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?
December 5th, 2009
Filed under: Rants, Web | Tags: christian, judge, judgement, ki, side hug, vlog
Discussing my thoughts on judging people that were brought up by comments on my Christian Side Hug Video.
October 30th, 2009
Filed under: Rants | Tags: praise, students, teaching
Pick me! Pick me!
Praise your students for answering questions incorrectly! You heard me right, shower your students with praise when they don’t know the right answer, but try to answer anyway. This may sound completely backwards when you first hear it, but just think about it and it becomes clear.
If you only praise students that answer correctly then no one learns anything. Why? Simple the students that can answer already know the answer, and the kids that can’t don’t want to answer because there is no motivation for them to. If they aren’t answering then you can bet your ass that they probably aren’t listening either. On the other hand, if someone answers and gets it wrong, then they naturally want to know what the right answer is, and so will others. You learn more from a wrong answer than you do from a right one. So instead, encourage participation over knowledge. Praise everyone that raises their hand or even shouts out! Count yourself lucky, if you have a classroom full of students so eager to participate that they can’t even wait to put up their hands.
So, how do you get them participating? I like to play games and award points for answering whether right or wrong. Make sure to make teams and have a rule that states each member must answer before another team mate can answer again. This will cause students to encourage each other to participate. Remember give verbal praise and points for all answers, if it happens to be wrong encourage other students to help come up with the answer and explain it. Once you’ve played a couple of times, students will just get use to participating, trying to answering questions and helping others who answer incorrectly. Your classroom will transform from a teacher lead Q&A session with only a few students joining in to a classroom full of students participating and discussing ideas and reasoning behind those ideas with each other.
If your students feel comfortable and safe enough to answer a question even if they are most likely going to get the answer wrong, then you my friend are in the top 10% of teachers. Once you have them participating, you’ve got them listening and thinking. With participation knowledge will follow, it’s inevitable! It really is that simple.
September 13th, 2009
Filed under: Pre-School, Rants, Work | Tags: mcdonalds, propaganda, ronald
Propaganda Machine
While the site was down, the pre-school where I work had a visitor. A nice clown that came to read books and sing about the importance of using your seat belt while in the car… whether you’re driving near or far. Anywho, as you’ve probably already noticed from the picture, this wasn’t just any clown this was Ronald McDonald! I can’t believe they let this guy in the door, talk about getting them when their young.
He did a great job of entertaining the kids and even talked to them about what they liked to eat. He said he liked apples? Make no mistakes, all these kids knew that this was the clown from McDonalds. While it sounds like he is promoting healthy eating by saying he likes apples, all he really doing is pumping the kids and parents full of propaganda that McDiddy’s is a healthy fun and family oriented restaurant. In reality no one should be eating at McD’s let alone any child! Do yourself and your children a favour and stay away from the golden arches and all their fast food friends.
September 13th, 2009
Filed under: Movies, Rants, Reviews | Tags: crazy, jackie chan, Movies, rush hour 3, subtitles
Rush Hour 3
I sat down and watched Rush Hour 3 on DVD for the first time a week or two ago. I knew it wasn’t going to be very good, but I’m a fan of Jackie Chan and the crazy moves he does so I had to do it. I was correct in my assumption that it wouldn’t be the best movie by a long shot, but that’s not what I’m ranting about today. For anyone who has seen Rush Hour 3, you’ll know that the movie is set in France, so logically there are a few scenes that involved a bit of French dialog. Not being able to understand French at all (sorry Mrs. Green for not paying attention in French class), I decided to check if there were English subtitles so I could follow what was being said. There was so I turned the on and watched a scene again. Check out the screen shot of what the subtitles gave me in all their glory…
Now bear in mind that “We’re gonna need…” is what they are saying in English. What they are saying in French is translated to “(Speaking in French)”! How useless is that!
July 17th, 2009
Filed under: Rants | Tags: book, television, tv
Nothing but Garbage on TV
I have become a fucking slave to television again. Everything in New Zealand closes the same time everyone gets off work, for some fucked up reason, so I spend my nights veged out in front of the box. My mind is turning into play dough, and not that colourful highlighter stuff you get at boutique toy stores or from the internet, nope the year old half dried grey coloured crap you find in the sale bin at K-Mart. It’s really quite depressing. But I’m actively trying to change that so I have started to read books again. Unfortunately I’m so hooked to the boob tube that I’m actually reading on my ipod. Must be getting some kind of fix from the pixelated goodness.
If there are any good books you can recommend to me leave them in the comments. If they aren’t available in ebook format that’s even better!
For the kind of teaching I do the rewards and team thing won’t work, but I will be aware of how I respond to the wrong answers in the future. Thanks for posting
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.