Tag Archive for learning

New Students

02/02/2012 Joh learn, love, relationships, School

Darin’s youngest daughter (R) starts school tomorrow. When he talked to her on the phone tonight, she wanted to speak to me also. It made my day. The anticipation of good things in her voice when she talked about all the fun had me smiling. “The teacher will read books, Joh”, with all the excitement of santa coming. I love it!

Tomorrow I meet my new students. Some of them I have worked with already, and some are new to me. I have met most of them in the interviews explaining our new program. Meeting a class for the first time is probably as big for me as it is for them to come back to school. We will all be a little nervous and hopefully the excitement about learning a bit differently will triumph. I hope they all come:).

I anticipate I will learn a lot this year. I hope my students do too!

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Part Time Holidays

08/01/2012 Joh Business, gratitude, holidays, learn, work

I’m continuing my part-time job during the school holidays. I love working there, some days it doesn’t even feel like work. My days off are more precious because they are rarer.

This week a customer came in who is converting a barn and we had a great conversation about all the challenges involved and found the perfect floor covering for her needs. I’m delivering it to them next week and will get to see the project. I meet lots of interesting people making their homes in their own ways and it’s fun to help them select the perfect floor covering.

I enjoy my drive to work. It’s about 45 minutes through really open country. Lots of people complain about the boringness of that drive, but I experience the spaciousness. The countryside changes colour with the clouds. I love it. There are a couple of spots on the way that I pay particular attention to.  Such big views! I enjoy listening to my music and making playlists for the trip.

I had big plans for the shop over Christmas. I was expecting less traffic and getting lots done. We did a bit but were busier than I expected, which is always a good thing, so there are still a few more jobs on my list. I have found a place for all our new tile samples. I enjoy maintaining the displays and getting to know each pattern, texture and size, imagining where it would best serve. Filing it away in my mind so when the right person comes I will know where to find it.

We are getting the computer program and systems into better shape. I need to learn more about MYOB. It is a different package to the one I used for ‘The Butchers Dog’ so there are things I am tweaking. The book-keeping is different. I did the book-keeping for ’Unique Furnishings’ and ‘Total Vision’ manually and I had systems in place to keep informed of the business stats. I am still working towards finding the way to get this businesses stats.

I love the freedom and responsibility my boss gives me to have a hand in all aspects of the business. It feels as though it is my own, yet I am working with a team. There is another sales person as well. We often all have different opinions and this makes for more interesting discussions.

I am immersed in home improvement. I am learning. That is what I love most about my part-time work.

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I Noticed…

08/09/2011 Joh gratitude, learn, work

This clip has stuck with me. It helped me to solve a problem I’ve been having with a group of people in my life.

I think noticing good stuff and feeding it back to the people in our lives at home, work and play can make a difference. It really is that simple.

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Photo a Day

27/07/2011 Joh learn, random, work

I am not doing it very well at all. I am out of the habit. I think about the photo at night. I am using my phone as a camera so my photo’s are pretty ordinary. Anyway… I learnt something from the year 7 students this week. They were making slideshows for an assignment and I was very pleased to see them using their laptops for more than wordprocessors and google searching:).

One of the students had a pile of photos, old fashioned, printed ones. She was holding them up to her laptop camera and taking photo’s of the photo and they weren’t too bad. She was using picassa, so I downloaded it tonight and had a go. I will put that photo on my tumblr tonight, cause it was a photo. I think I need more practice though. I also imagine the light will make a difference. If I can get it handled it looked much quicker and easier than using a scanner. The quality probably isn’t as good, but for basic jobs it would do.

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A Day in the Kitchen

22/03/2011 Joh Business, food, gratitude, learn

Today I felt like I was on the set of ‘The Iron Chef’. Last week, Will from the fishing shop across the road brought some Garfish he’d caught in for Darin to cook for his lunch. Darin did a great job and made 4 dishes from the fish. Will was rapt! So much so, he must have told his fishing mates.

