Who is Sam Brooker?

No to National!

2012-05-25T20:00:00.002+12:00

The National government will introduce these initiatives to our education system in a bid to save a miserly $43 million dollars annually and, in my opinion, severely disadvantage our children:

- Increase class sizes from a flexible ratio of between 1:23 - 1: 29 to an enforced 1:27.5 ratio minimum. This will, for the majority of schools, mean that your child will have less one to one time with the teacher, increase teacher workload thereby leaving less time for the children and ensure that schools have to let teachers go. Thinking about two schools in particular and based on student-staff ratios now with 20 classes, one will lose 1.25 teachers and the other 3.

- The $43 million surplus will most certainly be used to fund "performance pay" for teachers with the only way of judging high performance being through standardized testing. For anybody unfamiliar with this kind of testing, it might be said that the only thing of importance for a teacher is the children in their class passing a test so they get a bonus. It becomes less about the child and more about the money. It also creates the problem of competitiveness amongst teachers instead of collaboration and schools being judged on solely on their results from these tests.
"Schools being judged on their results?", you say. "What's wrong with that?"
What happens if your school is a decile one school, traditionally performs poorly because of the children's backgrounds and other things outside of the teachers control? That's not fair and hard-working teachers trying to make a difference to children's lives are unfairly labelled.

- Specialist teacher budgets, namely technology teachers (woodwork, home economics etc) in intermediate schools will be cut. Who needs practical skills these days anyway?

- Maori immersion schools will be exempt from the proposed class size changes because "Proportionately immersion schools are more successful in raising Maori achievement than mainstream and we do not want to impair that progress."
Hekia Parata, Education Minister, stated this today but has she taken into consideration the fact that these schools have class sizes considerably smaller than in mainstream schools? Is it therefore a complete contradiction to the changes? This seems unfair to other minority groups and indeed to the children considered less at risk than Maori students.

There's more but this is all I can bring myself to write at this point. Why do all this when New Zealand education is ranked first equal with Australia, Finland and Denmark on the Education Index (published by the United Nations based on adult literacy rates) and has 82% of students gaining at least a Level 1 qualification in NCEA?

Join my Facebook group to support our kids and not the National government!

Class size matters John, particularly to the students that struggle the most.

Have we become a society of selfishness?

2012-04-25T17:23:00.000+12:00

It's one of the most important days on New Zealand's calendar. On April 25th 1915, the ANZACs landed at Gallipoli, Turkey with the intention to open the Dardanelles, an important allied shipping route during WWI. Many soldiers died during the landing and over the eight month campaign approximately 10,000 allied soldiers died including 2700 Kiwis and about 8500 Australians.

Nowadays the day seeks to commemorate and recognise all New Zealand and Australian soldiers that fought in any overseas conflict including both World Wars, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afganistan, Iraq etc. We all get a day off to remember those that sacrificed everything for us.

So it really bugs me when people can't even get off their asses and get to a service on the morning of April 25th for an hour out of their day. Even sparing an hour is too hard for some. There's always an excuse. It's pitiful and selfish. I know that if I were to miss an ANZAC service, I would be riddled with guilt.

Have we become a society so selfish that not even the deaths and sacrifices made by our ancestors are not important anymore?

Lest we forget.

On twitter...

2012-03-07T17:53:00.000+13:00

I came across a tweet the other day that put the Facebook vs. Twitter discussion in perfect perspective. Unfortunately I can't recall who posted the tweet. Ironic I guess because the tweet said something along the lines of, "Facebook is for the people you knew at high school, Twitter is for the people you wish you knew at high school."

For me the statement is 100 percent true. Most of the "friends" I have on Facebook are people I would consider to be actual friends while most of the "followers" I have on Twitter are people I wouldn't know if I bumped into them in the street, but would like to meet; with the odd exception on both platforms of course.

It's a relatively knew pastime for me. It's highly addictive and its fun. There is no doubt that my main focus on Twitter is marketing and promotion but I really enjoy reading other peoples posts, linking into blogs and posts and following the trends for that day.

