Authors and Authority

There's a collection of memes that have retained some currency among teenagers these last few years and they're aimed squarely at the not-so-humble English teacher. In the simplest terms, it goes:

AUTHOR: "The curtains were blue"

ENGLISH TEACHER: *Insert analysis that seems over-the-top and ignores the fact that curtains are sometimes just blue*

At some point, sometimes perhaps only on the most symbolic of levels, the English teacher has to do battle with the senior English student as said student asserts that not everything can be analysed from an English standpoint. This debate can be fun and, in a way, plays right into the teacher's hands as it involves students exercising their critical thinking skills and forming independent opinions. In laying groundwork for the Year 11 'Reading to Write' Common Module, however, it also provides an opportunity to talk about something completely different to the merits of metaphor and analysis: the concept of literary authority. 

On this subject, the French semiotician Roland Barthes famously said,

"The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author"

We can use this quote to introduce students to the concepts of post-modernism and literary authority. The idea that an author doesn't get the final say on what they write is a genuinely unsettling question for many students to deal with, and the debates that arise from this can be challenging and disruptive to even the teacher's concept of what English is all about. At the heart of this idea though is something that gets to the very core of our role as teachers...

We teach with the aim of relinquishing our authority as knowledge-holders, and we teach to empower the student to become their own authority on the text. 

This isn't a straight-forward exchange or journey, and the success rate inevitably varies, but if even just one of our students becomes confident and equipped enough to develop a contrary opinion backed by their own judiciously-selected evidence... then this is the apotheosis of teaching, is it not?

Perhaps the quote should be:

"The birth of the student must be at the cost of the death of the teacher"

In engaging teenagers with such a challenging idea it becomes necessary to break it down and develop material that will re-contextualise academic theory within a 21st century adolescent space. I've included a PowerPoint below that went some way towards helping my current Year 11 Advanced English students.

• Slide 1 - Students engage with both sides of the debate via the Roland Barthes quote and one of the previously mentioned memes.
• Slide 2 - Students engage with a popular online meme to break down the idea of looking at a text from multiple points of view. This text, supposedly drawn by a young child, gives a straightforward account of a young student's current home life. In isolation, the text can be viewed as an authentic example of the unreliable narrator - a storyteller who is unwilling or unable to relate the reality of the events around them. The point here is that students are asked to consider four separate ways of 'reading' the text; the ultimate goal being to disrupt/challenge the concept of the author having ultimate authority over the meaning of the text. 
• Slide 3 - Examine a range of statements that reposition the concept of authority and authorship. Students are then asked to assign each statement a score based on how much they are in agreement with it. The class can then decide (argue) over the placement of each statement on a line that shows a spectrum of agreement/non-agreement. [Numeracy in English. Nice!]

Here's the PowerPoint: Authors and Authority.

Literacy and the Orca

Screenshot from the documentary Blackfish

Prospective English teachers (student teachers at university) are often told that the English method can be applied to every kind of text. One of the few parts of the senior syllabus that pays lip service to this is the Craft of Writing module in Year 12, in which informative texts are mentioned as one of the genres of writing that students will explore. Strangely though, despite this being mentioned in the module descriptor, there are no informative texts in the Module C prescriptions list nor is it expected for students to interact or engage with informative texts in the HSC Examination.

So why is it there?

If we consider that the HSC Examination implies the endpoint of what a student is expected to learn (in my mind it's the only truly summative assessment in the entire course of a student's primary and secondary schooling) then the logic follows that the curriculum for each stage should be backward-mapped from here. Yes, we don't asses informative texts in the HSC Examination, but the inclusion of this idea in the module descriptor is intended to support the literacy of our students. 

There is no specific Literacy subject in Stage 6 yet literacy is an integral part of our learning. The public is fixated on it, the government is fixated on it, and the media is fixated on it. We have NAPLAN and Minimum HSC Standards and PAT Testing but all of these things exist outside of the KLAs. We're often told that literacy should be taught in all subjects (and to some degree it is) but it often falls onto the shoulders of the English subject to show leadership in relation to it because reading and writing is our area. And it is - inescapably - embedded into the content dot points of our syllabus outcomes in ways that it isn't for other KLAs. 

The point I'm making here is that we should be building the understanding of our students in regard to reading informative texts because it's a key part of literacy. Having a sophisticated understanding of informative texts and how they work isn't going to be assessed directly in the HSC Examinations but it will be assessed indirectly in the sense that this kind of understanding is of invaluable benefit to students when they undertake a range of examinations across a range of KLAs. 

Where the Orcas Come In

In Year 10 at my school we have a unit of work called 'Charity and Change' that focuses on students identifying a charitable cause and pitching their own charity for a fictional sum of funding. In preparation for their project on this, the students are currently undertaking a case study on the documentary Blackfish and the issues it examines in relating to Orca captivity. In order to contextualise this it's necessary for students to have an understanding of what Orcas are and what their historical relationship with humans has been. 

In a sociology subject it would be fine to just have students examine the information directly, however, in English it becomes harder to link something as straightforward as this to the outcomes for Stage 5, especially if you've already created an assessment task that's tied into particular outcomes (in this case, EN5-1A, EN5-2A and EN5-8D). In order to make good use of a context lesson like this it can become a case of combing through the English syllabus content dot points in order to find windows into the requisite skills that will assist students in reading this genre of text.

