic violence if they hold traditional attitudes to gender roles, believe in male authority, have ‘sexually hostile attitudes’ towards women, believe that violence against women is trivial; and/or, believe that violence against women can be excused because women ‘ask for it’ or ‘deserve it’. I see these things every day I run this program,” said Phillipa.

The Love Bites one-day workshop aims to do what it can to address and respond to some of these attitudes through engaging exercises, discussion and creative work. However, it advocates for a ‘whole-school-approach’ in the knowledge that only a widespread transformation of attitudes and beliefs will see the prevention of violence.

“This program enables us to open a space for critical reflection, curiosity and exploration about the messages, ideas and beliefs young people receive. We share important

Teaching and learning

This course isn’t about identifying deviants in the classroom and correcting their behaviours.

These behaviours and norms are everywhere because we exist in a culture that allows abusive behaviour.

information about domestic violence and sexual assault legislation and consequences whilst also fostering young people’s sense of agency to make changes in the way they relate to each other. The program assists young people to identify abusive behaviours, respond safely, understand consent and practice skills of respect and communication.”

Often a school will have the course conducted for their students because of recent occurrences.

“Sometimes we are approached to run Love Bites in response to recent events of sexual assault, harassment, violence or young people sending explicit material through text under the age of consent or without consent. Before conducting the course we talk and plan with support staff at the school to discuss the relevant context and tailor the material and our facilitation to reflect this.”

Phillipa said that although it was hard to tell the long term impacts, she knows Love Bites teams have made some concrete differences to individuals’ lives.

“Young women who have experienced abuse have sought and found support.

Young men have come out of the program with a determination to stand against

violence and abuse and for respect and equality,” said Phillipa.

“Young men have reported realising ‘girls are more valuable than you think they are’.”

Groups of young people who have participated in Love Bites have gone on to organise community events and campaigns to create cultural change around these issues. Teachers have reported a shift for the better in the attitude of students’ a previous tacit support for abusive behaviours has transformed itself to overt condemnation.

Love Bites is a Respectful Relationships program through facilitated school-based workshops on domestic and family violence, sexual assault and creative learning and expression to students across Years 9, 10 and 11. The Federal Government has not renewed funding for the program.

Love Bites programs are run in partnership with schools and local services with each program planned for in ways that consider recent incidents, cultural contexts and local resources.

For training or for more information visit www.napcan.org.au/our-programs/love-bites.

independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|21

Understanding with the head and the heart Some of the people that feature in the Edmund Rice Centre’s new educational resource about asylum seekers and refugees are dead – they were returned to their home countries from Australia and subsequently killed, IE Journalist Sue Osborne writes.

The teachers, former teachers and other volunteers who have devoted two years to developing the Asylum Seekers and Refugees Education Resource feel all too poignantly the importance of the resource.

The free document, downloadable from the Edmund Rice Centre’s website, also features the photos of refugees who attended a centre in Sydney for English classes and day care.

It is packed with 35 varied activities for students aimed at making them think about asylum seekers and refuges with compassion, “to move their understanding from the head to the heart”.

Edmund Rice Centre Director Phil Glendenning says there are “lots of myths and misconceptions around and we wanted to provide teachers with reliable, well researched information that they can’t get from the media, politicians or church leaders, quite frankly. Our aim is to spread the truth.”

The Edmund Rice Centre is committed to the promotion of human rights, social justice and eco justice through research, community education, advocacy and networking with Indigenous people, asylum seekers and refugees, Pacific people affected by climate change and marginalised groups in society.

This resource builds on other education material previously produced by the Centre, including resources on the impact of climate change on the peoples of the Pacific.

The refugee resource had its genesis two years ago when St Dominic’s College Sydney Teacher Chris Hicks volunteered to spend his long service leave adapting ERC documents and researching facts and figures about refugees.

Former teacher, now Promotions Officer at Edmund Rice Centre Marisa Brattoni built on Chris’ research to create the resource.

“We started off with activities that correlated to the research, so we used information with tables and statistics about where refugees came from and the global patterns,” Marisa says.

“Then we went on to think about adding creative activities and put in music, poetry, drama and visual arts.”

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Teachers in the Edmund Rice network of schools and other schools volunteered their time and expertise to develop and edit the resource.

“There was a lot of good will behind the project. People just wanted to help get the message out there.”

The resource is non-denominational. “We wanted to get it out to as many schools as possible, Catholic, State, Anglican, Jewish, Islamic. It has an Religious Education component but it really is for everyone.”

