Welcome to Jeremy Sear who will post items at GrodsCorp that he considers too lowbrow for An Onymous Lefty — Ed
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The Editor has already posted regarding the teacher ridiculously sacked for appearing in the sealed section of a Cleo magazine (posed nude but tastefully). Fortunately some sane parents have responded to the “complaints” by anonymous dimwits (what’s the harm, seriously?) by petitioning to have her reinstated.

I simply want to implore other teachers I know not to get ideas. Hopefully the recent bonus and pay rise will make Cleo’s $200 less enticing, but you never know with these people. They’ve got too much free time (I knew the ALP should have stuck to the demand to get rid of those pupil-free days) and of course public debauchery is the inevitable result. I guess that’s why the minister caved, before the teachers’ union had a chance to copy the half-naked cabbies.

They’re not all Ms Tziolas, you know.

In NSW teachers get sacked for doing nude photo shoots with their partners in the Cleo sealed section.

A Sydney primary school teacher has been sacked for participating in a magazine nude photo shoot with her partner.

[…]

Mrs Tziolas appeared in the sealed section of Cleo magazine with her husband and nine other couples talking about their sex lives.

[…]

“As teachers we’re expected to be somewhat superhuman and not have a private life,” she said.

“It’s denying the fact that teachers are normal. Yes we have sex, yes we enjoy it…”

In Victoria teachers get cautioned by the offensively useless Victorian Institute of Teaching for buying students grog, discussing sex lives and swapping phone numbers.

A TEACHER who helped a student buy a slab of beer and discussed her sexual habits has been allowed to remain in the classroom.

And despite claims the teacher also talked about using marijuana to “wean herself” off painkillers, the price of cocaine and losing her virginity, Victoria’s teaching watchdog has found she deserves a second chance.

The Victorian Institute of Teaching found that Louise Margaret Huntington engaged in “misconduct” by failing to engage in “professional relationships” with her students.

A panel of three teachers found Ms Huntington displayed “professional immaturity” when she swapped phone numbers with a 17-year-old male student from another school in December 2006 and began seeing him outside school hours.

The secondary school teacher — who talked to the student about her lesbian relationships — allowed the teenager to stay the night at her house after driving him to a supermarket to buy beer.

Somewhere in the middle is the right approach.

GrodsCorp’s favourite chef and podcast sound engineer, Craig, walked into my classroom this afternoon to fix a computer problem. I was reading a book to the kids and we all ignored him for a few minutes. When I reached the end of the chapter I closed the book and said in a loud, sing-song voice, “Hi, Craig!” All the kids parroted, “Hi, Craig!” after me, causing widdle Cwaigy to blush a little bit. I then joked that it was lucky I was reading aloud as Craig can’t read so he just looks at the pictures and guesses. Without missing a beat one of the kids (bless ‘em) announced confidently, “He might not be able to read but he sure can cook!”

Craig’s online anonymity has been pwned. Priceless.

The Editor, John Surname, Jeremy Sear, Keri, Chuck A. Spear and Craig discuss:

* Teh gays
* Cab driver and teacher strikes
* Austrian hostages in basements
* SBS hidden cameras
* Ronaldo’s man-whore problem
* Bill Heffernan vs. Justice Kirby in the GrodsThink naked cagefight

** Because Ant Rogenous is using all the bandwidth to download instructional Fleshlight videos use only the “Play in popup” link or the “Download” link. **

 

 GrodsThink 15 (6 May 2008) [32:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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I’ve been reading over the media reports of the new pay deal for teachers that has brought The Editor almost to the brink of orgasm - and, as expected, some things don’t add up. According to Victorian politicians the deal makes the state’s teachers “the highest paid in the country”, and The Age’s little insert certainly seems to verify this:

State-by-state teacher salaries:
Maximum for a classroom teacher
Victoria - 2007: $65,414, 2008: $75,500
NSW - 2007: $72,454, 2008: $75,352
Queensland - 2007: $69,225, 2008: $71,994
South Australia - 2007: $68,422, 2008: $68,422
West Australia - 2007: $67,446, 2008: $71,206
ACT - 2007: $71,767, 2008: $74,279
Northern Territory: 2007: $70,047, 2008: $72,849

Sounds good, classroom teachers getting a $10k raise straight-up this year. Yet when you read the fine print that’s not actually how it works: the additional $10k will be phased in over three years: 4.9% in the first (about $3,200, taking them to about $68,600) and 2.7% in the second and third years of the agreement. That still leaves them well below NSW teachers at any given time.

