September 27th 2008 Bulletin

A whole year has passed since my last bulletin. For me it’s been a year of constant teaching, learning and reading. Glancing through the new HSC syllabus I discovered that – guess what – I have even more books to read! At present I’m half way through Michael Ondaatje’s novel In the Skin of a Lion and at least six others, and by way of an admission, I must say I found Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story like wading through mud in thongs, despite it being my third or fourth White experience.  Oh I’m still a White fan, but a slightly more wary one; it really put me on my mettle, and I confess the main character’s descent into madness served at times to remind me of my own.

Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time is going to be a big hit. A popular duet, I predict, will be Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Blade Runner. But would someone please throw The Fiftieth Gate off the end of the jetty?

It’s been a surprising year too, spiced with startling discoveries. An Advanced English student admitted to me, about a term before crunch time, that she hadn’t read a single text and wasn’t intending to. She had based all of her preparation on things like Spark Notes. That’s not the surprising bit as it’s both common knowledge and practice; but she had the audacity to ask me if I thought she was Band 5 or Band 6 material! The student isn’t solely to blame for this state of mind however. Shouldn't the system and the pressurizing parents take some of the wrap?

HSC Exam fever is upon us again, with three weeks to go to Paper 1, so I have to keep this brief. In case I don’t get the chance again before it’s all over –

GOOD LUCK TO ALL MY YEAR 12’S – BREAK A LEG – AS THEY SAY IN SHOW BIZ ! HAVE CONFIDENCE IN YOUR ABILITY AND SHOW IT TO THEM.

July/October 07 Bulletin
October has arrived!

He runs screaming from the room clutching his head – dramatically!

Ironically, the drama class which I mentioned in my last bulletin has not yet eventuated although it still may. To forward the cause I've just finished writing an adaptation of  Sophocles' 'Oedipus the King'. It's not too bad really! I just need a cast to perform it! Any offers?

Reading, which keeps me sane at most times, is driving me a little insane at present. Hamlet, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice are all rolling around in my head at once! I’m half-way through Wild Swans, have just finished Emma and a re-read of Wuthering Heights. Last week I squeezed in Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s Tale and its appropriated film version A Simple Plan.

Students in pre-exam fever are sending me their essays or essay introductions. I collapse into my swivel chair late in the evening only to find myself writing a response to yet another creative piece for Paper 1 Section II before going to bed. The purchase of some PDF software has made it a lot easier to send students’ work back as email attachments with comments and suggestions. I have to be careful to not just proof-read or over-correct – something tutors sometimes do – but which I don't. I’ve picked up some pretty scary stories this term. The parents of one Year 11 student (who attends a prestigious private school) were concerned that all of his/her class mates were getting their English assessment tasks proof-read by their tutors before submitting them for marking. I was therefore expected to do the same in order to give their child a fair chance and remain competitive among his/her peers. I was appalled and communicated my feelings to them.  Surprise surprise – one week later I was dropped as their tutor.  Even though self-righteous indignation isn’t all that great a feeling, it still feels better than its opposite number which, like the student, shall remain nameless. Wishing them luck in their search for a better tutor and referring them to the BOS link ‘All My Own Work’ – I walked out of the front gate. This leads me to a closely related issue.

One of the traps, I’ve found, which students can fall into, is thinking that a model essay (for example the Paper 1 Journeys essay) can be pre-written, memorized and then just tweaked a little to make it fit the topic when in the exam room. This is mostly untrue. A quick read of the Markers’ Notes from any of the Past Exam Papers (eg 2006 Paper 1) will reveal that the most high-scoring students were those who responded most closely to the topic; something which you cannot know until you see the paper on the day. This year’s HSC exam experience has re-affirmed, for me, the right approach students should take towards this problem, that is, the problem of how to prepare for unknown essay topics. It’s simply this (and by the way I will continue to adopt this approach in 2008) - practise breaking down likely topics into their components parts, defining and expanding upon those parts, then linking them to the techniques (the how) of the texts. It’s better to become good at doing this than pre-writing and memorizing set essays. Once you’ve broken the topic into its component parts and defined them, you briefly touch on how those parts relate to the texts you’ve chosen (without going into detail or using examples). You do all of this in the introduction; the place where you frame up your overall approach or thesis. Too many students (and even some teachers) think that an essay is like a narrative; full of surprises from one end to the other. It’s not! You should lay out your plan in the introduction and then follow it  through in the body. It’s not the only way to construct an essay (there are freer forms) but I’ve found it the safest one overall because, more than anything, it prepares the reader/marker for what follows. It’s re-assuring to the marker, even if a little dull and methodical because it creates a sense of structure. If I had to isolate the single, most wide-spread weakness in students’ perceptions of essay/exposition-writing it would be the introduction.

