NEVER JOBLESS

Excepting for the first four or five years of my life, I have really never ever been without a job.

As I grew older that extended to include more sophisticated jobs like cleaning dad‘s tool shed, maybe greasing the tractor, Looking after fuelling vehicles on the farm, and so on.

From the age of 15 through 17, I was at a college that required students to offset part of their fees by working; Working was deemed to be good for the soul. In that context, I worked at picking fruit, emptying bins, again collecting eggs but this time from the college’s poultry farm, and carrying out other tasks on the College farm.

For the following four years after receiving my Leaving Certificate I worked on my father‘s farm. That included ploughing, combining seed into the ground, harvesting, turning super bags, cleaning out the fowl house, grubbing doublegee plants out of growing crops, and stone picking in the off-cropping season in order to remove obstacles from the ground that would impede the cultivation in preparation for cropping and various other things.

I also helped run Vacation Bible Schools for my church, was a sometime lay preacher, a youth worker, and various other activities of a religious nature.

In 1968 and approaching the age of 22, I got lucky and managed through the help of a wonderful Education Minister in Western Australia (Edgar Lewis the member for our electorate) to get into teachers college from where I graduated two years later with a teacher’s certificate.

Then came my occupational job for life. After five years in Western Australia working for the Education Department in remote schools, we came to the Northern Territory. I was a teacher and school principal in five locations, two remote one town and two urban from that time until I retired in January 2012. I was ever so glad and still am, for the chance to be a part of educational delivery in WA and the NT.

Since retiring, I have discovered blogging, and LinkedIn, and enjoy writing to share ideas with others, giving back I hope, in the same way as people gave to me during my career.

That will probably continue for the rest of my life.

I’ve also, since 2012 (and actually back in the 1980s as well), worked with our university in teacher education as a part-time lecturer, observer of trainee teachers, editorial leader and marker of assignments. I also did a bit of work online in the later part of my time with Charles Darwin University, with students who were teachers in

training.

These days, I spent some time acting as The Editor for my grandchildren who are getting into the upper secondary levels of schooling. I’m happy to do that, because they’re sort of assistance that students need these days from teachers is often not provided – I guess I was lucky back in my time is the student when that first hand contact and into personality was the part and parcel of teaching and learning; not just the downloading of material online, giving it to students, And telling them to do this or that or the other project and research.

I also am in “urban farmer”. I grow pawpaw plants from seed, give away the plants and also give away fruit. It’s my part of helping people and it’s done gratis.

It’s true to say I have never really been without a job.

PRACTISING RELIGION

Brought up as a young person in a religiously inclined home, I practised religion and felt myself to be affiliated with a particular church followed by my parents during my formative years. That continued into my early teens and really up until I turned 20. Within my church I served as a lay preacher, are used leader, a person who participated in running Fake-ation Bible Schools for young people in our hometown and so on.

Not so long after I turn 20, I was appointed as a delegate to the State Conference held each year by our church. during that conference I was astounded to learn that money operation as in all churches belonging to this group were regularly asked to give, and give until it hurt, was not being used for the furtherance of the work but rather by the church leaders to amass assets. These assets included the purchase of property for investment and so on.

I asked questions at the conference of our leaders and those who were there as delegates. I was it that we were being urged to give money to further the churches work within Australia and overseas, when investment and by implication bank balances seem to be the important thing and the way that money was being directed.

In response to my questioning I was more or less told to “mind my own business”. Decisions impacting upon the church were made by people in positions of authority and it was not my right to question the propriety of what they did.

For me, being involved with organised religion and the visibly practising Christian began to cease at that point in time. I remind affiliated with the church only to satisfy my parents. That made me feel somewhat hypocritical because what I was on the outside was not how I felt about religion on the inside.

With the passing of time I disaffiliated from the church and from organised religion and that remains the case to this day. I have however tried very hard throughout my life to live in a decent and principled way and to help others per my mission statement which I will re-list at the end of this response.

For a long time after my severance from religious formalities church practices I felt guilty about what I done and felt that I had somewhat apostatised. Some years, in fact decades past and I wrote a letter to my parents, who felt guilty about my departure from the faith, to point out that they had not failed me – that I had made my own decisions about the church and religious affiliation. I hope when they passed it wasn’t with the feeling of guilt that they had misguided me in someway.

It was about going back to that conference and considering the priority is the church exposed and the practices (it seemed to me) in which the church engaged.

My parents had wanted me to train as a minister and become a pastor of the church. That of course never happened.

However, I think that my life as a teacher, educational leader and a person working with others has enabled me to fill the work I’ve done with the same (hopefully) positive outcomes for them (and myself) that would have ever been achieved had I followed my parent’s occupational wishes.

Life before the internet

I am 77. Born in 1946, I could write a tome about pre-internet communication and interaction. For the moment two reflections will suffice.

The first example of difference relates to urgent communication pre-internet and pre-modern telephone communication.

Urgent messages were sent by telegram. The sender would go to a post office and pay two shillings and sixpence for a telegram of twelve words (maximum) including the name and address of the receiver. That is $2.85 in today’s currency.

The sending post office relayed the message via phone to the post office nearest to where the message recipient lived. The message was hand copied onto a telegram form, placed into an envelope, and given to a post office junior who delivered it, usually on a bicycle to the recipient.

This process was the way urgent messages were transmitted from sender to receiver for decades.

I am drawing on personal experience to illustrate the second instance of life before the internet.