It relates to the curriculum areas of English, RE, HSIE, Legal Studies, Visual Arts, Technological and Applied Studies, Drama and Music. It’s geared for high school but has activities that could be adapted for primary school and special needs classes. There is a picture book activity that could work for students from preschool to high school.

“The activities can be used as separate learning tasks, group tasks, or as a whole unit of work. They can form an assessment task or be used to inspire social justice activities.

The resource ties in well with the ‘Belonging’ theme in English, and supports Stage 3 of the Years 5 and 6 Outcomes in Global and Social Issues, as well as the Morals and Ethics component of the Studies of Religion HSC course in NSW,” Marisa says.

It has definitions of a human right, an asylum seeker, a refugee and explains the Refugee Convention. It encourages teachers to make contact with refugees and introduce their students to a refugee, but also has links to DVDs, interactive projects, and online resources to supplement your study.

In Sydney, Marisa is available to do a 10-minute presentation to staff on the resource. She would also like any school using it already to send their work to her to share on the Edmund Rice Centre website.

And, as Phil points out, “the resource was produced on the smell of an oily rag”, so donations to the centre are always welcome.

To access the Asylum Seekers and Refugees Education Resource visit http://bit.ly/1uIAmix.

Teaching and learning

There are lots of myths and misconceptions around and we wanted to provide teachers with reliable, well researched information.

New human rights guide to the Australian Curriculum The Human Rights Commission has released a new tool intended to help identify many of the opportunities that the Australian Curriculum provides for teaching students about the promotion and protection of human rights, both in Australia and around the world.

“The Australian Curriculum provides a strong opportunity for children and young people to learn about their human rights and the importance of respecting the rights and freedoms of others,” Commission President Gillian Triggs says.

“Our new publication, Human Rights Examples for the Australian Curriculum, is a guide that will assist teachers in identifying practical opportunities in English, History, Geography, Science and Maths for teaching human rights-related content to students up to year 10.”

Professor Triggs says the importance of human rights education, which is a right in itself, is recognised in a number of human rights treaties including the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

“Educating students about human rights, and the laws that protect all people, ultimately helps them and us to address discrimination, as well as harassment and violence, and to protect fundamental freedoms, Professor Triggs says.

“It is a way of protecting human rights by changing attitudes, building empathy and motivating participation, all of which help to build a more equal, respectful and inclusive Australia.”

Human Rights Examples for the Australian Curriculum is available at: http://bit.ly/1nnlwwf independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|23

Is your workstation harming you?

Six tips for safety There are some common problems associated with office workstations.

IEUVicTas OHS Officer Brian Martin identifies a range solutions.

Workplace health and safety laws require workers to be provided with a healthy and safe workplace. For a moment, take a look around your workstation. Most likely you are seated at a desk and your chair is some type of ‘office chair’. What equipment are you using? How much space do you have around you? Can you adjust your desk? Can you alter the height of your chair? Is there enough light?

Is there too much light, glare or reflection? Are there items you could trip over, is the space around you cramped by objects on the floor?

What about the temperature? Does the air feel stuffy? Is the workplace draughty? Do your shoulders ache?

You may not readily recognise the hazards and you may not be exposed to the same hazards as others in your workplace, but you cannot ignore the possibility that your workstation may be harming you. Here are six tips to minimise that possibility.

Tip 1: Lighting – is the light good enough?

Glare, reflection and shadows across your workstation can make it difficult to see what you are working on. Eye fatigue, headaches and poor posture are common complaints.

To determine whether the amount of light is adequate, use a lux meter. If you have to strain your eyes to view your work then the available light is inadequate. Lighting around your workstation should be as even as possible. A common cause of uneven lighting is poorly maintained light fittings. If lights and diffuses are not regularly cleaned, dust will accumulate and the quality of light lowered.

For general office work the lighting level should

24|independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014

be between 420 and 600 lux. Glare, reflection and shadows can be minimised by positioning workstations between overhead sources of light and ensuring that natural light from windows is to the side of computer screens rather than shining directly upon them.

Tip 2: The floor – will you slip, trip or fall?

These are a major cause of workplace injury and usually result from materials being inappropriately stored, electrical cords and leads overused, slippery floors and spills that are not cleaned up. The simplest way to minimise injury is to keep aisles and walkways clear of equipment, and all electrical leads.

Instead of using extension cords or cables install additional power points closer to where work is being done. Carpet tears must be promptly repaired and rugs or mats with curled or raised edges should be disposed of.

