I'm so hot, I might just hit on myself!

An inspiration.


  I was watching "unteachable" tonight on the ABC, and its one of those occasions in my life where i realise that i could be so much more than i am, in a professional capacity (I teach High School, for the uniformed).  Its happened before, usually when i see other teachers going above and beyond, and being such an inspiration to their students, for involving themselves so much.  The time before last was when Andrew Douch came to talk to us about using Web 2.0 tools in our classrooms.  I think he may have struck a particular cord with me, as a fellow Biology teacher.  I wanted to be so much more like him, to use my time so much more effectively. 
I've only been teaching for 2 years, so i know i have so much more to learn, and a better teacher to become.  I can already see the results, see the progress that i've made as a teacher.  But its a hard thing to measure.  If i do it on the amount of time i spend preparing and thinking about lessons, then i've gotten worse.  If i base it on VCE results, then its much improved (go Bio class of 08, you did me proud).  I have thinking about it though, because i feel measuring teaching success is so difficult, which is why i don't really like the idea of performance based pay.
Coz if you base it,say on my VCE results, then based on a state wide performance, then maybe not so good.  But can you look a bit closer, please?  Look at the kids who only took my class because they couldn't do their preferred subject, one that is as far removed from Bio that you can get.  And then can you look at the effort they put in for me, the work they completed, the motivation they had?

I'm an emotional person, i cry at the drop of a hat (i cried at that WorkSafe add where the daughter thought her dad had died, and then he appeared home....) but i had several moments this year when my students moved me so completely.  The first was when a parent came up to me at Valedictory (year 12 graduation) and spoke to me about how i motivated her son, who didn't enjoy school or science subjects, but loved my class and talked at home about how much he enjoyed my class and how hard he tried for my exam.
And then there were the two year 12's who both individually commented about how disappointed they were at their overall results, not because they were lower overall than what they wanted, but rather because they didn't want to disappoint me. 

Makes me tingle.


So maybe in that capacity i am an inspiration.  But i don't think i am.  I don't think i'm doing enough. I don't think i'm working hard enough, making my lessons interesting enough. I'm not engaging those students who have those different intelligences that the guy in Unteachables was talking about.

He does Punctuation Kung Fu.  Oh yeah, Kung fu geastures and noises associated with punctuation marks.  It was freakin awesome.

I think thats my challenge this year.  I'm teaching more boys than i ever have.  And a difficult group of boys.  And this worries me.  It has ever since i heard what they were doing with the program.  I'll admit it.
I've been dreaming about crazy out-of-control science lesson for the past week.  Alot involving boys looking like mad scientists. I may be a fraction stressed about this.
I just want to translate that motivation i have with my senior kids to my more junior ones, coz i dunno if i can do it.  I just don't know.

Every now and then an article comes out bagging out "my generation."  I think i've mentioned it before, i know i've had many a discussion with my oldest sister about it; i think the two of us like to discuss it because we both like to label people.  Mum always said that was a bad trait i had, that i had to label everyone, to put them into a box.  It's probably true.  Maybe i've grown out of it a bit though, i don't find myself grouping people in my head so much anymore (i do find myself being overly critical, and giving out fashion advice in my head, like someone has installed Trinny and Sussanah in there.....)
But anyway...
A couple of weeks before Christmas the Herald sun ran an article about the differences between the generations, using the same stereotypes that these articles always use, grouping people based on about three characteristics based on the year they were born.  For those of you who don't care about this stuff the way i do, here's the run down for you. 
Baby Boomers: People born in the post WWII days, when war was over and people had lotsa sex.  According to Wiki, and thats according to the US census, they are born between '46 and '64
(small note, there is SO MUCH arguments over where generation dates begin and end, and what constitutes a generation.  generally its like 20 years, and there's milestones in those periods of time that binds these people together as a group, i'm not getting into it, its too complicated and i don't care that much)
These people lived through the 60's and 70's, and came into adulthood during this "experimental" and "free love" time.  This is then equated to a more relaxed approached to things than the generations that came before them, less rigid, more of a feel that they can change things.

Then comes Generation X: '61 to '81 born, very different from the generations either side of it. Probably best described as conservative.  They came to adulthood in the recessions of the 80's.  They knew it was hard work, they faced the AIDS crisis, the cold war and the commonality of Divorce. 

