Now that we have ChatGPT, we can just see how conformist and generic New Years’ Resolutions can be. That’s because, as we know, it’s a conglomeration of what society deems to be worthwhile goals. 

I have been investigating how to shape my LinkedIn identity recently – I wrote a post about leadership that were my words and sentiments, but “cleaned up” for LinkedIn by ChatGPT. I decided, though, that the tenor was too bold and decisive for who I am, so I threw in a bunch of hedging words.

This time around, though,I have used ChatGPT to generate the resolutions, but add my own comments, questions and queries in italics. The post, though, is too long for LinkedIn, so I have used my long dormant blog to post them.

New Year’s Resolutions

Personal Growth

• Practice gratitude regularly – Yes, but really meaning it, rather than just displaying it.
• Read more books – Which books though? They need be read with a purpose, whether it be leisure or for a specific reason 
• Learn a new skill or hobby – This seems to be a very middle class professional thing to start, but not continue. If people are to be serious about this, they need to commit to it, and assign it as a work skill or leisure hobby
• Reduce procrastination – Especially by not using ChatGPT to create resolution lists. But if we are being serious about this, you would need to realise why you procrastinate and addressing that reason
• Step outside your comfort zone – Just what does this mean? Maybe defining what that comfort zone is through small challenges outside your zone.

Health & Wellbeing

• Exercise more consistently – Personally, I would like to do this whilst avoiding the gymnasium industry. Gyms to me are soul-sucking caves of misery, driven by music with a never ceasing beat. Walking with classical music would be more inspiring.
• Improve sleep habits – A worthy goal, but how to achieve it? This seems too vague, like many on this list.
• Eat more balanced meals – Already do that, but what precisely is “balanced”?
• Drink more water – Ironic from a Chat GPT generated list
• Prioritise mental health and downtime – A frequently stated – and worthwhile – goal

Mindset & Habits

• Be more present and mindful – Mindful of what…?
• Reduce unnecessary screen time – Proof that there is a widening social trend to spend more time away from social media – stated on social media.
• Build better daily routines – Society is drifting away from routine, so it is not a surprise that there is a yearning for a return to comforting routines.
• Let go of habits that no longer serve you – What precisely does “serve you” mean? Defining what is a habit, good or bad, can be difficult to do. Maybe this is another reference to a social media self-ban.
• Be kinder to yourself – This indicates that there is a mass level of self-critical people who suffer from conditions such as imposter syndrome.

Relationships & Community

• Stay better connected with friends and family – Getting off social media again.
• Listen more actively – This is an especially important goal and it’s good that it’s here – showing that many do want to achieve this in their lives.
• Show appreciation more often – A good community building goal to achieve.
• Set healthier boundaries – A worthy goal, but also, very vague – and sounds like a thousand other comments from the wellness industry
• Contribute positively to your community – Have specific goals for which parts of the community? Or, just Be Useful.
•  

Work, Study & Creativity

• Set clear, achievable goals – Tick
• Improve organisation and planning – Tick
• Seek feedback and act on it – Tick (all standard management goals)
• Take creative risks – The irony of this advice is that it’s contrary to the whole notion of using ChatGPT to gain an idea of what is expected with writing tasks and goals.
• Celebrate progress, not just outcomes – Interesting that this appears, in that a lot of industry – including the IT industry, is very focused on outcomes. Humanity, perhaps, still yearns to celebrate self-defined progress. 

Practical Life Goals

• Save more or spend more intentionally – We like to say this will happen, but the entire internet is set up for us to spend more. 
• Declutter living or work spaces – A societal goal where the appearance of order is paramount to a person’s reputation
• Be more environmentally conscious – Again, ironic from ChatGPT, which sucks in a lot of power and water to survive. Society, however, still wants this goal, despite the pushback from conservative elements in politics and the media
• Manage time more effectively – By using ChatGPT for simple tasks?

Draft One

Words are important to my subject because they are at the core of what English is. Words control meaning, they direct the reader to consider the text in a certain way. Words control the river that is English language study.  The grammar structure at the heart of already existing word patterns is the way in which discourses are diverted, directed, positioned, show privilege, show power, show the methods by which colonialism was enforced.

Draft Two

Words are the river that flows from the source of culture. These words / this water decides how ideas are considered by society, by students, by all of those who are important.  This is why it is crucial for students to understand the cultural source and the words / water themselves, so they can understand how words can be life giving or poisonous.  This is why a deconstruction of the words, putting them with the purification process of a conceptual bunsen burner, can be helpful to students.

To believe Hattie is to have a blind spot in one’s critical thinking when assessing scientific rigor. To promote his work is to unfortunately fall into the promotion of pseudoscience. Finally, to persist in defending Hattie after becoming aware of the serious critique of his methodology constitutes willful blindness.

Pseudo-science. Wilful blindness.  That’s a fairly stinging critique from the domain of mathematics towards someone who has become as close to a cornerstone for contemporary education philosophy as we have in contemporary education.  The question hangs in the air – what does this mean for education? How did we let what has been dubbed “pseudoscience” take such a hold in education?

It’s not all that difficult to realise what has happened.  We educators do like to reach for what looks like a quantifiable way to address abstract problems, such as what works to help students learn.  This is especially the case in an Australia where datasets are flying through school systems via NAPLAN and other high stakes testing.  We are crying out for an easy to use solution based on the same notion of data centred conclusions.  That is when we like to see theories like Hattie’s to help us.

Along comes Visible Learning with its elegantly simple solutions to a multiplicity of problems.  A set of data that says that a number of factors have verifiable impact on improving student outcomes.  Data that helps schools focus their annual management goals, figures for people to put on their presentations to support what priority they want to pursue. For the presentations I have seen, the main priority that was emphasised was feedback, teacher-student relationship, teacher professional development and teacher clarity. Even the Wikipedia page is easy to access for anyone.