Filing cabinets should be positioned so that drawers do not open into aisles. Regularly used items should be stored below shoulder height as injuries also occur when materials stored above shoulder height are retrieved by the use of ladders, or worse still chairs, desks, bookcases or filing cabinets.

Tip 3: Equipment placement – where do you put the computer?

Your screen should be positioned about an arm’s length from your seated position. The screen should also be positioned directly in front of you so you are able to look straight ahead and slightly down when sitting upright.

In other words, the screen should be at approximately the level of your eyes. Your

Diverse roles

screen should also be positioned away from glare, reflections or shadows. If you are using a laptop as your primary workstation computer the same rules apply. To achieve this, a peripheral mouse and keyboard is required.

Tip 4: Desk dimensions – what’s best?

Your desk or work bench should also be height adjustable, just below your elbows and have enough depth so that when your arm is outstretched, the computer screen can be positioned at your finger-tips. The desk must be large enough to comfortably fit the requirements of your job, other equipment such as keyboard, mouse, telephone and document holder. The items most often used should be within easy reach to avoid stretching. The corners of your desk should be rounded with no sharp edges. Avoid cluttering the space beneath the desk with items such as rubbish bins, files, or boxes. You need to sit comfortably with a forward facing posture to your computer and be able to get in and out of your workstation easily without having to avoid obstacles. These principles apply whether the desk is a seated or standing desk.

Tip 5: Avoiding strain – is my chair correctly adjusted?

When was your chair last adjusted to fit you?

Raise or lower your chair so that your thighs are approximately horizontal to achieve a 90 degree angle between your thighs and lower leg, with your feet comfortably on the floor. After you have placed your chair at the correct height the surface of your desk should be just below your elbows, If your desk

is not adjustable, use a footrest to achieve the correct position and raise or lower your chair.

The backrest can also be adjusted to provide support to your lower back. Adjust the height of the backrest so that the curve fits into the curve of your spine, this should be a position at about the position of your waist. Similarly the seat and backrest will be able to be tilted backward or forward to provide further support to your hips and lower back.

Tip 6: Too hot/too cold – what about the temperature?

Workstations should not be located directly beneath or in front of air conditioning outlets.

When the movement of air in the workplace is too low, stuffiness will be felt and when airflow is too high, it is likely to draughty. The optimum temperature range is between 20˚C and 26˚C but comfort will be influenced by clothing, how physically demanding your work is, humidity, air movement around you and the proximity of your workstation to windows, doors and passage ways.

Resources Standards Australia AS 4438: Heightadjustable swivel chairs (1997) Standards Australia AS 4442: Office Desks (1997) Standards Australia AS 1668.2-2002: The use of ventilation and air conditioning in buildings Standards Australia AS 1680.2.2: Interior Lighting: office and Screen-based tasks (1994)

independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|25

The changing role of the primary coordinator in Catholic schools 26|independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014

Diverse roles

Twenty years ago in this journal, John De Nobile wrote about the role of the primary coordinator in school leadership. In this article John and Stefan Boffa, of the School of Education at Macquarie University, revisit the role of coordinators as middle managers in primary schools and explore how the role has evolved.

Middle managers in schools include coordinators, heads of department, year advisors and similar positions where individuals have responsibility for programs and may also lead a number of staff.

Typically they work to implement projects developed by the school leadership team and are supervised by the assistant principal or principal. The positions have existed in secondary schools for a long time, but middle management positions in primary schools have been a more recent phenomenon here in Australia as well as elsewhere (Fleming & Amesbury 2001).

Our in-depth look at the roles of two primary coordinators has shown that, at least in the two schools reported here, their role has indeed expanded from the supervisory, administrative and curriculum implementation roles described in 1994 to more strategic responsibilities in areas such as OHS and school learning spaces; areas that in the past were the domain of the principal and deputy/assistant principal.

The history In primary schools, staff members with responsibilities equivalent to that of coordinators began to emerge, in varying shapes and forms, from the late 1970s, culminating in the creation of an actual position of primary coordinator (and since simplified to coordinator) in the early 1990s.

The emergence of the position reflected the increasing complexity of school administration and increased demand for principals and their deputies to engage in strategic development tasks to maintain and improve their schools. As a result, the more mundane, organisational chores fell to the newly emergent coordinators. In many cases these positions emerged as a result of calls from unions to both rationalise the roles of those in leadership positions and provide a career path, and, consequently, improve the attractiveness of, the teaching profession.

Primary coordinators – a tale of two schools This article looks in particular at the role of the Coordinator level 2 in two NSW Catholic systemic primary schools. St Peter’s School [pseudonym] is a school of 400 students in western Sydney and St Elizabeth’s School [pseudonym] is in the inner west region of Sydney has 450 students.

