Coping with Uncertainty

~ Corinne Campbell ~ Leave a comment

Most people crave certainty. Knowing what to expect gives us control over our lives and our environment. We can prepare, plan and make good decisions that prepare us well for the future and protect us from harm. When life is uncertain, we lose our ability to predict, plan and prepare. We start to feel vulnerable, as our lives become harder to control.

The current outbreak of COVID-19 in Sydney has created uncertainty for many of us. We don’t know when the lockdown will be lifted. For those of us involved in school, we don’t know how long we will be engaged in remote learning. Plans are put on hold, as we are separated from friends and family. Our economic outlook is worrying, with small businesses, and their employees are particularly vulnerable right now. 

When we are faced with so much uncertainty, anxiety thrives. Our imaginations can run ahead of us, conjuring up all sorts of worst-case-scenarios. 

It’s normal to find uncertainty difficult, especially for those of us already predisposed to feeling anxiety. Here are some ways to manage uncertainty that I find useful.

Stay in the present.

Most of the time, the things that cause us greatest anxiety are what we imagine about what will happen in the future, or what we recall that happened in the past. We can become so caught up in those remembered and imagined scenarios, that we forget to experience our moment-by-moment existence. Mindfulness can help.

As I write this post, the sun is streaming through my living room window, creating a toasty patch of warmth and light on an otherwise cold, wintery day. I can hear the chirrups of some noisy miner birds and, looking out to the sky, can see a vast, stretch of blue with light cirrus clouds wafting across. Noticing what is happening in my body, I feel my neck muscles stiff with tension, but my feet are cosy in their warm socks. 

Before I took that brief moment to notice what was happening in the present, my mind felt full and busy. I had a nagging anxiety about writing this well, and about getting through my long to do list. But, in taking a brief moment to be still and present, and just notice what is happening in and around me, I now feel calm and at peace. 

Accept the reality of the situation.

When faced with difficult situations, our instinct is often to fix or change what is happening. When faced with uncertainty, our instinct is often to resist, and to create certainty when there is none to be found. We can become impatient and angry as we wait for information and decisions to be made. We might feel frustrated or fearful, and rail against what is happening. While these are normal reactions, they are ultimately not helpful. No matter how much we might rail against what is happening, we are unable to change something that is out of our control. I find that when I stop resisting the reality of a situation, and start accepting it, the negative emotions I experience lose some of their power. By simply acknowledging that ‘it is what it is’, my anxiety and frustration ease, and I am able to have a more productive response. 

Focus on what you can control

Once we’ve accepted that a situation is what it is, we can stop focusing on what is outside our control and start to focus on what we can do. At the time of writing, I have no idea what I will be doing at work next week. I cannot predict or prepare. The only certainty I have right now, regarding work, is what I am doing today, so that will be my focus.  

When I allow myself to let go of the things I cannot control, I feel lighter. I am longer carrying other people’s burdens or the worries of tomorrow, next week and next month, instead, I just carry what I need to carry today. 

Accept the difficult emotions

When we experience physical pain, we try to get rid of it. We might rest or take Panadol or massage our aching muscles. When we experience emotional pain, our instinct is also to get rid of it. This can lead to us trying to bury or deny what we are feeling. But when we resist our difficult emotions, they often return with greater intensity – in my case at 2am in the morning! 

Acknowledging rather than resisting our negative emotions relieves their intensity, and helps us to move forward. If you feel angry, acknowledge that and let it be. Try not to create a secondary emotion by judging yourself for yourself for having that feeling.  Of course, if you do go on to feel ashamed that you feel angry, or frustrated that you are anxious, acknowledge that as well. Treat yourself with acceptance, compassion and kindness.

Notice when you are being driven by emotions

When we experience strong emotions, they can alter our perception of situations. We can become more easily offended, perceiving threats and slights that aren’t really there. Acknowledging what we are feeling helps remove the mental filter the emotion has produced. 

