Educate the whole child

Copied this off a post on my facebook.
The person who wrote this deserves an A triple plus.

Education is about so much more than test scores.

[My daughter's new elementary school principle sent this to all the students as they received their state standardized testing scores this week:
"We are concerned that these tests do not always assess all of what it is that make each of you special and unique. The people who create these tests and score them do not know each of you-- the way your teachers do, the way I hope to, and certainly not the way your families do. They do not know that many of you speak two languages. They do not know that you can play a musical i...nstrument or that you can dance or paint a picture. They do not know that your friends count on you to be there for them or that your laughter can brighten the dreariest day. They do not know that you write poetry or songs, play or participate in sports, wonder about the future, or that sometimes you take care of your little brother or sister after school. They do not know that you have traveled to a really neat place or that you know how to tell a great story or that you really love spending time with special family members and friends. They do not know that you can be trustworthy, kind or thoughtful, and that you try, every day, to be your very best... the scores you get will tell you something, but they will not tell you everything. There are many ways of being smart."]

 

 

 

Naplan scores

The children did their naplan tests this year and are just starting to get their results. So far I have seen the year nine results for Evan.  He did great, scoring in band 10 for everything. The state average is around band 7-8. His school's average is a little lower in bands 6-7.
The school caters to a multi cultural and low socio economic area, so will always struggle to get high scores.  It always seems unfair to compare schools from very different areas.

This is an article that was published in the Tyalla school newsletter this week and was taken from the Sydney Morning Herald. It discusses the fact that background plays a much bigger role in relative success in test scores than the choice of school that your child goes to.

It is nice that common sense prevails and that you just can't beat the value of having a parent at home while the children are young.  Trying to buy back that time later by shopping around for 'good' schools may not necessarily give you the value you hoped for in terms of test scores for your children.

See my related blog about the things that tests can't score

Orara High school flash mob

I've been waiting to see this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lNS-VaefMag
My daughter, Sarah had been practising secretly for weeks with a select group of year 11 students and teachers. It was so secret that she couldn't even tell her brother in year 9 about it.
It sounded like a fantastic way to liven up a dreary presentation day. I wasn't keen enough to actually go and sit through the presentation assembly, but I really wanted to see the end result after I had heard so much about it.
Well done William and Jack for videoing this, I was hoping that it would make it's way onto youtube
Great job year 11!

Ellie is on the move

Ellie is at that very active age where she has mastered crawling and is desperate to get the hang of walking.  She pulls herself up at every opportunity and likes to let go so she is balancing on her feet. Sometimes she even claps her hands while standing. She has started to cruise around the furniture, using it to get herself to lots of new and interesting places.

With this new found mobility and activeness it is that much harder to get a decent cuddle or snuggle out of her.  That's one really lovely thing about breastfeeding her, she has to stop and snuggle up for a feed. Often she will still wriggle around a bit, but last night was so sweet, she fell asleep in my arms. I was enjoying the opportunity to hold and cuddle a sleeping baby when suddenly I leapt out of my chair,  ouch! 

She still had my nipple in her mouth and in her sleep she had clamped down on it with her few new and very sharp teeth.  It wasn't her fault as she was asleep, well was asleep until I yelped.  The poor thing got quite a rude awakening.

Luckily I was able to swap sides and settle her back to sleep again.  As she was feeding on the second side I thought I could feel one or maybe two top teeth.  She has had her two bottom teeth for 2 months now. We have been waiting for the top two to emerge, and it looks like they have.  All without any stress or fan fare, which is great.

I'm going to enjoy seeing those two teeth grow in, they will make her little face look a bit different.

Meanwhile, I'm going to be very careful I don't get bitten again.  The more teeth there are the more painful it is going to be.

Here's a really good article about breastfeeding and biting
https://www.breastfeeding.asn.au/bfinfo/biting.html

Fires around Coffs

I went for a drive today and got a surprise as I approached Nana Glen. Over in the distance the whole ridge stretching from Nana Glen to Glenreagh was billowing smoke.  It looked like a line of volcanoes.

I took these photos from two places along Bucca Road.

From Bucca Road just outside Nana Glen Primary school

Over Mandy's back fence a bit further along
 Bucca Road.

