Woman and Child First

Teaching: An Art Form

This year my private practice has been suspended due to gaining full-time employment until December, in public schools as a School Counsellor. I've been doing this work since 1988, give or take a couple of babies and several city/town/house moves.

This position, particularly working as a casual/relief counsellor usually means remaining on the periphery of the staff at a number of schools at any one time. It can feel isolated. Teachers' quite rightly don't see you as one of them anymore (though I taught primary school classes as a pre-requisite to this) and you're only there 1 or 2 days a week. So I always try to make my services relevant and my 'self' accessible.

But today I became a teacher person again and barged myself into a presentation on the instruction of reading and writing. (Quite frankly I think that this was invaluable to my job anyway - makes sense to see what is being taught when you are advising on Learning Difficulties!)

Stephen Graham presented an extremely straightforward model of "Explicit Teaching". Yes! Simple teaching for complex ideas. User friendly. He gave a couple of demo lessons and once again I am humbled by what an outstanding job most teachers do.

How difficult it is to have a group of children in front of you and skillfully instruct them in some of life's most important tasks - reading and writing.

It's not a bad experience either, to see that most of these people genuinely like children. And the kids love them back.

Driving home I reverted back to memories of being an idealistic 22 year old primary school teacher. When goals of modelling excellence and being an influential person in a kidlet's life were real. Too many of us in Education take what we do for granted. This work is really.... very... important.

Here's to the teacher's who have made their art their life's work.

Let's give them more money and stop complaining about their holidays. They earn every bit of both.

An Interesting (Informal) Statistic

Whilst sitting watching the unfolding of a Kindergarten lesson today, I noticed two (2) things.

1. That Kinder teachers who enjoy their job are entirely fabulous to watch in action and

2. That at any random point in time you can look out onto a group of 4 - 6 year olds and at least two (2) of them will be picking their nose.

I like spending time in Kinder classrooms, those guys haven't hit earth yet.  One little dude today ran up to me and said, "Hey I'm going to choke you!"

"I love to see what a fantastic job I do as the School Counsellor!" I thought. He remembered me!

So I said, "Hey Jimmy!" and suddenly realized his name was Felix.*

Untalkative Bunny pictured during a session with a psychiatrist.

* Not real names

The Dore Program For LD, ADHD And More

If you have a child with a Learning Disability or behavioural problem like ADHD, then you know how difficult schooling can be for them.  These kids have average to above-average intelligence yet fall behind significantly in one or more areas of schoolwork. The self-esteem issues are huge. Many programs designed to help them just don't.

So it's obvious that if a program comes along purporting to "cure" your child of his/her LD, ADHD and more,  then you take notice. You may be more than willing to part with vastly large sums of money in order to help your child. The Dore program has offered this opportunity and for many, it's worked. For other's it hasn't and it's really very expensive.

Four Corners, a documentary show consisting of very good journalism and a long history of being well-respected has recently presented a bunch of scientists, psychologists, teachers and LD specialists slamming the Dore program. See Dr John Rack, Dorothy Bishop amongst others.The claims largely revolve around the lack of decent, validated research to back up claims of "cure" for Learning Disabilities. That's a big NO NO in psychology. One must have good research data!

The owner of the program, Wynfred Dore,  however is unphased by the outcry.  He says he has enough anecdotal  evidence, through satisfied clients, to confirm the success of his work.

So who's right? Well I think both of them are probably in charge of bits and pieces of fact. I don't think there is a right and wrong here. The Dore program will work wonders for some kids. It won't work for others.

But I do agree, the research needs a thorough doing over. And parents need to be made aware. The whole issue of LD, ADHD and other behavioural and learning difficulties is extremely stressful for parents and children. Things that work, even just for some, need more objective attention.

Wild Things

When I first went into playing this game I thought, "What kind of sick and twisted mind would have children play a game where they see animals trapped in glass jars inside closed lockers?" I was outraged I tell you.

Then I realized the object of the game is actually to set them free.

So Justine Cooper is off the hook and the Queensland Art Gallery isn't made up of monsters in human suits after all.

Cute game for littlies aged around 4 - 7. But hey. I've been playing it for 2 hours.

Skills inspired: memory, auditory, basic reading/word recognition. Knowledge: animals, names and sounds, habitats.

Message: conservation and freedom for wild things.

Pictured: Justine Cooper (artist) at Museum of Natural History, New York

Being With Adolescents: The Urgency Of Our Future

Today I was lucky enough to watch Dr. Michael Carr-Greg (Adolescent Psychologist) speak to a room of 400 people, most of whom were High School teachers in the public system of North Coast, NSW, Australia.

Carr-Greg is a high profile Oz psych who writes articles for such publications as the Sydney Morning Herald and Girlfriend magazine ( I heard the teacher sitting next to me groan with ignorant disapproval to that last one).

He is passionate about people, more specifically educators, knowing about what the brain research in the last 5-10 years has found. I've written about this myself, on this blog, and I can tell you: This man was like a long lost friend to see in action.

He put this to his audience:

The teenage brain secretes melatonin (sleep inducing chemical) at around 11pm each night, some kids get it at midnight. This we know. What we now also know is that the same teenage brain needs 8 hours sleep per night. So work it out... They stay up late and then we get them out of bed at 7.00 am to start school at 8.30. This actually means  they are sleep deprived 5 times a week by 1 - 1 and a 1/2 hours.