At their inception both schools were led by principals, and there was no middle management as such. There was no ‘executive’, and any duties that teachers undertook in addition to their normal teaching were generally done on a voluntary basis. Today, however, there is a significant middle tier of management in place in both schools. At St Peter’s School the principal is supported by an assistant principal (AP), and there are four coordinators (a religious

education coordinator, a coordinator 2 and two coordinator 1s). At St Elizabeth’s, the principal is part of a leadership team that also includes an assistant principal, a religious education coordinator and two primary coordinators. At both schools each coordinator has a reduced teaching load to accommodate the respective non-teaching functions of the role.

Both individuals had responsibility for particular key learning areas and for organising events, rosters and performing other administrative tasks. The coordinator 2 at St Elizabeth’s also had responsibility for supervising a stage, which involved checking teaching programs and implementing or monitoring the directives set by the school leadership team. There has been discussion at the school about a more direct involvement of coordinator 2 in mentoring staff as part of their annual review process.

The coordinators increasingly find themselves dealing with a number of factors which were not traditionally part of their work. As the principal of St Peter’s School says: “Coordinators used to be about toilets, rubbish and playground duty, but now they are genuine academic leaders.”

In recent years the Catholic diocesan school offices have sought to more closely align individual school goals with systemic goals. The focus is increasingly on accountability for leading learning within a broader context and a number of significant factors are having an impact on the coordinator’s role.

At St Elizabeth’s School, as a result of a goal set by the school in its strategic plan, one of the coordinators was entrusted with responsibility for leading and managing the redesign of the ICT room from a desktop computer based ‘lab’ into a learning space dominated by notebooks and iPads.

In both schools the responsibilities of coordinators have definitely moved from toilets and rubbish to more strategic, and far more complicated roles often involving project management, which were once upon a time the sole domain of principals.

As the coordinator from St Elizabeth’s school says: “Being given the task of re-imagining and rebuilding the ICT Room was the most unexpected thing. Up till now coordinators looked after a KLA and maybe organised some events. This project was a whole new dimension”.

Arguably one of the most significant factors affecting the role of primary coordinators since the early 1990s has been the increasing importance of compliance issues which schools are required to address. Three areas which have had a particular impact on St Peter’s School are finance, occupational health and safety (OHS) and welfare. While coordinators are assigned a key learning area as their specific academic responsibility, independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|27

Coordinators used to be about toilets, rubbish and playground duty, but now they are genuine academic leaders.

all have the added responsibility of ensuring the school’s overall compliance with regulatory requirements: for instance, increasingly coordinators participate in the school’s financial and OHS audits.

Although the principals and assistant principals interviewed at both schools expressed some regret at their much reduced day-to-day contact with the classroom, overall the devolution of responsibilities has had a reportedly positive impact on the effectiveness of their schools.

Staff see the school’s management structure as more democratic, invitational and inclusive (Gunter, 2006), with the result that morale is high and the ‘business’ of the school is increasingly efficient. This was identified by the principal at St Peter’s School as a key factor driving the effectiveness of the school.

A more inclusive decision-making process has resulted in more efficient dissemination of information at both schools. This knowledge sharing means that essential news is travelling faster, and also highlights the importance of the right information reaching the right people (Blenko, Mankins, & Rogers, 2010).

In this process coordinators participate in and contribute to the decisions, but must also ‘mobilise’ teachers as needed. For example, one coordinator at St Peter’s School has responsibility for collating, tracking and analysing NAPLAN and other test scores on behalf of the school and feeding observations and recommendations back to staff. While the leadership team as a whole authorises any resulting action, the coordinator in question is best placed to drive such action across the whole school.

At St Peter’s School both the principal and assistant principal have noted a positive response from staff and parents to this distributed leadership (Harris, 2004) through the devolution of authority to coordinators.

They noted that staff reportedly react more positively to, say, a cancellation of activity due to wet weather if the decision is made by a coordinator rather than by the principal.

The value of this is two-fold. Firstly, by utilising the varied experiences and skills of all staff, it is likely that better decisions will be made for the benefit of the school community (Blenko, et al., 2010).

Secondly, it serves as a de facto succession plan (Erickson, 2008).

Vital role into the future It was clear from the two schools that the expansion of primary coordinator responsibilities has produced benefits, making them more democratic workplaces, contributing to positive attitudes about the school and

28|independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014

higher morale, making communication flow more efficient throughout the school and resultant better decision-making. Leadership succession is also made more possible and this is advantageous to schools in relation to stability of direction over the longer term.