Then comes us (or me), Gen Y.  I hate descriptions of gen y.  the start date of my generation is one of the hotly debated topics on Wiki, mid seventies to early 80's to about the year 2000.  But then, just like every generation, there seems to be two groups, and early group and a late group.  Like someone born in 85 (like me) is very different to someone born in 2000.  (case in point, i spoke to my year 7's last year about 9/11 on the anniversary, i remember it clearly and horrifically, they remember it in vague terms, something that disrupted their ABC Kids viewing, or the simple fact that they've always had the internet, or don't remember dial up).
Gen Y are the children of the Baby Boomers.  Those relaxed bastards are the reason we get such a bad rep. Coz you see, they were relaxed and indulgent, so we're relaxed and indulgent.  We're coming into adulthood now, or for about the last what, 10 years? 
See, here's the article that the herald sun ran, here  
and this is how they describe us "Gen Y is characterised by its "all about me" attitude. Gen Y-ers are notoriously selfish, live for today and spend big."
oh goody, and wait, they're examples of our generation are really good too..... Britney and Paris.  That totally sums up everyone i know. 

So here comes the part where i defend my generation. 
You see, the one thing that i keep hearing about my generation is that we've had it so good.  We never had to struggle for anything, we had it easy.  Unemployment is low, economy was good.  Yeah yeah, i get it.  We've had it easy.  sure.

But think about that for a moment, have we really?  Getting into Uni isn't as easy as it used to be.  ENTER's go up all the time, and on top of that so do HECS.  Sure, so did Gen X have a debt, some of them.   But as high as ours?  And on top of that, when all my friends around me are finishing up uni and entering working life, what have we got?  Oh yeah, a recession like all you Xers went through when you were entering the work force.  I have friends who are engineers, who's jobs in these industry's are at risk all the time when they've just started them.
I'm one of the few people who are secure in their employment, coz i'm a teacher.  You know, one of those jobs that just screams "selfish and Me! Me! Me!"
On top of that, more and more of my friends are finding that they have to do multiple degree's to get anywhere near what they want to do in life.
Most people i know grew up in families that had financial troubles.  They remember the heated arguements between parents, the silence and the tears.  The fact that both parents had to work to make ends meet.  The continual divving up of money just so we could go on school camp.  The fact that we didn't have an oven for a couple of years. 
We didn't have idylic childhoods.  

Sure, most girls i know love to shop, and yeah, we can be selfish, but i pretty much think thats a human trait, selfishness.  I don't really see many people 20 years older than me being less selfish.  I don't see them giving up their time or their money anymore than my generation does. 

It just annoys me that my generation get blamed for many traits that we have, traits that are a product of the way we were raised or the examples we see from the previous generation. 


So there's my rant. 

Jimmy Eat world sung about not living in ones regrets at 23, not loving what i'll never have and not loving selfish things.  I was quite happy to turn 23 so i could honestly sing these lyrics, not sing them and think, maybe that will happen when i'm 23.  It was like being 17 and finally being able to blame the rain on the fact that you lied. 

At the start of this year, and as my birthday is in January, the start of 23, i was talking to my friend Robyn about which years of ours had been good.  I expressed a warm sentiment for 13, when things were idyllic and fun, and she relished 21.  We both agreed that 22 for her had been shocking and 23 was going to really have to suck badly if it was to sink to those depths.
22 for me hadn't been much of a year at all for me.  Nothing monumental happened.  Sure, i started my job as a teacher, but i had been working towards that for 7 years, it was the next step, the expected rather than the exciting.  Around me people were off having adventures and i was settling into my routine. 

So excuse me for feeling that 23 was going to be of similar prospects.  Robyn rightly pointed out that i was going overseas twice that year and that there should be enough for me to bring 23 up above the levels of previous years, and she had "a feeling" about 23. 

Sometimes i wonder at her psychic abilities.  Coz that girl is far too often right. 

23 has been pretty damn magnificent.  I did go OS twice, to NZ and USA both trips teaching me a bit about myself and changing the relationships with the people i traveled with.  In the US i realised i can do things by myself and its not too bad.  I can make flights and talk to strangers and make friends in hostels.
In NZ i appreciated not only the beauty but also started to see my mother as more of an individual person and not just my mum.

And then there's CYM; certain young man.  For someone who has long bemoaned her single status and lack of romance on this blog,  a part of me finds it interesting that i don't have much to say about him, except he's wonderful.  He makes me happy.  The thought of losing him scares the crap out of me and twists my stomach up.  Its sometimes like he peels away the layers of bullshit faux toughness and extrovertedness and makes me softer. 

I'm not going to gush anymore, i don't want to be that girl too much, but sometimes i feel that perhaps any other year is going to have to have some drastic changes in it if it is to top 23.