Fruit and Shakespeare: Things I Learned in Bundanoon

Bundanoon Makers' Markets

Bundanoon is a nice little town in the Southern Highlands. They made headlines in 2008 and 2009 for becoming the first place in the world to ban the sale of bottled water, and it's a township that is also well-known for hosting Brigadoon, the 'largest highlander gathering in the southern hemisphere' (not an actual quote, but this is the sort of thing said about it. It basically means lots of people put kilts on and strut about on the heath). 

My wife and I have a special place in our hearts for the Southern Highlands. It's only an hour and a half south of Sydney yet still feels like a whole world away. It's also where we got married, and we travel back down there several times a year. 

Gosh, that makes me feel so old. I used to spend my weekends going to pubs and watching punk bands, now I go on bush walks and visit craft shops in Moss Vale. 

This was one of three lyrebirds we saw in the highlands; the other two were feathered and moving but, alas, this was the only one I managed to photograph.

Anyway, the point of this post is that while gadding about in the highlands last weekend, the Duck and I happened across the Bundanoon Makers' Market and met one Rachel Russell, a maker and purveyor of home-harvested jams, preserves and spreads. Here she is, pictured below after I awkwardly asked if I could take a photo of her stand:

Rachel Russell and her home made wares

Ms. Russell introduced me to the wonders of the medlar, a fruit the likes of which I have never heard. As it turns out, this humble-looking fruit has a certain historical and literary significance. The medlar is an ancient winter fruit referenced in many Shakespeare plays (and throughout the Jacobean and Elizabethan eras in general), and its quirky look lends it a variety of euphemistic nicknames that allude to 'open bottoms' and the like. 

Note this quote from Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, in which he bawdily references the medlar in relation to Romeo wanting to 'get some':

Now he will sit under a medlar tree,

And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit

As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.

O Romeo, that she were, O that she were

An open-arse and thou a pop'rin pear!

I also learned from Ms. Russell about something called bletting, whereby fruit is softened beyond ripening through a process (in this case frostbite) and the toxins are broken down to allow it to become more edible. 

Bletting lends itself to the idiom, "Time and straw make the medlars ripe" (referenced in Don Quixote), and there are a whole host of other allusions related to the innocuous looking little fruit. Elizabethan playwright Thomas Dekker bleakly says in reference to the poor medlar (and bletting), "Women are like medlars - no sooner ripe but rotten".

What a charmer.

Meanwhile, the Edwardian novelist D. H. Lawrence said medlars were "wineskins of brown morbidity", proving that he too had a fatalistic view of innocuous foodstuffs.

Yum!

Anyway, the Duck purchased some chardemedlar from Ms. Russell; an Elizabethan-styled medlar paste for use with cheese or crackers. I tasted some this afternoon on a teaspoon. It tasted like a deep, dark apple stew that had been squeezed out of a dusty medieval Christmas dessert feast. I liked it. 

Reading Roll: July-December 2016

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

I read the first of Rothfuss' fantasy novels The Name of the Wind last year and found myself moderately happy with it. The Wise Man's Fear continues the story of Kvothe, a redheaded medieval wunderkind equally adept at music and magic, and sees Rothfuss develop his fantasy realm with layer upon layer of further world-building. Kvothe straddles the line between flawed anti-hero and the more traditional heroes of legend seen in Tolkein, and his story operates more like an episodic bildungsroman than an intricately plotted epic. There are many elements of these novels that I like, but I'm reserving full judgement until after the series has been finished.

DMZ Volumes 1-4 by Brian Wood and Ricardo Burchielli

This 12 volume series tells the high concept story of an American civil war that has reduced Manhattan to a modern-day hell-on-Earth. Matty Roth is a journalism intern who finds himself stranded in this demilitarised zone between the United States of America and the Free States of America. At the time of writing, I've read the first four volumes, which deal with Roth's increasing disillusionment and assimilation into the DMZ, and the political pointscoring that often leaves the inhabitants of Manhattan exponentially worse off.

Othello by William Shakespeare

Othello is arguably one of the Top 5 Shakespeare plays, and I say arguably because, well, when it comes to Shakespeare pretty much everything is arguable. Reading this again was a great pleasure for me... whenever I read Shakespeare I seem to get more and more out of it, and this time (while I was programming a Close Study unit for my Preliminary Advanced English class) was no exception. The mystery of Iago continues to fascinate, the alleged culpability of Othello is as divisive as ever, and the tragic sexual politics surrounding the female characters ensure a certain relevancy some 400 years later.

This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki

The Tamaki cousins had quite an impressive debut with the bewitching coming-of-age tale Skim, and here they take things to another level altogether. This One Summer explores the same genre with more depth, playing out parallel stories of a summer holiday as experienced by adolescents on the cusp of teenage-hood, older teens clumsily crashing their way into adulthood, and adults struggling with the weight of their own secrets. I really enjoyed this graphic novel, it's beautifully drawn and made a strong emotional connection with me.

Descender by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen

I've just started reading this series from Image comics. The artistic style is really cool; super-detailed and reminiscent of watercolour paintings, and the narrative takes a few risks by launching straight into the action and letting the world-building emerge after the fact. It's a science fiction opus in the vein of Image's Saga, with elements that call to mind the Stanley Kubrick/Steven Spielberg film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. I'll be continuing to read this one. 