To an extent, there could be an argument for suggesting that there’s little wrong with looking at what Hattie is suggesting.  The need for timely feedback, for example, has been a welcome focus in teaching.  (On a side note, it’s interesting that “students self-reporting grades” is not something that I have seen being implemented system wide as yet) What using Hattie does is that we can use his numbers to support what we already do, but also add some other possible priorities for consideration.

There are downsides to Hattie, however, and two of these are his findings on class sizes and ability grouping not having a sizeable effect on student outcomes.  The first falls into the argument from politicians that governments don’t need to fund smaller class sizes, which runs counter to many existing studies that demonstrate that class sizes do make a considerable impact on student learning. The same for ability grouping,  where again there has been a number of studies, especially in the realm of gifted education, that shows positive impacts on ability based grading.

Considering these elements, giving statistical heft to what is still largely a qualitative profession could be seen as a noble effort on education’s part, but what this risks is exactly what Bergeron has achieved – make us look like we’re playing in the sandpit of scientific research, rather than undertaking anything serious. It also has the impact of raising Hattie’s work above existing research which could contradict him, which raises issues for educators.

This notion of trying to introduce scientific methods to educational discourse is not new. Education research is littered with bunches of attempts to find scientific solutions to problems that have previously appeared too difficult to solve. Much of the gifted education research I looked at in my Masters had quantitative explorations into the testing-centric US education system, for example.  While it was interesting – and often more rigorous than Hattie’s – it has limitations in terms of application of systems that are not as focused on testing.

Another example is the “quality world / perceived world” notion at the heart of William Glasser’s Choice Theory.  This introduced a number of science domain – based questions when I was first introduced to it.  Where was the peer reviewed support for this diagram? Where were the psychological community studies of this model? Where was Glasser’s own PhD in psychology?

That is not to say Glasser’s Choice Theory is not useful to us as educators – it is very helpful in providing us a framework to consider how students might not want to follow instruction, and how to eliminate control and command methods of discipline. In that sense, Glasser’s ideas work better as a notion of good suggestions that have had a positive impact on schools and welfare policies and practices rather than a scientifically verifiable method of seeing the human brain.

And perhaps, ultimately, that’s how we could see Hattie’s work. A set of interesting, a way of helping schools set up positive methods of teaching, providing feedback and assistance to students. However, it is not a silver bullet, it has significant flaws. And we can’t pretend it’s science.

The Module Related Texts and Standard English

The first was the suggestion that the modules part of the English Standard course could have an external exam that didn’t require students to discuss a related text.  To that many Standard teachers there thought… 

That would be a big positive for the teaching of the course, as the requirement to find and discuss two related texts for students in that course mostly leads to students either searching the internet for what others have used, asking their teachers, asking each other or, in some cases, school teaching students those related texts. Keeping the selection of related texts to internal assessment in one module would provide schools and BOSTES a chance for more authentic assessment. And the students will say…

The ATAR English Studies Exam

The second was the possibility that the English Studies course could have an external examination available for those students of the course who want an ATAR, in a similar fashion to current students in Hospitality and Business Services. While some students may feel like this is what will happen to them…

I think this would be a positive change, because I think it would increase the popularity of the excellent and currently under-utilised course.  Each time I teach the Standard English course, I am struck by the number of students who really struggle with the concepts and demands of the course and are only doing it because they (or often their parents) have a belief that they must have an ATAR at the end of their studies, which means that many students are feeling unenthusiastic about the course. 

It is clear that such students would be better suited with the skills and ideas taught in the English Studies course. If there was an examination that effectively gave them an ability to execute the skills as well as satisfy a set of externally set standards, that would lead to a more active role for English Studies in English faculties.  It would be crucial, however, that the examination would remain an option, so it wouldn’t turn English Studies into a Standard Lite.

The Extension 2 External Exam

Ever since the ICAC investigation into Extension 2 English, there was been an ever increasing pressure to take more weight away from the external project and more towards assessment that is considered both more “objective” and tamper free.  The latest in a line of these ideas is an external exam. And of course external exams based on prescribed texts are entirely tutor proof…?

It was explained that this exam would come with two different options – either based on their own process of composition or, like Extension History, based on a set of prescribed research texts. Many of us in the room were not exactly warming to the idea.

I’m not sure of the purpose or utility of either of these examinations.  An examination based on a student’s own writing processes would be difficult to set and mark, as those processes are considerably different and would be challenging to measure on an objective, centrally examinable scale. The examination on a prescribed set of research texts would also be difficult to reconcile with the nature of the course, which is dedicated to creating a project that is consistent with the students’ interests, rather than conforming to a set of understandings about a narrow set of texts. In that way, it is considerably different to Extension History.

In short, such an exam could very well endanger the course’s existence, as it would be yet another exam to do, another set of things to remember that don’t have a terribly strong link to the project at hand.

Let’s see what comes of this consultative process – hopefully something that has really does have the best way to teach and assess students at heart.

It had been a fair few years since I last attended an English Teachers’ Association Conference.  Most years in the recent past I have been enmeshed in the completion of the Extension 1 English marking operation.  This year was different, as the exam was earlier in the cycle and as a result, the operation finished before the conference. One day before, but still, before.

I submitted a proposal to present at the conference, partially because presenters don’t pay to attend for their day but mostly because I felt as though my idea – PBL Fridays – needed one last forum.  I’ve presented on Project Based Learning Fridays three times now – once at a TeachMeet, once at the ACEC Conference in Adelaide.  The audiences all three times were quite different.  I remember I talked more about football in the Adelaide version, this time I spoke more about preparing junior students for senior English. 

