Smile – though your heart is broken…

I was sitting in a coffee shop the other day sneaking a quiet cup of coffee by myself when I recognized a lady who walked by.  I wasn’t sure how I knew her.  She was laboring under the weight of many bags of groceries, and she stopped for a rest just outside the coffee shop window.  She sat on a park bench with her groceries around her feet and next to her on the seat. She had the look of someone tired, beaten down, and struggling.

Then I remembered who she was.  I had taught her.  I remembered her, an older woman, one of those students we sometimes call a “second-time learner”.  After lectures I remember she would come up for a quick chat, ask a few questions but I most distinctly remember her for smiling a lot.  I don’t remember picking up any particular signals about her abilities or lack of them until the first assignment was due.   In that particular paper I used to let the first assignment be quite loose – they could be quite creative on how they presented the information and so when I received her draft I was a bit surprised.  It looked like a preschooler had written it.  However, as I say, there was room for creativity in the assignment providing the content was accurate.  But this was something else …..  this was actually reflecting her literacy ability.  And she was trying to do a degree, and I was trying to teach her science. 

This story could be about a lot of things – it could be about formative feedback, diagnosis of learning disabilities in the classroom and various other pedagogical issues around detecting and supporting learning needs in the tertiary environment, but this time I am making this about entry.   This woman did not pass my course, nor did she pass her other courses.  In fact, I have never before issued a student as lower grade or mark as I had to for this student.  Yet still she smiled as I tried to work with her. 

When I think about that smile and how she looked the day I saw her on the park bench I can detect a distinct change.  I think about how proud she was about being on this degree, that she was making her way towards her chosen career path, I can imagine how proud her children were of her, and probably her extended family, I can imagine how difficult it was to find the money to pay the fees, how financially difficult it was to stop her work as a carer so she could pursue fulltime study.  Yet she smiled. 

Of course she failed the programme and could not continue.  I think about the cost of that to her.  The disappointment, the financial burden, the covert message to her children, her own self-esteem and I feel angry that we put her through that.  Entry criteria is not there as a barrier but as a indicator about what skills you need to meet the cognitive and learning needs of the programme of study.  If students do not meet the entry criteria, we need to support their career aspirations by giving them fair and transparent advice on how best to staircase to their desired destination.  It is not about letting people in and giving them a go.  We need to be sure we are not setting them up for failure.  I think sometimes we relatively successful people underestimate what it takes to be a fulltime student, and most of us have no clue what it takes to be a fulltime student who is inadequately prepared for academic study, and most of us have not experienced that sense of utter failure.  It is not fair. Whoever let her into her the programme of study probably thought they were being kind.

That day I know why I didn’t recognize her immediately – she was no longer smiling.

Waiting for the Universe …

Sometimes things just seem so unfair. When my little daughters used to compete in Irish River-dancing, I can remember one particular occasion where middle daughter gave it her all. She wasn’t being favoured by the judge in this competition but she took it on the chin, and didn’t give up.

She changed her hair style, altered her costume, and as a final resort, re-choreographed her whole dance to the hardest, most complicated hard-sole steps she could muster. She worked in all sorts of flurrys and arm movements, head movements and pointed her little toes as hard as she could. She worked behind the scenes, practicing and performed her utmost. It did

False Prophets

The world is full of false prophets.  Not those religious types that predict the world’s end, but those that have lots to say about all manner of other things. People have access now to so much information – information that was once locked in books or only a few had access to. To find out about something, you only have to “google it”.

 One of the tell-tale signs of a false prophet is the inability to tell facts from theory.  Of course as a reader, you may not know the difference yourself so you may succumb to the persuasiveness of the writer.  Take H1N1 Influenza A for instance (Swine flu).  I have never heard so many all-knowing everyday people with opinions about something that the real experts are only just getting to grips with.  Yet where would they get their information from? 

Committ(e)ed to Education

In terms of being professional and making decisions – it does strike me as quite odd that teaching is one of the few professions where people deter the most important decisions to committees.  While there is no doubt that teaching is definitely a social-cultural activity and as such, knowledge is validated by the collective, education seems to defer most decisions to the collective.

Why is this? Are educationists afraid of making decisions? Education at its most fundamental should take into account people’s various worldviews, and should have purpose that is meaningful to the stakeholders.  Often, this is articulated especially in the tertiary environment by policy and procedure, which has in term been stipulated by standards or statutes by external quality bodies.  So why do we need more committees – committees that review and re-do, and then more committees such as Academic Boards or Boards of Studies that approve.  If the policies and procedures are based on evidence based research, then what do all the extra bodies achieve?

Cultural Perspectives

When you belong to a particular culture there tends to be certain attributes that you value and want to preserve. These usually include language, ways-of-knowing, particular ways of communicating and common values. You are usually more at ease with people who are within your culture and with whom you share these common values.

I want to tell you what it is like to belong to a culture that appears to be foreign to many. My language is carelessly mispronounced; meanings are distorted sometimes to the point of complete inaccuracy or misrepresentation. Often, you find these inaccuracies perpetuated in textbooks, or worse, taught in schools. There are a lot of preconceptions of what people like me are supposed to value, of what I can do, or how I think, of my capabilities …. of my culture. People sometimes blame the ailments of society on people like me, and those within my culture. I often see stereotypical representations of my community in the movies, and in stories. We are often placed as either the aggressors, with mad, psychopathic tendencies, or weak and ineffectual.

Secret of Success ….

In Charles Darwin’s early days his dad decided that his son was to be a doctor, so he was sent to Edinburgh to study medicine.  He did not do well in medicine and so was then sent away to Cambridge to study theology.  However, he kept being distracted by natural history and one thing led to another and the rest is … well, history.

Charles Darwin’s son apparently asked one of his school mates “when does your dad categorise his barnacles?”   The son obviously did not realise that everyone’s dad does not spend all day wondering about collecting and examining stuff, and that most dad’s had some sort of occupation.  However,

What are we?

One of the reasons that ITOs came into existence was due to the impression that polytechnics were out of touch with industry. And here we are, a decade or so later, and we still hear that polytechnics are out of touch. 

 

So let us examine this.  I know from my experience that ITO based training is not necessarily better than polytechnic education – note the deliberate use of the words training and education.  Polytechnics have significant overheads – academic boards, compliance, administration, and buildings, which sometimes simply make us a more expensive option.  Polytechnics are also considered to be slow to respond so the package may be considered to be out of date, or unable to deliver

What Does the Future Hold?

One particular summer in the very early 1980s, my friend and I went everywhere together wearing matching hats. Mine was green and hers was pink. They had imitation flowers on the front of them and they were very hideous (yes, I do have photos). We loved them. That is, until “Princess” Diana started wearing hats and it become fashionable. That was it; our hats were discarded in

Boys Are Different from Girls ….

While driving to town one day, my daughter who was 6 at the time proceeded to tell me all about how she knows about how girls are different from boys.

“How so?” I curiously enquired, wondering what the playground conversations and activities had been that lunchtime.

“Well,” she says “it’s all about how they drive”. With some relief, I nod in agreement and ask for more details. “It’s quite obvious really – boys drive

Women’s Institute of Technology ….

I was standing in the queue for the café the other day and I looked at all the people.  Women outnumbered men at about 3 to 1.   I was sitting at a meeting the other day and women outnumbered men at about 10 to 1.  Don’t get me wrong, this is not necessarily a criticism but it is an interesting phenomenon. Where have all the men gone?

 

We all know that supposedly girls thrive in the NCEA (National Certificate in Educational Achievement) environment where they are rewarded for persistent effort.  Where as boys classically thrive in the competitive environments of exams and last minute cramming.  So, are