As middle managers, coordinators in primary schools contribute considerably to the efficient performance of their schools and will surely continue to be increasingly involved in the strategic leadership of schools. Given the increased focus on leadership related activity as opposed to the organising and administration associated with management, and in line with the recent literature, these coordinators should be referred to not as middle managers, but middle leaders.

References

Blenko MW, Mankins MC & Rogers P 2010, The Decision-Driven Organization Harvard Business Review, 88(6), 54-62.

De Nobile J 1994, Redefining Leadership Roles In Schools Independent Education, 24(4),10-14.

Erickson TJ, 2008 Redesigning Your Organization For The Future Of Work People & Strategy, 31, 6-8.

Fleming P & Amesbury M 2001, The Art of Middle Management in Primary Schools: A Guide to Effective Subject, Year and Team Leadership London: David Fulton Publishers.

Gunter HM 2006, Educational Leadership And The Challenge Of Diversity Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 34(2), 257-268.

Harris A 2004, Distributed Leadership and School Improvement: Leading or Misleading? Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 32(1), 11-24.

Legal

Under surveillance

students recording teachers It is unfortunately becoming more common for students to use their phones to record (audio and video) teachers and for these recordings to be used in complaints against them, writes IEUVicTas Senior Industrial Officer Denis Matson.

Some teachers have found themselves accused of unprofessional or inappropriate conduct on the basis of recordings made secretly by students. Often the recording is played back out of context, sometimes edited, and normally quite disconnected from the circumstances that preceded the exchange. This article looks at the issues and the ways schools should manage this form of ‘secret surveillance’.

Is secret recording illegal?

It is not illegal for a student to secretly record a conversation they are party to.

Under the Surveillance Devices Act 1999 (Vic), a person is prohibited from secretly recording a conversation they are not party to. Similarly, it is prohibited to visually record a ‘private activity’ to which you are not a party.

The classroom may arguably be a “private activity” because it is normally not expected to be observed by people other than the teacher and students. But the students are a party, so can secretly record it without breaking the law.

Can a student play the recording?

No, except in very limited circumstances.

Playing a recording to anyone other than the parties to the activity is ‘publication’.

The maximum penalty is currently about $35,000 or two years imprisonment. The exceptions to this rule include publication “to protect lawful interests”, or in the course of “legal or disciplinary proceedings”. These circumstances are very narrow. For example, a student merely complaining to the school about a teacher is not the protection of

“lawful interests”. “Disciplinary proceedings” are only those conducted under legislation (such as the proceedings of the teacher registration authorities in the various states and territories), not an investigation by a school about a teacher’s conduct.

What should you do if called to answer for a recording of you?

Call your Union. Never try to defend serious matters without proper advice Point out that the student has contravened the Surveillance Devices Act. The student should not have communicated the recording to anyone outside the class without your consent. This includes to the principal.

Point to the hefty penalties.

Do not respond to any allegations about your conduct until you have been given a copy of the recording and sought advice.

The recording may well be edited and/or otherwise tampered with.

What should the school do about students making secret recordings?

School cyber-safety, ICT use and behaviour policies should make clear that students should not record, upload or distribute in any other way visual and auditory material concerning staff and other students. The policies should outline the expectations of the school, and the legal and school-based ramifications of recording and distribution.

Further advice You can get further information by calling the IEU or checking the website for the relevant Union policies.

independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|29

Big Brother at school Staff and student monitoring is on the rise due to technological advances, but where will it lead?

IE Journalist Tara de Boehmler explores the possibilities.

Students pour into school each morning, scanning their fingers to indicate they have entered the classroom. Teachers likewise take the scan. Cameras in class are used to monitor lessons and teachers can expect to receive feedback on their style and student management at a later time. During library period students use finger scans to borrow books and scans are again used at lunchtime, enabling staff and students to purchase lunch in the cashless canteen. On the playground, a fight breaks out as one of the students retaliates against ongoing bullying. An observer uses the school’s anonymous texting service to report and attach a photo of the incident. Meanwhile other cameras based around the grounds record the actions of a teacher attempting to break up the fight. The teacher will later receive guidance on her methods. When one of the students fails to turn up on finger print scans in the next class, a text is automatically sent to notify his parents. In the staffroom, teachers discuss the incident among themselves. Their conversation is captured on a camera placed in one corner of the room.

Where are we? The US? Australia? Is this the school of the future or are we already there?