In 1972 and 1973, I earned extra money by reporting on football and basketball for a country newspaper printed – linotype printing – in Perrh each Wednesday for distribution on Thursday and Friday.

Football was played on Sundays. I had to round up the details of the games played at four different locations, type up my report on an Olivetti typewriter, drive it 25 kilometres to a pick-up point and give it to the driver of a road transport bus for delivery on Tuesday morning to the newspaper office for inclusion in the paper’s sports pages.

The Internet has made what were elongated and complex communications processes, so much simpler and easier to manage.

GOTTA BE GOOD AT SOMETHING

I WASN’T GOOD AT

On the Farm as a Child

Extracting double-gee plants and seeds from growing wheat crops.

Removing eggs from. Underneath clucky hens inmm laying nests.

Hand milking cows.

Crutching and doctoring flyblown sheep.

Eating vegetables prescribed by my Mother.

Wearing a hat for sun protection – and I have suffered!

Resisting spoonfulls of sugar from the sugar bowl.

Denying myself scoops of fat from the dripping tin in the Coolgardie safe.

Dedicating time to feeding and watering the fowls.

Cutting heads off roosters being prepared for sale in our home town.

Sitting still in church.

Focussing on the study of mathematics, physics and chemistry.

As an Adult and Educator I wasn’t good at:

Accomodating Type B personality people.

Pretending agreement with policies with which I actively disagreed.

Having to take on staff members who were ‘gottabees’.

Having to acquiesce to ‘ascribed authority focussed’ superordinates.

Sloppily dressed members of staff.

Accepting system perogfatives to ‘water down’ expectations for some students.

Appreciating system and Australia-wide testing regimes.

Not sharing my school’s successes with media.

Being told in 1974 that I was over-educating indigenous children.

Lots more examples could be furnished; in fact many more hundreds of things at which I am not good could be listed.

A GOOD THING

One thing I believe myself to be good at doing is saying “sorry” when I’m wrong, learning from my mistakes, appreciating those who point out my weaknesses and improvements, and always striving to do my best.

Oops – that is four good things.

CONVERSATION NECESSARY

I would welcome the opportunity to talk soon. Not to one individual but the whole of the Northern Territory Government Cabinet. I would also like to include our Department of Education’s Chief Executive Officer together with the heads of sub-departments.

Sadly, that conversation will never become a reality and will remain a wish to happen in my head.

The reason I would like to talk with these people is to ask them to reflect upon the past. Look in the rear vision mirror where the Northern Territory Government and Education have come from.

Life and organisation are all about the past, the present, and the future. I do believe that informing what happens in “the President” should take into account what has happened in “the past”. However, they do sell them the case.

Policies and processes defined as “new“are often far from that. They are, in essence, revisiting what has happened in previous years, been implemented and then discarded because of problems. A lot of the new policies coming into vogue (and this has happened over time) are simply revisitations of what has been trialled and then discarded.

This on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, on-again is tantamount by to revisiting the wheel with organisations including the government, going around in circles. I’m not saying that we don’t need to move forward – we do! But in moving forward we need to take account of what has gone before.

I would very much like to talk with the people nominated, in order to point out numerous instances of revisitation based upon the above methodologies since the 1970s the 1990s.

But as I said, that conversation will never take place because nobody in high places is interested in thinking about past successes and failures: Through trial and error they would prefer to find out for themselves.

PRECIOUS POSSESSION

Over the years one accumulates a lot of material and many possessions. They all have value.

But in singling out just wanted to one in terms of my own personal self and not taking into account family (the most precious of all associations in life), my most precious possession would have to be an A5 folder containing plastic sleeves in which materials can be placed.

In that folder I have copies of awards, appreciations, academic records, life memberships, and several photos remembering particular events of importance throughout my life.

It’s a simple folder and one in which I store precious memories. From time to time I take this folder go through it and reflect upon its contents.

Self-reflection in a private way is important and this folder with its contents is my reference point for these reflections.

THE BOWER BIRD

Metaphorically speaking, when it comes to collecting and collections, I am a bit like a bower bird. I hang onto things for a long, long time and create frustration in others when I won’t tidy up, throw out, or give away items that I have collected.

Among the collectables I have kept are the following:

All my annual diaries from 1970 onward – there is a gap here in there but they’re mostly intact.

Copies of letters that I sent to people over the years as we were working in rural and remote parts of Western Australia and the Northern Territory. They are a good record.

The various trip diaries I compiled when we were travelling overseas and interstate.

Albums of coins, especially those appropriately cast for commemerative reasons.

Chronicles of teaching and administrative materials that I acquired over the years, in order to assist others and also to stimulate writing on educational subjects, something I do in retirement.

Collections of slides and photographs of places that we have seen, worked in, and lived in, over the years. (These need to be converted).

In terms of collection I have given a great deal of material to the Northern Territory Archives, because as I get older it becomes of less used to me and if it’s not given a way where it may be useful for research purposes in years to come, it may well finish up at the rubbish tip when our house is cleared

out.

Copies of articles I have contributed to publications over many years. Included is the volume of 300 columns I wrote for the Northern Territory News in a weekly column “ Gray Matters” for nearly 6 years after my retirement. (I have never written for remuneration .)

I also have a great deal of material that is saved online, including photographs, written materials and so on.

I really use LinkedIn as a source where by written material is retained in a collectible manner.

I blog and have over 2000 pieces of written and .saved material.

Collectibles ultimately translate into a trove of quite wealthy information.