Chickafinty ~ A Life in the Laundry

The past is another country

I had been looking for her, on and off, for years - ever since the internet really. We were at school together and we were friends.  We weren't close friends, but we had more of a relationship than the word acquaintance allows for.  In Year 9 or thereabouts she just disappeared.  One day she was there and the next she was gone.  No explanations, no reasons, just an empty desk and a lot of kids like me wondering why.

Much, much later, and a little more worldly-wise than I was at 14, I pieced together some of the bits.  Some of the things that she had shared with me pointed to a history of  abuse...but at 13 I wasn't even dimly aware that such things happened.  Unfortunately my friend was all too aware and for ghastly, unimaginable reasons.

Those suspicisions were confirmed through her sister, who is somewat famous, and makes no bones about what happened to her little sister.

Filling in the gaps, I suspected that the abuse had come to light somewhere around Year 9 and that resulted in her leaving so suddenly and with so few explanations.  

Last week I found her.  

It was one of those serendipitous findings where a search for someone else, lead to a weird website with all-too familiar names on it, which lead to a website with our Year 10 photos on it, which lead to the comments section on that website and BAM! there she was, but with another name.

I googled the name and found her.

Now, I wonder, is the past truly another country and you can't go back?  For a week the words have been swirling around in my head "I don't know if you remember me, but...", "Our lives couldn't be more different now, but, I wonder if...?"

Looking back on that photo, and all the names from my past, stirring up long-forgotten memories and a world that existed long before the me I am now.

Can you go back?  Or is it all best left quietly reposing in the past?

Why am I not surprised

When I returned to full time teaching in 2005, schools were abuzz with this new "wonderful" numeracy programme called "Count Me In, Too".  CMIT required specially trained staff members to implement the programme,  and a huge sum of money spent on resources like counting teddies (in three different sizes and four different colours), laminated feet, number cards, ducks, in short, just about anything you could think of.  I remember one staff member from a school I taught in, arriving in the staffroom bleary eyed having sat up past 11pm the previous evening laboriously cutting out and laminating a bucket load of resources for this amazing new programme.  As a relative outsider (I was a casual teacher at the time) it seemed a waste of time, resources and money.

When I tried to implement the programme at my new school I was foxed at every turn.  There weren't enough resources in the resource room, and as I was last in to the school I was also last into the resource room.  You can guess what was left in there.  Yeah, pretty much nothing.  I ended up wasting my own time, money and resources making these amazing new games.  CMIT was all about games.  Games and strategies that would "teach" the kids numeracy skills.  In my experience the kids were very good at playing the games, but as soon as they were presented with real maths, they baulked.  In my opinion CMIT was worse than useless, because all the numeracy time was wasted with playing these ludicrous, resource-ridden games, and none was spent actually teaching the principles of mathematics.  As with any whizz bang new programme, the bright kids picked up on the concepts in spite of the programme and the rest were left floundering.

Which brings me to the article I read on news.com.au this morning.  Apparently, kids in the upper primary years were failing in their numeracy skills...remembering of course that these are the kids raised on a steady diet of CMIT in the lower and middle primary years.  So they introduced a new programme into the schools at enormous cost to help those kids who were failing at upper primary maths (possibly because the counting teddies weren't being used any more).  This programme has turned out to also be a failure.

The programme cost each school between $42K and $52K depending on the number of teachers trained.

The maths textbook that I use with our kids is second to none on training them in maths.  It caters to the very competent, and it helps the ones who need a bit of a push.  The capable kids can work on the book without help from the teacher.  The middle group can work on it with a little help, and the teacher could focus on the strugglers without anybody losing out.  The textbook costs $15.95 and there are two per grade.

For less than $12000 the whole of Years 3-6 (assuming 3 classes of 30 student per grade) could be supplied with a decent maths textbook, no teacher training required and my money says you'd actually get kids leaving Year 6 who could do maths, not just play games with teddies.  Better still, you could get the parents to fork out for half the textbooks and the school could save another $6000.  This textbook requires only base-10 blocks, no other teaching resources are needed.  That's another saving for the school.

I wish schools would stop chasing after the newest shiny penny and get on with the business of teaching kids.

DISCLAIMER: This is not aimed at my teaching colleagues, who are merely pawns in the bureaucratic system that passes for schooling in 2012.  My collegaues work long, thankless, disheartening hours within a system that they have no power to change.  These "brilliant ideas" don't come from those working at the chalkface, they come from higher up, and my bile is raised against those higher-ups, not my professional colleagues.

Shattered

Mister Bear works in Aged Care and has a lot to do with one of the facilities called Newmarch.  M. works at Newmarch and has a little dog called Cocoa.  Cocoa comes to work with her every day and visits with the residents.  He's very popular with everyone.  It is his first birthday today and they are having a birthday party at the nursing home to celebrate.

Except that Cocoa got out onto the road this morning and was killed.

On his birthday.

Mister Bear is pretty shattered, but is training today at Gordon, so he has to put his brave face on and train anyway.  I am pretty shattered.  I only met Cocoa once, but I have heard all about his antics and carryings on from Mister Bear.  Mr Bear had to deliver a birthday card for Cocoa today from one of the girls in the Volunteers Office.  I don't know if he will now.  I hope so because if nothing else it will demonstrate to M. how much Cocoa was loved.

M. will be absolutely devastated and my heart breaks for her.  It also breaks for the residents who considered Cocoa to be *their* doggy, and were looking forward to his birthday party this afternoon.

It is indeed a very sad day.

