As a (preservice) teacher, it’s always great to find new resources, especially ones that are free!
Recently Google has upgraded their maps service to allow users to view certain areas of the world in 3D. Watch the video below that explains this.
I’ve had a quick look around this and I can see awesome opportunities to use this to teach students about different areas of the world. Great for HSIE lessons. And, it’s really easy to use! And, it would look amazing on a smartboard, and students could interact with it. It’s amazing how real we can make different parts of the world look.
Below are some screenshots that I have taken while playing around.
Parents are the people that will see the students in your class more than you will, and they will have a much greater influence over you students then you ever will.
As a teacher, you will be interacting directly with your class for up to 4.5 hours a day, or 22.5 hours a week. These interactions will be mostly in the classroom and in a formal setting, and you will be expecting a certain level of interaction from your students. That is that you will be expecting them to show up to class, and to do homework, and to have the materials available for them to do these things.
Parents will be interacting with your students for significantly longer than you will be. If the parents of students don’t care about education, then it is highly likely that the students won’t care about education. And therefore your interactions with your students will be scared by this.
Parents matter in deciding where to teach, before deciding to teach at a school. Try to gauge what the parents will be like, and take this factor into consideration.
Parents will have the greatest influence on your students, so you need to consider them.
I am a Christian studying to be a primary school teacher. Once I am done with studying, I am hoping to get a job as a teacher, and so I want to think through the decisions when deciding where to teach. Specifically with reference to either a public school or a private school.
Over the past months, I have been writing a series of posts thinking through these issues, and for convenience, I am going to have them all archived on this page, and each time I write a new one, I will add it to this list. I will also add drafts that I am planning to write.
All of these posts are from a Christian point of view in deciding to teach in either a public or private primary school in NSW, Australia.
At some stage, I am also planning on putting these into a resource for those who are going through a similar decision making process, if you would like to be involved in proofing this type of a document, please let me know.
Parents matter in deciding where you want to teach.
Recently I wrote a post about parents at schools that care too much about their child’s education (here). This is the opposing post, about those parents who don’t care enough. Here are some characteristics of parents that don’t care enough.
Parents who don’t care enough
Students may not value education as their parents don’t.
This may lead to students not showing up to class very often, and as their is no support for education from home, there is no easy solution.
Discipline is a challenge as students don’t fear the consequences and are not reprimanded by parents.
Parents don’t give any support to students or to teachers, and so teachers can feel alone in situations.
Parents don’t keep teachers accountable, and so teachers may be tempted to be lazy.
Students may not have proper resources such as pens and pencils with which to work, and so learning may be compromised.
These are some characteristics of parents who don’t care. I don’t know of any private school where teachers don’t care (if you pay that much then you care). But unfortunately there is a minority of (not all) public schools in which there are some parents like this.
Stay tuned for one final post on parents, about why parents matter in making the decision on where to teach.
My School is a tool that was launched (on 28/1/2010) by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), and is designed to be an “information service” for parents.
The site allows you to type in a schools name, and then a profile for that school will appear showing statistics about enrolment, socio-educational status and academic results. The main purpose is to compare schools academically, below is a screenshot of the site.
This school is above the national average, and statistically comparable with similar schools
The issue with the academic results is that they are based of singular nation wide tests called the NAPLAN tests.
Parents are being encouraged to use the “My School” website to compare their school to similar schools, and they are also being encouraged to talk to teachers about their schools results. The website states that it aims to introduce “a new level of transparency and accountability to the Australian school system.”
If parents are encouraged to judge schools based off this one test, then this test will start to take over teaching. Instead of teachers teaching students what they need to know over the course of a year, teachers are going to be forced to teach students what they need to know to do well in the NAPLAN test.
Teaching for a test is not good for learning.
I doubt that the “My School” website will benefit education in Australia.
The demographics of students and parents that attend public and private schools tend to be pretty stereotypical. As in certain types of parents send their children to private schools, and certain parents send their students to public schools. Although, sometimes schools can break these stereotypes (ok, a lot of the time).
So, instead of talking about private and public schools in this post (and the next few), I’m going to be talking about two ends of the parent spectrum. Those who care too much about their child’s education, and those who don’t care enough. Of course most parents will fall somewhere between these two, but will probably lean either way. So here are some characteristics of parents that care too much.
Parents who care too much
There will likely be a lot of pressure on the child to perform
Students may often be forced to go to tutoring (I onced tutored a Kindy girl in maths, she was doing year 2 maths at the time…)
The parents will put stress onto the teacher, and ask questions about why their child isn’t getting straight A’s
Although because of this, the teachers are accountable and teaching remains excellent
Students may be forced to do tests for selective schools when they have no chance of getting in, and therefore are under unnecessary stress
Parents will support the teacher in learning, and students will value learning as their parents do
Most private schools have parents that exhibit above symptoms. This can be both harmful and helpful. And some parents may only be helpful, or may only be harmful. But in deciding where to teach consider the parents that you will be partnering with in educating their children.
I’m still in the process of thinking about whether to teach in a private school or a public school (can you call them that?).
Something to consider in this decision are the other teachers at your school.
At a Christian private school, there is likely to be a higher proportion of Christian teachers. This might make it easier to have a Bible study each week with other teachers, and you may be able to create a unified front for Christ for non-Christian teachers. In this situation it may be easier to be a witness for Christ with the support of other teachers.
At a public school, there may not be many, if any other Christian teachers. This might make it incredibly hard to be a witness for Christ, and you may be tempted to be quiet. However, you would then be placing more Christian teachers in public school staff rooms. So hopefully encouraging Christian teachers who may be at the school, or being a much needed witness at the school.
All of this is of course speculation as I don’t know how many Christians teach at either public or private schools. However, I would love to hear from you!
If you’re a Christian teacher (preservice counts), what has your experience been with staff rooms at public and private schools?
This semester at Uni I have been doing some research into the funding of Public and Private Schools.
Through this research I have come to believe that (in terms of funding), there is no such thing as a Private school in Australia.
On the right is a breakdown of funding in Australian schools from 2008. As can be clearly seen, both private and public schools receive government funding. Of this, Public schools receive far more State funding and Private schools receive more Federal funding.
Government (Public) schools receive $1022 per student from the Federal government and $10222 per student from the State government, for a total of $11244 per student from government funding.
Non-government (Private) schools receive $4713 per student from the Federal government and $1664 per student from the State government, for a total of $6377 per student from government funding.
How can we can non-government schools “Private” when they clearly receive government funding. Sure, they may have policies that are not dictated by the government. But why cant we have a system where every student goes to the local comprehensive government school? I understand that there are reasons for this (I will detail these reasons in a future post), however surely a single system of education would benefit the education of all.
Australia has a history of a split system of education (mainly based on religion), which is where a lot of these issues come from. Other countries such as Canada and England have a more mainstream system of education, where there are Private schools, but they are for the VERY rich only. I wonder if there is any possibility of a single mainstream system of education in Australia?
