Erm . . . hi :-)

I'm not quite as sick as I was when I last posted, but I've been headachey on and off, and today is one of those nights. Blech.

School is normal (one part annoying, one part rewarding, thoroughly stirred). I'm still really enjoying having S here and I'm dreading the day when he has to go home in four weeks' time. We've settled into a lovely routine and the relationship continues to be strong. It's just lovely :-) We're about to head out to Little Country Town's sole cafe to get cheeseburgers and chips for dinner . . . our little Friday night treat. Yummy!

I haven't got much other news to report, except that the new car is still awesome. Oh, and that I won't be in Little Country Town next year (or rather, I will be exchanging this Little Country Town for another Country Town, probably a bigger one!). S and I have made the decision that the Midlands region where I currently live is not part of our 5-year plan, so he is going to apply for somewhere in the Mid West, which is a large area north of Perth, going from the edge of the Perth metro area right up to Exmouth, some 1250km from Perth, and east for quite a way too. Map:




We're planning to try for one of the larger towns, such as Geraldton or Carnarvon, so that I will be able to get a job there too. Geraldton has six public primary schools and six private schools so there's a pretty good chance I'll snag a position if S is posted there. So there'll be another January house move for me and another new place, but it'll be with S and that makes it 100% worthwhile. I'm looking forward to it, too - the Mid West has a spectacular landscape in parts, all gorges and red rocks and turquoise sea (google-image Kalbarri, you'll see what I mean! We'd love to live in Kalbarri but it's not exactly hard to staff, being so gorgeous lol).

So that's me at the moment. I'm teaching my class to play the recorder at the moment and have finally, after craving it since I was about 9, managed to get my hands on an alto recorder and a tenor recorder (much bigger and lower than the usual descant recorders that are taught in school!). I'm ecstatic and I'm going to bring some home from school to play with :-D I'm trying to get the kids to play in a little recorder orchestra. Good fun!

I'm sick :-(

For the last few days I've been exhausted and have had aching limbs and a splitting headache of the "oh my god my head is going to fall off" variety. Not happy!

We have an open night at school tomorrow and I don't want to do it - parents are scary :-(

S is now 1.5 weeks into his prac and is finding it very stressful and tiring and negative (just like I did!) but is keeping his chin up and powering on regardless for the most part. He's sick too with the same thing so we're just trying to love and support each other and keep it together. Co-habitation has had its rocky moments but on average we're doing fine and it feels just right.

I'm really loving the new car, it makes a world of difference to how I feel about myself. I hadn't realised how much my crappy old car reflected on my self-image, but I'm having a much nicer self-image with the nicer car! Naughty to place value on such things but nevermind.

Off to cook dinner and try to keep my head from thudding to the ground . . .

Cars and Courses II

I got the car! I got it!

The finance worked out as more than I wanted but I can just afford it. I can't believe that I'm getting such a nice car! We're picking it up on Friday or Saturday. I can't wait! *SQUEEE*

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For all the educators, parents and future parents out there, check this out:
The Virtues Project

The Virtues Project started when three concerned individuals decided to do something positive to try to reduce the violence they were seeing in schools (both against the self and against others). They looked at a huge cross-section of the world's cultures and eventually came up with a list of virtues that are common to most cultures. They then set about looking at ways to teach these virtues and to foster virtuous behaviour in children and teens, with the aim of lifting self-respect and respect for others.

They have developed an incredible range of advice books and teaching strategies for raising children with strong virtues, fostering a "culture of character" within families and schools, and educating school children on how to use virtue in their daily lives.

We (the whole school staff, just about) went to a facilitator training course for the Virtues Project on Monday, and I was completely blown away. It's beautiful. It's spiritual without being religious, heartfelt without being preachy, and very practical.

I would thoroughly recommend it for anyone working with children or interested in their own spiritual growth - particularly, I suppose, people who aren't religious but feel that they would like a baseline for moral guidance - but also those who are religious and would like some practical strategies for teaching (and learning!) moral behaviour. It doesn't negate / contradict any teaching in any religion I know of, and is aimed at supporting people in their spiritual growth regardless of their religion.