So, before I get to the reading skills, I wanted to first have an information sheet supports the watching of Blackfish by covering the following content:

• What an Orca is and how it operates in the wild
• What makes them 'special' in terms of their intelligence
• The relationship between Orcas and the Yuin Aboriginal people of the South-East Australian coast
• The broader relationship between Orcas and human societies
• The current ecological status of Orcas 

All of this is included in this sheet: Orca Information

Then in terms of the skills that students would be using to read the text this is where the English outcomes needed to come in. I ended up finding the following content dot points to support this:

• EN5-2A: use comprehension strategies to compare and contrast information within and between texts, identifying and analysing embedded perspectives, and evaluating supporting evidence
• EN5-8D: examine how language is used to express contemporary cultural issues
• EN5-8D: explain and analyse cultural assumptions in texts, including texts by and about Aboriginal Australians

These have been used to construct some questions that will scaffold students in gaining a greater awareness of the processes we employ when reading informative texts. These questions should redirect student focus into using particular reading skills, such as:

• The strategies used to comprehend informative texts - such as the conventions used to structure said texts
• The ability to recognise perspectives
• Identifying where evidence has been used to support an argument or point
• Looking more closely at word choices and why they've been made
• Examining the Aboriginal perspective and contrasting attitudes that relate to it

A sheet of these questions can be found here: Orca Questions

The questions are broken up paragraph by paragraph so students don't get lost in the text. As 'whole text' comprehension isn't one of the skills being taught here it therefore becomes a waste of time not to direct student attention to specific parts of the text.

Happy reading!

Some Further Reading:

Eden: Paradise and Purgatory by the Sea - my visit to the Eden Killer Whale Museum 

Killer Whales Learn to Speak Dolphin - an interesting article on the concept of dolphin 'accents' and 'dialects' 

Defenders of Wildlife: Orca - a site with a lot of information about a specific Orca population 

The History of Whaling in Twofold Bay - the curious story of 'Old Tom', the Orca that worked alongside human whalers in Eden and Boydtown

Standard Module A: Language, Identity and Culture

Some of the texts in Module A for Standard English

Before we get stuck into the prescriptions for Standard Module A: Language, Identity and Culture, here's a quick break-down in terms of representation.

Regarding text types, this module includes:

• 1 fiction novel
• 1 memoir
• 1 suite of short stories
• 2 suites of poetry 
• 3 plays
• 1 documentary
• 2 films

In terms of authorship, it breaks down as thus:

• 7 male composers, 9 female composers
• 14 Australian authors (2 of whom are Aboriginal, 7 Asian-Australian), 1 British, 1 Jamiacan-British
• 7 of the texts were created in the 21st century, 1 in the 1990s, 1 in the 1950s, 1 in the 1910s, and 1 approximately in the late 19th century.

Prose Fiction Options
There are two options in this part of the module; a collection of short stories and a novel. The novel in this section is the only text in the module written by a non-white, non-Australian author.

Short Stories by Henry Lawson

• The Drover's Wife
• The Union Buries Its Dead
• Shooting the Moon
• Our Pipes
• The Loaded Dog

What is it: This suite of short stories covers a range of themes from Australia's colonial period. 'The Drover's Wife' and 'The Union Buries Its Dead' deal with the harsh reality of colonial life in the Australian bush; 'Shooting the Moon' tells a smirking story of fiscal irresponsibility and forged loyalties; 'Our Pipes' uses the symbol of the smoking pipe to explore coming-of-age, identity, and loss, and 'The Loaded Dog' tells the humorous tale of a dog running around with a live explosive in its mouth.

Scope for Study: Context will be key here, especially if working with students from multiple cultural backgrounds. The texture of Lawson's short stories can be hard to get a contemporary grasp on when read quietly and without an understanding of what life was like for white Australians in the second half of the 19th century. Students will need to experience the stories aloud, as if listening to an eloquent raconteur around a fire, and with glossaries on hand to translate the now antiquated colloquialisms that pepper Lawson's narratives.

NESA Annotations: As far as I can tell, there are no annotations for these Henry Lawson short stories in any of the three Annotations documents released by NESA.

Verdict: I'm unsure of this one. I can see the merit in doing this as part of a comparative study but I think, in isolation as a textual study of its own, it would be an increasingly hard sell to win over Standard English students. I'm not even sure if 'The Loaded Dog' is all that funny either. It ends with a bunch of dogs getting blown to pieces and all the characters laughing about it... 'uproarious' isn't a term I'd use for this! Some of the stories are fascinating from a historical standpoint when considered alongside an understanding of yesteryear's values, but I think an examination would need to be made about the absence of Aboriginal representation (aside from racist references in 'The Drover's Wife'). As a Prescribed Text, I think this would live or die on the basis of an individual teacher's passion for it or on the cultural context of the students studying it. 

Small Island by Andrea Levy

What is it: In 1948 London, with the bombings and war with Hitler now over, Queenie Bligh finds herself without her husband and in need of an income. Flying in the face of the attitudes of the times, Queenie opens her house up to Jamaican boarders, most notably former RAF Airman Gilbert Joseph and his newlywed wife Hortense. The West Indian migrants have come to England in search of a better future but instead find a country cold and largely unaccepting of their skin colour. Meanwhile, after disappearing into a military prison in India, Queenie's long-lost husband Bernard begins to make his way back home... 

Scope for Study: Small Island provides fertile ground for exploring complex issues relating to the Jamaican diaspora and England - notably the impact of colonialism and the extra dimensions this brings to the immigration narrative, the role of racism in shaping inter-cultural relations, and the degree to which identity is tied to place. Students will also need to contend with the role of language through the text's use of Jamaican and British dialects in its portrayal of multiple first person perspectives.

NESA Annotations: Annotations for Small Island can be found in the 2015-2020 document, with reference to the text's inclusion in the old Standard English 'Distinctive Voices' Elective for Module A. The novel's value is highlighted through Levy's winning of multiple awards, as well as its skillful exploration of "themes of prejudice, empire, war and love". Other aspects identified by the annotations are: the text's historical authenticity, the use of extensive flashbacks to create a non-linear narrative, the use of multiple narrative points of view, and the language utilised to craft the distinctive voices of the four protagonists.

