Over the Moon dance performance
The anual Over the Moon dance performance is on this weekend at the Phee Broadway Theatre Castlemaine. Edna Reinhardt’s school performs works by students, teachers and local dance artists. All ages are presented in this high production value show. Hundreds of people – students and family volunteers are involved, costumes made, and kids escorted from a separate building as the Phee can’t hold them all. The logistics come together as does the community to celebrate dance and the students year of work and progress. Not to be missed.
Shoulder to shoulder parenting
Michael Grose was in Kyneton last week
By Andrew McKenna
‘We need small town mindsets with our kids. We need to look out for each other’s kids. Child raising needs to be shifted back to a group endeavour.’
Those words are comforting to those of us living in small towns, but also reassuring to anyone who has thought that a nuclear family is inadequate to raise children. Continue Reading »
Birth choices
A still from the film
By Arabella Davison
On Friday the Theatre Royal in Castlemaine hosted the screening of Labouring Under an Illusion, a documentary looking at the media’s often bizarre and sensationalised portrayal of birthing. Attended by around 60 people, including local health professionals, the event raised over $2000 in support of local private midwife Sally McCrae.
The Steiner School goes Latin
The Castlemaine Steiner School last week enjoyed its annual multicultural week, with a celebration of all things Latin American and Spanish. There was dancing, singing, music, food, a play or two, and in keeping with the school’s philosophy everyone participated: a huge celebration of a vivaz new element in the Steiner curriculum.
For more pictures go to CI’s Education page (now filed under ‘Culture’ above).
Against the flow: Issues regarding ‘independent learning’
By Darryl Coulthard
I learned that the best way to ruin something was to let an open-style teacher near it and make a project out of it … It seems to me dishonest, hiding real relationships of power and knowledge under the cloak of participation and democracy.
My God, you’re here from Planet Boring
By Andrew McKenna
‘Dear Dr Michael, at times I think my son is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.’
This was in a letter Dr Michael Carr-Gregg received in one of his roles as Agony Uncle for various magazines. Dr Carr-Gregg was in Castlemaine last week giving a lecture with the topic ‘Demistifying Adolescence’, and he gave the packed hall at the Steiner School plenty to take away.
Continue Reading »
Steiner students keep on planting
National Tree Planting Day (Friday 30 July) was hugely successful again this year at the Castlemaine Steiner School and Kindergarten.
Go to CI’s Education page (now filed under ‘Culture’) to read this and other stories.
A sceptic in the ranks: The Ultranet and education
By Darryl Coulthard, Deakin University
I thought of the teachers working away on the laptops, organising their work, undertaking reports and proformas, filling in spreadsheets and answering emails. Classroom work, real teaching seems so far away. I could imagine myself as a teacher saying, ‘do you want me to teach or piffle away on the laptop’? But then again I thought, everything on a laptop can be monitored.
Sustainable tourism is here
More than 350 people visited Castlemaine on Saturday for the State of Design Festival Open House Day. The day was a partnership between Mount Alexander Sustainability Group and the Alternative Technology Association.
Sister school agreement with Indonesian school signed at CSC
It was an historic moment in Castlemaine’s education history this week when a sister-school partnership was signed with CSC and SMAN3 Tangerang Selatan Banten Province Indonesia.
Principals from four schools, a representative from the Indonesian Consulate and a number of students are participating in an intense three-day cultural exchange program as part of the launch of the sister-school partnership. Continue Reading »
Book on climate change a first
The first book in Australia to examine the way in which rural and regional communities respond to climate change was launched yesterday by The Hon Damian Drum, MLC, Member for Northern Victoria Region and Chair of the Rural and Regional Parliamentary Committee.
Continue Reading »
Online and Internet security for children (parents only session)
Dear parents,
My name is Janita Docherty, and I am a Leading Senior Constable with Castlemaine Police.
On Tuesday 20 July, the Castlemaine Police are holding an Information Session in which to educate parents and other community members on cybersafety and responsible Internet use.