Steve has been working on this fire in the incident control room since last Wednesday.  He has been working 12 hour shifts and is feeling quite exhausted. Interestingly, he hasn't actually seen the fire.  He's been managing it through radio communication with men on the ground and plotting information on maps.  I thought that he might enjoy actually seeing photos of the fire that he has been so immersed in over the past week.

This fire is burning right along this ridge and smoke extends beyond the frame of this photo to the left.  It stretches all the way to the escarpment above Glenreagh.

Sailing

Today is the very first time that I have ever been sailing.

The family acquired a Manly Junior sail boat from a work mate of Steve's a couple of years ago.
Steve and Sarah have attempted to sail it based on Steve's  flimsy memory of sailing as a child.  Needless to say, after a few disastrous attempts later they gave up the venture.  My dream of being chauffeured around the harbour in a yacht while sipping champagne looked like it was not going to materialise.
Steve and Sarah still nursed the driving ambition to learn to sail, so recently contacted Urunga Sail Training Club about their sailing course that they run.

http://www.yachting.org.au/db/clubdisplay.asp?ID=516680&Action=Display&MenuID=Clubs+and+Classes%2F6%2F0%2CThe+OnBoard+Program%2F10559%2F0%2CWhat_is_OnBoard%3F%2F10612%2F0%2CParticipants%2F11668%2F6236

Rather than let the two of them head off every weekend for fun and frivolity whilst leaving me home to tend baby and home, I decided to throw my hat into the ring too.

Almost $1000 later, the three of us are signed up for a sailing course, that begins next week, and a family club membership for the season.

Sarah and I got ourselves kitted out yesterday with water shoes, long sleeve rashies and gardening gloves. With forecast temperatures of 33 degrees today, we thought we'd pop down to Urunga and have a go at the social sailing that the club runs every Sunday.

Sarah got first go in the boats. I get the distinct impression that they hold very high hopes for Sarah. (Not so high hopes for me). Sarah is a natural, well she looked like it to me who was watching from shore. I stayed on shore to mind Ellie, who at 8 months loved discovering sand. Handful after handful was shoved into her mouth.  This was not the cleanest looking sand either.  There was no way to stop her, so before long she looked like a monster from the deep with brown sand dribbling down her chin.  I'm sure she managed to eat more sand in that sitting than she eats food at meal times. It's going to be interesting to see the results out the other end when I change her nappy tomorrow.

I took Ellie down to the water's edge to clean her up a bit.  She adored the water too and carried right on scooping up handfuls of muddy sand and shoving it in her mouth.  Maybe it was the salty tang she enjoyed.  I have heard that I should avoid salting Ellie's food so that she doesn't develop a taste for salt and also because it is supposed to be hard on her kidneys.  Well with baby led weaning philosophy stating that babies know what food they want and if we provide them with a variety they will naturally choose what they need, Ellie is obviously in need of sludgy river sand, mmmmm.

As is always the case when you try to time these things, right when it was my turn to go in the boat, Ellie was in need of a feed and a sleep. Oh well, I knew she wasn't starving after that belly full of sand, and I had complete faith in Sarah's ability to rock her or walk her in the pram if she needed settling.  There was nothing to hold me back. So I got to have my turn, my very first go in a sailing boat.

Doug kindly, perhaps I should say patiently, offered to take me out in the Tazer. A two - three person boat. My job was to sit up front and manage the jib, whilst ducking the boom and counter weighting the boat if we tipped up too high.  The main goal being not to capsize. Doug gave me instructions peppered with lots of sailing terms while he did all the hard work and kept us on the move. All those fancy sailing terms were like a foreign language and I just let them swirl around my head and wash off me, confident that by the time I finished the sailing course I'd know all of them. So we jibed and we tacked and we did some other things too. I remembered to duck at the appropriate times and deluded myself into believing that I was getting the hang of the jib rope.

Then we swapped positions.  Eeek, me to the back of the boat, in charge of steering, and Doug up front managing the jib, and all the other fancy things he was doing from the back that magically makes the boat go. Steering a boat is great fun, but prone to bring out a spot of dyslexia. Doug kept telling me to look forwards, not back, as each time I looked back we invariably ended up off course. We ended up off course a fair bit of the time when I was looking forward too.