Verdict: It's a nice book and I'd probably enjoy it outside of an educational context. But as a text intended for Standard English students to study? I just don't see how it could ever work. For starters, it's over 500 pages along. Then add in the fact that the narrative is quite complex in its use of four separate viewpoints (two of which are rendered in the Jamaican-English dialect), and that the plot unfolds across five years in three different countries. If a teacher somehow saw past all of this and was brave enough to try it with a Standard English class then there's a whole other issue to contend with as well - that of probable parental complaints. Some scenes are quite sexually graphic, and one scene in particular depicts racially-charged sexual violence with an underage prostitute. It boggles my mind how this particular book ended up on this list.   

Poetry / Drama Options

The largest amount of options for this module fall in this section, and this is where I suspect the majority of schools draw their Poetry/Drama text from. There are two sets of poetry, and three plays to choose from.

Contemporary Asian Australian Poets edited by Adam Aitken, Kim Cheng Boey and Michelle Cahill

• 'This is Where it Begins' by Merlinda Bobis
• 'Home' by Mariam Wei Wei Lo
• 'New Accents' by Ouyang Yu
• 'Mother' by Vuong Pham
• 'Circular Breathing' by Jaya Savige
• 'Translucent Jade' by Maureen Ten

What is it: Six Asian-Australian poets from a diverse range of backgrounds explore themes relating to identity and culture. 'This is Where it Begins' looks at the role of storytelling as a cultural event, 'Home' examines the multiple definitions of home that inform the persona's viewpoint of the concept, and 'New Accents' utilises humour and brevity to poignantly lay bare the shame, burden, impact, and prejudices that arise from a migrant's mispronunciation of words. In 'Mother' the persona compares the hopes and dreams of a Vietnamese refugee with that of her privileged daughter, and 'Translucent Jade' considers the idea of cultural heritage being bound up in objects. Finally, the poem 'Circular Breathing' muses on the concept of a connection between the persona and Aboriginal culture.

Scope for Study: The breadth of styles in the poetry of these six poets makes it difficult to create a thesis of study based solely on structure and technique (which is for the best, really!). Instead, students will need to consider the shared 'Asian-Australian' experience and other themes that arise from this, such as the relationship between the past and the present, the role of culture in forging identity, and the sincere wish of each poet in wanting to better navigate the awkward space between the two cultures they inhabit.

NESA Annotations: There are two sets of annotations in the 2019-2023 NESA Annotations document - one for Standard and one for EAL/D. The Standard section asserts that students will develop empathy through their engagement with different perspectives and representations. Stylistic elements of poetry that are singled out for examination include: stanzaic patterns, enjambment, repetition, bilingualism, wordplay, figurative language, and descriptive language. The annotations also suggest that students should reflect on the 'intercultural insights' offered by the poetry in relation to contemporary Australian society.

Verdict: This option is unique among all the Prescriptions in that it is thematically-unified rather than the work of just one author. As such, it presents certain challenges, however, the poetry itself is still quite accessible for Standard English students. Provided that the teacher supplies the level of support needed to understand context, annotate the poems, and write personal responses to the themes therein, I can see this being a rewarding learning experience for our students.  

Inside My Mother by Ali Cobby Eckermann

• Trance
• Unearth
• Oombulgarri
• Eyes
• Leaves
• Key

What is it: This suite of Eckermann's poetry weaves a sparse yet evocative tapestry that taps into the processes of memory, the complex modern connection to culture, the ongoing trauma of the Aboriginal peoples in the wake of the Stolen Generations, and the problematic spaces that exist between the poet and her ancestors. 

Scope for Study: When considering this text Standard English students will be able to connect with various elements that have allowed Eckermann to create meaning through poetry. Among these are the poet's rejection of most forms of punctuation, the use of imagery and sensory descriptions to orient the reader in the poet's memories and thoughts, and the employment of structure to separate or combine ideas into a narrative. Teachers will also need to examine Eckermann's context as a survivor of the Stolen Generations and how her experiences are represented through her poetry in order to build and support student understanding.

NESA Annotations: Being quite a new text (published in 2015), 'Inside My Mother' has only been included in the latest 2019-2023 Annotations document. Recommendations are made to focus on the poet's personal experiences as supporting material for the selected poetry, and for each poem to be viewed "as a synecdoche for the loss of cultural identity". Students are also encouraged to consider the importance of family as a central concept in Aboriginal culture and the ways in which this is reflected in the text.

Verdict: Eckermann has been touted by some as the logical successor to Oodgeroo's legacy, which is quite a big claim but not entirely unfounded. It's just a shame that the poems selected are almost uniformly in the same three-lines-a-stanza style, especially when there are many other poems in the volume that don't follow this structure and creatively play with space and indentation in the 'concrete' style. The inclusion of the latter in particular would've worked really well with helping to 'sell' poetry to Standard English students as an intriguing and highly imaginative art form. I don't know if I could ever see myself teaching this text, I think I'd just feel disappointed that I couldn't use some of more inventive poetry within the volume that hasn't been prescribed.

Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler 

What is it: It is 1953 and Melbourne woman Olive patiently awaits the arrival of Roo, a cane cutter from Queensland who travels south every summer to be with her. This is the seventeenth of these summers, and Roo's co-traveller Barney finds himself single once again after his lover Nancy has decided to get married in his seasonal absence. Olive is looking to fix Barney up with her fellow barmaid Pearl, a widowed single mother with reservations about the idea of an ongoing seasonal romance. Things become complicated in this fateful summer when Roo and Barney arrive with some news - Roo has hurt his back and may no longer be able to continue in the harsh work of the sugar cane harvest.

Scope for Study: In reference to Module A, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll offers a portrait of Australian life in another time. In the post-WWII context, cane-cutting was quickly becoming increasingly industrialised and no longer relied on the heavy hands-on input of the 'cane cockies'. Through its examination of this shift, the play offers a snapshot of the end of pre-multicultural Australia - a text written as the industry (and country) was undergoing significant cultural changes in response to the arrival of post-war migrants. Students will be able to examine this context and draw connections between the era and the characters - their dialects and values, the way their personal decisions and word choices are shaped by 1950s Australian morality, and the way in which the plot and structure of the play reflects a world in turmoil and decline.