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdel's memoir of growing up in a funeral home features in many graphic novel best-of lists, and Bechdel herself occupies a special place in popular culture and literary criticism for the concept of the Bechdel Test (does your novel, TV show, or film have more than one female character? Do they speak to each other about something other than their relationship status? Congratulations, your text just passed the Bechdel Test... and many texts don't!) Fun Home is an erudite, brave, finely-observed and raw look back on Bechdel's life with her deeply troubled father. At several points in this book I had to stop and fully digest what I had just read; such was its depth and intimacy. This graphic novel certainly deserves it's place in the canon.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanigahira

A few people recommended this novel to me, and it accumulated quite a few awards, as well as high praise from many reviewers and literary critics. But, alas, I just didn't like it. For a start, it feels unevenly structured, and took several hundred pages to get to a point where I could fully appreciate what the book was about and what was going on. Also, for a novel that takes place across several decades, it has this odd quality of seeming perpetually set in the same year - one without historical or social event; a place without time. It's not an unambitious novel. I just found it tedious and unnecessarily drawn-out in its self-flagellating masochism (as opposed to harrowing, which I assume is what Yanagihara was going after). I got to the end and felt like I had just wasted a whole bunch of time.

The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender by Marele Day

Marele Day's late '80s Sydney-side detective novel has found itself back in the limelight on the 2015-2020 HSC Standard English Prescriptions List so I brushed up on it in order to contribute a sample essay to an upcoming Cambridge Checkpoints textbook. As far as HSC texts go, there's a lot in Day's crime novel for students to sink their teeth into - Harry Lavender explores the encroaching influence of technology, the way that people present themselves to others and the public world, and the masculine nature of the crime genre. I really enjoy Day's writing, she has an arresting way with words and really knows her way around an extended metaphor. Harry Lavender stands the test of time.

Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama

I listened to this memoir as an audiobook, which was great because it was read by the man 'imself, swearing and all... there's something therapeutic about listening to Barack Obama casually say the word 'motherfucker' and recount his rebellious youth. Surprising cusswords aside, Dreams of My Father goes beyond your usual making-of-the-man memoir. Obama has a lot to say about notions of race as he muses on his upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia, about his journey to Kenya in search of the father he never really knew, and about his early political career in Chicago. In his writing of this book, Barack Obama reveals himself to be that rare thing - a politician with real intelligence and talent.

Red Rosa by Kate Evans

Keeping on the theme of great political figures, Kate Evans' graphic novel biography of Rosa Luxemburg shines a bright light on the tragic and inspiring story of the early 20th century Marxist who dared to stand against the Great War. Luxemburg was a socialist who stood in stark opposition to the European communists who were all too willing to dilute the philosophy of Karl Marx in order to get ahead (mostly men who showed little interest in the inclusion of women in the socialist dream). Luxemburg's story is both courageous and sad, and it's a shame that her political legacy as a groundbreaking feminist isn't more widely recognised. Evans does a great job of translating Red Rosa's life (and her political theories) into an exciting and fast-moving narrative.  

The Bone Readers by Claudio Tuniz, Richard Gillespie and Cheryl Jones

I've had this sitting on my shelf since it first came out back in 2009, and I decided to finally pick it up in response to the recent and continuing discoveries of prehistoric remains that are rewriting the story of humanity's origins. The Bone Readers is more science than history, but in the frame of Big History it occupies the point of intersection between the area of our past claimed in equal measure by historians and scientists. Tuniz, Gillespie and Jones have a lot to say about the often volatile debates that surround who 'owns' this part of the human story, and even the outright contradictory gets a look-in when it comes to the various theories of how humans first got to Australia. This book also outlines several new and mindbending technologies that are being utilised to trace the timelines of 'prehistoric' humanity (begging the question as to whether or not we can continue to consider 40 000 BC as 'pre'-history anymore). Highly recommended reading for any historians or history teachers out there.

Boys' Club by Matt Furie

Matt Furie's scatterbrained comic strips are collected together here in all their bizarre and fatuous glory. I'm not sure why I picked this up, or what I expected, but I laughed a few times nonetheless. Furie has this tendency to build an anti-narrative in the space of just four panels, using non sequiturs and graphical asides that focus on the grotesque, all in the name of capturing an atmosphere of senseless small-scale hedonism reminiscent of the Young Ones. The anthropomorphised characters are sometimes hard to tell apart, but it doesn't really matter all that much.

The Divine by Asaf Hanuka, Tomer Hanuka and Boaz Lavie

This stand-alone graphic novel mixes a Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now scenario with South-East Asian folklore to create a very cinematic war/fantasy adventure. The illustrations are magnificent; beautifully detailed and somewhat terrifying in their unexpected brutality. The panels are no doubt drawn this way to reflect the traumatic history of Indochina, a theme that fuels much of this story's exploration of the fictional nation of Quanlom (inspired by the colonialist and postcolonialist histories of Burma, Vietnam and Cambodia). I won't say much more, but I think this would make a great text for a Year 10 or Year 11 English class. 

Virgil by Steve Orlando

Speaking of cinematic, this one-shot graphic novel pioneers the 'queersploitation' genre through the blending of blaxploitation film conventions with the medium of comics. Virgil tells the action-thriller story of a closeted gay cop in homophobic Jamaica who, after being brutally outed by his colleagues, embarks on an ultra-violent revenge quest (with all the requisite blood detailed in a particularly lurid pink). Orlando uses his archetypal action hero and numerous B-movie tropes to effectively explore pertinent civil rights issues in rather entertaining fashion.

The Son by Jo Nesbo
Earlier this year I read Nesbo's popular crime-thriller Headhunters, and enjoyed it immensely. I immediately sought out another of Nesbo's stand-alone thrillers, The Son, and found it equally as gripping. The Son weaves together fast-paced, densely-plotted interconnected stories of police corruption, addiction, and organised crime. There are more than a few unexpected twists along the way and Nesbo expertly controls what the reader does and doesn't need to know to build to an incredibly tense and satisfying denouement.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

I first read this when I was about 20 years old and, whilst I could appreciate how significant it was, I didn't really appreciate it as a novel. Now at 36 years old, and as I gear up to teach 1984 to my Advanced English class early next year, I find myself appreciating Orwell's novel a whole lot more. It's almost universally acknowledged that Orwell's novel earns its masterpiece status via its satirical deconstruction of governance, however, some critics out there have noted that the narrative lacks in plotting and characterisation. Upon re-reading 1984 just recently, I would say that these elements of the novel are undeserving of such criticism. Winston Smith is a weary and downtrodden protagonist entirely worthy of canonisation, and O'Brien's dualistic nature could not reflect the novel's central themes more effectively. And surely if it was plotted more intricately then this would just detract from the quintessentially dystopian setting?