When we notice, acknowledge and accept what we are feeling, we create a mental space that helps us to see if we are responding in ways that are reasonable. For example, if we notice we feel angry after reading an email, we can choose to wait until we are in a calmer frame of mind before responding. If we don’t notice our anger, we are risk a reckless rather than reasonable response.  

Let go of perfectionism

When times are uncertain, we seek to control what we can. For some people, this leads to perfectionism, and putting unnecessary pressure on themselves to reach unreasonably high standards. None of us are ever perfect, and, in the current time of change and uncertainty, we have to work in new ways, and carry added burdens of worry and responsibility.  If you notice you are slipping into perfectionism, try to give yourself a break. Rather than aiming for perfection, accept your limitations and focus on doing what is reasonable and realistic in the circumstances. 

Remember that all things pass

One thing we do know is certain is that all things change, and nothing is ever permanent. We sometimes fear that difficult times will last forever. When life is good, we sometimes forget that those times will also pass. Life has its seasons. While things are challenging right now, this won’t last forever. Good times will come again. 

On Peter Garrett and the Futility of it All

~ Corinne Campbell ~ Leave a comment

Midnight Oil played a concert in Sydney’s Domain on Saturday night that I was lucky enough to attend. It was a beautiful, warm spring evening – perfect for a night out.

Oils At The Domain
PIcture courtesy @bodgerog

As I listened, I realised that the protest songs the Oils wrote are as relevant today, as they were in the 70’s and 80’s, if not more so. It made me wonder what the point of it all has been.

Peter Garrett brought Australia’s and the World’s attention to Australian social justice issues through his music and through his activism with the Australian Conservation Foundation and Greenpeace.  He went into politics, first founding the Nuclear Disarmament Party, and later joining the Australian Labor party and becoming a minister in the Gillard Government.

From my outsider perspective, his ministerial position seemed to compromise him. He no longer spoke out as stridently or as passionately as he once did. He was silent when I wished he would speak up, he seemed neutered, ineffectual.

So it was great to see him performing again. It was like the Garrett of old. He sang and spoke so passionately and well about issues facing Australia, in particular, the Adani mine. He was inspiring, bold, convincing.

But it leaves me wondering. If someone like Garrett, whose years of activism and of politics can’t change things, then who can?

Do democratic politics not matter?  They don’t seem to. Those who have taken bold stances before coming into power, seem to become weakened when obtaining power. Former PM,  Kevin Rudd turned his back on climate change,  our current PM, Malcom Turnbull appears to have compromised just about everything he ever claimed to care for. I’m watching to see what becomes of Anne Aly.

So if we can’t achieve social change, or protect what is important through music, activism, academia, politics, how can we?

Are we so enslaved to the capitalist system that nothing else matters?  Will we continue to destroy ourselves because the people with real power in this world are people like Murdoch and Donald Trump?

Is there really any way out?

I have no answers. I don’t believe we can give up. I know I am complicit, I  am by the fact of my whiteness, and of my middle-class privilege, my consumerism, my use of products like my iPhone,  produced through the exploitation of the poor, and destruction of our earth.

I do believe we need to keep trying to make the world a better, fairer and kinder place.  I hope that one day, we’ll figure out how.

If Australia’s Education was One School

~ Corinne Campbell ~ Leave a comment
Imagine a school that organises itself in the following way:
The children from wealthy families are put in separate classrooms to those from poor families.
The parents of the  wealthy children donate money to improve their children’s classrooms. The principal agrees with this, so the children in the wealthy classrooms have nice furnishing, great technology, climate control, maybe even some additional teaching support.

The children in the poorer classes have basic furnishings and outdated technology.
But that’s not the only decision the school makes. To further meet individual needs, they divide the classes by religion.  So the  Jews, the Muslims, the Christians, the Atheists all learn in separate classes.

And then, to raise student achievement and cater for individual needs, they divide the school even further. The ‘gifted’ kids are separated from the others. Those with disabilities are also taught separately.