Moreover, that last 1 hour sleep is REM sleep - the period of time that the brain dreams, processes all the day (before's) info, gets rid of the junk it doesn't need and completes the whole "good" night's sleep.

He said (I I love this guy), " I challenge every school principal in this room to delay your school's starting time till 10.00 am and take it through till 4.00pm.... Oh! I know!~ This is going to inconvenience all the adults. BUT WHO ARE YOU THERE FOR? ISN'T IT THE KIDS?"

There's more, so much more and I will post on what other things this man said, all the same stuff I've been reading up on for the last 2 - 3 years. We need people to fight for our young. It was a great inspiration to me to experience this.

Watch this man, he knows his stuff. Michael Carr-Greg.

ps. He asked the audience at one stage to put up their hands, if they themselves had never made a mistake as a teenager. One teacher, thinking he was being funny, did so. Carr-Greg gestured to him and said, "There's always one IDIOT in every audience".

The Inverse Power Of Praise

You have to read this article in the New York Magazine it's so important. It appears that to praise a child for being intelligent (EG. "You must be smart at this!") has the reverse effect to what many parents and teachers believe to be the case.

That is, It doesn't encourage children and in fact, appears to have the opposite effect, particularly on gifted kids who underachieve.

What works so much better and does really encourage a child is to praise them on the effort they put in (EG. "Hey, you've put a lot of work into this!") Less pressure with this slant too, no doubt.

So then, kids prefer knowing that their individual efforts (which they can control) will have them eager to carry on and try new work (take risks) rather than knowing they have a natural intelligence (which they can't control).

Thanks so much to Vaughan over at MindHacks for finding and sharing this extremely helpful piece of info.

The True Story of Mary: Who Wanted To Stand On Her Head

I am so happy to see that this book has been acknowledged in tying with another book in the Aurealis winners.

Written by Jane Godwin, I'd nearly forgotten about it, I was sure that it would be available in my favourite Sydney bookstores last October but could not find it anywhere. It was not available yet.

The illustrations are to die for and the message is heartbreakingly beautiful and funny. Inspiring. All children should have this book. All humans should have this book.

I want hardcover.

Must have hardcover.

The True Story of Mary who wanted to stand on her head by Jane Godwin.  Follow the link, click on the image and read the editorial by Amazon, for a description.

Illustrated by the marvelous and talented Drahos Zak.

Wizards and Wonderment

Ah Magic!

"Naming your Familiar:

Once you have decided upon the secret name that you are going to give your familiar, pass your hand over it again five times, crying:

Now I'll give you a new name, secret as a hidden flame.

It's a secret none shall see. Only we two: you and me.

With my hand I make the spell. You new name to none I'll tell. It is .....!"

From Wizardology: The Book of the Secrets of Merlin.

My eight year old son, bewitched by this Christmas gift, recited the spell to our beloved cat (Velvet) this afternoon.

The funny thing is, she crouched down dutifully in front of him as he read from this stunning and beautifully presented book.

He held his hand over her head as he recited the spell. She waited for her new name...

...which of course, I cannot disclose.

But I can tell you this - Wizards!  And there is nothing more to say...

Young People's Health: What's it going to take?

That's the name of the 5th Australian and New Zealand Adolescent Health Conference being held in Sydney 13th-15th November, 2006. The conference is presented by the Children's Hospital in Westmead. The main themes of the conference are:

• Risk and protective factors
• Neurobiology of the adolescent brain
• Family, community, and cultural influences
• Impact of media and technology on young people
• Research, policy and practice responses

I'd love to hear the latest regarding the impact of media and technology on youth. This covers advertising, mobile phone use, sexuality and the media and more. Also, I would be really interested in the neurobiology of the brain discussions - this is such an important area, with so many implications for school systems.

The conference is also calling for youth participation, giving young people a voice and a chance to create their own networks. What a  great idea - to actually include the people we are trying to help!

The conference is also for:

Paediatricians and GP's

Nursing and allied health staff

Hospital, rural and community based health workers

Youth workers and youth health workers

Mental health workers

Education and other sector professionals

Researchers, academics and policy makers

Interested? Check out this important conference right here. Sounds good to me, I will seriously consider attending.

SLD's - Terms and Definitions

For anyone who's been told their child may or does have a specific learning disability, it is a great relief to find straight-forward terms and definitions to understand this condition.

The Departments of Education in Australia generally define a SLD as being a condition where a child of average to above average intelligence is approx. 2 years behind their chronological age in areas of reading or maths. (I doubt that U.S. or British educators would differ greatly from this overall definition).

However, we can get more specific than that. Here are some terms:

Dyslexia: The child may mix up letters within words and sentences while reading. Difficulties with spelling are common as are letter reversals.

Dyscalculia: The child finds maths concepts and symbols difficult to understand and use.

Dysgraphia: The child has a difficult time with the physical task of forming letters and words using a pen and paper and therefore has a hard time producing legible writing.

Dyspraxia: This is where the child mixes up their spoken words and sentences.

Non-verbal learning disorder: The child may perform very well in areas of language and maths but have poor motor coordination, visual spatial organization and/or a lack of social skills.

It's important to get the right diagnosis in order to give the right remediation. The term 'learning disabled' is broad and it's desirable to have a more detailed understanding of the child's actual condition. When we help a child in an educational setting, the idea is to tailor the help to meet that child's specific needs.

Nice idea huh? Not so easy to see in practice, sadly.

Terms above adapted from a very helpful and informative link regarding learning disabilities, run by the University of Washington.