According to a surveillance and monitoring survey by UK teachers union, the NASUWT, a third of teachers said they were being observed more frequently than ever before, with 5% reporting that they had been observed more than six times in the last year.

Nearly three quarters of the respondents said observations were to monitor the quality of teaching, rather than to assist them in developing their skills.

30|independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014

While classroom filming can be an effective tool when responsibly used as part of a broader, opt-in professional development program, the IEU has supported members who find they are not only being filmed in class, but that the surveillance is extended to school grounds and staffrooms.

NSW/ACT IEU Organiser David Towson was told by one Islamic school employer that cameras placed in staffrooms were “security cameras and not surveillance cameras”.

“I told him I don’t think members see much of a distinction – I don’t,” Mr Towson says.

The installation of surveillance cameras is not a new phenomenon for staff at the school, where they were previously installed in playgrounds, classrooms and corridors.

“Members conceded that these cameras may serve a useful purpose in some settings.

But putting them into staff rooms was a leap too far, not to mention a possible breach of the Surveillance Act 2005 (NSW),” Mr Towson says.

“Staff regarded the installation of these cameras as demonstration of a breach of trust between employer and employee.

Members raised cultural and religious concerns in relation to being filmed in their staff rooms and female members in particular were concerned about what they saw as an invasion of their privacy.”

The value employers base on privacy at school is in doubt, with many attracted to new surveillance technologies.

According to UK civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, an estimated 40% of schools in England were using biometric technology at the start of the 2012-13 academic year.

Technology

Staff regarded the installation of these cameras as demonstration of a breach of trust between employer and employee.

IEU Organisers have been alerted to schools introducing finger scanning, a biometric technology used by some industries to keep track of staff by assigning an encrypted numerical identifier based on ridges and arcs below the surface of their skin.

Australian public schools are also taking up scanning. A notification regarding biometric finger scanning at Belmont High School, NSW, reads: “biometric finger scanning has been widely used in schools in the UK and the USA to track attendance, library book issue and cashless lunch purchases. Biometric scanning units are used throughout many workplaces in Australia to track pay and attendance of staff, secure door access within workplaces and secure electronic devices such as laptops”.

Civil Liberties Australia (CLA) believes introducing fingerprint scanning into schools is “the thin edge of a wedge”.

“We support proper use of new technology, but this development has inherent dangers which should be evaluated by schools, their governing bodies, and parents,” CLA CEO Bill Rowlings says.

Warning that schools are in danger of becoming “mini-surveillance states”, CLA says the only way to ensure a child is at school all day is to fingerprint the student every half hour.

“So pretty soon children will be scanned into every classroom, every separate facility within the school grounds. If that is done, children are taught by example that they have no privacy, no personal space. They are a cipher, not a flesh and blood human being,” Mr Rowlings says.

CLA believes school fingerprint databases could be an “enticing honey pot for criminals who want to create stolen IDs” and says families must be able to opt out without penalty to students. Feedback to Big Brother Watch suggests students are in danger of being disadvantaged if they opt out.

“It was nearly a full six weeks into the new term before an adequate alternative

arrangement was made for our son to receive his lunch,” says one parent.

But not everyone is adverse to the technology.

Another person tells Big Brother Watch: “At my school the introduction of a library scanner saved the cost of library cards and their replacement so it was cheaper but the best bit was that there was a big jump in lending from the library, up 150% in the first term and still up 50% two years later. The kids liked it and as they could always get a book even without a card they read more. In the canteen the system means that free school meal pupils are indistinguishable from those paying for their food. Removing this stigma is important”.

Many developments have positive applications when used responsibly.

Apps, such as Stymie, allow students to anonymously notify staff of bullying incidents and forward evidence, such as screen shots, Snapchats, texts, or instant messages. Yet anonymity services are also used to carry out bullying, such as the textem.net website.

A commonly used text messaging system allows schools to notify parents of student absence.

Perhaps it’s good practice for the future workforce who will be more likely than ever to be subject to systems like the electronic tagging used on some of Amazon’s employees, to have their social media use monitored and to be subjected to surveillance as a means of boosting productivity and reducing criminal acts.

The CLA is not convinced. In a further comment about the danger of creating mini surveillance states, Mr Rowlings says: “I’m not sure these are the primary lessons we should be teaching children … learning about two-way responsibility and trust are far more important lessons at school age than learning how to cope with surveillance.”

independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|31

Women’s Conference Workplace Equity and Diversity NSW/ACT IEU 15 August 9am-3.30pm, Mercure Hotel, Sydney This event examines current and emerging issues in work, life and care. Keynote speakers include Dr Muyesser Durur of Charles Sturt University on The Future, Changing Paradigms of Diversity and Unions NSW Assistant Secretary Emma Maiden on What should be the Priority for the Modern Feminist Movement?

