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The Puppet Master

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  Puppet Master The narrow, high-walled passage swallowed the sound of my boot scraping a broken cobblestone, the echo sharp in the dry air. Above, a sliver of unforgiving sunlight cut down, carving deep shadows where the damp, mossy scent of the gully was now replaced by the smell of dust and ancient stone. I paused, looking not just at my gloved hand—the leather scuffed from my descent, but at what was attached to it. Thin, nearly invisible lines, like high-tensile wires , stretched from the articulated cuff on my wrist and disappeared into the air above the path. I tracked them with my eyes until they converged on a small, stone figure standing motionless in the centre of the walkway. It was a crude marionette , barely a foot tall, carved from the same pale, cracked stone as the surrounding walls. Dressed in a simple tunic, its blank, oval face held a radiating sense of expectant waiting. Its arms were held out, palms up. I held the strings. Yet, the feeling was not one of cont...

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?



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