ETA Mister Bear delivered the card on Saturday so M. will already have it.  My day has been completely thrown out of whack...this is just so very sad.

It was the rainbow unicorns

The world hadn't gone to pot this morning, so the day started off better than i had anticipated.

The Other Half's project is being rolled out this week, which in IT terms means we have basically not seen him during the week since the roll out began.  The days have been very very long without him and the poor man is utterly exhausted when he does get home.

The good things are that this is the end of Phase One and that two of the facilities involved in Phase One are about 10 minutes from home.  In the day time there is nothing happening in the early afternoon in the project so he has been able to come home for lunch.  He's been working 12-13 hour days so that little respite in the middle of the day has been lovely for him, and for us.

The bad thing is that this is the end of Phase One, and Phase Two and Three are yet to run.  None of the Phase II and Phase III facilities are near home, and when they roll out he'll be working 14-16 hour days with no middle of the day respite.  The roll-out goes over two weeks.  We're not looking forward to that at all.

Please, please, please pray that he doesn't get sick again.  When he gets overtired, he gets sick and we simply cannot afford for him to get sick again this year.  There's some stuff going on to do with that, and basically it's not good, so please, if you'd care to, pray that he doesn't get sick.

The other stuff that was going on in the background came to fruition this week and was resolved very nicely in the negative.  Usually that's a bad thing, but in this case it wasn't.  There was a possible move on the cards.  It fell through and we're both relieved.  The Other Half had a bad vibe about it from the get go and the longer it went on, the worse the vibe got.  I was nervy, but as usual it was hard to tell whether the thing itself was wrong, or whether it was just me and my pathological hatred of change.

 

Tomorrow

It's possible, possible that we could wake up tomorrow and find that the world has gone to pot.

Or we could wake up tomorrow and discover that rainbow-pooping unicorns have been cavorting on the lawn.

My money would be on the pot-bit, but then I am a glass half-empty kind of girl.

"Just because it's written down doesn't make it true"

This piece of advice was handed to me by my new doctor.  Of all the things he has said this is the one piece of advice/counsel that has stuck most firmly, and the bit to which I cling when piddling about on the internet.

Unfortunately the bit about being able to walk away and not be upset by something was very short-lived - about a month to be precise - and I'm back to being on tenterhooks on the internet.  This morning I read something that made me very angry indeed.  It was written by a person whose opinions always rub me up the wrong way.  (In fairness I suspect that my opinions make her feel likewise.)  As usual she was spouting off on a topic that has nothing to do with her, and is never likely to affect her.  I had to breathe deep and walk away.  It's her opinion.  I don't share her opinions - on anything - so today's pontifications were hardly a surprise.  It would be pointless to disagree.  So the best option is to simply walk away.  Again.

"I'll pray for you"

I'm working my way through "Teach Me to Pray" by Andrew Murray.  It's hard going and slow going because there's lots to think about and time to be alone and contemplative is thin on the ground.

He talks extensively about intercessory prayer, and how important it is in the life of a believer.  This is an element of prayer that I have kind of taken for granted as that's what Christians do; they pray for others.  They pray during times of sickness and sadness.  They pray in praise.  They pray for guidance.  They pray for their families, their churches, their leaders, their politicians, their friends, their pets.  It's what Christians do.  They pray.  It's not a badge of honour, nor a sign that God cares more for the Christian, or that the Christian is in God's good books, it is simply what we do.  A lot of the time it is the only thing we can do.

Point form

• Dad had a heart attack on Saturday morning while visiting at our place
• He had an emergency angiogram late Saturday night and had three stents put in
• My sister arrived from England on Tuesday morning, but her bags didn't.  Last heard of they are in Abu Dhabi
• Dad is home from the hospital
• Mum stayed with us while Dad was in the hospital and I looked after her
• To look at them you would think that Mum is the one who has had the heart attack.  She is very very tired.  So is Dad
• My sister is caring for them this week and I will take over again when she returns to England on Saturday
• Dad had to go back to the hospital last night with chest pain.  He's ok.  They kept him overnight and all his bloodwork came back fine so he's been/being released
• I got home from the hospital a bit after midnight (it's been six very long days)
• Dad's gone from 3 tablets a day to I-can't-remember-how-many-tablets a day
• I'm going backwards and forwards between their place and the hospital while still homeschooling the kids (or trying to, maybe, would be more accurate)
• There's other stuff going on in the background that I can't talk about yet
• I think that's all

Stocktake

A number of events in the past couple of weeks or so have forced me/us to do a stocktake.  If you like, a specifically spiritual stocktake - a taking-the-temperature of our lives and seeing what is good, what is not good and what is downright bad.

My people have just come home and I need to be with them, so this will have to wait...

In a bit of a state of shock

For a few weeks our church have been asking for prayer for M. a mother of two and a grandmother of a new grandbaby who has been sick.  I know her only slightly, but have chatted with her at least once as when her girls were little they homeschooled them for a while.

I thought "sick" meant flu, or bad back or something similar.  But "sick" in this instance means seriously ill.  Seriously ill.

I can't believe it.  She's so young, her daughters are younger than me (by a long way) and her grandbaby's life can be measured in weeks or months...not sure how mnay but she was born this year.

Apparently it has taken several months to find out what is wrong and now they are doing all they can, but it's not much.  Her condition was described in church this morning as deteriorating.

Please, if you are the praying kind, bring M. her daughters, son in law, and her parents before the Throne.  Her parents belong to the church as well and they are struggling with their daughter's most serious illness.  They would covet your prayers, I know.