It was refreshing to see the theme of this year’s conference – Curiouser and Curiouser – because it struck me that with this theme, the ETA wanted to see more presentation content that focused on engagement of younger students into the art of writing and analysis.  That’s a good focus, especially as conferences such as these run the risk of becoming just “preparing your students for the HSC” festivals.  Taking a glance through the program saw that they had succeeded in that goal.

Arriving at the Uni of NSW, it did feel as though I was falling down a rabbit hole, but this time, it was to a Wonderland that was very familiar indeed. The site was the same, the people were a bit different – except for a number of a familiar and friendly faces that remembered me – and yet again, there were the eager booksellers, selling their textbook wares. That air of complete familiarity is comforting on a level, especially the welcoming hellos of the likes of Michael Murray and Susan Gazis – two legends of the game.

The Keynote

Going into the keynote, by Dr Mary Macken – Horarik, I sat down to do what I like to do at conferences – tweet up a storm. I do it for two main reasons – I want to have a record of what I hear at conferences, and the storify I do later achieves that goal (this is the Storify done of the conference by the ETA – my tweets feature heavily) – but also there’s a number of people who can never make it to conferences.  There’s a number of reasons why people can’t make it – their school can’t afford the cover; their school / the teacher can’t afford the conference fee; they live or work too far away.  They can, if they want, see what’s going on by catching up with my tweets.

Before the talk started, up came two things that never change at ETA Conferences. The internet was dodgy for those who relied on the uni guest internet (I’m doing a Masters at the uni, so I was ok, thankfully) and the call went out to “not take photos of the slides” unless the presenter was ok with it.  Both of those things for me sum up what frustrates me about the ETA Conference.  Connectivity should be one of the first priorities, so we can tweet, connect and the like.  The idea too that people’s powerpoint slides are somehow state secrets and should not be shared puts a distance between the presenters and the participants.  This is not the ETA’s fault, of course – it’s the fault of an education system that runs on the belief that teaching is a competition and that if people are using your ideas for their own team, then that’s bad.  It’s also predicated on events from many years ago, before the net, when people were actually stealing ideas from presenters and selling them as their own.  Those boundaries have melted due to the net.

Apart from anything else, it’s nearly impossible to stop people taking photos.

Needless to say, I was taking photos throughout the keynote and tweeting about it.  Normally at a conference, I would say that about 20 – 30 people minimum tweet heavily during a keynote – many more the occasional tweet.  At this keynote, there was 1 tweeting heavily, 1 moderately and 3 throwing in the occasional one.  That was it.  I was surrounded with a sea of people evenly split between writing down things on paper and typing their own notes.  That’s why this event was so familiar.  No interaction of ideas, no backchannel discussion, nothing.  Again, this isn’t the doing of the ETA – they sometimes try to whip up some discussion / conversation through their official account.  It’s the culture of English teaching at conferences that likes things the way they are.

The keynote was solid.  I have been to keynotes at ETA Conferences that have engaged with ideas and dreams – the Where We Are and Where Can We Go speech, or sometimes the Where Should We Go ideas talk.  This one was focused on research and its relationship with grammar. Ideas and dreams weren’t really a focus – this wasn’t a TED style talk, for which I was grateful.  It taught us a few very useful things about grammar and had us engaging with Alice in Wonderland in a way that can be applicable outside the room.  It wasn’t, however, just about Classroom Ideas either. It did advocate the usefulness of research as it applies to grammar teaching, which gave the keynote a relevance that was rare in my experience of conference keynotes.

The New HSC in English

Then there was the discussion by Louise Ward of BOSTES of the possibilities for the new HSC course in English.  There were many interesting ideas discussed, but there three that stood out to me.  I will discuss these in a later blog post.

The Presentations

There were two presentations I attended – a sparky, new ideas focused one given by the Odd Couple of Abbotsleigh, Melissa Kennedy and Megan Townes about Poetry and Coding, which was daring to suggest that English and Computing can be friends. It was more than that though, and gave an insight into how poetry can be taught in an age where students have drifted away from loving literature of literature’s sake and other hooks are needed.  It was also – as one would come to expect with Megan and Melissa – had interactive elements and invited teacher involvement in the sharing of ideas.  I always like those kinds of presentations, as I get very easily distracted at workshops and presentations.

The other presentation I attended was made by Lisa Edwards and Rebecca Duncan of Engadine High.  It advocated the need for high schools to build strong curriculum links with feeder primary schools, rather than just pastoral ones. They did this by foregrounding the excellent work being done by the ETA in reconciling the concepts in the new K – 10 National Curriculum with what we do as teachers.  That is why the idea of building curriculum links to primary schools is such a vital and important idea right now. 

If people didn’t attend mine, then hard luck.  You miss out.   As you cry from the genuine feeling of FOMO – here’s the presentation.

What you didn’t see was me discussing my ideas – and inviting the people in the room to contribute their ideas to a communal Google Doc. There were the usual problems with dodgy internet and people not being able to connect, but we got there and there’s some interesting ideas already.  What I am hoping, though, is that my presentation doesn’t just stay inside the room in which I presented.  My fervently expressed hope was that as people go on experimenting with Project Based Learning, they could ask questions and float ideas on that Doc, or to this doc, which discusses problems and goal setting – a PBL Online Support Group, as Michael Murray said in his very generous closing words for my presentation.  That’s exactly what I wanted, because I believe conferences shouldn’t just spark ideas and start people thinking about how to change their classroom practice and then forget everything as soon as they get to their cars.

My gift for presenting was the same as the ones I have received before – this notepad folio.  It’s a curious object from a past era that seems to me to symbolise where the ETA sits in its worldview.

The question I always walk away from these conferences is – how many actually turn to their notepads and computers after conferences?  The challenge I have for myself is – how often will I return to my Storify of the conference and do something with it?