This morning a guy came in and asked if Darin could cook his catch for him and three of his mates. We agreed and he dropped the fish in at 12.00, and planned to return at 1.00 for his feed. Darin served them crumbed, tempura battered and whole pan fried. He made an amazing seafood risotto to go with it with prawns, calamari and lemon rind. It was delicious. It was all presented simply, and looked beautiful. I wish I’d taken a photo of the food and the smiles on the men’s faces. I think the guys were quite impressed. They rained praise on him. When the fisherman came to pay he pulled 3 times the amount we agreed to charge him and I think he was pleasantly surprised at the price and purchased some lamb ribs and veges to take home for dinner.

Work is like a daily live performance. You only get that one chance to get it right. I love the push of putting it all together before we open the doors. I am learning so much. Every day I learn more and the learning is not just information, but how to do things, like chopping fast. Not that I can yet, but I’m getting there. Now I’ve been shown how to hold things and stabilise everything, it’s no wonder my chopping has been so poor in the past. I didn’t have a clue. The greatest thing about it all is there is so much more to learn:-).

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Loving Autumn

20/03/2011 Joh Business, family, food, home, learn, love, reading, work

Here today it was one of those fresh Autumn days where the sky is blue and the air is comfortable. I walked the kids to the park. I enjoyed the smells of lawn, roses and a variety of trees that met me each corner I turned. We met a lady with two dogs on our way to the park. The kids had a ball throwing balls and having them retrieve and return to them. I think the lady was happy with that, because it saved her lots of energy. Energy the both the kids and dogs had, but she and I perhaps didn’t. When she asked me if they were my children, cause they were so delightful, I really wanted to claim them, but honesty got the better of me.

I spent some time today washing. The clothes dried quickly and I got most of my laundry done. I had piles of it because I had a big clean-out upstairs and changed all the linen in the house. So in between reading Pamela Allen picture books, playing hide and seek and reading some of my current reading obsession, I washed, dried and folded clothes.  It was really convenient the day was so good for drying clothes.

When the kids returned to their mum’s we went to work to do some preparation for the week ahead. I love our Sunday nights in the kitchen. I learn heaps because there is no-one around and no pressure, so I get to ask more questions and Darin tells me heaps of interesting information. Like tonight I learned that a potage is soup that is thickened with it’s own ingredients. I watched Darin make chicken jus tonight. To be honest, before I met him I didn’t even know the word jus. We tested out our new menu item – hamburgers! –It’s a whole new world to me and I love it. There are so many things to learn about food. I had no idea. We can also have the music up much louder cause there is no one around:-).

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One of Those Days

15/03/2011 Joh Business, learn, relationships

Today I felt overcome by how much I don’t know about what I’m doing right now. I want to be competent but I feel like I have such a long, long way to go and I’m frustrated by that. It probably doesn’t help that I’m working with someone with over 30 years of experience who shows me something and makes it look easy – until I try to do it! I watch and think, ok, that looks simple enough, but then when I go to do it, it’s not.

It’s dangerous work too ;-) … I have so many burns along my right hand and arm that my friend Cath tells me I look like a self-mutilator. Working with knives and ovens requires a level of being present that I have overlooked at times. Just brushing your hand on the bain marie, coffee machine steam handle or the oven will always result in a burn. Fortunately I have been relatively more cautious around the knives and have only nicked myself a couple of times usually washing dishes. Blue band-aids galore!

There are so many things I love about my career change but today I wondered if I’ve done the right thing. Darin needs to be somewhere else tomorrow for a little while. I want him to be there too. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to fill his shoes for a short while. I would love to think he could go off and be where he needs to be all day, but I know I wouldn’t manage it all without him. That’s uncomfortable for me to realise I am relying on him so much. He’s very reassuring and I know at the end of the day I can only do my best and I’ll probably be ok. It was just a very different feeling than I have felt for a long time… to rely on someone, and have to admit it… even to myself. I wonder how it feels to be him. I’m not sure I would like it.