While in my belligerent frame of mind I would like to include a related anecdote of something which occurred this week. One of my Advanced HSC students told me that he rang the HSC Advice line and spoke to an experienced English teacher who told him to use the ‘three-finger’ rule for all essay introductions. That is, keep it very short. Good advice, I would have thought, for Year 6 students! The adviser also told the student to not mention all aspects of the argument or thesis in the introduction because you should start a new paragraph for each new idea. My jaw fell through the floor! No wonder students get confused! I replied that even teachers on the HSC Advice Line can have their bad days or that perhaps the adviser was advocating a multi-paragraph introduction (which has its own pitfalls). It’s also possible that the student misrepresented the advice he was given when telling it to me. On the whole I support the concept of the HSC Advice Line and I'm sure it does a magnificent job.

Sincere good luck to all my 2007 Year12 students - of whom I will be thinking on Friday and Monday morning - and a hearty greeting to my ongoing and new students for 2008!

Paul

17.10.07

May/June 07 Bulletin

As the second term draws to a close a well-deserved but short break approaches. Diligent students are using the time to keep up with reading and revising. Take one thing at a time. Don’t panic.

I’ve been skipping around a lot in my reading. I was half way through Dickens’ Bleak House before realizing it’s not on the syllabus, which is a pity because I was enjoying it immensely. It does relate well to Society and the Individual however, which a couple of my extension students are doing. A couple of my Year 11’s have caused me to re-read Shelley’s Frankenstein as a comparative study with Edward Scissorhands. That’s a labour of love however, as Gothic Horror is one of my oldest favorites.

The last couple of months have been spiced up with revisiting some of the poetry of WB Yeats and Robert Browning. Ibsen’s great play A Doll’s House has come round again. I’ve also genuinely enjoyed re-reading The Great Gatsby. It produced much deep thought, perhaps deeper than on the first read. I finally decided it was about the gulf between old, traditional mid-Western American values and those of the faster-paced, commercially-driven East. The imagery of the novel is just mind-chilling; the ideas almost too vast to get the head around. It’s easy to see why it’s considered such a great American classic. I really felt sorry for poor Gatsby in the end. So much love-energy, so mis-directed. So lonely in his Taj Mahal!

Creative writing classes are where I let off some steam. I really get involved in the stories my students write and I’m sure many of them think me quite nutty! Oh well - it’s a living.

Looking forward to Term 3 just a little, which is also a sign that something is wrong! In years of teaching in conventional schools that never happened. Holidays were the only thing I consistently looked forward to, at least in the last few years, as I started to tire of the over-crowded and over-noisy, under-resourced classrooms. One of the tuition colleges has now requested Drama classes however, so it looks like I’ll be re-visiting more than just books I read years ago. The next bulletin is sure to be an interesting one – so stay tuned! I’ll probably slip a disc!

27/06/07

March - April 07 Bulletin

The build up to Easter has been busy. Senior students I tutor are all feeling relieved now that the half-yearly exams are over but I remind them to focus on the main event to come.

Reading and re-reading plays seems to have been my chosen lot lately.  Henry IV, The Crucible, The Club and Stolen have come around again. Deb Westbury poetry has been a fresh experience for me however, and for selfish reasons, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a novel I’ve been promising myself to read for quite some time, is proving well worth the wait. Some of Elizabeth Jolley’s short stories are helping me teach creative writing, as are a couple of old text books on writing, one of which has the innocuous title of Proper Words in Proper Places!

PB 08/04/07

January – February 07 Bulletin

New students…new texts to read… I’ve discovered an affinity with Coleridge! …. I’m becoming a “library cormorant”! My local one at Five Dock nearly always has what I need… if not I browse the second hand bookshops in Croydon. There’s also a great s/h bookshop in Randwick called T’s (I’ll add their website to my Links page) which specializes in school textbooks. 
 

No new study habits to add other than the following. When reading a text borrowed from a library, such as I have this week with Whose Life Is It Anyway by Brian Clark and Raw by Scott Monk, try jotting notes onto Stickies and sticking them into each chapter or scene as you go. To think that I used to scribble notes in pencil in the margins of library books, lightly, then rub them out, painstakingly, afterwards!

Raw takes a while to get into but if you persevere it pays off! Monk has a knack for idiom which grows on you. Though the main character seems a bit stereotyped at first, I’ve actually met a few oppositional kids just like him. After a while you start to identify with and even admire him. He is, after all, just a product of our increasingly un-egalitarian society. Another nice thing is it never becomes didactic, in other words, the writer never seems to be trying to tell you why or how Brett became that way. He just leaves you to work that out for yourself. At the same time I never feel that Brett is at risk of becoming unsympathetic – for the simple reason that there are just too many kids like him out there.

This month I’ve also been catching up on Wordsworth and Byron …and yes… I’ll re-affirm it here… the more you read of other people’s opinions of texts… the less you will trust or care about your own!

PB 13.02.07

December 06 Bulletin