NESA Annotations: Notes for this text can be found in the 2015-2020 Annotations document. Special note is made of its 'groundbreaking' use of Australian colloquial language and 'distinctly Australian characters', and themes that are particular to Australian society: 'mateship', nostalgia vs. pragmatism, the different kinds of adult relationships acceptable in 1950s Australian society, etc. The annotations also suggest that students compare and contrast the 'voices' of each of the play's characters and the ways in which they represent changing values in Australia at the time.

Verdict: It didn't take me long to read this one because it was so fan-bloody-tastic. I really felt the poignancy of the dying world presented by Ray Lawler, even moreso when you consider that he wrote this at the very time that it's set. It's so prescient and really cuts to the core of Anglo-Australian society in an unsentimental way, and the ending was like a strike of lightning. I think the potential for students to connect with this probably depends on how well the context is taught but, like most context-heavy texts, it will fall into place once enough groundwork is laid. Students should be able to 'get' the themes at its heart with little issue, and the dialogue feels authentic despite the gulf of years between the play's initial performance and the modern day.

Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw

What is it: Quite by chance, the academic phonetics expert Mr. Higgins meets a lower class flower girl called Eliza Doolittle outside the theatre one night and is taken by her accent. Eliza, hoping to better herself, seeks out Higgins afterwards to get tutored in 'speaking proper'. Higgins sees this as an opportunity to conduct an experiment in conquering the strictures of class, and the two begin a troubled journey that sees Eliza transformed (for better or worse) and Higgins challenged in regard to his amorality.

Scope for Study: Some contextual study will be needed to support Standard English students, specifically in understanding why Shaw saw a need to write this now iconic play. Coming at the end of the fin de siecle, the play presents the final days of the class system in England and reflects the rising class consciousness that had eroded the foundations of European society in the 19th century. Shaw's text comes at this issue sideways by highlighting vocabulary and dialect as symbols of class, with a theme of vocabulary being the key to articulating and understanding other people's thoughts. In a nutshell, students will need to understand the relationship between class and language in order to successful engage with Pygmalion.

NESA Annotations: None of the last three NESA Annotations documents (from 2009 to the present day) include annotations for Pygmalion. Bernard Shaw's play has popped on and off the Prescribed Texts list for, I suspect, at least 100 years, so I'm guessing the assumption here seems to be that we should all know it well enough to not need annotations.

Verdict: Pygmalion is undoubtedly a classic and its humour still holds up today, especially considering the ongoing divisions between Australia's own haves and have-nots. Due to its age I think it would be a challenging text to teach to a Standard English class, but not impossible - it just requires passion from the teacher and strong linking to context. Teachers will need to be wary of some of the nuances of language that have radically changed in connotation since the play's initial publication, for example, the line "you know you can't be a nice girl inside if you're a dirty slut outside" will unavoidably be a talking point with students, so you will need to be both brave and very sure of how you want to teach it. 

Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah by Alana Valentine

What is it: Shafana is a young Afghan-Australian woman who is studying science at university. Her closest relative and mentor is her aunt, Sarrinah, who has struggled to find skilled work in Australia due to her engineering qualifications not being formerly recognised in this country. In the course of working on a university assignment, Shafana has rediscovered her faith in Islam and is considering wearing the hijab. In seeking her aunt's blessing, however, Shafana finds that the older woman sees the religious veil as a barrier that will hold Shafana back in Australian society.

Scope for Study: Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah is a perfectly pitched text for Standard English in that it is challenging (in language, construction, and theme) whilst being relatively short. The brevity of this two-character play is such that it will allow plenty of time to examine the issues that are raised and the motifs that tie the text together. Students will need to be orientated to consider the play as a narrative set during the fallout of 9/11, an event that looms a lot larger in the teacher's psyche than it does for those who were born after it happened. Another challenge that the teacher will need to consider is how to present the text to a class - as a two-character piece it doesn't lend itself well to a whole class reading, and would probably be better absorbed as a presentation in which two teachers play the characters.

NESA Annotations: This text was first introduced in the last Prescribed Texts list as part of the previous Standard English Module C and, as such, annotations can be found in the 2015-2020 Annotations document. The text is described as significant due to its connection to the earlier multiculturally-themed 1968 play Norm and Ahmed. Attention is also paid to the play's role in challenging the negative attitudes that some students may hold towards Islam as a result of the media, particularly in relation to stereotypes regarding Muslim women and the impact of 9/11. 

Verdict: As it's written by a non-Afghan writer Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah could be viewed as problematic, however, there are several elements that may mitigate this, such as the author's close collaboration with refugees and the Afghan-Australian community. There is some scope here for students to engage with the marginalisation of voices in a multicultural society, and there will be many points that prompt class-wide discussion. I haven't taught this text but several colleagues at my school have, and it's worth noting that there were particular students who refused to engage with the text as a result of their own prejudices. Student performance in assessment tasks reflected this and, with that in mind, I feel that this might therefore be better utillised as a Year 11 text rather than something that performance in the HSC hinges on (not that we have that choice, just something to keep in mind next time teachers are consulted on the English syllabus).

 

Nonfiction / Film / Media Options

There are four options in this section, some of which might arguably be considered some of the more obscure texts to be featured in the overall Prescriptions. One is a non-fiction book, and the other three are films.

Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung

What is it: The author, a Cambodian-Chinese refugee, relates her upbringing in the Footscray area of Melbourne. With the use of an episode structure, Unpolished Gem charts Alice's beginnings as part of a family navigating their way through a new cultural landscape after escaping the horror of Pol Pot's Year Zero, her teenage depression when faced with crippling questions about her future, and the difficulties she faces in starting a romantic relationship with a 'skip' Australian.

Scope for Study: Unpolished Gem is a fairly accessible text for Standard English teenagers in that it utilises an authentic and honest voice to examine the intersection of two very different cultures with a lot of humour. Students will be able to engage with this humour and examine the way it disarms and cajoles the reader into identifying with Alice in her role as a figure trapped between two worlds. There is also scope for introducing the narrative device of 'stream-of-consciousness', which Pung employs increasingly in the last third of the memoir, signifying her journey towards self-actualisation.