Some of the parents still aren’t happy, so the school goes further, this time dividing along the lines of race. Whites are kept separate from PoC.
Would we accept this from any individual school? Would we not be outraged by the school’s divisive and discriminatory policies?

Yet what we find (I hope) absolutely unacceptable for a school is the way we Australians run our education system. We need to THINK about this.  Really really think.

Not Such a Safe Space After All

~ Corinne Campbell ~ 5 Comments

After a few years of fairly prolific blogging about education, I quite suddenly fell silent. I had, I think, been naïve to assume that putting my thoughts out into the public sphere was a safe activity. But, just over a year ago, someone took and twisted the words of my blog and used them in a particularly nasty attempt to sabotage my career. It was their first, but not their last attempt to do so.

It’s taken over a year to come to terms with the knowledge that there are people who act with such cowardice and malice, and that what we put into the public sphere can make us vulnerable. But I miss being part of the conversation about education. I miss blogging, I miss being a part of the public dialogue, and I don’t like being silenced. That act of cruelty hurt, but I think  I’ve enough courage to return to the public space. So this term break, I plan to start writing a few posts again, but perhaps with a little more caution… Stay tuned.

 

Phonics in a Post-Truth Age

~ Corinne Campbell ~ 5 Comments

banksy-lies-politics

There have been renewed calls for phonics instruction in Australian primary schools, along with a mandatory phonics test for students in Year One.

The calls come from many sources. They come from well-intentioned professionals like speech pathologists, who work with children who’ve struggled to learn to read. They come from think-tanks and politicians. They come from people with financial interests in selling phonics programs to schools.

They don’t, however, come from the professionally qualified experts who teach young children to read in schools every day. They don’t come from the education academics who specialise in the teaching of reading and development of literacy. They don’t come from the curriculum experts who carefully develop reading curriculum for our schools, or from the school and system leaders who are responsible for the ongoing professional development of our teachers.

At this point, I’m sure I will be accused of the logical fallacy of ‘appeal to authority.’ It shouldn’t matter who is making the argument, what matters is whether their claims are true.

But it does matter who makes the argument. It matters a lot. We should not so easily dismiss the views of professionals with not only the most relevant academic credentials but also the closest knowledge of what actually happens in classrooms every day.

The phonics lobby, as I’ve chosen to label the group that so stridently calls for its return to schools, would have us believe that primary teachers:

  • teach reading using a whole-language approach
  • do not teach phonics explicitly
  • if they do teach phonics, they don’t teach it well
  • do not know how to assess phonics
  • have no idea what they are doing

In NSW the whole language approach ended in around 1994 when a new curriculum for English was released. I remember it well because I’d just started my professional teaching career and had to suddenly re-learn how to teach English, this time explicitly.

This brings me to another criticism that the phonics lobby like to throw at us. Charitably, they tell us it’s not our fault we have no idea what we are doing. It’s the fault of our training. We were all indoctrinated by into our kumbaya ways by the left-wing progressive post-modern academics who dominate teacher education.

I admit that it’s possible. I have turned out to be left-leaning educator and have been known to sing Joni Mitchell while strumming guitar after a few too many beers. But I’ve no idea what the dominant ideology of teachers or teacher educators might be, if there even is one.

But the point is, that really doesn’t matter. Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is just that – INITIAL teacher education. We don’t stop learning the moment we graduate university. In fact, to maintain our accreditation against the  Australian Professional Teaching Standards we must continue our professional learning throughout our career.  At university, I learned to teach reading using the whole language approach. Upon graduation, with a new curriculum requiring an explicit teaching approach, I re-learned. The NSW government provided, and continues to provide extensive professional learning for teachers around the state to ensure we have the knowledge and skills to do our work well.

I think it was around 2010 that the Best Start initiative was rolled out to NSW primary schools. Along with an initial assessment of all children upon entry to Kindergarten, all schools had to ensure that they were teaching phonics. And not just any phonics – synthetic phonics, which is the preferred method of the phonics lobby.