1. All Private Schools Are The Same

Whenever independent schools are discussed, the examples cited to support an abolishing or phasing out of funding (which are the same thing, long term) are the big, high fee independent schools. The ones with rugby fields, their own swimming complexes and the like. The problem is for this argument, however, is that not all independent schools are the same.  The differences between the Kings and Knoxes of this world with places like Qibla and Lakes Christian College is considerable, in terms of facilities, resources and the ability to provide education. Whilst schools like Kings and Knox has outstanding assets to build upon, such as their buildings, reputation and old boys’ networks, the newer, outer suburban independents don’t have such luxuries.  The outer suburban schools tend to never be discussed in such conversations.  This could possibly be that, over the years, inner suburban voices are the ones most aired and heard in education debates and they are the ones who live near big, traditional, heritage independents. 

2. Independent Schools Foster Religious Division and are Discriminatory

This argument is geared mostly around the differences between a secular education facility and a facility based around a religion.  Opponents of faith based schools will often cite anecdotal situations of situations where students and/or teachers have acted in a way deemed contrary to the religious ethos of a school in order to then justify the ending of government funding for all faith based schools.  One of the most contentious battles in that area is centred around attitudes expressed towards homosexuality in both students and teachers, which continues to be a crucial part of our continuing discourse as education systems.  On that issue, for example, I would personally be surprised if gay students felt comfortable in coming out in any school, independent or government, in the outer suburbs of Sydney.  The difficulty of the approach to say that all non government schools are the same in terms of such issues is that all non government schools are being tarred with the anecdotes of a few situations being applied to all.  This is not to downplay the problems faced with a clash of secular beliefs attitudes and those held by faith based schools, but it’s not necessarily as cut and dried as all independent schools being discriminatory. 

Another plank in this argument is that the formulation of faith based schools emphasises religious differences in the community, working against a harmonious society.  The difficulty with this argument is that it downplays and disregards the desire for families to have their children being educated in a school that has a faith based philosophy for education – in that Australia does have a considerable link to a variety of faiths, as with those who observe the Muslim faith, having education linked to that faith is very important to their community.  One of the criticisms of John Howard’s time as Prime Minister was the changing of funding arrangements which allowed smaller, community faith based schools to pop up in the outer suburbs. This allowed, aside from Christian schools to grow, for a proliferation of Islamic schools to be formed, which can be seen to contain a touch of irony when one looks, for example, at a Government not known for its welcoming attitude to refugees from Islamic nations.  There are many Islamic schools who do actively work towards create a harmonious society. I remember vividly the positive attitude being fostered towards the concept of “Australia” as when I visited Qibla College in Minto in order to film a multi-faith documentary. 

In addition, this argument by its philosophical basis excludes independent schools such as Montessori and Steiner schools, which are based on educational philosophies and Reddam House, which is not run by any church organisation.  It also excludes schools like Amity College, which is a secular school with connections with the Turkish community, rather than being an Islamic school, which is the perception people in that community may have, due to the number of Muslim students in the school.   This is not to argue, however, that Reddam House, for example, should necessarily receive government funding.  Just the flaw in the religious division argument. 

3. We Can Be Finland!

One of the more recent arguments against funding independent schools is that they don’t fund them in Finland.  And Finland get good results, so therefore, we can not fund non-government schools and be like Finland.  This argument leaves out that Finland’s success as a school system is not so much related to funding but more about attitudes and educational philosophy. Australian schools, whether they be government or non government, are far removed from Finland in their approach to administration and education.  The Finnish attitude towards standardised testing for example, is vastly different from ours – their assessment schedules aren’t jam packed with high stakes, across the board tests, which is a major bugbear for educators here.   The attitude of teachers towards innovation, too, is considerably different to the many conservative approaches that we see in classrooms.  What Finland did wasn’t just about funding state schools. Theirs was a philosophical change as a system.  When in NSW we see young teachers having to wait up to 10 years for the certainty a permanent position in a government school and teachers with permanent positions being hamstrung by a difficult, unwieldy transfer system, it’s difficult to see how we could become Finland in terms of the connection being built between teachers, students and the system around them.

4. Private Schools Are Just There to Entrench Elite Attitudes

The argument that all independent schools teach “elite” students finds its foundation in the time when that was the case, especially with the larger Protestant schools and independent order Catholic schools such as Riverview and St. Joseph’s. The difficulty with the argument is that independent sector has grown in all kinds of shapes and has filled a need in delivering education outcomes to those who fall between the cracks that exist in public education. 

One of these contemporary realities is with special needs support, especially in the outer suburbs.  Sometimes the public system, despite the outstanding efforts within schools in that system to differentiate and cater for a variety of student needs within their schools, can’t cater for every student need.  It is for this reason Aspect run satellite classes in mostly Catholic systemic schools and some government schools for students on the Autism Spectrum. There’s also independent schools that have specialised programs that also help to educate students who require educational support that public schools in certain areas cannot provide, for a variety of reasons of priorities, challenges and issues specific to region and/or individual schools. These programs are expensive, as they require more teachers and aren’t a way for school systems to make money. Therefore, if funding was abolished or phased out by governments, it could well be these less “economically sound” areas that would be the first to be cut back. 

5. In the End, what should be our priority?

Ultimately, the argument around school funding was well fought and argued through the Gonski review, which settled on the idea that recurrent education funding be sector blind and based on need. In that way, the schools that actually need funding increases – which are largely government schools and a few independents – get that support while the large, well resourced, high fee schools don’t.   The beauty of Gonski was that it sought to bring everyone along on a journey towards a consensus about how schools should be funded.  Australia has far too complex an educational landscape for a more simplistic approach than what was suggested with Gonski.  The argument for Gonski and its relationship to impoverished students attending systemic Catholic schools is outlined very well in this Herald piece of August 23, where Maxine McKew made the argument that it would be “an act of monumental national stupidity” to ignore Gonski’s findings.  I would add that any punitive approach to funding, as is suggested in some political circles, does not take into account the impact on kids across the country.  Such discourses probably should – if we are to take everyone with us for a productive reform of our school funding arrangements. Otherwise, if one of our political parties was to take the no-compromise, punitive approach to funding, that party runs the risk of staying outside the issue and not having a material impact on the outcomes of meaningful education reform. 