Check out their website, particularly the shop, which has some fantastic books and resources (the virtues reflection cards in particular - very cool).

This is a Godsend for me because while I'm somewhat religious, S isn't, and I could see how this could be a spiritual middle ground for us.

If anyone else has had experience with The Virtues Project or likes what they see on the website, please do comment - I'm curious about others' reactions :-)

Courses and programmes and cars, oh my!

I'm feeling extremely anxious and teary right now, and very overwhelmed. I'm having a very difficult day :-(

On the way down from Little Country Town last Saturday, my car started to make horrible grinding noises, which I figured were the brake pads starting to wear through. Before I could even think about getting it fixed, money-wise, it also started going putt-putt-putt-putt-etc whenever I accelerate. And then it started to blow a lot more exhaust smoke when starting up, and I even got smoke off the engine yesterday, even though the oil dipper says that the car is full of engine oil. And the fuel gauge has gone whacko, dropping randomly to below zero then popping back up again the next time I start the car.

All this boils down to MY CAR IS DYING.

It's an old car (1981 model) and it's done it hard, and I knew it wasn't going to last ages, but I thought it would do more than 3 months. *sigh*

So, crisis time. I'm in Perth and I can't drive back to Little Country Town in a car that could blow up at any second. So I went out this morning to a car yard and tried to buy a car. I found a REALLY nice one, a Toyota Vienta from 1997 which was a luxury model back when it was sold, but has done quite a lot of country kms. It's in near-perfect condition and has a perfect service history, and was a trade-in to the same car yard where the owners bought it new over a decade ago. It's GORGEOUS. It's a white sedan with leather interior, CD player, climate control, the works. Automatic transmission with cruise control, fully workshop tested . . . and it's only $8990. And it drives SO smoothly. I WANT IT.

But . . . I couldn't get automatic on-the-spot finance to buy it, because I have some other debts and also because I didn't have all of my paperwork down with me since I didn't expect to be buying a car, and the banks aren't open today for manual finance approval. So I have to wait until Monday at the earliest to find out whether I've got the finance for the car. And that means I'm car-less. Thankfully S was coming up to Little Country Town anyway to start his prac, so we'll just use his car only for a week and then come down next Saturday and pick up my car, if they approve the finance. IF. I don't know if they will. But ohhh, I want them to!

I feel horribly guilty for wanting this car, because it's really nice and it's a sedan, when most people would probably feel that I should settle for a much more basic and much smaller hatch. But I think this is my lack of self-belief and self-value talking. Why can't I have nice things sometimes? I think this car will be a good value asset and do well on the long country drives. Is that so wrong?

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In other news, to all of the teachers and parents out there: one word. THRASS. It's a phonics system that is just OUT OF THIS WORLD. Instead of teaching the old "ants on the apple, a a a" type phonics - which confuses kids because 'a' can say 'a', 'ay', 'ah', 'eh', 'air' and a host of other things - it teaches kids that the 26 letters of the alphabet are just symbols that we use to represent a variety of sounds, and that the letter only makes a sound when it's a spelling choice inside a word. It can be used from kindy right up to adult English as a Second Language. It uses picture associations, word associations and games and activities to teach kids that there are multiple spelling choices for all of the 44 sounds used in English, and it gives them tools to assess and make the right spelling choice for sounds in any given circumstance. I went to their training course on Wednesday and Thursday, and I was just blown away. I'm going to start using it with my students immediately, particularly the weak spellers. It's just awesome. It teaches English like it really is, and makes it easy enough that little kids can grasp it. I can't say enough how good it is. If THRASS is available in your area, and you're a teacher or a parent/future parent, or even just a curious linguist, try to get along to a training course. It'll change the way you think about English, completely. And no, they're not paying me to say this lol.

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In other other news, I'm also feeling overwhelmed about the new term, which starts on Tuesday. My year 5 and 7 students have standardised testing in Week 3 so I have to get them ready for that, and I have to work out what to do with the 6s during the tests. These are new tests as well, from the new National Government plan for schools. They're called NAPLAN (National Plan, I think) but Mum started calling them NAPALM and I can't help doing it too. I've even written NAPALM on all of my term plans lol. It seems oddly appropriate, somehow.

