“Gun Control to Donald Trump
Gun Control to Donald Trump
Take your prozac pills & put your holster on
Gun Control to Donald Trump (ten, nine, eight, seven, six)
Commencing countdown, engines on (five, four, three)
Check legislation & may God's love be with you (two, one, liftoff)...

This is Gun Control to Donald Trump
You've really made the grade
And the people want to know why you don’t care
Now it's time to leave the Trump tower if you dare...

"This is Donald Trump to Gun Control
I'm stepping through the door
And I'm voting in a most peculiar way
Hollywood stars look very different today
For here
Am I sitting in a tower
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do

Though we’re past one thousand deaths
I'm feeling very still
And I think the NRA knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much she knows
Gun Control to Donald Trump
Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong
Can you hear me, Donald Trump?

Can you hear me, Donald Trump?
Can you hear me, Donald Trump?
Can you "Here am I floating 'round my tower
Far above the earth
U.S. of emergency is blue
And there's nothing I can do"

#mentalwellbeing #guncontrol #Bowie #Trump

Lara Bingle in the wind

Goodbye Morrison
Though I never knew
Like Steve Bradbury on your feet
While those around you fell

They crawled back to Dickson
And they challenged Mal Function
They set you in the Lodge
And had the polls to blame

And it seems to me you live your life
like Lara Bingle in the wind
Never knowing who to turn to
When the rot set in

And I would have never voted for you
But I am just a kid
Your mandate burned out long before
Your ego never did

Energy policy is tough
The multinationals don't play
Canberra created a bubble
And no taxes were paid

Even when you lost
Oh, the press still hounded you
All the papers had to say
Was that Morrison was found ineptitude.

Goodbye Morrison
From the asylum seekers in detention
Who sees you as nothing more than tryranical
More than just a ScoMo

\

Procurement and fixed priced contracts

As I rode my bicycle to work this morning, I was contemplating short trip transportation business models.  I have background in sustainability, procurement and/or sustainable procurement.

As I crossed the Story Bridge, I saw a City Cat.  I contemplated the cost of operation and the price paid by consumers.

People swipe on, and swipe off for a fixed price contract (despite the warnings from Chris de Burgh).

Taxi passengers, do not fix their price and are charged by flag fall, distance and duration of their journey.

Uber have disrupted the market with fixed prices.

Now Lime scooters are disrupting the transport market further.

All the while, I am causing a minor disruption of my own, by riding my bicycle to work.  I don't have to pay the ferryman,

the realm of whelm

I am currently working as a Teacher of Year 10 Science, Year 11 & Year 12 Biology.  In my spare time, I am the Year 8 Year Level Coordinator at my school.  I am also writing material for the 2019, Year 11 Psychology


In recent weeks, I have been working with students on reducing their anxiety and stress, through some basic principles of project management.


Here is what we have been discussing in classes.


Towards the beginning of term, students can be a little bored, perhaps to the point of being a little underwhelmed.


At this time of year (week eight of ten) many students are overwhelmed with assignments and pending exams.


From the outset, I have been working with my students to whelm.


I ask Student to get out a calendar and plot all their assessment due dates.  If there are clusters of assignments and exams falling around the same dates, students need to bring forward some of their tasks, to adjust their level of whelm,


In Year 11 Biology we have added addition terms to our meta-vocabularly.   We have named extreme levels of whelm as #Hyperwhelm.


Very low levels of whelm, might be considered to be #hypowhelmed.


We are aiming to adjust the levels of whelm towards a target of iso-whelm.


The secret is to keep chipping away at small sections of larger tasks.  One need to eat the metaphorical elephant, one mouthful at a time.


The final component in the realm of whelm is co-opting the wombles' song from the 1970's tv show.


"Underwhelmed, overwhelmed, wombling free......"

Pre-servce and beginning Teachers

I have fresh memories of being a novice teacher and spending almost every waking moment juggling:

• Caring for a high needs young family - now aged 7, 9 and 47
• my activities of daily living (eating sleeping, bathing, ablutions),
• Coming to school from 9 to 3 then more recently 8 to 2 and
• endless lesson preparation.

Up until this year, I would spend every morning tea and lunch break, in lesson prep.  I would go home to busy family times, then after my children were in bed, I would do lesson prep to 23:00 most nights (five or six nights a week).

I spent the first three years of teaching in some sort of Post Traumatic stress induced depression.  I had to work longer and longer hours to maintain a reasonable level of productivity.  It was a vicious circle.  The more hours I spent in lesson preparation, the less productive I became, just through sheer emotional and physical fatigue.

In 2018, I have turned a corner.  I took on a role as  Year 8 Year Level Coordinator.  I am teaching 2 or 3 classes a week instead of 5 and I have access to a bank of 3 or 4 years of pre-prepared lessons.  I have colleagues around me developing and sharing their lesson materials. 

My children are now more independent, can do a lot more for themselves these days.  They are a joy to my soul.

Life is pretty good these days.  However, it makes me wonder: is there more that we can do to support pre-service and beginning teachers?