Learning in Playful Environments

In the small patch of forest Beside the new HDB they’re building, There’s a family of Dogs that seem Somehow to survive. I see one standing Sentinel sniffing the air And watching warily The towers of concrete That slowly encroach On his home. Last night they chased me. Three wild dogs barking At my heels As I pedalled down The footpath, heart Pounding, trying to look calm. They didn’t bite Despite my fears And my vulnerability. Instead they left me wondering Whether the world will be better When they’re gone.

A perfect storm of converging ideas brings this post into being. A recent IBO program on "Affective Skills and Mindful Living" has got me thinking more about the skills students need for success post school. This reminded me of the role of Capabilities in the Australian curriculum  which in turn took me to an article by Richard Bates where he writes: The central assessment issue for educational institutions has now become that of how teachers and learners  are to devise ways of testing validity claims – of testing the validity of information and knowledge claims t hat are new to both. This is by no means a simple issue, but contemporary circumstances force the issue  to the centre of the curriculum and pedagogy of educational institutions. The open curriculum and an  autonomous pedagogy require tests for truth and utility that are centred around individual and social  purpose.    (Bates: 2012, Is global citizenship possible and can international scho...

I've been writing alongside my Grade 6 students in their personal narrative unit. The Writing Workshop approach we use (from Columbia University's Teachers College Reading and Writing Project - TCRWP ) encourages teachers to model writing for their students. It's fun sharing writing with kids. I like the way they're so engaged by the fact that I am a writer, too. TCRWP cleverly encourages me to integrate particular skills into my writing just when students are ready to engage with them. In this story, I am writing about an event from my childhood - when I was about 10 - which I hope inspires students to think about similar times in their lives. We have been looking at how stories look to deeper themes to become more powerful. The kids told me they enjoyed this story but they want something a bit happier next time. Christmas Dinner My Uncle is holding the goose by its feet. It's upside-down and it's strangely calm as its head weaves around like an inquisitive sna...

The house which my wife and I own is on the land of the Boon Wurrung people on what is now known as the Mornington Peninsula in the south east of Australia. We have owned the house for 15 years; they have owned the land for 40,000. And already we enter a region of problems: "Ownership" is such a problematic term. When the first permanent settlement of Europeans was established in Boon Wurrung and neighbouring Wurundjeri territory in 1835, my white predecessors thought it just and proper to purchase the land they wanted to own. In exchange for scissors, blankets and an assortment of knives and mirrors, John Batman  "bought" the land from Wurundjeri elders and laid the foundations for the city of Melbourne. Less than 50 years later, Jimmy Dunbar, the last full-blooded Boon Wurrung person, was dead. Jimmy Dunbar What killed the Boon Wurrung people was not primarily a failure of good intentions. This history certainly has its share of scurrilous individuals and acts of...

It's a bit impertinent To write this When I Didn't know you That well But I read Your books And taught your son And you gave me a Collection of your writing So I thought I could give You this in return. You wrote about Soundings - Sailors taking soundings Trying to fathom The depths of Meaning in the place We both lived. I loved the masterful Elegance of Your art form: Swinging the lead And letting it fly At just the right Moment so that it Hit the water Far enough for'ard For the lead to touch Bottom just As the line Became vertical. Timing: a split second To fathom meaning And make sense Of the darkness Beneath. ... Your two seats Were like all the rest In that instant Before whatever Political stupidity Turned a flight I knew nothing about Into one about which I knew too much. It was intermission When I looked at my Phone. Ballet In the park. The Twist and turn of bodies Beautiful Until it is shattered By the news. I can't make sense Of it. A line Of words Trying t...

Mice by Gordon Reece My rating: 2 of 5 stars I didn't like this book and I don't feel I have a right to be overly critical of a book unless I can put in the time to explain why - so here goes. This is a YA book and, whilst I'm not of the opinion that YA literature should shield readers from the harsh realities of the world, I do believe that it has a moral responsibility to treat difficult issues with complexity and insight. As the narrator of the novel notes: "So much of what Mum was was made up of what she'd read. Is that what our middle-class culture created? People formed more by the books they'd read than the lives they'd lived?" (p.199) To the extent that this may be true, I was disappointed by the lack of empathy or insight shown in the novel. The main character is a victim of cruel bullying which drives her to decide to suicide. A series of events saves her from taking her own life. She then goes on to murder two people. Despite having been a ...

It’s the complexity of it all That gives me a headache. Reimagining John Lennon’s Song with my Grade Six Students, we stumbled into The binary of black And white as John And Yoko walk down a Dark path to arrive At a white house and Yoko opens shutters to Illuminate an empty Room in a place they Call “not here”. The peaceful simplicity of a Black and white world Greyed as we walked Our own path: Black White, Wrong Right, Evil Goodness, Dirty Clean, Ambiguity Clarity, Weak Strong, Chaos Logic, South North, African European, Female Male, Innocence, Experience, And arrived at a room Where my illumination Opened eyes And minds onto A world which is increasingly Hard to see.

David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell My rating: 5 of 5 stars Gladwell's ideas are as compelling as his prose. The essential premiss is that mainstream views of success produce Goliaths who may be unable to view the world creatively and may lack the resilience to adapt and succeed when times change. The Davids of the world might see opportunities others miss and have the the necessary resilience for success which comes from being an underdog. It's interesting that several of the case studies Gladwell works through are based on religious figures as there is something of the evangelist in the way Gladwell writes, too. This makes for an easy read - like listening to a sermon on one of the Gospel stories - but did make me wonder at times how much the flow of the story was encouraging me to lazily drift over the rigour of the argument. Not that I have particular reservations about Gladwell's argument, just that he is so skilled with his prose that I wondered at times if I might...

This is a recent article I wrote for Dunia , a magazine published by UWCSEA. You can find the digital version here. The version below is the original which was clipped slightly to fit into Dunia . It follows nicely from my reflections in my last post about the changing nature of teaching and learning in Middle Schools. Reading and Writing Workshop in the Middle School at East “Do you like the rhythm of this?” asks Ali, as he turns to his partner. “Yeah, but the mentor text is shorter, maybe you could cut out a few words.” The two boys look again at the lead they’ve been using as a model: There’s no dignity in poverty . They compare their writing to the mentor text discussing what they’ve been learning about meter and rhyme and the need for a catchy phrase to help anchor their audience’s attention. After a moment more of discussion, they return to the speeches they are writing as a part of their study of the Grade 6 Development Unit. This style of learning will be familiar to parents w...