Back into it! (goodbye summer)

Well, the first full timetable cycle is over and schools is well and truly back. It’s always a challenge coming back after the long summer break and, in Australia, the return to school time often coincides with the hottest part of the summer and not the ideal environment to begin working with eager young minds. [...]

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Just the facts Ma’am

I went looking for a picture of the Blues Brothers because I thought that the old ‘just the facts, ma’am’ quote came from them, but I found that the quote actually came originally from a much earlier TV series called Dragnet, which I vaguely remember from the black and white TV past, and which the [...]

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“C” for (Australian) Curriculum

From the AGE today a top Victorian educational bureaucrat grades the draft Australian Curriculum as ‘C’ standard. Mind you, that would be totally acceptable by VIctorian VELS standards. Interestingly, David Howes’s main criticism was couched in terms of curriculum over-crowding and increasing expectations about what schools should have to teach. I liked the comment that [...]

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Waleed Aly on National Curriculum

I said in the previous post that I was having trouble figuring out Aly’s take on National Curriculum in the latest issue of The Monthly. Some of the key points seem to be: “(Curriculum) … is a form of political activism.”  [National Curriculum, like Texas curriculum on evolution, is political] AGREE “…Perhaps I never got [...]

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C.A.T Curriculum

I didn’t think I’d find it online, but after reading Waleed Ali’s piece on the National Curriculum in the latest issue of The Monthly, (more on that piece later if I can actually figure out what he is arguing) I went looking for Julia Guillard explaining the return to basics (basics +) emphasis on our [...]

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One teacher’s reflection on ‘No Child Left Behind’

Besides the obviously heart-felt and thoughtful nature of this teacher’s reflection of what its been like on the ground as a teacher in the USA under Bush’s ‘No Child Left Behind’ regime, I fear that we’re about to embark on the same sad journey of an emphasis on inflexible standards imposed from a long way [...]

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Curriculum 21

If there was one session from ASCD that I’d like to take back to my own school it was probably Heidi Hayes Jacob’s Curriculum 21, another new book in the ASCD store. The first part of the presentation was too similar to the previous one on mapping but then it branched out into the need [...]

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Connecting DI, UbD and other acronyms

I was looking forward to the Saturday ASCD session on connecting acronyms because of its powerhouse of presenters: McTighe, Wiggins, Tomlinson and Marzano? (Okay, I didn’t know Marzano), authors of books that have crossed my desk often over the last few years, and important figures in the ASCD world, which seems to be a world [...]

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Curriculum Mapping

One of the most impressive presenters at the ASCD Conference so far has been Heidi Hayes Jacobs who opened with a session on curriculum mapping on Saturday.  I’ve heard her twice now and her message is strong and insistent: no excuses for not changing. In the session on curriculum mapping she managed to breathe life [...]

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Bereft of big ideas?

From the ‘pretty much everyone agrees that National Curriculum is a good idea’ lovefest on the 7l30 Report last night I thought I must be the only living person in NY who still has big question marks about the ideas. So, I was pleased to see this piece in the AGE today from Libby Tudball, [...]

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