Being too Busy to Think




The BIG Issue: Exhausted Teachers cannot reform
For so many reasons most teachers I talk to say that they are busy. Busier year after year.  

 Burnout
Burnout often affects people in helping professions: lawyers, doctors, social workers, managers and teachers, among others. For teachers, working with students means constantly trying to respond to their needs while simultaneously meeting the various demands of the organisation. When teachers feel that there is a mismatch between all these demands and the available resources they have for coping with them, stress is induced. The usual culprits mentioned are: lack of time, ideas, materials, expertise and support.
https://goo.gl/k8vzJY

 This is not unusual

  • Almost half of new teachers leave the profession in their first year because of an excessive workload and 'exhausted and stressed colleagues', a union leader has warned.
  • The number has tripled in six years, according to an analysis of figures by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL).
  • The most recent statistics show that in 2011, around 10,800 newly-qualified teachers did not take up a teaching post – up from 3,600 in 2005. 
  • Around 40 per cent of newly-qualified teachers were not in the classroom after a year in 2011 – compared to 20 per cent in 2005.
    http://goo.gl/tAIKj2

Teaching Is The Most Exhausting Job I've Had
http://goo.gl/8PBFR6
Reform Failure
‘... it is more difficult to find evidence that classrooms have improved or even fundamentally changed as a result of the many reform initiatives; and indeed the persistent failure of educational change is a common theme in the literature (Sarason 1990, Fullan 1993, Cuban 1998, Spillane 1999) (Wallace 2011).

 Learning from Failure
Can schools' learn from failures to reform, and embrace a society that requires citizens to have the skills and capacities to adapt and change. 
OR
Have schools resigned to the continuation of failure and are inept to reform due to teacher fatigue?

Check out these posts

Melbourne to Darwin November 2019

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Melbourne to Darwin

The Shopping Centre
Not knowing whether to be scared or to be content Make your judgment Halo or devil 
We describe our persona of creepy In our religious manifestations In our children books In our stories  In our movies
Our hell on earth Permitting the dead to guide our fear and vision 


Peter went shopping In our hallowed place of transaction To think and talk about probability To keep the gate open for approved believers To revoke the others who continue to seek knowledge
Our gatekeeper of the significant fell into a moment And became lost in thought  He let his guard down  There on a humble symbol of power  Laid down to rest Control
A situation began to unfold No-one saw who claimed it
Everyone knows Key 6 was extensively employed to establish Terra Australis Incognita To support those of divine grace to access the fruits of this new world To impose those bereaved from grace and imposed to a fate of generational poverty



The moment in which Peter forgot about ke…
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Ambitious Artist Ha Ha Ha video

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At the age of 60, I thought life would be much easier to understand
In the '80s, I was painting art inspired by Fauvist, Cobra and Art Brut artists
I wanted my art to be raw, powerful and primitive
I was investigating our psychological and physical barriers as they failed to protect
I wanted to paint self entrapment where sickness and resistance hid any possibility of outwardly demonstrating wellness.


Back in ‘81
When
Times were fun
As a fine artist
With ambition in mind
I thought of life


It was so primitive
From the 1860s to 1950s
They were seemingly untreatable
They were feared
There was panic
Colonies within a colony


A prison for the sick
Of appalling living conditions
Enforcing social isolation
GRIM and SHAME


A wish in time
Investing in negative sentiment
Self-sealing
Theory
Evidence
Belief


Invested in negative sentiment
Fabric and Structure


Pressed on for living
I have the need to know
Fleeting and impulsive distrust


A self-deprecating joke
I murmur in delight of my loss
I j…
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Darwin Jingili Water Gardens Day 1

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COVID-19 2020 has shut down my travels. 
So that now I'm on my annual mid-year break I have the time to question my actions. My employment is based on a formal strategy.  High pressure and doing it. 
COVID-19 has placed barriers onto my normality. The basis of this blog is questioning the 'just doing it' normality within the confines of COVID-19 restrictions. Understanding my actions within confinement -  'we cannot know things as they are in themselves' (Kant). 
On this basis, I have dedicated part of my holiday getting to know myself getting to know Jingili Water Gardens. In short, thinking about my experiences experiencing Jingili Water Gardens. 
My initial quandary is that I do not know if this blog is a response of being free to act within restrictions or is it a 'just do it' reaction imposed by confinement.  In other words, is this aesthetic of my own freedom or is it that of an outcome derived by that of an authoritative decision? 
If I walk around Jingil…
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Social Networking and Teaching