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

My friend Kira read this classic dystopian science fiction novel recently and recommended it to me, and it did not disappoint. Knowing that Wyndham is responsible for the Midwich Cuckoos, I have always associated him with those creepy blonde children in the film version of said novel, so I've actually sort of gone out of my way not to really read any of his stuff. The Chrysalids turned out to be in complete antithesis to my prejudices, telling a post-apocalyptic parable that sets the ideologies of evolution and religion in brutal, implicit opposition of one another. Wyndham has an elegiac and gentle storytelling-style, reflecting a distant future through the familiar prism of childhood innocence. A book that definitely deserves its classic status.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Speaking of classics, I finally got around to reading this philosophical and fairytale-like children's classic. De Saint-Exupery uses his Little Prince to explore his own ideas of adulthood and all its ridiculous self-built fallacies. It took me a while to adjust to this tale's collision of science fiction and fable, but in the end I found myself very taken by the allegorical elements in each of the Prince's stories to the marooned WWII pilot. Beautiful in its simplicity, and something that I think will stand up to many re-readings.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

This is another book that I've had sitting on my shelf since it first came out. Eggers tells the true story of Adbulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American small business owner living in New Orleans during the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. Zeitoun opts to stay in his city while his family evacuates and spends his time after the hurricane paddling around in a canoe, feeding abandoned dogs and giving lifts to stranded people. Things go horrendously awry for Zeitoun when he gets arrested as a 'looter' and is incarcerated without a phonecall in terrifyingly bleak conditions. Eggers tells his story very closely from the dual perspectives of Zeitoun and his wife, and creates a gripping Capote-esque non-fiction narrative of a city reduced to shockingly apocalyptic conditions. My enjoyment of the book was marred, however, by recent real life developments surrounding the Zeitoun family that have seen Abdulrahman imprisoned for physically attacking his now ex-wife... upon finding this out I almost stopped reading the book as it was a bit hard to stomach Eggers' depiction of Zeitoun as humble everyday hero. I'm glad that I persevered though as the book has much more to say about American corruption in New Orleans than it has to say about the protagonist.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Patrick Ness developed this children's novel out of an idea by the now-deceased Irish novelist Siobhan Dowd, and has created something really special and perfectly pitched. I read it in a day while travelling to the city and the back on the train, and I must have looked quite strange towards the end when I started crying in my train seat while I read the last few pages. All I'll say is that the novel deals with a 13 year old boy who finds himself visited by a huge tree-monster while his mother battles terminal cancer. A little under two months ago my own Mum passed away from cancer, so this book hit me really hard. Context is everything, hey? My own context combined with Siobhan Dowd's (she developed this idea while she herself was dying from the same insidious illness) to make this a really difficult but rewarding read. I recommend it regardless of your context.

English Studies - What it Was, and Where it's Going.

This weekend I trekked up the countryside to the Hunter Region to attend #EnglishStudiesDay2016; a wonderful collegial experience driven by passionate English Studies advocate Sam Schroder; one of the architects of the English Studies course during its piloting stage.

One thing that set the tone of the day was the welcome to country provided by a local student, a young Worimi man, who conducted it in his people's language. I don't think I've ever seen a welcome or acknowledgement of country given so beautifully. It really struck a chord with me.   

Anyway, aside from getting the opportunity to network with other teachers, teachers who have such positive opinions of the English Studies course as a forum for authentic engagement with English, the day provided a real moment of clarity in which Sam Schroder provided an overview of what the English Studies course is. Where it came from. Where it's going.

If you're a new teacher you may very well find yourself allocated to the English Studies course, and knowing where it is has come from and how it's continuing to develop is something that will be pertinent to you. And if you're not teaching English Studies, well, it might still be of interest to you anyway because maybe you're awesome like that.

The Birth of English Studies

Prior to English Studies, there was the 2 Unit Contemporary English course. From 1997-1999, the Contemporary English course was phased out to usher in the increasingly complexity of the Standard and Advanced courses. Many teachers were happy to see Contemporary English go as it was widely perceived as a 'dumbing down' of the English course and did not benefit those preparing for university study. Standard English grew out a response to this as a course for students who weren't suited to the Advanced course but would still be going to university and needed to be able to engage at an academic level when they got there.

Two more things then also led the way to the development of the English Studies course:

• In a national content, the Melbourne Declaration of 2008 acknowledged that a set of standards should and would be applied to all Australian students, with two specific goals:

• Goal 1 dealt with equity and excellence, the idea that opportunities should be provided to every child, not just those who wanted to become doctors, lawyers, etc.
• Goal 2 was the idea that all young Australians should become successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens.
  
• The other influential factor was that, on a state level, 2010 saw NSW increase the leaving age from 15 to 17.

This means that even those who aren't equipped for Standard or Advanced English should be able to have a scope for success in English, and that's where English Studies comes in. English Studies should be a forum for students to be taught how to be critical thinkers; active citizens who question what they see and are able to communicate their opinions.

How it Happened

In 2009, BOSTES invited submissions for the creation of the English Studies course. 76 schools were selected to pilot the course in 2010, and students at some of these schools had to apply for the class and were considered 'lucky' to get in. This was followed by extensive evaluation, and the Department of Education then invested in the writing of units to support the course. In 2011, the course was rolled out across the state.