I have to say however that I do get sick of the same self-promotional tweets from people I follow, over and over again so I try to limit my promotional tweets to one or two a day leaving just a link to my website on anything else that I post. I figure that if I skim over other peoples self-promotion, they will likely do that to me if I was to keep whacking out the same old, "read my book" tweets.

Don't get me wrong, it might work and I have tried a couple of things but quickly put paid to those. An example was when I tried out using Tweetadder, a downloadable programme that posts tweets for you on a regular basis without you having to do anything but surf the net. It seemed like a good plan until one of my loyal followers and an acquaintance outside of Twitter told me that I was becoming a "bot" in reference to my robot-like tweets. Four days of Tweetadder was enough. It didn't move my book sales along anymore than my regular tweeting had done so I gave it the flick.

Twitter can be a good promotional tool when used in the right way. People want to know there's a real person behind every 140 character message.

Thoughts?

FREE COPY of Emotion (a Sam Brooker thriller)

2012-01-31T10:01:00.000+13:00

Everyone loves something FREE and so I'm offering five copies of my novel Emotion (a Sam Brooker thriller) for FREE to the first five visitors to this blog.

All you have to do is be one of the first five people to put your email address in the comments section of this post and I will gift you a copy.

Of course there are a couple of conditions -

1. You must be able to receive the Kindle edition of this book via your Kindle Reader, Kindle for iPhone or iPad/tablet or Kindle for PC.

2. You must provide a review for the book on the Amazon website and on your blog if you have one.

3. Tell your friends about the book if you liked it.

That's it. It's that simple for you to enjoy a book that was the #1 New Zealand thriller on Amazon Kindle for five days and one which is still in the top 10.

Enjoy.

Rhys Chamberlain

On fear...

2011-12-23T16:11:00.001+13:00

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear... And when it is gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear is gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

- Frank Herbert (American science fiction author and writer 1920-1986)

Amy Winehouse and Justice

2011-07-27T15:04:00.001+12:00

The death of Amy Winehouse from a concoction of mind and body altering pills, powder and other substances got me thinking about why she was unable to be helped or whether in-fact anybody actually tried to help her. Of course, people say they did, but what people say and what people do is a totally different thing as most right-minded human beings know.

Her demise got me thinking about other people in her predicament or in a worse one and whether the crimes they commit when under the influence should be judged in the same degree as a person who commits a crime when their thoughts are not rationalised by drugs. It's a difficult train of thought and I think that, overall, the justice system here in New Zealand is too soft on offenders, especially with regard to more serious crimes. At this point some criminals get a slap on the hand and told to go and "rehab" with a second chance. But often it's not a second chance, it's more like a third or fourth chance and the amount of serious re-offences by criminals on parole is just not good enough. The big question is though; what can we do about it? I don't want to sit on the fence about the death penalty but I'm going to because that form of punishment has a number of pros and cons. For instance, if a criminal under the influence of methamphetamine commits a murder, then I tend to lean towards the fact that the offender was not in his/her right mind and obviously hasn't been helped by anyone and so why should they die? But someone like Clayton Weatherston, the man who killed his girlfriend by stabbing her 230 odd times, needs something more severe than 20 years in prison.

In some ways I'd like to thing that the death penalty should be bought back for serious crimes but that each case be judged on its events and the person sentenced accordingly. Was this person in their right mind? But in other ways I can see the huge problems associated with bringing it back like the major one; is this person guilty beyond reasonable doubt? I don't know. It's certainly a tough one but I know one thing, crime would go down substantially if it was reintroduced.

As for Amy Winehouse, she didn't get the help she needed and as a consequence, the World has lost one of the great artists.