Details: www.ieu.asn.au

Australian International Education Conference (AIEC) Inventing the Future 7-10 October, Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre This year’s theme ‘Inventing the Future’, will challenge participants to imagine international education in new ways. The program will showcase innovation in international education and focus on the practical impact it has on us as international education professionals and practitioners as well as on partnerships and collaboration.

Details: http://aiec.idp.com/

ACEL National Conference Passion and Purpose: Setting the Learning Agenda 1-3 October, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre This conference provides a multinational platform to examine the direction that education should take in the challenging years ahead. Setting the learning agenda for tomorrow involves looking at the big picture and optimising students’ potential through educators’ passion and purpose.

Details: http://acelconference.org.au

ACE National Conference What Counts as Quality in Education?

11-12 September, Adelaide Looking at what counts as quality in education from a parent’s perspective, and in VET. Details: http://bit.ly/1f30mhG

Giveaways Kimochis Educator’s Tool Kit (Valued at $595) One set to give away

With fun activities to practice tone of voice, body language, and appropriate words, Kimochis will help children learn techniques for handling life’s challenging moments with character. This kit aims to help children effectively communicate feelings, build confidence, self-esteem, strong relationships and the foundations for academic success and social and emotional intelligence.

The Kimochis Educator’s Tool Kit includes the 296-page Kimochis Feel Guide: Teacher’s Edition, five Kimochis characters, 29 feelings, and the takehome parents’ Feel Guide in a sturdy, black bag.

Land Girls Series Three (M) Roadshow Entertainment/ABC Videos Three copies to give away

Series three of this award-winning BBC drama explores the loves and lives of three girls, Connie, Iris and Joyce, doing their bit for the British war effort in the Women’s Land Army. The local manor house gets turned into an army hospital after a bombing raid, and Connie celebrates her engagement, while a ghost from the past could ruin everything.

The Search for Noah’s Ark with Joanna Lumley (G) Roadshow Entertainment/ABC Videos Three copies to give away

Absolutely Fabulous star Joanna Lumley travels around the world to discover the truth behind the account of Noah, the flood and the ark in this BBC documentary.

To enter one of these giveaways, put your name, membership number and current address on the back of an envelope addressed to IE Giveaways 1, 2 or 3, GPO Box 116, Sydney 2001 by Friday, 8 August.

32|independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014

Talking point

Talking point

The best tip I ever received…

Maureen Shembrey, Principal, St Anthony’s Primary School Alphington, Victoria I began teaching in 1977 and all the tips I received in those early years were centred on control and management, as teaching then was an entirely different beast to today.

I could teach a class of 44 Grade Five students, organise the day clinically and provide some pretty impressive activities, if I do say so myself but, being so focussed on covering the syllabus, I often

wonder how effective I was in terms of relating to and engaging all the young ones in my care.

The tip which made me stop, reflect and add another dimension to my work was that those you are communicating and dealing with will remember you and what you are trying to convey if you show true and genuine interest in them and what they have to say and

contribute. As a Principal now, this tip is part of who I am and I make myself truly present in every situation, whether dealing with students, staff or parents.

I make sure my dialogue is genuine and that I know by the end of the conversation exactly how the other is feeling.

Paula Egan, ESL & Classroom Teacher, Mt Alvernia College, Kedron, Queensland Years ago, as an ESL teacher, the point was made to me just how brief a time we teachers allot for answers to our classroom questions – on average about 1 second! Recently, in a mainstream junior secondary setting I consciously applied this advice.

One student in this class has an “unspecified learning disorder”. She tends to be passive and reluctant to respond; it’s very tempting to move on.

But this day, after posing a question to the class, I nominated this student, adopted a pleasant expression and

mentally counted to seven. Hey presto, I received a relevant and intelligent response. No longer will she – or any other student in that class – assume I will give up easily. A response will be expected and respected.

Jennifer Gluwchynski, Teacher from Canada on exchange at St John the Baptist Catholic Primary School Woy Woy, New South Wales When I was embarking on my teaching exchange the best advice I was given was to be flexible about what comes my way and to be prepared to laugh about the situations I will not be expecting or will not be prepared for.

This was especially important because, as seasoned teachers, we have lots of background knowledge and we think we know about kids, curriculum and teaching. But sometimes we are surprised by what we don’t know or what we’re experiencing, particularly when we’re in a different country.