After this, things become a little hazy... there is some feeling that the course hasn't been given the support it needs. Non-government sectors have expressed no interest in developing resources, and some schools opt not to run the course in the belief that a non-ATAR version of English has no validity to their communities. The RAP data, however, shows that English Studies is, essentially, doing the job it was designed to do - students who would have gotten Band 1 and Band 2 marks in Standard are instead catered for in the English Studies course.

How it Works Now

There are two mandatory modules. In the Preliminary course this is Achieving Through English, which focuses on the worlds of education, careers and community, and in the HSC course it is We Are Australians, which takes the form of studies on citizenship, community and cultural identity. There is a possibility of crossover with the subject of Work Studies in terms of resume writing (which forms a crucial part of Achieving Through English), however, Sam Schroder suggests that this is a perfect opportunity to engineer cross-curricular study between English Studies and Work Studies, which allows for team teaching and the avoidance of unnecessary repetition across subject areas.

The other modules are elective, with scope for 1 self-developed module in the Preliminary year, preferably something that is appropriate for your school's context. Examples given by some of the teachers in attendance at #EnglishStudiesDay2016:

• Surfing (a coastal school)
• Pig-shooting (a school way out west)
• Indigenous studies (a school with a large indigenous community)

Where it's Heading

The proposed syllabus is currently slated to begin in 2018 with an exam option that allows English Studies to achieve an ATAR, something that (judging from anecdotal and empirical evidence) is unlikely to change before it rolls out. Working in tandem with this is the introduction of a common module across English Studies, Standard English and Advanced English, which is the element of the course that will enable this ATAR option.

Your mileage may vary as far as whether this is a good idea or not. I'm not against it, but I'm also not particularly passionate about it. In fact, I tend to feel this way about most things before they happen - I reserve judgement for when I see things in action. We'll see what happens. What I will say though is that students often change their minds, change their goals, and anything could happen in a student's life between the commencement of Year 11 and the time in which they finish up their high school education - so, therefore, it follows that we shouldn't be locking students out of opportunities just because they've committed to English Studies at the end of Year 10. The allowance of an ATAR option means that students can, right up until the day of the HSC examination, choose if they want to do this or not.

I'm looking forward to seeing how everything goes in 2018. 

English Studies: Authentic Assessment as Learning

The majority of this post originally appeared here. I have adapted it to include the PowerPoint presentation given on the 3rd of December, 2016 at the English Studies Day at Hunter River High School.

PPT - 'Authentic Assessment as Learning'; presented 3/12/16.

Complete Unit/Assessment Task - 'On the Road'

Associated Resources - here, here and here.
Special credit to my colleague Kira Bryant for the meta-language activities found in the above unit.

The idea of travelling for recreation has its own meaning, and sometimes it can be best expressed in imagery. This picture above was taken in a Ballarat alleyway.

So, picture this, it's Term 3 for Year 12 and I'm at the tail end of teaching English Studies. It's a point where I can now reflect on the subject with some hindsight. I would be lying if I said that I had gone into teaching this subject without some degree of trepidation, however, it turned out to be one of the most liberating, vocationally-affirming and positive experiences of my teaching career so far.

The way I see it; English Studies gives space to engage students with the role of language and texts in representing our authentic interaction with the world around us. For my class, this meant learning how to write letters and postcards, plan holidays, construct a resume that promotes their abilities, work collaboratively and effectively, make appropriate use of technology, and communicate in a meaningful manner. 

Something else to consider with English Studies in keeping students engaged is being strategic about the way assessment is used. I have found that the most effective way of using assessment with English Studies is through project-based (or authentic) assessment. In the terminology of the syllabus, this means Assessment as Learning. The last term of a 7 term slog with these students was always going to be a stretch in regards to mustering student-enthusiasm, so I knew I had to come up with a program for the travel-writing unit On the Road that:

• Integrated assessment into every lesson (therefore making the content meaningful and answerable to the audit process).
• Incorporated real life skills (IE. Planning their own holiday - something I'm sure that all of them will have to do at some point in the near future).
• Was fun (meaning that I could incorporate an excursion as a nice way to finish the topic with a class that had been such a pleasure to teach).

I had four weeks allocated for the assessable part of the topic at the beginning of this term, so I created a booklet of three sections. In order to complete the assessment 'task', students also had to work through a couple of lessons in the booklet designed to build their use of travel-related meta-language.

Section 1: Plan Your Overseas Trip

This is the nuts and bolts section and, at first glance, is mainly organisational in outlook. Students must select an international destination and then use the internet to research all the necessary components of a real holiday. This means:

1. Flights - time and price.
2. An itinerary that details where they will be going on each day of a 7 day trip.
3. Accommodation.
4. Distance and means of transport from airport to accommodation.
5. Safety precautions (vaccinations, travel insurance)

Students are also required to compose three 'Facebook' posts (in the assessment booklet) describing three of their hypothetical days on their holiday.

Section 2:The Excursion

What's more authentic than getting your students to co-plan their own excursion? We decided to go on a day trip to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains (about an hour's train ride from where we are). Students had to research the logistics of catching the train there, times of arrival and departure, and figure out an itinerary that would include lunch and a visit of some local sights. You might have to adapt it if you want to use the project and don't want to go to Katoomba.

While on the excursion, students were required to take at least five photographs that would represent their travels, categorise them with a class-specific hashtag (and four other hashtags of their own invention), and then analyse their photographs in terms of what they represent.

I can confidently say that this excursion (on which I took 14 students) was the most technically successful excursion I have ever taken students on. By that I mean every student was engaged with the task at hand - taking photographs of Katoomba - and the 14 students who attended accounted for about 70% of the entire class (the highest percentage of attendees I have ever gotten anywhere on excursion). On the train trip home, nearly every student spent the entire hour uploading their photographs to Instagram and hashtagging them. 