I've been feeling sick this past week and haven't got anywhere near as much done as I needed to, and I'm at that stage where it's all just starting to come together but is ever-so-slightly out of reach. I hate that feeling! I've got nothing photocopied and no resources made, but I'll get there. I think.


I hope I can get S to relax and chill out tonight. He's so stressed over his 7-week prac and is making himself sick over it. I want to convince him that we should have a night off, and just make him relax.

Prayers and good thoughts for one very stressed and car-troubled teacher, and for one very stressed and overwhelmed student teacher, would be very much appreciated.

I. Hate. Boxes.

Honestly, how much stuff can one girl have?!

I'm trying to sort my house out but it's a losing battle at the moment - no matter how much I move stuff around, the place is still full of it. And I just don't have time to sort out and distinguish everything that needs to be thrown away.

I'm heading down to Perth tomorrow afternoon, and won't be back in Little Country Town until Sunday week (the 27th) so I may not be blogging for the next week. I'll try to get online on my various communities (BtN and NiH in particular) but I can't guarantee that I'll have time to blog. If not, there'll be a big update when I get back!

The week in Perth will be interesting - I'm taking Jem with me because I can't leave her alone that long, so it'll be interesting to see how she handles the 2 hour drive to S's place and then a week at his house. And when I come back, S is coming with me and staying for 7 weeks while he does his second last teaching practice. Cohabitation, here we come . . . *nervous, excited, happy*

Getting stuff done

Apologies for the lack of bloggage lately. I've been trying to completely sort every box in the house ahead of when S comes to stay at the end of next week. We need to fit him into my study and it's currently full of boxes, all of which I feel compelled to completely sort out. Ambitious, no? I'm finally learning to throw stuff away. Do I need backup CDs from two years ago? No! Do I need my credit card bill from June 2005? No! I keep reminding myself to get rid of it . . . I'm going to end up having to do a tip run. It feels good to be getting rid of so much junk.


It's raining here today. Not storming like it's done every other time it's rained, but just raining. Constantly. For hours. It's been raining since before dawn so it's chilly and sunless outside. I was going to walk to the cafe where I'm having coffee with a friend - it's only two minutes' walk - but it's just too soggy outside. I guess I'm driving after all!

No. That's not it.

There was an opinion piece in yesterday’s online Sunday Telegraph (seen on www.news.com.au) that was talking about the apparent decline of society and the need for children to be taught better morals. No surprises there, until I came to this item in the list of reasons for the current problem:

“. . .the stripping of parental rights preventing mums and dads from properly doing their jobs by setting suitable and appropriate parameters for their children.”

Um, no.

The only “right” that has been taken away from Australian parents is the right to mete out sadistic, severe beatings as punishment. And the fact that many physically abused children are still killed by their parents before the authorities intervene, shows that even this former “right” is still available to parents, for as long as they can get away with it.

Apart from the restriction of beating as a punishment, parental “rights” are still intact. The parents of today do not, on average, parent any differently to the way they did 25 years ago when I was a small child: the majority smack, almost all use some form of punishment, a tiny minority use none. And overall, this is not much different to how it was when my mother was a small child 50 years ago. A little less violent, perhaps, but generally very similar.

Falsely claiming that parental rights have been stripped is a cop-out, an abdication of responsibility for the situation. There is nothing stopping parents from parenting in much the same way as they have for the past century. Something is clearly going wrong, but that is not it.

And as families like mine can attest, you do not need those punishment-based trappings of parenting to raise happy, healthy, obedient, socially responsible children.

I don’t know what’s going wrong. I personally believe that it has to do with the fact that childrearing has not changed – it is still largely based on control, coercion and force – while schools, workplaces etc have moved into a culture of positive reinforcement and a collaborative approach to generating agreed behavioural boundaries. It is the contrasting levels of respect, and anger at authoritarian parents, that leads to disenchanted, rebellious children. But hey, what do I know? I only observe it, I don’t study it.

But whatever the problem is, the stripping of parental rights it is not. Parents who believe this are in denial about their own refusal to do the hard yards and parent their children properly. That I do know.