Eventually I got sacked after some miss understanding about which way to turn. The boat floundered and Doug needed to scoot back and remedy the situation. As we pulled in towards shore, he declared that based on our sailing abilities, Sarah had better be skipper and I had better stick with crew. Which was probably a really nice way to say that I sucked. That just means that come the start of the sailing course next week, my learning curve is going to be steeper than Sarah's, and I have an excuse to be slack, and let all the others do the work while I relax, sip champagne and dream.

Our 2007 Family trip around Australia

In 2007 our family took a 6 month break from real life and went on a camping/driving trip around Australia.  At the time the kids were aged 11,9 and 5. It was a fantastic experience, but the coming back to daily ordinary life was a hard one to adjust to.  As I was looking through my documents yesterday, I found a letter that I wrote from Darwin. It was really interesting to read what I had written. So I have decided to post it here..

23/6/07

Well, here we are still in Darwin.

We can’t seem to get enough of the place.  It probably has something to do with the fact that the rest of Australia has been plunged into the extreme coldness of winter, and the balmy days and nights up here just seem too good to be true.  But we Darwin-ites haven’t escaped all of the cold fronts. Last Tuesday Darwin recorded the lowest maximum temperature for a June day, EVER!  Yes, it set a new record low of 22.7 degrees Celsius.  The poor old locals nearly froze to death.

 

We have been staying at a bit of a rundown caravan park at Lee Point.  It is huge.  We like it because they don’t charge anything for the kids. We have found not charging extra for the kids is a rarity at other caravan parks.

 

We have gotten over our addiction with the massive Casuarina Shopping centre and have managed to discover some real gems in the Darwin area.  There are lots of free things for the kids to do.  Due to the prevalence of stingers and crocodiles on the beaches, the council has created lots of free water parks and other outdoor recreation areas.  There are outdoor markets, free outdoor concerts and a beautiful jetty where you can dine out on fish and chips, feed the fish and watch the sunset.  It is a really nice vibrant youthful laidback city.

 

We have discovered the wonders of the local library.  Steve joined up for a refundable deposit of $50.  Since then the kids have enjoyed story times, play stations, free internet access and have borrowed books, DVDs, cds and computer games almost on a daily basis.

 

We did leave Darwin briefly to meet Steve’s parents and go to an Aboriginal festival at Barunga.  Normally we would need a permit to visit, but for only $5 per adult we were able to camp on common ground in the community for the whole of the June, Queen’s birthday long weekend.  No rules here, we could light a fire where ever we liked.  This turned out to be a good thing as there was a cold snap that weekend and the overnight temperature plummeted to nearly zero. That was a bit of a shock after being used to Darwin where the temperature never dropped below twenty something degrees over night.  In fact our first week in Darwin was shocking.  With very high humidity and no relief in the night time temperatures we were seriously considering heading directly south, and fast.  But the dry season hit by the second week and we were finally able to enjoy cooler temperatures (overnight, at least).

 

The festival in Barunga was a great experience.  It felt really interesting to be in a cultural minority in our own country.  But there was a really positive vibe and it was a great way for the children to experience the kind of life that indigenous people have in these communities.  Our only disappointment was that we did not get much of an experience of traditional culture at the festival.  Much of it was geared to educate the aboriginal people about being healthy, their rights and social services that were available to them.  We did, however, enjoy lots of indigenous rock music at the nighttime concerts

 

After the festival we headed north again and camped in at Katherine gorge.  We found the gorge itself a bit expensive and comercialised.  Choosing not to pay exorbitant rates to travel the gorge via air or water we tried our luck walking across the top.  Sarah and Evan accompanied Ninny and Pa to Butterfly gorge.  It sounded like the pick of the gorges, as it was picturesque and yes there were plenty of butterflies there too.  Steve, Emma and Harry tackled a less demanding walk and headed out to Pat’s lookout.  It took plenty of cajoling but we managed to get Harry all the way there (eventually) and we enjoyed the splendid views.