The Cybersafety Information Session is targeted to adults, and any teens attending may require parental guidance. Continue Reading »
Standardised testing: a race to nowhere
By Lisa Y. Johnson-Collins
Race To Nowhere is an excellent description of the standardised testing movement. The (US) No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, increased the role of the federal government in public education and also expanded the role of standardised testing. This morning, I had a conversation with another educator who was ending a California State Testing week. The dedication of this teacher is commendable; although exhausted and stressed, this educator was hopeful that her students did well. She wanted them to have a chance at the best education possible. When I mentioned to her the best education possible is not based on state testing, she went through the myriad reasons why testing is a benefit. These alleged benefits of standardised testing permeate the public educational system causing harm to students, teachers and the future of public education as a whole. Go to CI’s Education page to read the full story.
Getting your wheels from the sun
The sun was peeping in and out, but late last week some of the kids at CSC got out with their solar cars. With last year’s state entries Troll, Chimera, The Nuke, Flying Coffin and Dodgy now in permanent retirement, it will be up to this year’s batch of Year 9 students at the school’s Junior Campus to invent newer, faster, solar cars to ensure them a berth at the Nationals, to be held in Perth later this year. Continue Reading »
The end of the age of testosterone?
By Andrew McKenna
It’s goodbye shipbuilding, real estate, coal, steelworks, machinery, and hello social work, teaching, psychology and healing arts. A recent article sent to CI staff – and a recent trend – got us talking in the office. From Iceland’s Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, the world’s first openly lesbian head of state, who campaigned against the male elite she said had destroyed the nation’s banking system, to the latest research showing that companies and nations developing their feminine side do better, the evidence is pointing to a major shift in the way we organise our lives.
CI staff caught up in our favourite restaurant in Melbourne, Sapa Hills, after a seminar in Melbourne on how to read body language.
Lorne (IT): I’m not inclined to believe that it’s end of the Age of Testosterone. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan. US foreign policy is hardly about to start being all consensual. Continue Reading »
Suicide is the number 1 cause of death for men 16-44 and women 16-34
“I lost my beautiful youngest daughter to suicide 3 years ago… She was not referred on to an appropriate service after suffering post-natal depression… She had 3 children whom she adored, and she had so much to live for. She said to me not long before she died, ‘Mum, I wish I had cancer, then people would be more understanding and caring’. We need improved and increased specialised services NOW.” -Mary, a GetUp member who shared her story.
- A message to you from Prof John Mendoza -
On Friday I resigned my position as the head advisor to the Rudd Government on mental health. And it’s because of stories like Mary’s and my frustration over the Government’s failure to do more to prevent them. Continue Reading »
Mid-winter at the Steiner School
On Friday, 18 June, mid-winter was celebrated at the Castlemaine Steiner School, as it is every year. Click on the picture for the full story on CI’s Education page.
Five minutes’ worth of inspiration
By Andrew McKenna
Castlemaine and its surrounding areas are renowned for … inventors? You mightn’t think so, but an inventor living near Castlemaine has come up with a device that might just revolutionise the care of some cancer patients. And there’s the revamped two-stroke engine as well…
‘I was there for one month and I managed to save them two million dollars,’ he said of a company he worked for in the States when he was not long out of mechanical engineering at Swinburne.
Did they give him a cut? Continue Reading »
Eliminate screen time for kids? You’ve got to be kidding!
Reproduced from John Allison’s Parent-Theses Journal
Reduce or eliminate screen time: Give your children a chance to flex their own imaginative muscles. They may be bored at first. Be prepared with simple playthings and suggestions for make-believe play to inspire their inner creativity.
For the full story go to CI’s Education page.
Playing, being, working
© John Allison 2010.
A child is playing and nothing else exists for her in that moment. Few adults can give such attention to their immediate situation, so willingly, for so long. And it is real work.
Play enables the child to live into a whole world. It is a world of her own making which borders on to the world we think is the real world. Through manifold creative acts the child pushes back these boundaries, to increasingly inhabit the world we know but all too often have forgotten how to understand. Play is a participatory pathway into the reality of this so-called real world.
For the full story go to CI’s Education page.
