Some good things happened at school recently that have borne out my decades-long advocacy of selecting texts that meet the students’ needs, interests and abilities rather than falling back on The Canon and what we think is both Good For Them and in our comfort zone as teachers. I share a pretty disengaged Year 10 class with my HT. We decided to teach @claire_zorn’s One Would Think the Deep this term, and it was such a great choice. When my HT read them the first couple of chapters in class, she said you could have heard the proverbial pin drop.

A couple of years ago I weeded this book from the school library, but not before I took some photos of. Then I forgot about the photos until I had to clear space on my phone. Here, for your tweeting pleasure, are some of the greatest hairstyles of the 90s. #hairstylefile I like to call this one the Sydney Opera House, although it was tempting to start the whole NSW V Victoria Scallops war again...

My final observation on teaching from home before return to school on Monday. As you will remember, schools were reassured several times about the need for consistency and an ability to plan ahead. So in good faith that's what we did. Executive staff put in ridiculous hours... planning what school would look like based on dates that shifted several times. So every time that happened, everything had to be re-organised. The new Premier's unilateral decision to bring us back a week early, released to the media first, of course, less than 24 hours

Saw my sister, niece and niece’s partner for the first time today in months. Lovely vegan lunch, wonderful to catch up, then sister and I went for a long walk. Now feet are killing me. Orthotic walking shoes hurting more than helping. 😭 We went to the local dog park and watched the shenanigans, although it got a bit too serious at one point and a poor, anxious corgi got picked up and shook by a big dog who smelt its fear. I like dogs but things can go very bad very quickly.

I thought people might appreciate a bit of an insight into how things are for teachers during lockdown. Please note this is just my personal experience, and is not a whinge or a plea for sympathy. I am fine, but it's hard, and all kinds of things are out of our control. My load this year is 3 days English, 2 days library. At the start of lockdown, I had just one class (Year 8) that I didn't share at least one period with other teachers. My HT and I share a Year 9 and a Year 10 class, and I had one or two periods of other people's Year 8 classes.

All day I have been listening to experts talk about the pros and cons of closing schools. Not a SINGLE ONE has mentioned the health and well-being of the teachers and admin and other adult staff who keep schools open every day. They talk about how children are not at risk, but neglect to consider the risk to the adults who work in schools who may be pregnant, immune-compromised, diabetic, asthmatic, with any number of health issues that allow them to work, but make them vulnerable to COVID-19.

Following this thread from earlier in the term, I'm continuing to do book talks to promote wide reading with English classes from various grades. (3 in one day on Monday! Phew!) Talking one-on-one to the kids about their reading habits (or lack thereof) is proving very revealing.

https://twitter.com/msmisrule/status/1225001797221093378

I'm really explicit with the kids about why reading for pleasure is important, but also with the Year 10s I really hammer home that if they do not start right now building up their focus and attention soan, their reading muscles, then they are going to be at a huge disadvantage.

I am spending the last few hours of the decade/year/whatever it is watching Springsteen on Broadway and listening to my Twitter notifications go off. My mum is home from hospital; a friend has lost her house. I am depressed and worried but I go forth into 2020... with a determination to be the best teacher, daughter, sister, friend, feminist and advocate I can be. Also mother of cats, carer of a dying garden and reader and writer. Let us come together and work for better times. Let’s follow Bruce’s advice and take care of our own.

I'm still working on the section of my thesis dedicated to Nan Chauncy's 1960 time slip novel, Tangara, and have am writing about a scene in which she explicitly marks Whiteness as dangerous to Aboriginal people. Chauncy describes the white faces of two convicts looking down on a group of Aboriginal people in a gully. Chauncy explicitly contrasts their white faces with the "terrified brown faces" of the Aboriginal people who the convicts will shortly slaughter for food.

Just had a student, who finds reading a challenge, return 90 Packets of Instant Noodles by @DebFitzpatrick2, telling me he was able to focus on it & read the whole book, and how much he loved it. Now I have to find another one just like it! I taught this boy a couple of years ago, and the fact that he has read and loved an entire novel by himself, without "having to" for class, is a huge achievement. I'm keenly nervous to find a great book for him to follow up. I'm thinking maybe one by Nick Earls. @nickearls

Well, this is exciting. I am going to be presenting a paper as part of the academic stream of the Historical Novel Society of Australasia Conference. My paper will be on my research to date on the Australian children’s time slip fantasy. #ahnsa #phdchat The conference theme is History Repeats, which is perfect for the aspect of my thesis that looks at how Australian time slip set outside of cities is primarily interested in how time on Country is iterative rather than chronological.

Here's the thing about people objecting to recastings of fairy tales with non-white, or disabled, or otherwise reimagined protagonists: they know little and care less about the long, cross-cultural and robust history of those tales. (I'm leaving side the racism inherent in their reactions for the moment, because it's so screamingly obvious in every tweet they make, and other people have demolished their claims of "I'm not a racist but..." far more effectively than this white woman could. #morepowertothem )

We knew America had tested the limits of its moral boundaries, and failed, when it accepted the murders of 5 year olds in their classroom as something they could do morning about. I feel exactly the same way about the Pell apologists. Abbott. Howard. Brennan. Devine. Bolt. & the rest. Now we see them unequivocally for who they are (as if we did not know). There should be no coming back for any of them from this precipice of moral bastardry. It will be our reckoning as a nation as to whether or not we let them.

My oldest friend, since we were 7, has recently moved house. She just sent me a photo of a letter she found when she was unpacking. I wrote it when my family moved away from Sydney to Canberra. I said to her, wouldn’t 14 years old us be pleased to know we’re still friends. Linda and I went on to lead very different lives and be very different people, but we treasure this nearly half-century of friendship very dearly. There’s something very comforting about having someone in your life apart from family who has always known you.

I'm currently writing about Patricia Wrightson's last novel, Shadows of Time. #phdlife There are two child protagonists; one white, one Aboriginal. Wrightson doesn't give the male Aboriginal child a name, because he won't share his true with the white girl. So she (the girl child) calls him Boy, refusing to use the alternative name her offers her. Now, we all know about the pejorative use of the word Boy when applied to black males, and even if (BIG if) Wrightson wasn't aware of it in the mid 90s, I'm stuck with having to use it.