Social Networking is big business. Social Networking holds a significant skills set which is increasingly becoming an important part of contemporary life. Students need to learn how to effectively and efficiently employ the tools for their working life. How do students gain the required skills set whilst advancing the required subject knowledge? Social Networking has added a complexity to the teaching environment. It is not a question of open exploration, suck and see, or for the teacher to step aside and assume the role as a friend. The interconnecting role of a teacher and student should not be compromised. Teachers are the experts who set standards, who hold the knowledge required, who provide an instructional environment that enabled clarity of purpose. This is not the era for teachers to provide a fuzzy environment where students have to guess what they need to know or are graded without a knowledge of standards. Today and tomorrow demands logical and analytical communication wit…
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Darwin Jingili Water Gardens Day 4-5

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Across the first 3 to 4 days of walking around Jingili Water Gardens my thinking evolved from discovery and my understanding of the actual scope of commitment it will take to realize a creative breakthrough. My reflection efforts have been centered on observing my thinking and my thoughts about my thinking. I now realize that I have evaded thinking about my cognitive psychology and what I bring to the gardens each repeated activity. In short, the subconscious filters that inhibit my perceptions
As mentioned in previous reflections, I am a career educator and a fledgling artist, and I am preparing my exit from educational leadership and building my aspirations as a late-career artist. The repeated activity is intended to enable me to find a difference that can help support a transformation.
On the macro, when I entered my artistic and education-based careers, computers were not readily available. As such, the Fine Arts course I completed at RMIT was in oil painting and teacher training a…
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Darwin Jingili Water Gardens Day 7-8

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On reflection, although I have mainly worked in a people-based industry (education), my mode of operations has been product-based. Dealing with large numbers of people invariably leans towards systematization. I focussed on systematization - that is - a step-by-step process underlined by consistency, performance, and dependability. Everyone knows, does their job, knows their timelines, and meets deadlines as expected. The systems that are designed by the controller's realities and meets expected standards. What I have found difficult over the journey and within the systematization of process and procedure were attitudes and behaviors. The intended system always seemed incomplete and momentarily lapsed into unreliability. Quite a few years back I became interested in error - more specifically accumulated error. I also became interested in values and the lingering ghosts of previous systems. I now realize that learning growth, change management, project management, and the success o…
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Darwin Jingili Water Gardens Day 2

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I have participated in previous holidays with urgency to experience something that I have not experienced before - a different country, a different city, and different tourist sites. I have a well-developed desire to travel and gain satisfaction through novel experiences. I have accepted that the consumption of difference is the basis of my creativity.
However, this holiday is passive and now intentionally regulated by maintaining a pattern of doing the same each day to reflect on the subtlety of difference. 
I'm not 'just doing it' for the sake of just doing it, at the same-ish time of day. On the same path through the same location, two days in a row, trying to establish my understanding of action within Jingil Water Garden within itself.  
So I am intentionally subjugating myself to perform in a linear succession day after day. In this manner, I bridge myself with yesterday, with today, and with tomorrow. A challenge of repetition to gain a deeper understanding of my creat…
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Engaging disengagement

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Disengaged students

If the data is consistent 10% of youths between the age of 16 to 18 are not engaged in education, employment, or training (a stitch in time: tackling educational disengagement). The ongoing cost for people who have disengaged will grow ever-increasing as society relies less on unskilled labor.


Technological change, greater labor market flexibility, and economic reforms are transforming the workplace. In Australia the labor growth sections are;

Health Care and Social AssistanceProfessional, Scientiļ¬c and Technical ServicesEducation and TrainingMining Construction  The jobs in decline are; Manufacturing Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing The Future Of All Work, And Not Just For Creatives - trends in USA: 
 “With the avalanche of new products, new technologies, and new ways of working, workers are going to have to become more creative in order to benefit from these changes.”


The disengaged ex-students have a decreasing employment prospect.
Has education failed these stu…
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