Section 3: Travel Writing

Students read an excerpt of travel writing (taken from this here blog) and answer some comprehension questions. I included this section to round off the booklet with a travel writing-focused activity, to illustrate to the students the way their excursion and planning links to reading and writing. 

Assessment

The rubric at the end of the unit makes use of analytical criteria, with students assessed in four ways. I'll just write a little on each one...

• Audience and Purpose: This refers to the student's ability to make use of language in a way that is audience-appropriate. In other words, writing with some degree of formality when required and understanding the purpose of language in certain contexts. (Links to Outcome H2.2) 
• Representation: The student's ability to annotate/analyse their own photographs in a way that insightfully represents their travel experience. (Links to Outcome H1.4) 
• Planning: How well (authentically) and in-depth did the student plan their overseas journey, and the excursion to Katoomba? (Links to Outcome H4.1) 
• Commitment: How thoroughly the student completes the assessment booklet and/or gets involved in the class throughout the four weeks. (Links to all three of the above outcomes, really).

Added Authenticity

As an additional piece of fun I organised with Blue Mountains City Council to have the five best photographs  re-posted on the Blue Mountains Visitor Information Centres Instagram feed. I think this was a great way to demonstrate to the students the authentic nature of the task, and the ways in which representation of experience (IE. Thoughtful photographs with a range of hashtags that show authorial intention) is both an English skill and a real world skill.

Teaching: The Demographic Approach

In the words of my city council, "Penrith is here"

English is all about context. We look at the context of authors, the context of their texts, the context of a text's intended audience, the context of our students in responding to said text, and the context of the teacher teaching the text and how it fits into the syllabus. But really, thinking outside of the KLA, isn't everything about context?

"I want to give you $20".

If someone said that to me, then I would want to know why. What is the context? I would want to know who's giving me this money, why they are giving it to me, and what they expect me to either do for it or do with it. 

Then I would accept the $20. Most likely. Well, it depends on the context.

I teach in Western Sydney at Glenmore Park High School; a fantastic comprehensive government school full of great students who will no doubt grow into our proud future. Like all schools, it comes with its own context - both in terms of the immediate community and the wider demographic of Western Sydney - and these are things that bear some examination for a couple of reasons:

• If we know where the child is from, we'll have a better idea of where they're going.
• If we know what their parents expect and want, we'll be able to better cater to the needs of our community.
• If we know the sort of priorities and attitudes that have been passed on to the students from their community, we'll know how to better implement the kind of change that will have a generational effect and foster increased positivity towards education in our demographic.

In my case, Penrith City Council have a wonderful website with data on the city's demographics called Penrith Progression. There are some caveats that need minding when looking at statistics, such as not drawing direct conclusions when data could be correlating with certain observed trends. This simply means that if I see a percentage in the numbers then I should be careful not to say that this automatically proves a hypothesis I may hold. That would be an opinion, rather than a fact. 

I can, however, use the demographic data as a basis for assumptions. I can assume certain things as a means to explore pedagogy. This should be a design process rather than a solution. I can use the information gleaned from Penrith Progression (or any other set of figures related to demographics) to support ideas I want to test out. If these ideas work; hurray! If they don't; look at the data again and perhaps craft a new hypothesis - try something else. Perfection is impossible and pedagogy should therefore be flexible and fluid; constantly shifting and improving to make things better. In short: it's a design process.

For those who teach in Western Sydney, here are Penrith's demographics (as of 2015):

Housing

• 50% of families in Penrith have children, which is equal to the rest of Sydney, however, Penrith has a 25% higher proportion of single-parent families.
• The average personal income for an adult in Penrith is $632 per week - better than Blacktown or Liverpool, but less than Sydney and Camden.
• 10% of Western Sydney's population is concentrated in Penrith.
• 22% of Penrith residents own their house outright, with a further 42% paying off a mortgage. A further 26% rent. This compares as similar to Blacktown and Liverpool, however, it does constitute a drop compared to Penrith in 2005, where 32% of houses were owned outright. There has also been a shift towards increased renting in Penrith (something that has not occurred in Blacktown or Liverpool).

 Education

• In all of Western Sydney, Penrith has the highest proportion of adults who finished school at Year 10 (32%) and the least to complete Year 12 (38% - compared to 50% in both Blacktown and Liverpool). 
• Penrith is a 'leading skills city', with 22% of adults having vocational certificates (trades). In contrast, 10% go to university - which is less than other Western Sydney areas (Liverpool has 17% of their Year 12 students going on to university). 

Other

• People in Penrith are much more likely to go on to work in their hometown. 56% of workers in Penrith also live here, which contrasts with 38% in Liverpool and 44% in Blacktown.
• In the next 15 years, demographic models currently predict that the amount of Penrith citizens under the age of 15 will increase by a whooping 42%.

Some ideas I've assumed from this information were that:

1. Due to such a relatively high proportion of Penrith students staying on in Penrith to work, this may mean that attitudes towards work and education are more likely to be entrenched and generational. 
2. The increase in the number of Penrith-dwelling teenagers in the near future will mean that schools (particularly those in growth areas, like Glenmore Park High School) will continue expanding towards capacity.

You might be wondering what I do with this information. In my personal teaching context, the main idea is that it supports a Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) approach that favours the building of positive relationships through extrinsic recognition of desired attitudes and actions. If I want to affect generational change then it becomes important to teach students (especially those who might be at risk of long term disengagement) that school can be a positive experience and that, even if they leave with the sole purpose of picking up a trade, they may therefore pass on positive opinions of schooling to their own children. This may, in turn, then improve the percentage of students primed for university enrollment in the next generation.

It's a long game, but I've always preferred to play the long game. And, at the end of the day, I shouldn't really need an excuse for having a PBL focus in my pedagogy, but it certainly helps to reinforce it if I can see what the data says about my city. I can use this information in my design process for catering to my community better.   