And then there’s the idea that perhaps education could be improved in all government and non government schools with forgetting about funding, instead focusing on a changing of philosophy and pedagogical approach in schools. However, that’s perhaps far too complex an idea for most politicians to grapple with.  

I have found over the many years that I teach that I never like to teach the same way each year. Teaching the same material in the same way. That’s partially because I’m easily bored with myself if I repeat what I have done in the time.  If I get bored, then clearly the students will be. Why wouldn’t they be.  So, I changed things up, year after year. Change related texts, pushed for change in the assessment tasks, set informal tasks that change.  This doesn’t mean, however, that I’m ignoring programs and outcomes. I do follow the program in so far as I recognise what areas need to be covered and which outcomes apply to the unit that need to be covered. However, I take that program as a starting point for the flight I will take that lesson – not as the anchor.  Essentially, I do what a number of teachers I know have labelled “reinventing the wheel” when they don’t want to change what they do. 

What I have found, having done this, is that I can really tailor learning activities to the class in front of me. I can notice the different ways each group learns, how they different from previous years, how they differ from each other. I can more easily adapt to changes in society, in perception, in available materials and texts with my method. I can place at the centre of my teaching building relationships and student feedback, because it is that which shapes the way I am teaching the module this time around. 

I know this method isn’t for everyone. There are teachers who like sticking to the same textbook, the same teaching program to the letter from year to year. They like the safety and security of what has gone before.  But that is how I teach and students seem to like it.  For me, it’s got some kind of relationship with idea that successful teaching and building relationship is something like this:

I discovered that in fact that they were selected to be part of the Google Teacher Academy in September. A free event when Google teaches them cool things about the Google suite of tech tools.  Sounds pretty good and useful.  So, I went and read about it and what you needed to do in order to be invited.

In order to get into the select group of 50, one needs to submit a video where you spruik yourself as a leader of learning doing innovative stuff as well as answer short questions – which, I gather is the same thing. Your application is then judged by an unspecified group of people against a set of unspecified criteria. It sounds a bit like a beauty pageant to me, where if you’re not creative enough, or innovative enough, or don’t know the right buzzwords to put in your video, you’re left to ponder why you’re considered not pretty enough by the Google Judges.

This is not to criticise those who put the videos in. I know of many great teachers who have no objection to that and have completed empowering, engaging videos.  It’s more about Google making people jump through such hoops that I question. The idea that we need validation from a corporation. Also, why a rich corporation like Google can’t run a free workshop for anyone who registers.  I can personally think of little else that I would rather do less than make a video telling others how good / creative / innovative a teacher I am.  I also have a strong objection to essentially placing my self esteem in the hands of an unseen, unknown group of Google people.  Therefore, there will be no video from me.

Ultimately, I will miss out on these things:

Educators who attend a Google Teacher Academy become Google Certified Teachers (GCTs). GCTs are:

• Outstanding educators with a passion for using innovative technologies and approaches to improve teaching and learning.
• Creative leaders who understand opportunities and challenges, and have a desire to help empower others in their local community and beyond.
• Ambassadors for change who model high expectations, life-long learning, collaboration, equity, and innovation.

After the GTA, GCTs are expected to positively impact change in their communities through a personal action plan. Other expectations to be announced.

In addition to two free days of training, GCTs get access to a private online community, opportunities to work closely with Google, a special GCT badge and more.

I am gathering the only people who can be GCTs and win the badge are people who have done the “Here I am, Google, Now Judge Me” video and are ready to enact the “positively impact change” thing – as well as being “Ambassadors for Change”. I gather the criteria for this “positively impact” thing will be set by Google for Google’s reasons.  Same goes with the mysterious “private online community”, which seems to be actively trying to create a gap between these GCTs and the rest of us educators.

I really like Google and what they are doing for education – the company has revolutionised the way I teach, gather resources and share them with students. I am able to work on my daily commute purely because of Google. The shared google doc has made collaborative learning a daily reality for the students in my classes. The Google Site has now become the hub for my teaching.  However, this Google Teacher Academy is counter intuitive to the way teachers usually work.  We work as a team, not as individuals grinning at cameras. We aren’t people who like to be the VIPs being ushered through the queue while the rest stand there watching on.

If I did submit a video, it wouldn’t be me talking about myself. It would be this.

The previous four parts of my recount and reflection on my time of being a pseudonym might have turned people off from going away from protected teacher twitter to a place where you are challenged, abused, targeted, insulted and bullied. The upside, however, far outweighed the downsides.

Relationship Building

It was a positive experience to build relationships with a range of people – both famous and non-famous – getting a good idea of what makes people tick and the sort of things that they are interested in on a daily basis. You can develop a well-rounded portrait of others through their Twitter usage that no other text form can provide. It’s often more engrossing than any other text around. Without the pseudonym, I would never have had the freedom to be able to engage on a level where I could feel free to express my views on a range of issues and therefore build in depth relationships.

A Soap Box

I enjoyed the attention that having a pseudonym persona and a few thousand followers could give me. I would be lying if I said that having that attention was a minor, paltry thing. While it made me wary about what I would say to an extent, for the most part, having the attention spurred me on to make comments that would resonate with people and have them think about various issues. It was also great in the later times to be that rare animal, the political tweeter who was also a GWS Giants supporter, being able to promote the bold, crazy brave idea of starting an AFL team deep inside rugby league territory.  It’s also been good to connect with those other brave souls who are supporting the club.

