This week I heard the news of the apparent suicide of Robin Williams – this has totally rocked my world – I feel numb… (note I am still in denial with the word apparent.) Robin William’s outer persona reflected (to me anyway) a confident, intelligent, successful person who had his whole life together. I guess […]
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What has happened to personal responsibility? I again wondered this while on an aeroplane recently. As always the crew showed the safety demonstration. I have heard this literally hundreds of times, (as of writing this post I have been fortunate to travel on 1752 planes in the last 35 years – yes I keep a record) […]
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In his book, Give and Take, Adam Grant discusses recent neuroscience which shows that giving actually activates the reward and meaning centres in our brains, which send us pleasure and purpose signals when we act for the benefit of others. “One study of more than 2,800 Americans over age twenty-four showed that volunteering predicted increases in […]
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“To get to easy you have to go through hard.” This was a recent Mountain Dew advert on the back of a bus and on billboards in Wellington. This parallels a message I have been teaching students about learning – “Everything is hard before it is easy.” When students are studying for an exam, the best […]
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I come from a long line of great chefs, caterers and foodies – in fact my Nana, Mother, sister and daughter are real foodies, and I’m just not one of them. I make food to sustain, comfort and for sharing with others. Now I can cook and indeed do and really enjoy it – not just at […]
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I recall at high school participating in a debate “Rules are meant to be broken.” To be honest I cannot recall if I was on the affirmative or negative side, nor whether we won or lost – however I have never forgotten the topic. In recent media coverage this old topic has come back to […]
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I am really excited that tomorrow is our daughters Matariki – mid winter festival. This time two years ago I wrote an article for the Teachers Matter Magazine about the power of having rites of passage built within the school system. Here is an extract from that article… Last term my daughter’s school celebrated the winter solstice, […]
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When my husband and I purchased the home we currently live in, there was a TV in nearly every room. From the dining table you could see three! In total the house had seven television sets. We only have one TV in our house… and I wondered if this was unusual and/or whether I was being an old fashioned […]
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A colleague recently posted a video from Burr and Burton Academy, a Vermont High School in the US called Student For A Day Project. It was an unusual experiment where teachers became a student for a day. Each teacher was assigned a timetable for the day, including their student parking space and what time they should arrive […]
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It was only this last weekend that I became aware of a quote by Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou sadly passed away today and suddenly I am surrounded by her wonderful quotes on several social media platforms. I’m not sure where I have been over the past few decades to not come across her work and philosophy as from what I have […]
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