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Celebration

05/08/2010 Joh food, friends, relationships, work

Tonight I’m going out for dinner where Darin works with Rhonda. She has gained her Certificate IV in Workplace Training today and I am delighted. I’m happy for her but I’m also happy for the kids she will get to teach. She is a great teacher and has positive learning relationships with students. We’ve worked in the classroom together a few times and they have been the best years. She makes a difference to students and their learning.

I think it would be great if teaching were an apprenticeship. It would be awesome to have an apprentice to be in classes with you, assisting in all the ways an extra adult in the room can. Giving you feedback about what worked and what didn’t. I remember when I had a student teacher I sat up the back of the class and saw my students in a whole new light. I noticed some where totally engaged, just not in what was going on at the front of the room. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d been at the front of the room!

It would be great for the student as they would get hands on learning and watch all the real things about teaching like classroom management, rapport building and other things that you don’t always learn in a book. I’ve seen many students do the whole teaching course and then find they hate teaching. This way, you would get a pretty good idea quickly.

There are so many resources available to teachers now that I think the idea of a person who is all knowing as a teacher is redundant. I have taught a number of subjects over my teaching career that I learnt alongside my students. I could never be an IT teacher if I hoped to know the most in the room. The best teachers know how to build great relationships with students and understand them and their learning styles. They need to like the students enough to find a way for them to learn what they need to learn, in order to get to where they want to go. They need to be assertive enough to create a safe space, so students are free to learn. They need to love learning themselves and model that to young people. Anyway I reckon Rhonda can do all those things, hands down.

More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given
~ Bertrand Russell quotes

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Learning to make Arincini

01/08/2010 Joh food

I have enjoyed making chocolate tarts and lemon tarts since the school holidays. I’ve given most of them away and even thrown some out that didn’t go to plan. I’m ready to move to the next thing I want to learn how to make on my hitlist…. arincini.

I love rice. It is my favourite food. If I get sick, I crave fried rice. If I want to comfort myself I make risotto. I read a beautiful post about food today:Food Memories: Jill Dupliex. It reminded me of the delicious rice pudding my nana would make that we’d eat with golden syrup and cream. Delicious.

I know the value of rice since Roger Green’s Feng Shui course, which included some Macrobiotic food as one of the branches of feng shui. I remember enjoying a rice ball at the ‘Wild Rice Cafe’. When I heard about arincini, I knew I’d love it.

Darin and I made the risotto together on Thursday night. Asha had friends coming over Friday night so I had some victims to test my food on lined up. I also planned to have brushetta which I have pretty well handled now, just in case it was really bad. Darin fortunately had the night off so he helped me heaps with both and they were yummy. We had the kids and J(8) wouldn’t go near it, but Asha and her mates liked it. I heated up the leftovers tonight for dinner -not bad.

Next time though I want to make the risotto a bit wetter and put more mozzarella in the middle. Still I’m happy with my first try.

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Technology at School

12/07/2010 Joh learn, work

Today we had a student free day. We focussed on implementing IT into the curriculum. I was struggling to be positive about it all to be honest. I am fairly up to speed with technology in classrooms. It was sunny outside and I had to break myself into sitting still. I have wondered if they do that to us, to create an empathy for when our students return to the restraint of the desk the next day. That’s what I like to think anyway.

I learnt a couple of new tricks from a fellow teacher. I’m keen to have a try of Glogster. You can make online posters and embed them with videos and audio clips. She also used Prezi and it looks an interesting way to avoid the overused phrase ‘death by powerpoint’, yet I imagine if you have nothing to put on your slides other than the words you are about to speak, it will still hurt your audience.

I realised today that the handful of teachers who are technological at school all have taken different paths and use it in different ways in the classroom. I think this makes it more interesting, yet I wonder if it makes it overwhelming for those who have not embarked on the journey.

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