Elysium: To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores...

The theme of this year's English Teachers Association Conference was one of exploration and discovery. Coming off the back of the emergence of the completed English Textual Concepts framework and the oncoming new senior English syllabuses, presenters were encouraged to match the rhetoric of the Shakespeare quote "To unpathed waters, undreamed shores".

I had a few ideas for presentations but the one that fit this concept most readily was Elysium, the 2013 Neill Blomkamp science fiction film, which works rather well when paired with George Orwell's Animal Farm in a Preliminary HSC Comparative Study. 

The PowerPoint Presentation on Elysium can be found here:

Resource: ETA 2016 Elysium PPT.

The majority of the Elysium part of the Comparative Study has been included on this blog with explanations of the resources and programming. These can be found on the links below, with each resource attached at the bottom of each post:

Link: An Introduction to the Comparative Study of Elysium and Animal Farm

Link: Elysium - Comprehension and Analysis

Link: The Language of Elysium - Connotation and Invented Lexicon

Link: Elysium - Characterisation and Representation

Link: Elysium - Allegory, Allusion, and Satire

History and Archaeology at Pompeii and Herculaneum

Dr Joanne Berry's book on Pompeii

The discovery of historical artefacts isn't something that happens in a vacuum. That's the main thing I took away from a fantastic set of lectures on Pompeii and Herculaneum by Doctor Joanne Berry and Professor Nigel Pollard, who visited Australia from Swansea University in the UK thanks to the HTA. Said lectures were held at Glenmore Park High School, which was very nice for those of us based in Western Sydney and/or the Blue Mountains.

I can't say that I'm very knowledgeable about Pompeii as I'm more of a Modern History enthusiast than an Ancient History one, but from an Extension History standpoint both Berry and Pollard provided more than enough grist for the historiographical mill for anyone with even a passing interest in the past. Dr Berry, an archaeologist who has been working at Pompeii and Herculaneum for over 25 years, stressed the importance of context in relation to archaeological material, whilst Professor Pollard honed in on the status of Pompeii during WWII as a fascinating case study that would be very useful for Extension History. I'll write on Professor Pollard's talk in a future post as today I want to concentrate on what Berry spoke about.

In exploration of context, Berry described the initial conditions in which Pompeii emerged as an archaeological site in the mid-18th Century. King Charles VII, the Spanish monarch who controlled Naples at this time, was consolidating a new kingdom alongside already established royalty in neighbouring states. For a rube like me,  who has never taught the mandatory Pompeii study, it was fascinating to hear about the context of Charles VII, the Spanish monarch who controlled Naples in mid-18th century - a new kingdom desperate to gain acceptance from surrounding royal families. Charles VII brought in poets, composers, artists, etc. in an effort to turn Naples into a cultural centre in Europe. He bought up the area where the Pompeii excavations took place, and the above portrait shows the artefacts around him - signifying the importance of these antiquities as conferring status onto the monarch.

Two years later, Horace Walpole arrived and recorded the discoveries made at Herculaneum. This was the birth of archaeology - seeing the arrival of military engineers, soldiers, and forced labour overseen by a military engineer. Walpole criticised the overseer for excavating artefacts at the expense of the ancient Roman city that was being uncovered, raising issues regarding the need to preserve the past. The things found at Herculaneum were selected, recorded and preserved only on the basis of what the engineers thought the King would be interested in - everything else was discarded, or destroyed. It was more like mining than discovery. It was only through recognition from foreigners like Walpole that people began to realise that an opportunity for learning was being lost.

This Peter Fabris painting from the time shows the excavation of the Temple of Isis - here the excavators were starting to become aware of impressing their financiers/benefactors, so that when they realised they had found something significant they would stop and then wait until a prestigious visitor arrived and then 'stage' the excavation. This led to important visitors (such as Maria Carolina) coming along and 'instructing' the excavators on what to do, believing that they themselves were directing the excavation. The benefit for the real excavators was that these important visitors would then also give money to them. Thus, the birth of archaeology as a practice supported by patronage.

The visiting of the Pope made it necessary to remove stepping stones in the Pompeii streets so that his cart could travel through, and often these stones were not put back. Our record of this now (and its delivery in Joanne Berry's lecture) shows the way history interacts with itself to create its own narrative - the early modern age interacting with the ancient world, as reflected through our contemporary perspective. In other words, the ancient streets of Pompeii were disturbed and restructured by the arrival of visitors such as the Pope in the 18th/19th Century, and now - in the modern day - we must contend with these restructurings of the site if we are to reach a better understanding of what it really looked like.

The Unification of Italy in 1860 politically required examples of Italy's past greatness as justification for nationalism, so Pompeii became emblematic of the new Italy, and this drew increased funding. Suddenly, anyone could visit the excavation (not just the rich and powerful), and an archaeological school was set up to train future excavators so that more glory could be uncovered. Fast forward to the 1930s-1940s, and the Italian fascists also poured incredible funds into Pompeii (in particular the excavations overseen by Amedeo Maiuri) with the expectation that he will find important things and will publish them under the aegis of the fascists. 

Berry says that what we know about Pompeii/Herculaneum depends on when it was excavated and who was doing the excavating, and that these things are affected by political context. There's also the influence of romanticism and the desire to impress, things that have affected the archaeological approach to Pompeii in all periods. Berry describes this a 'circular' process, the coming and goings of various regimes keen to use Pompeii for their own political and cultural advantage.

Stage 5: The Rise of China



The artwork of Maoist China is particularly ripe for historical analysis.
Students can use visual literacy skills from English to identify the purpose of the text.