An Emotional Journey

2011-07-18T16:28:00.001+12:00

It started way back in 2004 on my first night in a Paharganj hotel named Namaskar in the heart of Old Delhi. To get to the place I had to weave my way through the masses of people, cars and cows to reach the little alleyway that the place was situated. The entrance to the alleyway had a fruit stall on one side of it with all kinds of shining, delectable, delicacies available and on the other, an open latrine which made me gag as I noticed the run off from it edging towards my shoes and the stink stinging my nose. My room was a concrete block with no windows and a bucket for washing. The good thing was that, along with impeccable service, the place had a tiny, one man balcony that looked right out over Delhi. As I sat out there marvelling I had an urge. I needed to write this down. It was the only way I was ever going to be able to explain it to anybody when I eventually got home.

I guess that's how I fell into writing really. I was never really interested in writing at school although I was an avid reader despite a gap through my late teens for obvious reasons. The book idea came to me in about 2007 after I had had numerous attempts at writing other novels and had given up because they were what I would term...crap. Crime thrillers had been a favourite of mine for sometime because I loved the constant suspense and drama involved. It made me want to read and read and read. I thought to myself, if I love reading them, then why couldn't I write one? It would be all of the things that I've loved to read rolled into one. So that's what I did. I started to write.

Now I don't know about other writers but I didn't really draft up a plan for my book in the literal sense. I mean the basis of what I wanted to write I had stored in my head. I knew I needed a central character that everyone, not necessarily liked, but could sympathise with, and an antagonist that everyone despised. I also felt that I needed to have something a little different in my story so added a school teacher and an exotic location (Auckland, New Zealand), into the mix. The other thing I decided upon was that it had to have short chapters. It could be a male thing, but I like short chapters. I like knowing that in just a couple more pages I will finish the chapter and I can turn the light out. I hate leaving my book in the middle of a chapter. So I went with short chapters and none of my chapters are more than about four pages long. And I went from there. As the story developed, more and more ideas flooded into my head and I got more and more engrossed. I found out that I could just zone out of everything that was happening around me. Some days I belted out 1000 words. Other days I wrote one line.

Because I was a teacher, not a police detective or a sadistic killer, it meant I had to do some research which...

Kids and their Cliques

2011-07-10T14:35:00.001+12:00

I remember when I was thirteen.

It was all about where you fitted in, only, you didn't actually know that this was what it was all about and what you were trying to achieve.

There was the rugby heads, the skaters, the homies, the nerds, the goths, the emos etc. And then there were the in-betweens. The kids who didn't really fit anywhere. The kids who just kind of floated in and out of different groups. It was hard. You needed to find a place where you felt you belonged and felt respected.

I have to say that eventually I slotted in with the sporty kids. I was kind of lucky because I was reasonably good with a ball so most things came naturally. But before I found my place, before I found out where I belonged in the Teenage World, I experienced what it's like if you are one of those in-betweens.

It was my first week of high school. Two incidents stand out.

It was lunchtime (everything goes down at lunchtime) and I sat with the other newbies. Before I knew it all out war was being raged between the older kids and us in-betweens. I remember cowering behind my chair while all sorts of food groups went flying past my head. Apples, half-eaten sandwiches and what not. But while I was contemplating a plan for escape, I got hit. It hit me right in the thigh. It was a square of chocolate covered muesli bar which, at the time, felt like it had been frozen first, in expectation of causing damage to a newbie. It hurt. Man did it hurt. I fought back tears as I continued to cower. I can't recall how the rest of the afternoon went down but that incident has stuck with me.

The second event happened at break time. I was standing at the urinal minding my business when I'm grabbed by the scruff of my neck and my face is stuffed to within inches of the toilet flow. This is the only thing I recall about this particular event apart from the fact that I know my face didn't get wet. Maybe I was saved. Maybe something stopped this guy from going any further. I don't know. What I do know is that once I found my clique, had some friends, had some respect, these things stopped happening.

Now that I'm a teacher I see these types of things everyday although possibly not to the same scale as things went down then.

Everybody needs to feel safe. Everyone needs respect. It just takes time to find out who you are and where you fit. Sometimes you can't do it by yourself. Sometimes, you need help.

2011-07-04T22:21:00.000+12:00

Who is Sam Brooker?