September 3rd, 2010
Filed under: Life
Falling off my Bike
One of my earliest memories is falling off my bike. It was a hot summer’s day, I was living in Calgary at the time so I must have been 4 or 5 years old. There was a little corner store down an ally out the back of my house. I was biking there to buy myself a Texas Donut and a pack of Transformers Sickers for my sticker book.
I remember trying to act cool becuase my friend was with me. I was biking erratically moving my handle bars left and right really fast. Well, during one of the movements I pushed a little to far and the front wheel jack knifed causing the bike to flip and for me to go flying over the handle bars and skid across the allyway on my tummy. My shirt had come up during the fall so my tummy was scrapping directly on the pavement. I got a huge graize. I remember running home to mum crying and and having to lay on my back in pain while she picked little pebbles out of my tummy.
Good times.
September 3rd, 2010
Filed under: Life, Work
Fish and Chips
My first real job was working at a Fish and Chip shop with my best friend Kalama. It was really only a job for 1 person, but Kalama and I talked the guy into hiring us both. We were the chip boys, which meant we would peal and cut up all the potatoes to make the chips.
Machines did most of the work. We had to; carry 20 kg bags of potatoes from storage to the back room, tip the bags into a pealer, empty the pealer and cut off and crappy bits before shoving them into a chopper.
We got paid $1 per bag and we would do between 4 – 6 bags after school every day. It took about 40 mins every day.
The pay was bad. We always stunk of fish and lard. But I got to work with my best friend and get pretty much all the free fish and chips I wanted, so I remember it fondly.
May 21st, 2010
Filed under: Life, Pre-School, Rants, Work | Tags: budget, early childhood education, government, kindergarten, national, Pre-School
Bill English striking a blow against children in New Zealand.
Well it’s the 20th of May 2010 and the National government has released their 2010 Budget. As an Early Childhood Educator there was one major change to the budget that has really stood out to me. The decision to remove the incentive funding for Early Childhood Centres to have 100% qualified teachers.
As it stands now Centres get different amounts funding from the government depending on the percentage of (ratio-ed) staff they have that are qualified and registered Early Childhood Education teachers. So if you have 80% qualified teachers you get so much funding, if you have 100% then you get more. That extra money goes to classroom materials and staff wages, as you can imagine a qualified teacher gets paid more than an unqualified one.
Now the new 2010 budget changes this by removing the 100% incentive. Therefore to get the new maximum funding (equivalent to the old 80% incentive) a centre is only required to have 80% qualified teachers. Now, just think about this for a minute. This is some scary shit. Let me break it down for you.
Early Childhood Centres are businesses just like any other. They need to watch their bottom line. They need to make a profit, some are under more pressure than others (you know the ones… the big name ones on every corner who have stockholders). In order for a centre that currently employs 100% qualified teachers to stay at the same level of profit they do now under the new budget they have two options.
One, fire 20% of their qualified staff and hire people with no experience who will work for minimum wage. This of course results in a weaker education system for your young children. With no incentive for uneducated staff to study. In fact incentive for them not to study as it might just lead to their unemployment.
Two, increase the cost of sending a child to their centre. Labour’s education spokesman, Trevor Mallard, said the $100 million shortfall in ECE funding amounted to about $25 a week per parent. That’s a lot, more than your probably going to be getting in tax cuts!
This is where it starts to get really scary. Once all the Centres go down one of these two paths that leaves parents with a choice, a choice many of them have no real say in. Send your child to an expensive Centre where the teachers are all qualified and know how to professionally deal with your child’s needs during their most important and influential learning period, 0 to 5 years old. Or send them to a cheaper Centre where 80% qualified teachers is enough and hope your kid doesn’t fall through the cracks somewhere along the line.
Of course parents and whānau that live in lower socio-economic areas aren’t really going to have a choice are they? Which leads to yet another way to increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots. That’s right National, make sure that even if your under 5 years old, if you don’t have the money you don’t deserve the same level of education as people who do.
Scared yet? I am.
February 16th, 2010
Filed under: Pre-School, Rants, Work | Tags: childhood, children, guns, Pre-School
Guns in Early Childhood Education
Currently my centre has a No Gun policy. They don’t allow toy guns and we are meant to tell the kids that guns are not allowed at pre-school if we see them pretending they have one.