Isn't History an amazing subject? I'm so glad you agree. Below you'll find a complete unit on The Rise of China for Stage 5 History, which includes a rationale, outline, scope and sequence, assessment task, and associated resources/lessons. The idea behind this half-term unit is to build literacy skills in tandem with source analysis, with an emphasis on helping those students who dislike or have trouble with reading.


The Rise of China - full unit here.


Most of the texts in the above unit are included only in small part, or in the case of Mao's Little Red Book, aren't really covered by copyright. I recommend you try to seek out each of these texts anyway, some are out of print but can be gotten from places like Bookdepository.com or abebooks.com. A class set of Little White Duck in particular would be invaluable.


For more information on the lessons in the above unit, feel free to peruse the following pages:


Conception
Outline
Lesson Planning
Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3
Lesson 4
Lesson 5
Lesson 6
Lesson 7


Have a nice day!

Palmyra: Past, Present and Future

An aerial photo of Palmyra, taken prior to its destruction at the hands of ISIS

Thematically relevant to the study of Pompeii and its conservation is the recent development of socio-political fragility in Syria, and the impact this has on the UNESCO World Heritage site of Palmyra. Students looking to develop research projects in Elective, Ancient and Extension History may want to look into Palmyra's importance, the events unfolding around it, and the way this interacts with History as a discipline.

Alternatively, Professor Nigel Pollard's studies on Palmyra (on which this post is based) also provide fertile ground for non-syllabus specific historical discussion. 

Palmyra is a significant site for a number of reasons. Founded in 2000 BCE, it grew into a vibrant centre of pre-Islamic culture in the Middle East, and has been envisioned by historians as a key site on the 'Silk Road'. Palmyra's existence as a multi-cultural trading hub between Eastern and European classical cultures provides evidence for an ancient global economy (Big History scholars will find much of interest in this), and it has also been viewed, alongside the excavation of Pompeii, from a historiographical standpoint as somewhat instrumental in the West's rediscovery of the ancient world.

In reference to the earlier parts of its history, Palmyra's political status has been seen by historians as somewhat hyphenated. Sitting at the base of mountain ranges in the unforgivably desolate Syrian Desert, Palmyra occupied a geopolitical point between the West (Rome) and East (Persia) as a marginalised part of the Roman Empire. The oasis created by the wadi (valley) that sits between the two halves of the Palmyrene mountain range provided the conditions that made this a perfect exchange network between the Mediterranean and Asia.

In the 3rd Century, Palmyra broke from the Roman Empire and asserted its own authority as an independent city state, with it's own ruler; the regent Zenobia who ruled in place of her adolescent son. The city grew into the relatively shortlived Palmyrene Empire with the conquest of Egypt and Galatia, which predictably ended with the destruction of the Empire at the hands of the Romans (resulting in significant destruction of the city and its people).

Professor Nigel Pollard talking about the rise of the Palmyrene Empire at Glenmore Park High School, Western Sydney

Much more recently, WWI and the Syrian Civil War have both seen further threat to the survival of Palmyra as an archaeological treasure. In the Syrian conflict, the movement of troops and displaced peoples has had a tremendous impact on historical sites like Palmyra and - in much more sinister fashion - the intentional targeting of Syria's heritage by ISIS (for ideological reasons) has resulted in significant damage as well. Indeed, the status of Palmyra as a heritage site has actually made it a target for ISIS, who have blown up the Temple of Bel and other major parts of the ancient city. UNESCO's denomination of Palmyra as historically and cultural significant has also made it a focus for what Professor Pollard calls 'soft' power, with both Russia and the Syrian regime very keen to claim its capture and protection as a legitimisation of their rule over the region.

Crimes against cultural property are essentially crimes against people, as these sites are emblematic of a people's heritage - Pollard asserts that there is often a correlation between those who would commit genocide with those who destroy sites of historical significance. It's a case of erasing the signs that a culture ever existed, and examples of this are unfortunately all too common in recent history - in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. - and almost always coincide with ethnic cleansing and similarly abhorrent crimes against identity.

For more information on the destruction of Palmyra, visit the following links:
Reuters - Palmyra Before and After ISIS
Guardian Article about the Destruction of Palmyra
'The Battle Over History' - Foreign Policy Blog on Palmyra
The Ancient City of Palmyra

Marking Metalanguage

Working towards a better understanding of things can be hard...

As someone very interested in assessment, and the contexts that go with different kinds of assessment, I often find myself working towards a kind of multilateral understanding that can be shared between teacher and student. In more general terms, this means two things:

• Using analytical criteria grids wherever I can, so students can see how they perform in relation to particular skills.
• Using language that can be understood by students whilst maintaining the integrity of the rubric as a teacher's assessment tool.

The second of these dot points is perhaps the trickier of the two as there is a pre-existing metalanguage used by markers that should be retained as much as possible for the sake of clarity. One of the issues with metalanguage is that it can be inherently jargonistic; that is to say, different groups favour different shared lexicons when it comes to discussing and assessing the abilities of students, and there's no overall rule book that everyone everywhere is willing to adhere to.

Hey, that's life. 

One example of this is the use of 'sophisticated' to refer to an understanding achieved by a top-marked student, which  contrasts with other rubrics that favour the word 'skilful' as the top descriptor. How can we say one is wrong and the other is correct? Is an attempt to nail down our metalanguage to only one set of terms in fact a contradiction of the ethos of English as a subject that rewards independent thinking and multiple interpretations? And how do we reconcile this with the need of our students to have a clear guide to the terms used in our marking criteria?

I don't have the definitive answer to that, hence my earlier use of the words "working towards a kind of multilateral understanding". What I would like to offer here is a short guide to the English assessment metalanguage that I tend to use; a guide that has been designed for Advanced English student use in conjunction with peer assessment. The hope here is twofold:

1. Students become more confident in using a wider variety of terms when providing constructive critiques of their own work and the work of their peers.
2. Students gain an increased understanding of the sort of language they're likely to see in marking rubrics.

