Its all on

I know its February but i've just finished reading all those stories, blogs, articles on my RSS reader. Boy is my head spinning. The elephant in the room is definitely National Standards. People either wont say anything or cant shut up about how bad they are. What i'm going to do is treat them with the respect they deserve, which is not much. Who really cares, if you want to run around and boast about your standards then you might be part of the problem. The parents will get some sort of chart, the MOE will get some shitty information that they can stick in their pipe, and the Herald and Metro magazines can butcher the data. My mate Mr Russty has been quoted in both the Herald and Metro in the last 15 months and both times what he said was twisted. Teacher bashing has started, luckily we have amazing parents who continually say thank you, write great emails and are very very appreciative. We are good, and I think all teachers who are good should be bigger than all the whinging.

Great start to the year with the "meet the teacher" night already over. We had it from 5.30 for 30mins, then families brought blankets and picnics and sat around for an hour in the sun. The cool thing is that when these events are in weeks three or four the parents actually think you have something to tell them, after three days of school, meet the teachers is exactly that. No speeches, no microphones, just chick chat, introductions and lots of community. 300+ turned up.

Teacher only day was a bit of talk and lots of fun. We had an hour at school followed by three hours at Wenderholm, food, refreshments followed by another 2 hours on the water kayaking from Wenderholm to Puhoi. The fun bit was that the kayak was wind and tide assisted. Add an ice cream on the way home and it was the perfect way to slide back into (or out of) the office.

Had to share this gem. One activity happening @sumprimary last week was around four classes mixing groups and taking photo stories of the school and its people. These groups were mixed year levels and I was a victim who was needed for pictures. So as kids carefully approached my door I would always ask the older kids "who is this little guy" it was an easy way for me to start to learn the new entrants names. This one young fella walked in and I said "hey mate come and sit over here you ninja" the 5 yr old replied immediately "i'm not a ninja i'm a maori". After a week of school I think his teacher might be calling me Nostradamus.