The games we play....

Kia ora

Life has been busy recently - actually, when is life ever NOT busy?
However, life has been busy - mainly with a new job that entails a whole pile o' new learnings.
(New job is "Teacher In Charge" - a term I dislike, I prefer Kaiārahi - at a Teen Parent Unit... never heard of a TPU? well.... ask me about it some time... TPU's are AMAZING!!!)

Anyhoo - I have been observing and reflecting on "the games we play" as part of my learnings in this new community.  Now, I'm not talking "games" as in Monopoly, Scrabble, Chess, Tag, Football or even Curriculum for the Future - but more the idea of the type of manipulations we all play in certain situations to either get amusement, gain something tangible or just to rock the boat and watch the fall out. We all do it, we put on our "game faces" and head into the classroom. We act a certain way with certain people to get a reaction - be that a good reaction, or a not so good reaction.

In the past couple of weeks I will admit to throwing a spanner into the works of a few game players in my life - perhaps we should call my acts "wildcards." I consciously decided to have a little bit of a (social) science experiment and observe what happens when I didn't play the game as expected.
SUCH FUN!  Very interesting results! Just changing the expected behaviour from me has meant that some of the (negative) game playing has stopped (yay!). But has lead me to think.... am I now just playing games too?  Are teachers just meddling in the games that our students play?

(warning.... bad pun ahead)

Are we all just pawns playing along in the game of life?

 Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

https://c1.staticflickr.com/8/7037/13874125843_9129787855_b.jpg

All I know for sure.... Is right now, I'm tired of playing so many games and I need a holiday.

Roll on Summer!!!

2018 - #thisisme

I have been trying to think of my "word" for 2018, and failing miserably.  Everything I think of just seems to smack of tokenistic  blah-ness and I feel myself shudder with revulsion.

So - I have decided to take a slightly different route for 2018.

This was (in part) sparked by running into a student that I taught in my very first year of being in the classroom. She recounted to me how much she enjoyed the "random science fact" that I would write up every week in the corner of my white board. In fact, she could still recall several of them - listing them off to me as we were standing on Lambton Quay surrounded by the lunchtime suits.

 Linking up with an idea about positive body image and all the awesomely amazing things our bodies do that we just don't even realise or pay attention to (until it goes wrong) and my idea was born (admittedly at about 2 am one morning, when I just couldn't turn my brain off!)

365 days of stuff that I appreciate about my body - "this is me" - or #thisisme

From the walking chemistry set, to the ever reproducing cells, to the bugs that happily live on and in me, there is so much I love about me that I want to share!!! And yes, I acknowledge that sounded really self-centred, but this is going to be about learning how brilliant your body is.

I have seen so many students who are depressed or don't like the skin they are in. I know. I used to be there. I would love to be able to point out how that skin is just FASCINATING on so many (dermal) layers. (yes, there probably will be many puns...)

So...
Here is my newly updated Instagram profile, lets see how we go for 365 of #thisisme.

https://www.instagram.com/heymrshaynz/

Any suggestions on cool things our bodies do that I can celebrate? Let me know!!!

Day one? Snot.