Search Results: classroom
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Neve Mahoney
- 18 April 2018
8 Comments
In perspective, my hair colour really isn't that big of a deal. I don't face institutional discrimination because I'm a redhead. But because of the cultural fascination with red hair, people will always try to project their own ideas about redheadedness onto me. So as I've grown older, I decided to claim this part of my identity for myself.
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AUSTRALIA
- Fatima Measham
- 15 March 2018
3 Comments
Politicians like to talk family. They talk about their own during campaigns, to establish their credential as human beings. They talk about ours, the 'working families' and 'family values' upon which socio-economies rest. There is even a party called Family First. But let's get real. We wreck families all the time.
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EDUCATION
- James O'Brien
- 09 March 2018
65 Comments
I was in a lecture with 50 pre-service teachers preparing to transition into the profession. One student spoke up saying he was afraid to teach in Catholic schools, fearing he'd be reprimanded if he said 'the wrong thing'. In fact, a church school comes alive when teachers and students breathe an air of freedom.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Grant Fraser
- 15 January 2018
7 Comments
On days like this, with blisters of tar already softening on the road, the nuns would curdle in the heat, shifting their stays by habit; sometimes, a bead of sweat would tempt their brows. Cooped in our desks, we steered our wilful pens over acreages of white pages.
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EDUCATION
- Madeleine Hamilton
- 11 January 2018
2 Comments
The mood was subdued at the gates of our small Catholic primary school at 3:30pm on Wednesday. Ten per cent of our school's students have an autism diagnosis, and for their parents who had read Pauline Hanson's comments to the Senate that afternoon, those familiar feelings had been activated yet again.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 29 November 2017
5 Comments
When misused power remains unchallenged, it is the most vulnerable who suffer most. The truism finds acerbic embodiment in the Slovak-Czech black comedy The Teacher, whose setting in 1983 communist-ruled Czechoslovakia provides a historical backdrop that doubles as an analogy for any socio-political context where power can be a means to personal ends.
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AUSTRALIA
Being both gay and Catholic leads to a somewhat fraught existence. On one hand, we have our Catholic peers who, frequently, have trouble empathising with what it means to be 'intrinsically disordered'. On the other, we have our queer friends who are, understandably, sceptical of our allegiance to an organisation that has a deep history of discrimination towards people like us. This existence is further complicated for those of us who choose to partake in ministry that sees us employed by the Church.
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RELIGION
- Gillian Bouras
- 04 July 2017
6 Comments
When I was a small child, Presbyterians ministers, including my great-uncle Jack, seemed to be everywhere. They march through memory: soberly suited, dog-collared, determinedly cheerful and often dull, although Old Jack preached a fiery sermon, and could well have taken to the stage instead of the pulpit. They were eventually replaced in my life by a procession of Greek Orthodox priests. They would extend their hands to be kissed in a gesture my nonconformist soul found quite shocking.
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EDUCATION
- Madeleine Hamilton
- 22 June 2017
19 Comments
The mood was subdued at the gates of our small Catholic primary school at 3:30pm on Wednesday. Ten per cent of our school's students have an autism diagnosis, and for their parents who had read Pauline Hanson's comments to the Senate that afternoon, those familiar feelings - dismay at the ignorance and lack of empathy of some people, worry for the future, and defiant pride in their diverse children - had been activated yet again.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Gillian Bouras
- 30 May 2017
14 Comments
Brian's work was notable for its firm yet subtle control, the great tumbling yet disciplined lists of adjectives, the elevation of the quotidian, the appreciation of the natural world and its creatures, the sheer love of life. Re-reading one recent piece I find the references to the 'lovely bride' and 'the house wolf' almost unbearably touching. One reader wrote he was not initiated into Brian's 'grand mysteries', but that the joy and awe conveyed rang out with love and goodwill. How very true.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
We talk about how there are all sorts of illuminated beings in every sort of context, and how some beings serve their fellows by being great listeners, and others have healing hands, and others are good at getting everyone to come to a disgruntled agreement, and how some are lucky to discover that their skill, their gift, the thing they love to do and do really well, is to pay fierce attention to the holy of everything, to notice the flourish and song of holy and the awful of bruised and broken holy, and report on this to their brothers and sisters, which is, of course, everyone.
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EDUCATION
- Francine Crimmins
- 08 May 2017
14 Comments
'We won't have classes next Monday because of the public holiday on Tuesday.' My tutor tells us this cheerily, as if he has done us a favour. I'm studying a degree that costs $4000 each semester, about $60 per hour of actual teaching time. This includes a subject where instead of being able to meet with faculty members, we must skype them. If that's not the most expensive skype call ever, perhaps the critics are correct, and young people should stop complaining about the potential increase of fees.
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