Curated News Source

It was good to become a kind of news sources for people, being able to select the best news, funniest stories, pictures, etc, and retweet them and read responses to them. Or, add my own comment to them, which I eventually did more than just retweet. I also became a useful source to ask about certain issues when people wanted to know things, especially about Western Sydney, music, football. It was good to be helpful.

Fun

It was fun most of the time, looking at the humour that springs up around the issues of the day and various entertainment events. What used to be a lot of fun were the hashtag games, where people would try to outdo each other with puns and cultural references. My personal highlight was creating #bobkatterfacts and seeing that take off.   It was also fun to have conversations and jokes with like minded people. Even better would be reading the conversations of others.

Finding Friends

One place where Twitter has an advantage over every other form of social media is in the ability to discover friends with similar interests, even very obscure ones. I was able to find a range of friends in relation to classical music – even down to having great conversations about Martinu (never heard of him, don’t worry, most people haven’t); to TISM (still my favourite band) and everything in between. I also found a whole group of people to chat to about AFL, which is hard to do in most workplaces and social circles in NSW. Twitter has a way of letting you find all sorts of people that you would not normally be able to find in the real world around each one of us.  I have had so many conversations that I had waited 20 years or more to have.

Being Able To Reach Out

There’s a lot of unhappy people on Twitter, as you find out the longer you hang around and make solid friendships. It’s often a tool for expressing anger, upset, anxiety and there’s always ears ready to listen when needed. In that, it’s a valuable tool, even if laced with the problem that there might be judgemental people ready to write people off and make a hurtful comment. Fortunately, however, the block and ignore function is easy enough to use on such occasions – asking for a helpful ear is a way of discovering just who the good people are.

There was also a chance for me to help lonely people at New Years’ Eve and Christmas Day with starting the #nyeathome hashtag and being amongst those who started the #xmasathome hashtag, which provided people with a chance to connect to others who might be also at home, alone on such days. Some of the comments and reactions I read in relation to those made me appreciate the medium and its potential. Also made me happy to be able to help with whatever crazy ideas come from my head.

Long Term Real World Friends

I am grateful to the range of friends I have made on Twitter. Tweetups are excellent and I highly recommend them. There have been a few negative experiences, which can happen with any social interaction, but for the most part tweetups are excellent because you already know each other’s views and background before you have even met. So the tweetup gives you a chance to forget the small talk and plunge straight into meaningful conversations. I have gained many sweet, fantastic, joyful, supportive friends through the pseudonym’s life and I hope to maintain those friendships for many years into the future. Most of these friends have small followings and may not tweet all that much, but that doesn’t matter in the end. Not everyone is as mad and frenetic as me on Twitter, which is probably a good thing.

Walking Away

I have contemplated walking away from the persona encased in my pseudonym many times. I feel a pressure, anxiety, concern whenever I go online and start reading my timeline or tweet. I get annoyed when people are rude, abusive, arrogant, haughty, dismissive. I get easily bored with repetitious political fights, twitter storms. I get tired of my own sometimes irrational, often emotive responses to things that shouldn’t get to me, such as being ignored. As wiser heads tell me – and I understand in my more reflective moments, there’s no need for people to respond to you – it’s their life, their account, they can do whatever they like with it. I just get tired of it and the emotions these kinds of things create within me.

What has stopped me from walking away in the past are the friendships I have built up over the time – though the closest friends will connect with me on Facebook and a real me Twitter account. Having walked away from the pseudonym for the last week, however, I have also missed the interactions and fun element encased in the interactions I have had, but mostly the interactions of others. It’s very entertaining when you follow enough people who can conduct crackers of conversations. It is probably that reason that will bring me back to using the pseudonym – to be able to engage and interact with a range of interesting, great, warm and lovely people. Losing that would be a greater pain than the minor annoyances I feel. The breaks I will intend to take, though, will be important. I need to manage the way I use it, to realise how I will react before things happen. In other words, I will just have to learn to get over myself. Also, the breaks will allow time to not be plugged into what appears at times to be like The Matrix – this other world of appearances, fast pace, mechanical interactions and glittering lights.

But really, it isn’t really the Matrix, even if Keanu Reeves appears a fair bit and there’s a heap of wannabe Morpheus figures about. It’s a lot funnier than the Matrix, a lot warmer and welcoming if you just relax and enjoy the experience.

The teacher Twitter network is a very pleasant, almost protected environment where the mood and tone is often overwhelmingly positive, friendly and gentle. Argument is rare, as are genuinely rebellious figures.  When I left that environment and plunged into regular, general Twitter, I was in for a shock. Many of them, really. Here are some of the pitfalls of getting involved in everyday political Twitter.

Pitfall One – Never ending arguments on #Auspol

One thing you experience fairly early on political streams such as the #auspol stream is that there are never ending arguments about the same topics, conducted by the same people, though with many new additions and a few subtractions. They are shouting at each other, megaphones in hand, over a ditch that will never be crossed. The users behind the accounts almost never stray into regular, everyday twitter and actually engage with people on a reasonable, rational level. They just like to shout – often in caps.

Every so often I would plunge back into Auspol to see how it was going, but really it was like Neighbours or EastEnders – it never changes, except the technology improves slightly. Whilst in 2010, it was articles and words that were retweeted, in 2014, the tweets were filled with unflattering pictures of either major party leader / various members of a parliamentary party with words written on them. These were either memes or meme fails (depending on who you talked to).

The pitfall is that for the uninitiated, they would be offended and puzzled by this never ending argument and might believe that “that is Twitter”. Certainly, media outlets that like to have articles about Twitter, they like to highlight the kind of abuse and insults that go with the territory of the #auspol tweeters. Best thing to do is pretend they don’t exist.