NESA Annotations: No other text (that I've come across so far) has as many entries in the various NESA Annotation documents as Unpolished Gem. It is featured twice in the 2009-2014 annotations, both as a Standard and an ESL text, and again as an ESL text in the 2015-2020 annotations. From a Standard English viewpoint, the annotations support the now defunct Standard Module C Into the World Elective and highlight the importance of this text as providing an access point for students of South-East Asian heritage. The rest of the annotations don't really go too much beyond a few generalised comments about 'different narrative techniques' and 'aspects of Australian history'.

Verdict: Unlike the majority of the other texts in this list, which are largely monocultural or presented from a monocultural viewpoint, Unpolished Gem closely examines the nature of a hyphenated identity. Pung operates in a space between her Cantonese-speaking parents and wider Australian society, which adds a layer of internal conflict to the narrative that pulls together the various chapters set across a 19 year time period. We witness Pung's loss of language through her eyes and the impact that language can have on a family living in a new land. Perhaps most importantly, Unpolished Gem is a very worthy text because it encourages empathy and lets students see inside the experiences of someone who has lived the refugee experience.

One Night the Moon, directed by Rachel Perkins

What is it: Real life family Paul Kelly, Kaarin Fairfax, and Memphis Kelly play the Ryans, a colonial family living in the remote outback of Australia during the 1930s. One night daughter Emily climbs out the window to follow the moon into the wilderness and disappears, prompting a frantic manhunt led by her father Jim. The local police enlist the assistance of an Aboriginal tracker named Albert Yang, however, Jim's racist attitudes prevent the man from helping, and the search begins to look hopeless as a result.

Scope for Study: One Night the Moon is an unusual text within the Prescriptions List as it is both a musical and a non-feature film (too long to be considered a short film, too short to be considered a 'movie'). It is also an extremely valuable text as it is directed by an Aboriginal filmmaker, Rachel Perkins (daughter of famed activist Charles Perkins) and thus provides an Aboriginal voice on issues relating to Aboriginal identity and culture within the colonial context. The film features a lot of material that bears student examination, such as: the use of dutch angles, the purpose of each song, the employment of an elliptical structure for the narrative, and the contrast between Aboriginal and European viewpoints.

NESA Annotations: Covered in the 2015-2020 Annotations document, where it was included as part of the Distinctive Voices elective. Themes mentioned include loss, reconciliation, prejudice, and distinctive cultural values and perspectives. Mention is also made of the film's use of multiple genres (such as the 'opera film', fable genre, and the Australian 'lost child' myth) to create a "visually rich portrait of the unique Australian landscape". On a side note, it's unfortunate and disappointing to see such a relatively recent document using the word 'Aborigines'.

Verdict: This is a beautiful film and, while some Standard English students may roll their eyes at the use of country/folk ballads throughout, its brevity and relative straight-forwardness will make it accessible for study. Perkins' vibrant and organically loose camera movement gives the proceedings an ethereal atmosphere while keeping things moving along, and it's also interesting watching Paul Kelly in the only acting role he's ever undertaken. An examination of context, irony, and the way One Night the Moon utilises musical genres will also allow students to gain an appreciation for the disparity between (and inability of) the colonial and Aboriginal worlds to co-exist in the early 20th century.

The Castle, directed by Rob Sitch

What is it: The Kerrigans are a typical Australian family living in the Melbourne suburb of Coolaroo. When the government informs everyone on their street that their homes are about to be absorbed so that a multinational company can expand the airport, patriarch Darryl Kerrigan is appalled and dismayed. Darryl decides to fight the matter in the High Court of Australia by rallying the support of his neighbours and enlisting the help of a shonky low-level lawyer. The odds have never looked worse!

Scope for Study: The Castle should be well-known to a good portion of Standard English students due to both its perennial showing on free-to-air TV and its cult following among several generations of Australians. Drilling down into its use of humour and shared lexicon will only go as far as the teacher is able to link it to student experience, and attention will therefore need to be paid to highlighting the inherent 'Australian-ness' of the text that has both made it so popular in Australia and so indifferently received in overseas markets.

NESA Annotations: Another one where NESA have not provided annotations in any of the three Annotation documents from the last ten years.

Verdict: I love The Castle but my experience teaching it was with an ESL class where the majority of the migrant students did not get the humour at all. Truth be told, it was a very labouring and strange experience to see so many of its best jokes fall completely flat with an audience that, even after understanding why it was considered funny, would shrug and say 'so what?' Humour is, of course, highly subjective. I think it would be useful to gauge what sort of class you have before attempting to teach this one.

Reindeer in My Saami Heart, directed by Janet Merewether

What is it: In this documentary Australian filmmaker Janet Merewether visits northern Sweden to interview Inghilda Tapio, a poet and one of the Saami, Scandinavia's indigenous people. Tapio recounts a childhood of discrimination in which the Swedish government practised policies of dehumanisation and cultural destruction, and compares this to the contemporary struggles of the Saami people in their attempt to hold onto their reindeer-oriented culture.

Scope for Study: Students will be able to draw parallels between the history and experiences of the Saami people with the Stolen Generations. Reindeer in My Saami Heart also provides scope for Standard English students to engage with sophisticated concepts such as the power of language to represent experience and the ongoing battle of indigenous peoples the world over to resist the Eurocentric colonisation of the mind. The documentary is also open to study in its use of a rich sound design and traditional artwork to recreate the nomadic and ancient lifestyle of the Saami. Teachers will also do well to examine the film's intertextual ties with Tapio's own poetry.

NESA Annotations: Like Contemporary Asian Australian Poets, this text has two sets of annotations in the 2019-2023 NESA Annotations document - one for Standard and one for EAL/D. The Standard section highlights Tapio's role as an advocate for an ethnic minority, and calls attention to the construction of the documentary from a range of materials that utilise pathos to provoke an  emotional response from the viewer. The annotations also identify the maintenance of Saami language as crucial to the survival of indigenous culture.