The following terms have been gleaned from school-based assessment tasks, HSC marking rubrics, and the metalanguage used by NAPLAN SMART data and the Literacy Continuum to describe writing standards. I have deliberately tried to keep it from being too long so as not to overwhelm students who are already trying to decipher a marking rubric, but I'm happy regardless to hear any feedback that can assist in the refinement of these terms (or the addition of new ones).

Cracking Open the Marking Terminology used by Teachers

Appropriate to Audience, Purpose, Context and Form: This terminology is taken straight from the English syllabus outcomes. It is asking if the response a student has written reflects the right text type for the question. Additionally, do the sentences reflect the level of care suited to the context (EG. An exam, or a performance), and has the student understood the requirements of the task?

Attempt: Anything on the page that demonstrates a student has tried, even without evidence of understanding, to engage with the question.

Basic: Student shows some understanding, or can use a skill to some extent (most likely not well or successfully). This can indicate a D-grade; slightly below-average.

Cohesive: The student's response 'hangs' together and assists the reader in understanding the composed text. It includes: using synonyms that fit, ellipsis of unnecessary repetitive words, using groups of words that fit together well, and using the right group of words to refer to a specific idea. 

Control of Language: Maintaining one kind of tense (EG. Past tense), keeping the same perspective throughout (EG. Third person), not breaking the subject-verb agreement (EG. Singular noun matches with a singular verb), and making the right word choices.

Effective: Student can do something with some degree of skill or higher understanding. Usually indicates a B-grade; above-average.

Evaluates: Makes a judgment, shows an opinion. Matches up with questions that use the phrase 'To what extent'.

Implied: Something that cannot be obviously seen in the response. The teacher may judge that certain elements in the response indicate the student understands something, or can do something.

Judicious: The student has put thought into what details or examples they choose to use. Could also refer to the deliberate ellipsis of unnecessary details, or purposefully not doubling up on the same kind of technique or example, or matching supporting evidence well to the thesis statement/topic sentences.

Limited: The lowest tier of understanding, or evidence suggests that a student is unable to use the skill being assessed. Indicates an E-grade; well below-average. Interchangeable with Elementary.

Satisfactory: Student has shown that they understand what needs to be understood, or can use the skill that needs to be used, but has done so in a 'workmanlike', 'un-showy' or inelegant fashion. Usually indicates a C-grade; average. Interchangeable with Adequate.

Sentence Variety: Uses simple sentences (one clause sentences), compound sentences (sentences with two clauses joined together that could otherwise be separated into two one-clause sentences) and complex sentences (multiple clauses that are dependent on one another for the sentence to work).

Skilful: Student is able to do something exceptionally well. Can indicate an A-grade; well above-average.

Sophisticated: Occupies the same level as Skilful; can indicate an understanding that goes above the majority of the age group.

Sustained: More than one page of writing.

Thesis Statement: The sentence that states the main idea of an extended response to a question, and helps to control the ideas within the paper. It should reflect an opinion or judgment that the student has made in response to the task's instructions.

Allied Occupation of Japan: The War Crimes Tribunal

MacArthur and Hirohito: unlikely post-war allies

The Allied occupation of Japan at the close of WWII is incredibly fertile ground for historiographical interpretation and debate. This period of 1945 to 1951 is a time that calls into question issues relating to the status of Emperor Hirohito (orchestrator, puppet or something else entirely?) and America's emerging need for a strong ally in Asia at the dawn of the Cold War. It's also a case study that forms the fourth and final set of dot points in the Conflict in the Pacific syllabus for HSC Modern History, and relates to the following past HSC questions:

• Evaluate the view that the aims of the Allied powers were achieved successfully in the occupation of Japan in the period up to 1951.
• Discuss the impact of the Allied occupation on Japan in the period 1945-1951.
• Evaluate the view that maintaining the status of the Emperor was responsible for the success of the Allied occupation of Japan to 1951.
• How successful was the Allied occupation of Japan in achieving its aims to 1951?

The part that I want to focus on today is the War Crimes Tribunal. At the end of the war, General MacArthur (nicknamed the 'Gaijin Shogun' by the Japanese, quite literally the 'foreign general'), announced the formation of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. This tribunal was intended to formally bring to justice the Japanese leaders who had implemented and enforced the Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere during WWII, and it was a tribunal that was - unsurprisingly - controversial and not without its complications.

Lesson: Part 1 - Understanding What Happened

There are two sheets here that I've attached at the bottom of this blog post. The first sheet is a 1-page reading that gives an overview of the tribunal, who was put on trial, some associated statistics, the outcome, and the impact and controversies that have been noted by historians. Students read through this sheet and use the second sheet, a graphic organiser, to gather and re-structure information in a way that shows their understanding.

I like graphic organisers because they're helpful in getting students to focus on specific parts of a text, and they allow for the relationship between ideas to become visible through the use of flowcharts, arrows, separation of facts, and so on. They also aren't particularly demanding in terms of thinking, which means that every student should be able to engage with it. Just be ready to direct your students on how to fill in the first couple of boxes and most will be able to do the rest. 

Lesson: Part 2 - Evaluating What Happened

The important thing is to then have the students compose a paragraph response that puts into action what they've just learned. Ask them; To what extent was the War Crimes Tribunal a fair process? or alternatively, Whose interests did the War Crimes Tribunal primarily serve? The resulting paragraph doesn't have to include all the information that's been gathered in the graphic organiser. Tell your students to pick two or three pieces of evidence to support their idea and to reconstitute this into a response.

What they end up with should be adaptable as a body paragraph for any of the past HSC questions listed at the top of this post.

Resources

War Crimes Tribunal - reading 

War Crimes Tribunal - graphic organiser