Pitfall Two – Twitter Storms

Twitter storms are an almost daily occurrence on Twitter and aren’t all that hard to start. These are the type of things where a whole range of people are outraged about something and need to complain about it on Twitter. A lot of the time, they are justified, but often times they aren’t. It’s hard for new time users to pick that difference, however. They usually go something like this:

• Someone famous has tweeted something offensive / silly / rude OR
• There’s been a picture that has been offensive / shocking OR
• There has been an opinion piece on Fairfax or News Limited that has offended / shocked / outraged (Chris Kenny, Sam De Brito, Miranda Devine, Paul Sheehan, Piers Akerman, Mia Freedman and Gerard Henderson are often in this category) OR
• Eddie McGuire has been Eddie McGuire OR
• People in the Government / other political party have said something considered to be offensives, shocking, etc OR
• Catherine Deveny or Helen Razer have written something contrarian and sharp edged

It’s then you have people arguing, shouting and the like – partially because there’s always someone on both sides. They die down after a few hours and rarely go into the next day – except if there’s people who are a day late to the news and reignite it because they missed out on the outrage. These twitter storms can be considered a bit of a pitfall, because they are ultimately a bit pointless and a waste of energy and passion. However, they do also act as a form of entertainment unrivalled by shouting at a sexist episode of Two and a Half Men. (Are there non sexist episodes?)

It’s not hard to be dragged into such Twitter storms and have one’s words misunderstood and misinterpreted. It also had the effect of draining one’s evening relaxation time with pointless, endless battles about tiny points. This happened to me a fair amount and so after a while I learnt the art of realising that my contributions would not help, but might well fan the flames. Mind you, it can be fun to fan flames with a well placed comment or two, especially if you have a decent number of followers, so I did indulge from time to time.

Pitfall Three. The Political Groups 

There are groups of twitter users who do tend to gravitate towards each other and will attack in groups if you express particular political and/or social views. This isn’t a “conspiracy”, it’s out in the open. As a result, to provide an example, if you express the view that the Israel army shouldn’t be bombing Gaza, there’s a group of users from various nations who will criticise you and accuse you of being a Hamas supporter – even if you have said that you think Hamas’ actions aren’t helping anyone in the situation. I experienced this each time I expressed that kind of opinion – so I can understand what kind of response that the Herald columnist Mike Carlton received. The problem for Carlton was that he didn’t just do what most experienced twitter users do and block and ignore. He bit back, which is what these people want. They can then go to a rival media organisation and show the evidence. Right now, that group can claim a “victim” of their campaign.

The same goes, however, if you express views about either political side that supports something they do. I have also seen this happen to journalists who have just written an article or completed an interview on TV – groups of people attacking them for perceived bias, and no matter how reasonable the responses can be, there will be no backing down by the groups.

It happened to me because my first AusVotes piece was critical of the people who continually shout the same things with their Twitter accounts and attack journalists rather than being reasonable and balanced with their critiques. For over a year, I had people attack me for suggesting that their tactics run the risk of watering down their message and scare off undecided voters and new Twitter users. The problem is that they get a fixed image of what you are like and what you think and you can’t disabuse them of that image. So if I experience those kind of group attacks, it just becomes easier to block, ignore and move on.

Pitfall Four – The Lack of Respect and Forums for Pseudonyms

There’s a lot of people using pseudonyms on Twitter. There’s a variety of reasons for them as well. These include:

• The Cowards. People who attack and swear behind the cover of a Twitter pseudonym because they haven’t the guts to own their abuse and attacks.
• The Professionals. People like me who have to adopt a pseudonym as to separate work life from personal life.
• Comedy Accounts. Either fake celebrities / politicians or fake departments that are funny (eg. Rudd 2000) or not (most of the others)

The problem is, many on Twitter, especially journalists, are wary of people who adopt pseudonyms and assume that all of them are in the coward category. It’s also a convenient cover if such people are losing arguments, I’ve found. “You’re just an anonymous troll, why should I respond to you?” is a common response from such people. You will also find that most media organisations will not publish work by someone who prefers to use a pseudonym, which makes it hard for people who might want to write about something for such outlets, but may feel constricted by their workplace’s social media policy.

This does mean, however, that people with a pseudonym have to find other ways of expressing themselves, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. People wishing to go down my path, however, should be aware of these limitations and perceptions.

Pitfall Five – The “Enemies”

I found it interesting the image that people had of me on Twitter – opinions were formed because they didn’t see my image or had not met me. If that was a negative image, it was near impossible to shift it, which did annoy me.  There were people out there who considered themselves my enemy.

There were a number of reasons why I had these people who didn’t like me, in retrospect. First of all, in my time of having the account, I became a Greens supporter and tweeted support for their policies and criticism of the policies of other parties. I did, however, also tweet criticism of some Greens policies because I’ll never be an entirely partisan warrior – I can’t make myself into that.

I also did say quite a few silly and wrong things, made many mistakes. In addition, because I had developed a fairly sizeable ego in my time with the account, I found it hard to back down and admit to a mistake, especially if I knew that people would crow over me for having admitted a mistake. Sometimes, for people, Twitter is a Win / Lose game, when really, I have realised, it shouldn’t be.