This in my mind is stupid.
First of all, trust me when I say that I’m no gun activist. In fact, I’m completely against guns being used against human beings. But that being said I sure as hell played with water pistols when I was a child and I even had a BB Gun when I was in high school. I have fond memories of my friends all going down to the local primary school with our BB Guns and glasses and having wars late into the night. I still enjoy the odd paintball game now a days. This didn’t make me into a crazed killer. This was just a part of my boyhood.
Second, aren’t we meant to be working with the children’s interests? The kids at my centre are very interested in guns. Wouldn’t it be awesome to do a project on guns. Learn about the different types of guns. Learn what guns are used for? Learn about how to safely use guns. Learn about gun licenses? Make some gun licenses? Teach them what to do if they ever find a real gun? To me this sounds like a great idea, but I’ve had some pretty horrible “great” ideas in my life time. But then again what’s the alternative? Make guns, which are seen by kids everyday in their cartoons and stories, a taboo subject. Just pretend they don’t exist?
What’s your thoughts on toy guns at centres? Would you allow them at your child’s centre? If so, why and what rules would you expect to come with them? Would you forbid them? If so, why and how would you stop a child from pretending a stick is a gun?
January 22nd, 2010
Filed under: Pre-School, Work | Tags: babies, childcare, ece, Nappies
Does this image disturb you? Why?
Nappies are just another part of the job description when working as an early childhood educator in New Zealand. Unless you happen to be a man that is. For some reason, being of the male persuasion leads to all sorts of awkward questions during interviews when it comes to the nappy changing policies. Are you comfortable changing nappies? What’s your stance on nappies? How do you feel about changing soiled children? Of course, these questions are usually followed up with some sort of polite statement roughly translated to “We know this is a non-issue now a days, but we feel like we have to ask”.
You’re right, in this day and age it is a non-issue, but you asking is making it an issue, isn’t it? For me personally, I have no problem doing nappies and believe that it comes with the job. I would be happy if I was just expected to do it and no one batted an eye or suggested otherwise. I mean, it seems to me that the only way it’s going to really become a non-issue is if that’s how we treat it.
But instead, I feel pressured into giving the centre permission to ask the parents if it’s alright with them if all staff (including the new guy we just hired) changes nappies, soiled clothes etc. It seems like the easy way out. The company gets to cover itself.
I wonder if there will ever be a time when I start at a new centre and this isn’t brought up. Or a time when if a parent does have a problem with me changing their child’s nappies, management will tell them that I’m an employee like any other and to get over it rather than awkwardly asking me to not to change little Susie’s nappies anymore.
January 17th, 2010
Filed under: Music, Reviews | Tags: Alternative
The Antlers - Hospice
1. Prologue
2. Kettering
3. Sylvia
4. Atrophy
5. Bear
6. Thirteen
7. Two
8. Shiva
9. Wake
10. Epilogue
Overall: 
I really wanted to get away with just rating albums with stars and not having any written description. Mainly because I don’t really have the writing skills to differentiate in words how one album or track makes me feel compared to another.
Unfortunately for me, this album does require a description. This is an album that needs to be listened to in its entirety in one sitting. You also need to be really focusing on the music to get the most out of it. The ten tracks tell a story of a relationship with a terminally ill child. With tracks made up from hospital scenery, snippets of conversations with doctors, terrifying dreams, and prayers. They take you on a emotional trip through guilt, duty, mortality, and hope in the face of hopelessness.
As overly depressing as all this sounds, the album is surprisingly uplifting. Make no mistake, you will feel the emotional strain that singer Peter Silberman is going through, but by the end you will see that even in our darkest moments there is unfathomable beauty.
Notice how this is posted at 1 am. This has me so upset I couldn’t sleep until I vented by writing it down.
Excellent analysis Ki. National is all about inequality. Also, notice on the news last night, the analysis of the amount of the money the tax cuts were going to save you stopped when they got down to $40,000 salary (there were no examples of how it effected those who earned less than this – just a throw-away comment that those on the benefit and pension would have an increase to equal the 2.5% increase in GST). As the price of oil goes up and the world financial troubles continue, this budget will help NZ stay in the recession as a large majority of people will become poorer.