In 2010 Victorian teachers’ pay will certainly overtake NSW teachers’ salary rates - but they’ll be the NSW salary rates of 2008 - and it’s highly likely that NSW teachers will have renegotiated their own agreement by then (it expires this year). Brumby and Pike’s claim that Victorian teachers will be the best-paid in Australia looks to be smoke-and-mirrors.

But it’s not all doom and gloom - The Editor gets $1000 to put on the bar at the Grodscorp Christmas Party. Huzzah!

UPDATE

According to the press today I am wrong, that this $10k pay jump is instantaneous and those scumbag Maoist teachers are actually getting 33-38% over the life of the agreement (sounds a bit far-fetched if you ask me). But the government is still sticking to its 4.9% thang. We’ll probably have to rely on The Ed to give us a clearer picture once he receives his new pay scales (if he has sobered up by then). 

Also, Zombie Mao informs us that the Oz is informing us that this will be the end of the fiscal world as we know it.

Details are still sketchy but news is spreading around the teacher gossip network like bird flu. It seems that teachers — who have been locked in negotiations with a government that didn’t really want to negotiate for 18 months — have successfully told education minister Bronwyn Pike to stick her sub-inflation offer of 3.5% per year and instead grant Victorian teachers (the worst paid in the country) pay parity with their NSW colleagues. With virtually no productivity trade-offs teachers have been offered payrises of between $5000 and $10,000 with a John Howard-style $1000 once off bribe payment thrown in for good measure. Again, I’m not sure of the exact details but will update this post when they are officially released.

UPDATE: From ABC Online

The Premier John Brumby says the salary of a graduate teacher will rise by about $5,000 and senior teachers will get a $10,000 pay rise.

“We’ll make the classroom teachers the highest paid anywhere in Australia,” he said.

Mr Brumby, says they gave the teachers more than the original offer of 3.25 per cent because the union has agreed to boost productivity by spending more time with students.

“They will get an extra 10 minutes of tuition everyday.”

The Education Union’s Mary Bluett says top teachers will get a 15 per cent pay rise and graduate teachers 9.5 per cent over three years.

“The salary will actually reflect the importance of the job of teaching,” she said.

“That would do a lot to retain the teachers that we have here in the state.”

Under the deal, three of the four pupil-free days will be moved to before the start of the school year and teachers will get a one-off $1,000 cash bonus.

UPDATE II: Check out the ABC’s apostrophe problems.

I blame teachers.

School healthy eating schemes to tackle obesity are driving teenage girls towards eating disorders, according to new research.
Attempts to drum home healthy eating message were making pupils acutely aware of their weight and inadvertently driving some to potentially dangerous behaviour, the Loughborough University researchers said. (Source)

So if we want to stop childhood eating disorders, The Ed and his Maoist comrades-in-chalk need to stop making fat kids feel fat by promoting healthy body types (yes, it’s all their fault again). As a community service - and to help The Ed out with his teachering - I’ve provided some useful lesson ideas and phrases to avoid this situation in future:

“Boys and girls, this is called ‘celery’. Blleeeeeeeaaaaahhh. Have a donut.”

“It’s a lovely day today, kids… bugger PE, let’s break out the nachos.”

“Self-esteem is very important, Grade Five. Go home and smash all the mirrors.”

“Listen up now for an important a commerce lesson: ‘How to get full value from upsizing’.”

“Today we’re going to go to the Library and research a great person from history. You can choose from John Candy, Chris Farley, Ricky May, Rodney Dangerfield or Kim Beazley.”

“Flab has benefits, boys: if it hangs over far enough, no-one can see your weiner in the showers.”

“You can be morbidly obese and still play sport … just look at Groupthink FC. And you can’t see their weiners in the showers.”

School sets low targets for student scores to ensure that targets are met.

“The modified course only needs to contain one assessment task (maybe the easiest one). The student only needs to get 50 per cent to get an SA (satisfactory achievement) or 15 per cent to get an RA (recorded achievement). It’s that easy!”

President sets low target for reducing carbon emissions to ensure that target is met.