A classic case of the concept of creating enemies was when a Labor supporter with some 6,000 followers decided that he loathed me enough that he created a parody account. This paraody account gained followers that had tweeted insults towards me for some time – mostly Labor supporters. I naturally was both appalled and fascinated. Essentially, I could tell that through what he was tweeting, he decided that I was the following:

• A “social climber” because I criticised “bogans” in the community that on the one hand were accepting middle class welfare and on the other were criticising poor welfare recipients and asylum seekers. Apparently, however, criticising people like that showed that I was actually a bogan but pretending otherwise (?)
• Pretentious because I tweeted support for Australia microbrewers
• Pretentious because I liked the cricketer Ed Cowan because not only was he a good player, but also intelligent
• An unoriginal plagiariser because I deconstructed the articles of others in my blog
• Pretentious because I supported the Greens and never criticised them

Some of the tweets were pretty nasty and I was initially offended and wanted to call him out for his ways. I was also hurt that there were many Twitter users I liked and respected that were following him and clearly enjoying his work. It was made clear to me by other, wiser users, however, that the calling out wasn’t necessary or would be a particularly good look for me. In addition, it was becoming clear to me that he would see that biting back as a victory. As a result, I looked at the account with a more circumspect attitude. I realised that he quickly ran out of material and so mostly used the account to retweet more pictures of an awkward Tony Abbott with some words scrawled on them. I was feeling in the end that I could have done a much better job satirising me, possibly because he had stopped reading my tweets sometime back in 2011.

Pitfall Six – Ego and the Hip Tweeps

When you gain more than a thousand followers – some of who are people you see on TV, read in the paper and the like, you run the risk of developing an oversized ego. Well, I ran the risk and did develop such an ego. I still saw myself as some teacher from nowhere who was suddenly being listened to and having my tweets appear on all sorts of TV and radio shows. It made me arrogant and big headed often, when I look back at it.

As a result, I would be easily hurt / offended / affronted if interesting people with similar follower counts to me wouldn’t respond to me or follow me back. I realise now that this was fairly egotistical and narcissistic of me, especially in terms of people following back. The non-responding thing irked me for longer, because I thought it was rude. I always responded back to people who were friendly or had some intelligent criticism to offer. I just think social media is social, not a soap box or broadcast platform. In addition, I’m just some person in the street, just like the people responding to me.

I realise now that it’s the same thing with Twitter as it is in any public place, be that a school playground or workplace. There’s the hip ones with their own language and ways of being and the rest of us on the outside, observing or – even better, finding our own cool people to be with. The main difference is that ones who consider themselves hip will not respond to those considered to be worth chatting to.   I see this now as an integral part of Twitter and I would suggest to anyone considering a time on general Twitter to not really worry about expecting polite and respectful attitudes from a range of people – more be pleasantly surprised if people do respond to you in a genuine and warm manner.

There’s also a cautionary note about making comments about the more widely known hip members of Twitter – there’s a strong possibility that you might attract a bit of negative attention from their friends and admirers. I experienced this first hand a number of times, but once with a quite strong reaction.

There was a time when I ran for local council, for a variety of reasons, mostly as a favour to the local Greens, because there weren’t a lot of people putting their had up for the opportunity. Plus, I thought it would be an interesting process. It was, but I wasn’t too devastated that I didn’t win – I knew that I was a very low profile candidate and wasn’t driven by a desire to become an elected politician. I met politicians during the campaign and did not want to become a smile, a title and a shake of the hand. I did somewhat regret not winning on one level, though – my father wanted to be a councillor – he was driven by a desire to help local people, but he didn’t want to join a political party in order to get in – he wanted to be an independent. It was one of those things we never got to plan, however, with his death at the age of 69. The council election brought those thoughts back to me, especially as during the campaign, my mother passed on.

I was going through this mixture of regret, mourning, pain and relief when one night I questioned an assertion by one of the more hip members of Twitter. He bit back with a set of insults relating to the size of my defeat in the council election. A friend of his came in too and twisted the virtual knife with comments about my loss. Considering that I didn’t make reference to my campaign on Twitter – I was always very careful to separate my real self from my pseudonymous self – I was shocked and a bit wounded. It opened up a range of buried thoughts and feelings I had managed to suppress in relation to the election, including those related to my father. It didn’t help that I could not respond without getting insulted more, or have another person come in – the girlfriend of the second insulter – to justify and defend the actions of the other two. So I just gave up, blocked them all and almost walked away from Twitter altogether.

I know it all sounds a bit low level and minor now – and I probably overreacted at the time. But I did not want the virtual character to have an impact on what I was doing in my real life. I also knew I could not really explain myself and felt vulnerable and it was a deeply unpleasant experience. It also made me resentful towards the first person, who was widely liked and respected on Twitter. That made him pretty much invulnerable for public criticism, as I discovered at a later stage, when, after making a criticism in a conversation to someone else, one of his supporters (who did not follow me nor had ever talked to me) publicly rebuked and insulted me in a flurry of nasty tweets. These tweets were later Storified and laughed about by others. Any response from me was belittled and laughed at by a number of people. It was pretty horrible and there seemed to be no-one willing to support me publicly against the attacks.

It was, however, a useful experience because it taught me the wisdom involved with assessing who it is that are pretty much impervious to criticism and also the worthiness of picking one’s battles. I also learnt later from others that they had had similar problems with “pile-ons” from various people who were friends on and off Twitter.

Eventually, however, as with many Twitter storms, it was all settled as the originator of the insult apologised to me in person some 18 months after and was genuine in his regret. It didn’t take me much time to accept it – I knew it wasn’t all that big a deal, it was a throwaway line from him and he didn’t have a clue about what I was going through away from Twitter. That is one of the bigger pitfalls of things like Twitter arguments – we don’t know oftentimes what is going on in the lives of people away from the screens and perhaps we do more damage with offhanded comments than we can ever know.

The ultimate pitfall is the battle one does with any anxiety that can build up with any social interaction that requires responses from people that you don’t see physically. While that form of interaction has many, many upsides (which I will be covering in the next part), it does leave you vulnerable to the perception of being judged by an unseen Snark Squad, ready to put you down for not being hip enough. That is why one should be prepared for a bit of ego battering and battles with anxiety along the way. As I will explore in the next post, it’s worth the slings and arrows.

Part 5. The Upside and Glories of Everyday Twitter