All public schools across NSW were provided with extensive professional learning involving a series of face to face workshops, in-school tasks, and participation in professional learning communities. That training continues. Every year, courses continue to be provided to schools to ensure that any untrained teachers, new to teaching the early years have access to that professional development.

We were provided resources to create our own phonics and phonemic awareness programs, and we were even provided the assessment tools.

NSW has been teaching reading, including phonics, explicitly since 1994, and have been teaching synthetic phonics since 2010. Yet the phonics lobby would have us believe that none of this is happening, phonics are ignored, and whole-language is our method of choice.

They either have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to what ACTUALLY is going on in schools, or they are deliberately misleading the public. After all,  in this post-truth age, why let facts get in the way of our agendas.

 

Don’t Look at The Elephant

~ Corinne Campbell ~ 6 Comments

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CC Image courtesy of David Blackwell on Flickr

  • 10-year-old with a brain injury  who was removed from  family due to physical abuse.
  • 11-year-old living  in a  shelter, on the run from mother’s abusive spouse.
  • 8-year-old with an STD
  • 12-year-old rescued from a house fire. The mother and sister  weren’t so lucky.
  • 11-year-old who found her sibling hanging from the backyard hills hoist, a few months after the father was arrested for murdering the child’s mother.
  • 9-year-old who cowered while the family was held in a siege.
  • 8-year-old who hid behind a tree as Martin Bryant shot people at Port Arthur.
  • 6-year-old whose sister was burned in a horrific car accident.
  • 7- year-old who visited his father in jail each weekend and wanted him home for Christmas.

These are just some of the children I’ve  taught  (details changed to prevent identification). Every teacher has stories they could share.

Domestic violence, drugs, alcohol, crime, trauma, tragic accidents, mental illness, misadventure, sickness – this is the world many of our children inhabit.

Meanwhile, teachers and principals are consumed with knowing our impact,  ensuring every child has a year’s growth for a year’s education, that no one is coasting, that standards aren’t slipping, that our impact is measured and our effect size is greater than 0.4.

And our education reformers focus on no excuses policies,  mandatory phonics tests, literacy and numeracy tests for teachers, and how to deliver education on a budget.

The Power of Pedagogy: Why We Shouldn’t Teach Like Champions

~ Corinne Campbell ~ 1 Comment

This is excellent…

laylatreuhaftali's avatarCities, Suburbs and School Choice

According to Milton Friedman, one of the foundational advocates of a school choice system, one goal of school choice is to reinvigorate the teaching profession, replacing ineffective teachers with the “many talented people who are currently deterred from entering the teaching profession by the dreadful state of so many of our schools” (Friedman 1997, 344). Indeed, prominent charter networks frequently boast that their teachers are uniquely qualified, passionate, and eager for their students to succeed (see the below images from Uncommon Schools and Achievement First). The notion that teachers in charter schools are more talented, more determined, or more loving than those in public schools is one theme charter schools use to attract families. After all, what parent would not jump at the chance to ensure excellent teachers for their child?

Screenshot (16) “We Are Uncommon | Uncommon Schools,” [http://www.uncommonschools.org/our-approach/who-we-are]

Screenshot (15) “Our Mission and Vision,” [http://www.achievementfirst.org/our-approach/mission/]

       To make this claim a reality…

View original post 5,178 more words

Distractions

~ Corinne Campbell ~ 2 Comments

“What doesn’t work in education? The politics of distraction” by John Hattie was published by Pearson last year. It’s an interesting read.

Michael Barber writes in the forward,

In this new paper, the first of two, he [Hattie] addresses the question of what this search for more impact means, and he does two things powerfully. The first is to make the case that the minimum goal of education, when rightly expressed, should be for all students to make at least one year’s progress for one year’s input, no matter where they start. The second is to argue that at the level of public policy there are many ideas, many of them popular and plausible, which do not pass the 0.4 test.  These comprise what he calls the politics of distraction.