I had a lot of excitement going into the classroom in Australia and wondering what the children would be like and what the experiences would be. I learnt quite quickly that children are children and the things that make them happy, sad and connected with you are the same, no matter where you are, but the way they express it is different.

For others thinking about doing an exchange I would advise having a positive attitude and to be prepared to face your adventure and embrace what comes your way. Some parts are

going to be great and some might be a disappointment but if you’re willing to take it on, being in the right headspace is the starting point for anything. One of the things said to us in Canada was to let this be our year of ‘Yes’. So if people invite us for dinner or want to show us something, we just say ‘Yes’. I think these are good words to live by.

independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|33

Reviews

Seduced and abandoned This new documentary/ mockumentary from James Toback, who is best known for writing and/ or directing such films as Tyson (2008), Black & White (1999), Bugsy (1991) and Fingers (1978), has teamed up with Alec Baldwin to make a film about the Cannes Film Festival and the difficulties in getting film projects financed in one of the biggest film markets in the world. The title also refers to the 1964 Italian satire by Pietro Germi about a teenage girl whose seduction leads to a plethora of amusing ramifications for all concerned.

The film straddles two styles of filmmaking.

Firstly, the straight documentary where they interview a host of actors/actresses and film producers/directors about the film they are pitching for financing. Everyone from Martin Scorsese, Ryan Gosling, Jessica Chastain, James Caan, Roman Polanski, Diane Kruger, Berenice Bejo to Francis Ford Coppola is given a chance to ruminate on the film industry and whether Toback’s film is worth funding.

Secondly, the film has a more subtle mockumentary approach as the film they are both trying to finance is called Last Tango in Tikrit, an obsessive love story set in Iran, with the infamous Bernardo Bertolucci film (who is also interviewed) Last Tango in Paris (which starred Marlon Brando in a highly controversial role) as the template.

This is of course patently ridiculous, yet everyone keeps a straight face throughout the proceedings. The intention is to achieve around $20 million from producers at the festival to make this film starring Baldwin and Neve Campbell.

Hence the film attempts to be both a revelation about the way film deals are made at Cannes, coupled with the absurdity of some of the stories that are pitched for funding at the festival. For the most part this works quite well, especially as we learn a great deal about the film industry, the superficial vacuousness of the Cannes Film Festival, and the behind the scenes machinations that are the real story of the festival.

Indeed, the subtlety of the mocking approach contrasts well with the more obviously sustained documentary satires like This is Spinal Tap (1984), Zelig (1983), Man Bites Dog (1992), Bob Roberts (1992), Waiting for Guffman (1996), A Mighty Wind (2003), For Your Consideration (2006), Best in Show (2000), Borat (2006), Bruno (2009), I’m Still Here (2010), and of course our own comedic documentary Kenny (2006).

James Toback also uses a split screen approach in many sequences to exemplify the history of the Cannes Film Festival which owes an enormous debt to the French Cinematheque established by Henri Langlois, who showcased a myriad of important

34|independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014

up and coming directors, and the student revolution in Paris in May 1968 which played a decisive role in overturning preconceptions about cinematic narrative and the standard Hollywood product. Ironically, Seduced and Abandoned is an American film, but not in the same league as the usual overblown epic. Highly recommended.

Peter Krausz is the former Chair of the Australian Film Critics Association, is a film journalist, hosts many Q&As for film festivals and cinema releases, and runs a weekly three-hour radio film program in Melbourne called Movie Metropolis. He can be contacted at: peterkrausz8@gmail.com

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independent education| issue 2|Vol 44|2014|35

THERE IS NO WEALTH LIKE PEACE OF MIND. OK, LOTS OF MONEY WOULD BE NICE TOO.

We all know money can buy us freedom. But nothing can free the mind like knowledge.

That’s why we’re dedicated to educating our members. It’s all about empowerment.

By this we don’t mean sending you a yearly letter stuffed with information.

From the start of your career through to retirement, our people are there to guide you along the way.

We have dedicated professionals available to talk over the phone even late into the evening.

Our online education tools and services will also allow you to build your knowledge at a pace that suits you.

We offer seminars and workplace sessions right across the country.

If you wish, we’ll even come and talk about your financial plans in person at your workplace.

True wealth, as our members will tell you, starts with a wealth of knowledge.

For more information visit ngssuper.com.au or call 1300 133 177.

Issued by NGS Super Pty Limited ABN 46 003 491 487 AFSL No 233 154 the Trustee of NGS Super ABN 73 549 180 515