 

Sadly, we found out about the death of Emma’s Father, the children’s little Pa, upon our return to mobile phone reception in Katherine.  We headed back to Darwin and set up camp again at Lee point.  Then Emma left Steve and the children to spend a week in Darwin while she flew back to a very cold Canberra.  Ninny and (big)Pa moved on to Kakadu.  We were hoping to catch up with them again later in our trip.

 

6/7/07

We are now in Katherine and still enjoying the perfect camping weather.

When Emma returned to Darwin after her week freezing in Canberra we stayed on a few extra days and made sure we saw all of the Darwin Museum.  It took three goes, but I think we managed it.  Lucky it was free.  The museum was wonderful, we particularly liked the exhibits about Cyclone Tracy, Australia under Attack and the stuffed specimens of birds and animals.  Steve has become quite a bird watcher (of the feathered variety).

We left Darwin and drove onto Kakadu and ended up spending 10 days there.  We didn’t intend staying so long but the time flew by without us even noticing.  Kakadu is great, and cheap.  There is no park entry fee anymore and many of the campsites are free.

We spent 3 nights in Northern Kakadu at a free campsite called Malabandjubandju.  From here we visited Jabiru, and the excellent visitor information centre and the spectacular Ubirr Rock.

Ubirr Rock was amazing!  The rock art was extensive and impressive, and the view towards the Arnhem Land escarpment from the top of Ubirr Rock was breathtaking.

 

We headed almost 200km south (Kakadu is a big place) to Gumlon Campground.  This was a $5.40/night campground where we could get a nice hot shower.  Here we met up again with Steve’s parents (Ninny and big Pa). We stayed for 3 nights and while here had the fortune to go into an area that we should have had a permit for.  People we were camped with had a key to Koolpin gorge.  So we borrowed it and went for an explore over rocks and up rock pools to the top of the gorge.  Once again, magnificent views were to be had.

While at Gumlon we caught up with some traditional Aboriginal culture.  We visited the culture centre near Cooinda, watched a slide show about history of the area (including the 1950’s uranium mine at Coronation Hill) and participated in some basket weaving using pandanus palms.  We ate bush damper prepared by our Aboriginal host which Evan and Harry particularly liked, embarrassingly so.  They ate so much that the Aboriginal family had to pull out an extra one from their store to feed them with.

We climbed up above the falls at Gumlon to some beautiful rock pools at the top.  The water was so clear it looked like a picture from a resort brochure.  These falls used to be called UDP falls which stands for Uranium Development Project.  It gives some indication of the area’s past history and the fact that using Aboriginal names for places is a much more attractive option.

 

We continued travelling with Ninny and Pa and moved camp to another free camp ground at Sandy Billabong.  This one was more in the middle of Kakadu, down a 4WD only track.  The first night was frighteningly quiet with no other campers around and Emma laying in bed imagining one or all of 4 different wild animals coming to devour the family in their sleep. Crocodiles, buffalo, wild pigs or dingoes were all possible visitors to this campsite.  The following nights saw many campers move into to join us including a number of tour groups.  So we never felt so alone again.

From this campsite we explored central Kakadu.  We visited Nourlange Rock and were treated to very interesting and entertaining ranger talks about the landscape and the rock art that we were seeing.  We visited Anbangbang Billabong for lunch and then climbed the rocks above it to the lookout.  We went further than the track and climbed right to the top of the Rocky escarpment for some wonderful views.  On the way back down we discovered some rock art.  It showed a story depicting lots of stick figures and a large rainbow serpent.  We wish we had our ranger with us to interpret the rock paintings for us and to tell us about the significance of the site.

We visited Jim Jim Falls on one of the days.  This is probably one of the best known areas in Kakadu.  We could not access Twin falls as the road was closed.  Jim Jim was a tall fall that we accessed by a long rocky scramble.  There was a plunge pool at the bottom in which we all enjoyed a well earned swim.

 

Reluctantly we packed up; knowing that there was still heaps to do, but that  it will have to be saved for another visit.  Now we are in Katherine (again) re- stocking and catching up on washing before the next leg of our journey.  We have decided to head west and dip our toe into Western Australia.  It was never our intention to touch West Oz, but given the cold southern air and the fact that we are so close we just can’t resist popping across to Kunnunara and Wyndam.  Where to from there who knows.................

Until next time, from who knows where, take care and enjoy the winter, we sure are!