This article was first published in Salient magazine, October 4, 2015. * “…no school system can claim to be just which is organised in such a way as to favour children who have been socialised in one, rather than another part of the social structure of the community that nourishes them. Wherever a school system …
This article was first published in Salient, September 27, 2015. * The current refugee crisis has many times been framed as the “worst humanitarian crisis since WWII”. It seems this framing functions to counteract numbness in the West, much like the viral sharing of that gut-wrenching photograph of Aylan, the three-year-old boy taken from this …
The World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis Is Still the West’s War on Brown Children Read More »
In March this year, Victoria University (VUW) launched its new student ‘hub’ complex in Kelburn; the following month champagne flutes were raised in celebration of VUW’s ranking as the number one New Zealand university. Among fraud allegations, a departing vice-chancellor and a struggling student union, Renée Gerlich discovers plenty of toil and trouble beneath …
First published on The Aotearoa Project, April 29, 2015. * “… no school system can claim to be just which is organised in such a way as to favour children who have been socialised in one, rather than another part of the social structure of the community that nourishes them. Wherever a school system is …
New Zealand’s Literacy Gap: A Call to Action for Student Teachers Read More »
First published as a letter to the editor in FishHead’s April 2015 issue. * Dear FishHead Magazine, I have just read your March “sex” themed issue, and expect to see the following response in full in your April letters section [this letter can be read in that issue]. I would like to know if FH …
Published in Education Review, September 2013 When Alan Simpson started his post as headmaster of Ngataki School in 1952, the school was set in pine, sand and scrub in a hot, windy climate. It had 40 children, no power, little funds, and no cleaners. Cleaning was sorted easy enough: for the floors, Simpson and his wife …
Published in Education Review, September, 2013 “The government’s agenda is becoming chillingly clear” reported Education Aotearoa in Winter 2011. Charter schools, performance pay, league tables, public private partnerships and class size increases: these proposals continue a trajectory commenced with the Lange government’s Tomorrow’s Schools reforms, driven by free market ideologies. The 2007 curriculum was a more promising Ministry document, including statements on …
Click here for a feature in FishHead magazine about what Wellington city’s best teachers are doing to close the literacy gap in their classrooms.
“The arts are the sustaining, vitalising element in the education of teachers as well as children. It is essential for teachers to have personally satisfying experience of music, art, drama, dance, poetry, fiction – of some at least of these – if they are to be lively, sensitive, confident, and sympathetic enough to engage …
Frillseekers: The arts-first pioneers of New Zealand’s world class education Read More »
Click here for an article in Salient about the state of teacher education at Victoria University.
