New idea!

So, new term, new concert, new idea.

It may have been discussed at PD last week that Western society is very good at seeing the glass at not only half empty, but unwashed, chipped, and the wrong size/shape/color/SOMETHING. Oh, and full of the wrong substance. Of course. Translated into teacher-speak, our students seem to get really hung up on what they can't do, to the point of overlooking the twenty things they CAN. I thought it might be useful this term to give very specific and targeted goal ownership... which then facilitates achievement ownership... which makes everyone happier becasue they're force to own up to all the things they CAN do. Hooray.

How does one do this, I hear you ask? Well, in my INFINITE brilliance, I availed myself of some very attractive scrapbooking card and two packets of post-it notes, one star-shaped, one arrow-shaped (OF COURSE the shapes are significant; do you people know NOTHING?!) and sallied forth to change the world. My studio now looks like:

I really ought to have moved that chair out of the way first...

mmmm...that's my deliciously fire-engine-red fiberglass case on the shelf there...

 

And here you can see my nanna trolley that I take to school every week, plus THE bookshelf.

 

Isn't that paper beautiful? I LOVE it.

There's 29 sheets up, one for each student to claim (that's their name on the star) and post their goals and accomplishments on each week. I'll put the other dozen up at school for my primary students who I see at school on Wednesdays.

This term our concert falls at the end of the eighth week, so enough time for everyone to see progress being made! I visualise children replacing the arrow with a star as each goal is achieved, then I'll take them all down and display them at our concert. Very boring post today, I know... I wore myself out after teaching by spreading 250 litres of mulch. I need another 250 litres.

But if any teachers/parents out there want to advise I'd be happy to hear it!

Booooooooooooooring

So today the physio says "You need to rest that for four days" before launching into a seemingly irrelevant rant about Steve Moneghetti and training runs and gym work (gym work?!) ... the lond and the short of it is that I have rather impressively screwed my right wrist and am not to play/demonstrate/write/feed myself with my right hand for a minimum four days. Argh.

Hang on, I hear you say. What for am I then blogging? Well, my cyberspatially challenged followers of randomness, I am blogging because I'm a little OCD and don't like missing a day. And I'm sneakily mostly typing with my (dexterous) left hand while banging the stationary fingers of my right up and down on the keyboard. Sometimes my ability to injure myself amazes even me.

Oh, and there's nine people on the right now. NINE! Sure, I'm related to one of them, and practically related to another, but that means I'm a little entertaining? Sometimes? Jeez, I don't think I have enough limbs to keep up with the spate of "Laugh at me as I injure myself yet again!" posts, but I do have a small dog with plenty of legs. (KIDDING).

Watched Neil Gaiman give a Google tech talk. When I grow up, I want to be Neil Gaiman. Possibly I won't dress quite so randomly (my leather jacket will be brown and have sleek motorcycle sleeves, not cuffed blouson monstrosities) but I'll happily acquire the accent, diction and devastating timing. Have a flaming desire to read Coraline after he said "Children are quite comfortable with it. Adults come up to me and say "I stayed up till three in the morning to finish that book and then had to get up and turn all the lights on. You're sick. And dangerous" "

It interests me that childrens' books have suffered a peculiar bout of sanitation. I remember being delighted (and horrified) by the "real" Bluebeard; recently my darling husband gave me Grimm's Grimmest. Yes, they're gory and could very well cause bad dreams; they're CAUTIONARY tales! If every little girl wants to be Cinderella, we haven't told them the right story!

Still waiting for Fishpond to send me my Pygmy (that's a book, not a small person) and have high hopes that it may arrive in the next ten days before I board a Jetstar flight to Japan. The best thing about a stupid wrist: no washing up. Hooray.