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?
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https://c1.staticflickr.com/8/7037/13874125843_9129787855_b.jpgAll I know for sure.... Is right now, I'm tired of playing so many games and I need a holiday.
Roll on Summer!!!