Hattie argues that many popular education reforms, such as lowering class sizes, are distracting us from what will really make a difference, and that we should put our efforts into those areas evidence tells us will maximise our impact on student learning.

It’s a seductive argument. It seems so… sensible.

But, dismissing the importance of investing in school buildings and infrastructure, or of lowering the teacher-student ratio fills me with unease. Effect size on learning or not, the environments in which we learn and the relationships between teachers and students should not be undervalued.

Hattie’s reform agenda, based on impact and effect size is, I believe, a distraction in itself. The minimum goal of education should never be reduced to “one year’s progress for one year’s input”. Education has always, and must always serve a broader purpose.

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Here in Australia, the gap between the richest and poorest Australians increased by 13% between 2005 and 2015, with a further widening of 10.4% expected in the next decade.

(Source: Living Standards Trends in Australia, 2015)

We have utterly failed to improve reading and numeracy outcomes, employment outcomes and life expectancy for Indigenous Australians.

(Source: Closing the Gap 2015 Progress against Targets)

Students with disability continue to face barriers to education including:

  • Difficulties in enrolling
  • Failure of schools to provide reasonable adjustments
  • Exclusion from school activities
  • Low expectations
  • Shortage of services in rural and remote settings

(Source: Education and Employment References Committee: Access to real learning: the impact of policy, funding and culture on students with disability 2016)

Almost one in seven (13.9%) 4-17 year-olds were assessed as having mental disorders in the previous 12 months. This is equivalent to 560,000 Australian children and adolescents.

(Source: http://youngmindsmatter.org.au/survey-results/prevalence-of-mental-disorders/)

There are increasing incidents of racism and violence occurring across our society and growing numbers of young people at risk of radicalisation.

A year’s growth for a year of schooling presents an impoverished view of education. For schooling is about more than academic growth. Our education system is how we  maintain a cohesive, civil society. We can’t afford to be distracted from that.

Holding out for a Hattie

~ Corinne Campbell ~ 8 Comments

The hero teacher is a trope that has been around for many years. I first remember coming across it with To Sir With Love which seemed to frequently be the midday movie when I was growing up. That inspiring individual, usually fresh out of university, who by sheer strength of will is able to break through whatever social and systemic barriers exist and turn disengaged, marginalised and failing students into successes.

The hero teacher will be appointed to work in a disadvantaged school, staffed by that other teacher trope, the tired teacher: old,  experienced, jaded and uninspired.

Tired teacher knows that students in this school can’t be trusted, won’t learn and aren’t worth caring about. He shakes his head at Hero Teacher’s efforts, knowing they won’t work. But eventually, Hero Teacher overcomes all odds with nothing but passion and innovative teaching methods that no one has ever tried before.

Teach for Australia, a fast-track training program for teachers seems built on this fictional trope. It replaces a 4-year university degree with a short-term apprenticeship style model. The program recruits top graduates from other fields and parachutes them into needy schools to break the cycle of disadvantage.
And then there’s the discourse on Edu-Twitter. The heroic, innovative teachers, making a difference, but having to continually overcome the obstacles put in their paths by those old-school teachers, the laggards. Old teachers. The ones who are slow to adopt the new ideas, or worse, push back against them. Who sit their students in rows, use worksheets, kill creativity and prefer an industrial model fo schooling.
Everyone wants a hero.

In fact,  if one was to judge by the tweets that came from the Visible Learning conference in united states, John Hattie may very well be the hero that education has been holding out for. He channels Martin Luther King and inspires us to dream:

I mean education needs a hero, right?

These tropes may inspire us, but ultimately they divide. They encourage us to think of ourselves, of each other in binaries.  Good teacher/bad teacher, inspiring teacher/lazy teacher, quality teacher……
We’re more complex than that, education is more complex than that.
We each might harbour a private fantasy to be that hero teacher, or to find a hero to follow, but it’s a dream. Heroic individuals won’t overcome the systemic issues that create such inequity in education outcomes, and nor will quality teachers. We need to work together.