Mr Bush has unveiled a plan to halt the growth of US emissions by 2025…

Victorian Premier John Brumby chants that education is his number one priority like a mantra, but utterly fails in making it so — Victoria can proudly claim that it has the lowest paid teachers in the country. After months of negotiations with the teachers’ union (following months of the government refusing to negotiate at all) the union has reduced its ambit claim of 10% per year to nothing more than pay parity with NSW teachers. But Brumby won’t budge from the government’s standard offer of a barely-CPI 3.25% rise per year with anything over this figure to be offset by productivity gains. Ask any teacher where there’s room in their work day for extra productivity and they’ll probably laugh at you before punching your lights out.

But here’s the weird thing: Victorian opposition leader, the Liberals’ Ted Baillieu, is promising to make Victorian teachers the best paid in the country if elected in 2010. This shit’s messing with my mind.

Usually when two unrelated events are juxtaposed nobody gives a toss - except tabloid reporters. To them, some chains-of-events are logically connected. Teachers go on strike… kids get day off school… kids go surfing… kid gets bitten by a shark and dies… teachers indirectly responsible. Otherwise why would just about every major media outlet mention the teachers’ strike within the first two or three pars of their stories? And then there’s this buffoonery in their online comments:

Let’s hope that the teachers who were on strike, and in particular the teachers who would normally have been teaching Brock and Peter today, suffer lifelong guilty consciences because of their ultimately deadly decision not to work today. It’s time teachers woke up to themselves, and realised that their petty strike actions can have potentially far-reaching and disastrous effects way beyond the reaches of the classrooms and innocent children they desert. Yet another nail in the coffin of teachers’ credibility? You bet. RIP Peter.
Posted by: ausGeoff of Frankston

Of course if it wasn’t teachers - and perhaps sharks - then it would barely rate a mention. Otherwise we should expect to see similar stretches of logic like:

McDonald’s outrage: kid hit by truck while crossing road for burger

…or…

Man dies from heart attack while jogging; family sues Adidas

…or…

Blogger electrocuted while reading GrodsCorp; Editor to blame

Behold the sheer brilliance of the Brumby-Pike plan for educational reform:

Principals will help burnt-out teachers find new jobs under reforms proposed for Victorian schools.

They’ll sack ‘em.

Education Minister Bronwyn Pike released a discussion paper yesterday addressing ways to remove under-performing teachers. “It’s true there are some teachers who become disengaged from the educational process,” Ms Pike said.

They’re shite.

“I think there needs to be an opportunity for them to consider an alternative career.”

They should piss off. 

Ms Pike said some schools had lost the confidence of parents and their community.

They’re shite too.

Under-performing schools would face greater scrutiny and more hands-on management from outside.

We’ll take those ones over and kick arse.

Australian Education Union state president Mary Bluett said the paper failed to acknowledge the need for more money for Victoria’s teachers, the nation’s lowest paid.

‘Give us more money’ - leftists.

The Rudd government, through education minister Julia Gillard, has flagged a strong policy focus on LOTE (Languages Other Than English) in primary and secondary schools.

THE Federal Government is moving to significantly increase the number of students graduating with foreign language skills by pushing the states towards a nationally consistent language curriculum.

New government research to be released tomorrow has found that students are being turned off languages because they believe the subject will affect their university entry scores or because they are told by parents and career teachers that language skills are not relevant to their future.

Gillard says that Australian students need second language skills to remain internationally competitive — and this is true — but there are other major advantages to learning foreign languages in school.

1) Learning another language improves one’s English skills.
Getting your head around the grammar, sentence structure, spelling, punctuation and formatting rules (and contradictions!) of a foreign language makes you pay attention — perhaps for the first time — to the same rules that you use intuitively in the English language. However, to use a language well you’ve got to do more than just use it intuitively. A lot of people can write and speak seemingly sophisticated sentences in English with fancy words and complicated structures, but are relying on reciting them from memory without a basic understanding of the underlying rules that govern the language they’ve just used. Learning another language from scratch helps you learn how to better use the building blocks of your native language that allow you to “play” with words, get creative, and better communicate in a range of genres and situations.