Verdict: The story of the Saami is a fascinating one and is, in most cases, something completely unknown to Australian teenagers. Reindeer in My Saami Heart will probably therefore challenge the views of students in relation to the indigenous world as not something restricted to just Australia or America. That said, it has to be admitted that this documentary's gentle, poetic style may be alienating to Standard English students and, on a practical level, it's one of the harder texts to track down on the Prescriptions List. I think it would take a special kind of Standard English class to engage well with this film.

On Bookstores and the Argyle Emporium

The Argyle Emporium

Nicole and I often pass through Goulburn at least twice a year on our travels but I never thought to see if there were any bookstores in the area before our stopover there today. 

Sometimes you just find pure book gold, and the Argyle Emporium in Goulburn lives up to its fantastic name.

I love bookstores, and they're easily where I spend the most of my disposable income, but it's not every bookstore that interests me. The franchises, like Dymocks and Collins, hold only a passing interest for me as they are - by and large - filled with the same books at any given time. The next tier of interest is any other bookstore that retails new books - again, these are usually filled with books that can be found pretty much anywhere.

Kinokuniya holds a special place for me because its sheer size (and inclusion of graphic novels) usually means I'll find something of interest there.

But, really, the kind of bookstore that usually gets my money is the Secondhand Bookstore. Here you'll find out of print books, books that I never knew existed, books I've been searching for, specialist international books that have accidentally found there way to some Australian backwater via an itinerant erstwhile owner, and small books that are specific to local regions.

For about 8 years I worked for a well-known bookstore chain before I was teacher and there are some things that customers often wouldn't realise when it comes to books, I'll list them below briefly before I get onto the Argyle Emporium:

• The mark-up isn't particularly high in Australia for booksellers, which means that new titles can be costly for customers while also not generating much of a profit for the seller. Part of the reason for this is that the Australian book industry fought hard against the introduction of parallel importation for books in Australia - this means that Australian book publishers get to determine which editions go into our bookstores and an Aussie bookstore isn't allowed to import in a cheaper version of a book from overseas. So... you can imagine how responsible Australian publishers are when it comes to pricing, considering they've been handed a market where price-fixing and monopolisation are very easily achieved.  
• One result of the above practices is that customers are often better off just ordering their books online from an overseas market where competition is allowed. Even with postage, overseas editions of books are often cheaper for Australian customers.
• New titles have a very short lifespan on bookstore shelves if they're not popular. After anywhere between 3 to 9 months, the big publishers will release a list of titles they're willing to take back and the bookstores can then send them back for credit. The titles that don't get sent back often get marked down so that room can be made for the next round of new releases.
• The sheer number of new releases means that books are continuously rotated through bookstores. Customers will often walk in expecting that any well-known book they want will automatically be sitting on a shelf - this just isn't possible, there are literally hundreds of thousands of books available in the market, which brings me to my next point.
• Books don't remain in print very long. Unless it's one of the 1000 or so recent high-selling titles, or a canonised classic, most books go out of print within a year. And they often don't come back into print. 

Anyway, the Argyle Emporium is an amazing secondhand bookstore in Goulburn that I never knew existed until today. The site is a former police station that was built in 1885, vacated by the police in 1975, and turned into a secondhand bookstore in 2007. The Emporium also sells comics, posters, music, videos, DVDs, and a few other curios. 

Sci-fi, fantasy, comics.

Some people come into the Emporium and enjoy it so much that they never leave.

Here are the books I picked up today:

Always up for a bit of natural history, and the Tasmanian Devil is an interesting marsupial.

Winner of the Booker Prize in 1984.

When I was 8 years old we went to the World Expo in Brisbane and we got to see some replicas of the Terracotta Warriors. Dad hyped us up about it so I went in there with a real sense of awe at seeing these nearly 2000 year old lifesize sculptures.

This is an offshoot of Steve Jackson's 'Fighting Fantasy' series; Choose Your Own Adventure styled novels that employed the use of dice so you could fight monsters while you adventured your way through the different paths set out in the book. Don't worry, it's every bit as nerdy and fun as it sounds. There's an argument to be made that they're a basic form of ergodic literature. Anyway, I loved these when I was a kid and I used to borrow them from the library all the time.

Nicole found these ones - we both have nostalgic memories of this series from our childhoods.

An overview of the American and French Revolutions. I love a good revolution.

I'm always on the lookout for Aboriginal history texts, and it's never unhelpful to find some literature that unpacks and unravels some of the debates around complex issues like the 1996 Wik land rights decision.

What's impressive is the sheer size of the store, with some 10-15 rooms converted into different sections organised by genre. It's bigger than some libraries I've been to, and to think you're often standing in former gaol cells now repurposed for book storage is kind of cool. 

There's also a tunnel underneath the building somewhere that leads to the old court house; I like to imagine this is probably filled with books too... maybe a wall of books that blocks it off. 

Secondhand bookstores like this are invaluable because they help Australian booklovers get around many of the issues I dot-pointed above. Places like the Argyle Emporium are filled with out of print titles, they have multiple editions of books available due to the depth of time that they draw from, and you can usually pick things up for a fairly reasonable price.

Modelling Essay Writing

Earlier this year I had the pleasure to write a student resource textbook on The Merchant of Venice for the HSC 'Texts and Human Experiences' Common Module. I wrote this at the invitation of Into English (the book can be found here [digital e-book] and here [print edition]). It was something I did separately to my teaching as I actually taught my 2019 Year 12 class Nineteen Eighty-Four for the Common Module, and this means that I haven't had much of a chance to reflect on the module from a Merchant of Venice standpoint. Anyway, long story short, I've received some questions over the last few months about essay writing for The Merchant of Venice and this prompted me to write a sample paragraph. 