2) Learning another language improves one’s thinking.
More to the point, it improves your metacognition — thinking about thinking. The process of forming connections between foreign and native vocab gives you an amazing insight into the way your brain ticks. People who understand the way that they think, and can manipulate their thinking and actions while engineering situations to best match their thinking styles, are better overall learners than people who have poor metacognition.

3) Learning another language improves one’s cultural understanding and relations.
Pretty obvious this one but very important. Language is a window through which you can understand a culture and its history. Everyone’s heard the story about how Eskimos have forty words for snow or something like that, but there are less obvious ways to read history through words. The literal English translation of a foreign word may reveal a between the lines truth about the way other people think. Also, what are the first words you learn in another language? Foods and other interesting cultural tidbits.

When we travel overseas we expect practically everyone to speak English and, lucky for us, they usually speak enough for us to communicate. Just because English is basically the universal language of travel isn’t an excuse to get lazy and refuse to learn anything else. Making an effort to learn another person’s language shows respect — even if your efforts to hold a conversation fail and you both need to default to English.

4) Learning another language increases one’s sense of the world and decreases one’s insularity.
This is especially crucial for Australia. We’re a young country and rather isolated and insular in our corner of the world. With our close cultural ties to other English speaking countries, and English one of the “global” languages, it’s easy to forget that it’s not the mother tongue for the majority of Earth’s citizens. By failing to force students to learn another language at school, combined with the fact that we can generally get by with English alone when travelling, we reinforce the false primacy of English and a lack of need for other language skills.

Overall, it’s hard to justify the current attitude to LOTE in schools. We should really be requiring primary and secondary school students to study at least one language up to grade ten. Western European languages are most commonly taught at schools but the focus in future should be on south-east Asian languages as they will become increasingly relevant to our lives. Oh, and there are dozens of live Aboriginal languages that exist within our very own country. What about some of them?

RWDB and spotter-of-cancer-jokes-where-none exist, Tim Blair, has a tale to tell of our Maoist-dominated education system:

Niece Amy is now at a fancy private school, having followed family tradition by scoring (in my case, scamming) a scholarship. First challenge at the big new place: debating.
Topic: Should the Prime Minister have apologised to the stolen generation(s)?Amy’s team were (sic) assigned the negative case. They won.

I don’t have time to give Timbo advice on the use of singular and plural subjunctives, I’m too much in shock that those red flag-waving Phrygian cap-wearing Che-loving bastard teachers permitted debate about such a contentious topic - and not only that, the negative team won! What the hell is the world coming to? Surely indoctrination is the name of the game, not the development of skillz and tolerance of debate. And who was the freakin’ judge, Wilson Tuckey?

Some future debate topics for leftist teachers to prevent a recurrence of this ugly tolerance-of-views rubbish:

1. John Howard should be castrated with barbed wire, not disembowelled.
2. Is George W. Bush Satan or the Antichrist? Discuss.
3. Debating is counter-revolutionary dissent and you will be shot if you disagree. Do you agree?

Tomorrow for the second time in my life I’ll be celebrating Easter. However, not for religious reasons like everyone else, but because Easter signals the start of school holidays. I challenge teacher-bashers who constantly shout “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GREAT HOLIDAYS?” to spend a term in a classroom trying to make 28 screaming kids learn against their wills, trying to placate 28 sets of parents who think their child is the centre of the universe, trying to deal with divisive and soul-destroying workplace politics, and trying to find time to actually teach because you’re so utterly overloaded with administration and non-teaching tasks.

I’m going to go and put my head under a pillow for four days.

Teachers love to think that their students think they’re cool. Students love to laugh at the way that their teachers think they’re cool even though they’re desperately not.

I’m usually no different, but recently I achieved true “cool” status.

We were at the Game On exhibition at Melbourne’s ACMI for an excursion last week and were wandering the public gallery after our educational session. The exhibition contains hundreds of computer games spanning the time between Pong and the Nintendo Wii. A group of my kids were playing Guitar Hero and failing miserably. They were on the easy level and could barely bash a right note; the game kept on stopping mid-song and accusing them of failure. Noting an opportunity I purposefully strode up, snatched the guitar, set the game to the hard level, and BLEW THEM AWAY with 95% accuracy. The kids just stood there, mouths agape, in absolute awe of my Guitar Hero skillz. One of them finally breathed, “how did you do that, Ed?”

Just in case you’re wondering, it is hard to be as cool as me.