This paragraph can be viewed as supplementary material in support of one of the sample questions in the Into English book. The question itself isn't too important as the piece is predominantly designed to just demonstrate the components of a paragraph addressing human experiences, and can hopefully be used as a model for students to look at.

Here's the paragraph in question:

Sample Paragraph

The Merchant of Venice, through its exploration of the way in which people respond to appearances, reveals particular inconsistencies inherent in the human condition. This is perhaps best exemplified by the Prince of Morocco's observation that "All that glisters is not gold", an aphorism in which the deceptiveness of appearances is rendered concisely on multiple levels. Primarily, this remark is made in response to the false selection of a gold casket in the test for Portia's hand in marriage. It also doubles, however, as a metaphor for one of the play's key themes, wherein society often projects a shiny veneer that covers uglier truths. The antipathy that exists between Antonio and Shylock similarly conveys this context, with Antonio using the simile "like a villain with a smiling cheek" to describe Shylock's offer to loan him money, highlighting the apparent act of kindness as being inherently deceptive and evil. The inability of Christians and Jews within Renaissance-era Europe to see each other's true nature is further reinforced by Shylock's rhetorical identification of Antonio's hypocrisy, exemplified by the line "You called me 'dog' - and for these courtesies I'll lend you thus much money?" From a 21st century context, the audience is positioned to give equal weight to both the Christian and Jewish standpoint, and Shakespeare's depth of understanding becomes clearer from this more enlightened vantage point. In his examination of deceptive appearances, Shakespeare utilises these discussions to bring to the surface a range of inconsistencies in human behaviours and attitudes in order to demonstrate how conflict originates in such duplicity.

Annotated Paragraph

To assist with breaking up the above paragraph into its constituent parts, I have also attached an annotated version below.

Here it is: The Merchant of Venice and Human Experiences

I wanted to put the annotations up here directly but I couldn't figure out how to do it within a blog. I mean, to be honest, it's the end of the year and I'm feeling pretty exhausted so I didn't really invest too much time in trying to figure out how to convey annotations in the blogging format. 

Okay, look, if I'm really honest I didn't invest any time in figuring out how to convey annotations here. It's been a long year.

I would like to add that I wish you all the best over the upcoming holiday break!

What Are You Looking For? (Things That Have Worked For Me #3)

This post is part of a series of things I've picked up over the last 9 years that have turned out to be incredibly helpful. Obviously their mileage will vary depending on your context and I don't expect them to work for everyone, so feel free to either take these on board or put them in your brain-bin - I won't mind either way.

3. Look for the Positives rather than the Negatives

This one sounds so simple on the surface but in practice it can be quite difficult to maintain. Any cursory look at a behaviour monitoring database held by a school will include entries that cover various behavioural events. These can be positive or negative, including things like a student completing a particular lengthy and high quality piece of classwork (positive) to a student becoming argumentative with the teacher (negative). In a lot of cases there will be an imbalance between these events, with a higher quantity of negative events being listed because these are the sort of things we've been trained to 'jump onto' as quickly as possible.

But when we think about it (or even look more closely at the data) there is often a pattern that reveals that the negative events are restricted to a very comparatively-small percentage of the student population. A look at the complete roll of students in any class will make it clear that the vast majority of students are doing the 'right' thing or, at least, not doing the 'wrong' thing (which in most eyes is considered the 'right' thing by default).

Child psychologists (such as Doctor Roberto Parada) will be among the first to tell you that recognising desired behaviour in children has a much bigger impact than acknowledging the kinds of behaviour we don't want. In a classroom, this can be admittedly difficult, but the long term effect of pushing further in this direction cannot be be underestimated and undervalued.

Here's a scenario called 'Picking Your Battles' that makes the thinking a little more explicit:

1. A student with a history of defiance comes into the classroom late while wearing a hat or listening to headphones. He sits down and begins working on the class activity like everyone else in the class, perhaps doing some work for the first time in weeks.
2. The teacher pulls the student up on breaking the school rule about wearing hats, listening to headphones, or coming to class late.
3. The student responds defensively, or aggressively, or both.
4. The student stops working on the class activity.
5. The student continues to break the original rule AND/OR gets detention for arguing. 
6. Any opportunity to build a positive relationship with the student during this lesson is now gone, PLUS no work has been completed.

If the student had gone unchallenged then we would've had a different scenario play out. The undesired behaviours, such as coming late or listening to headphones, could be dealt with afterwards when the student doesn't have an audience.

U.S. Educator Annette Breaux makes a few points that relate to the above scenario:

• If a student is angry, leave them alone and give them space.
• Weigh up the reality of what you're asking them to do - are they going to react favourably?
• If there is a choice of you having them working while breaking a minor rule, or not working at all, then what is more important in the long run? 
• Is it more likely that the student will listen to your instructions about following rules if you show them first that you care foremost about them getting the work done rather than having them accept your authority? 
• Is challenging a disruptive student going to ease the issue?
• Is their education the most important aspect of their being at school? How can we make this clear to them?

I'll add to the above that our syllabus doesn't include behaviour management. I'm not saying that behaviour management isn't a part of our job (that would be insane) but I'm saying getting students to meet syllabus outcomes is the first priority. If you can manage to get students to meet syllabus outcomes then the chances are that they won't have time to be able to break rules too much. Besides, what is a parent going to query more - the teacher disciplining their student or the teacher educating them in line with the syllabus requirements? If we're successfully teaching a student our subject then I'm arguing that that's the better goal.

I know it's not ideal but it's preferable... we don't live in an ideal world and there's a higher chance of teacher burnout when we strive to create an ideal world in our classroom. As Breaux suggests above, a student (and their parent) are more likely to listen and respond reasonably to our management of undesired behaviours if we're actively demonstrating that the student's education comes first (more on that in the next blog) or if we're waiting until after class to discuss the issue (proving that it isn't about humiliating them in front of their peers).

There's another really clever chap called Adam Lefstein who talks a lot about 'face-work', which is the idea of teachers becoming preoccupied with looking a certain way in front of their colleagues. This is nominally because we're worried about having our behaviour management judged. The more we can break the appearance of judging our colleagues, keeping an open door to our classrooms, and being honest about the challenges we face, the more we can start changing the conversation to being about the things that students are doing right in the classroom. Yeah, okay, there's four kids chatting and not focused on their work, but look at the twenty-odd other students who have done everything you asked! Is the visiting teacher seeing that part of the lesson?

The challenge here is to walk into a 'challenging' class you have this week and decide to only acknowledge the 'good' things happening, even with the students who are still exhibiting undesired behaviours. This could be awarding points in a system of some kind, chucking out some lollies, giving award certificates, promising a positive phone call home to their parent... but whatever you do, unless something completely un-ignorable happens, try to avoid even seeing the 'bad' stuff. We've all had enough lessons like that. We've had plenty of lesson where we only saw the things that went wrong, so what's the harm in trying the opposite just once?

Don't approach this as a sentimental or emotional exercise; try to drop any preconceived ideas you already have from your time teaching these same students in the past. Approach the lesson as scientifically as possible, identifying and rewarding desired behaviours only, and watch to see if student completion of work improves.  

Settling the Class (Things That Have Worked for Me #2)

This post is part of a series of things I've picked up over the last 9 years that have turned out to be incredibly helpful. Obviously their mileage will vary depending on your context and I don't expect them to work for everyone, so feel free to either take these on board or put them in your brain-bin - I won't mind either way.

2. Don't Wait for the Class to Settle

If you're nearly 7 foot tall, and look like Conan the Barbarian, then you'll probably have no problem quelling the dissent of the class with a booming voice and a threatening neck-vein the size of a rope. For the rest of us, however, relying on physical intimidation or authoritarianism isn't necessarily going to work. I spend a lot of time telling student-teachers they should play to their strengths and that, if their strength isn't in presenting a strong and authoritative presence, they may need to rely on other strategies to shape a learning environment based on engagement. 

The time spent waiting for a mixed-ability class to become quiet is almost never time well spent. There are likely somewhere between 20 and 30 individual students (all with their own drama going on) and waiting for every single of one of them to simultaneously fall silent and pay attention can be an immense challenge. The probability of different interactions between this many people is so high that you can't predict how settled the class will be each time you see them (think about it - if you have 25 students then how is each individual potentially going to react to any combination of their 24 peers on a particular day? I'm not a Maths teacher but I'm sure the figure for the amount of student-combinations is quite high). 

I've most often fallen into the trap of waiting for the class to be quiet usually just before I'm about to play a film clip of some sort. Waiting for the students to be quiet before I play the clip (while forcing myself not to yell at them in order to make it happen) is almost always futile. This can be the same for a range of other activities, including whole class instruction. 

What surprisingly sometimes works instead is just moving straight into the clip or activity while the students are still unsettled. The activity becomes the thing that settles the students. If I have a task that requires instruction then I'll put the instructions up on the board or hand out the sheets... this will get those who understand (and are willing to work independently) to engage with the work. Then, while this half of the class is getting underway, I'll start moving around and instructing the other students one-on-one. This works because:

• The amount time spent moving around and doing one on one instruction tends to be equal to the amount of time it would get me to settle the whole class at once.
• Even if I do manage to settle the entire class and they become quiet, this doesn't mean that they are all attentive or capable of understanding the instructions. Just because a class is quiet and compliant it doesn't mean that they're listening. Once the activity gets underway, speaking one-on-one guarantees a higher level of engagement across the class as it allows for differentiated instruction. There are students who struggle to follow the more traditional lecturing-style of whole class instruction and moving around to them once their peers have started working gives them an opportunity to listen and interact with you.
• Even if I do decide to try and settle the whole class at once and it somehow takes less time then just putting the activity in front of them, I can usually be fairly certain that my personal stress level will be higher as a result. I want to be in this for the long haul, so it's better overall if I don't break myself trying to get over 20 students to simultaneously be quiet. If I can let go of the idea that my authority needs to be recognised (and let's be honest here, no syllabus includes 'recognition of teacher authority' as an outcome) then I find myself a lot less stressed by the settling section of a routine lesson. If being authoritative works for you then that's fine, but for myself it's not one of my strengths so I've had to develop and adopt the other aforementioned strategies to save my sanity.

Non-verbal cues are also good. This can include the tried-and-true methods of:

• Holding my hand up and waiting for silence. Students should reply by putting their own hands up so other students can see that I want some quiet. Yelling for silence has always felt counterproductive and contradictory to me so I've found modelling silence in this way a bit more logical. 
• The above can be accompanied by quietly counting from 1 to whatever until the class settles. If I have to, I'll resume from whichever number I got to at any point in the lesson and this becomes the amount of time some individuals from the class might owe me.
• Proximity. Standing near the most disruptive students usually has a dampening effect on their off-topic conversations. 
• Walking around and pointing to clear, simple instructions that have been written on the board can be effective too. Many students are disruptive or disengaged simply because they don't know what to do and they aren't able to understand verbal instructions. 
• Write personalised instructions on a note and quietly place it in front of the student. This works especially well for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. 
• This isn't exactly non-verbal but choice theory can be really effective with students who might be categorised as naturally oppositional. Quietly give them two choices (both choices need to be positive ones, EG. You can do this work, or this work) and then walk away and let them decide without you hovering over them or waiting for a response. The act of waiting for a response can often exacerbate the opposition we're trying to circumvent. 

One more caveat before I finish up. I'm aware that behaviour management is very subjective and can be complex in light of school policies, and I'm also aware that nothing above is particularly revolutionary. My recent experiences teaching English Method to pre-service teachers has had me thinking a lot about articulating my processes and, as a result, I've been thinking of these blogs as living documents to help me sort and solidify pedagogy that I've found helpful. 

Hopefully there's something here that might prove useful to you too.