Listography List 4: Road Trip Playlist

I'm going to Falls Festival in Lorne this New Years. That means a trip down from Melbourne with the three other girls i'm camping with, which will of course mean much laughter, much gossip and more than anything, many a sing-a-long. 


While the other three worry about tents, eskies and money, i concerned myself with the road trip playlist. I think we'll be powering along with mini speakers in a beat up station wagon, so it's like a Big M commercial all over really. 


My list on my phone is currently seven hours-ish in length, so i'm not sure you need to see it all. But i think it's interesting reading, but that's coz i made it. 
So after my little ramble, i'll screencap the list for your perusal. 


Essential Road Trip items:


The Classics:
I'm talking the real classics, not what my students would call a classic, which would be like Chris Browns early works... In my list there's a touch of the Beatles, a touch of Queen, some Monkees and some Beach Boys. 


The 90's Pop:
We're all children of the 90's. We were all brought up on a healthy diet of Backstreet Boys and S Club 7. So there's Bring it all Back, Backstreet's Back, and some Summer Rain and You were meant for me to unleash our teenage selves. Britney, Destiny's Child and Robbie Williams all feature as well


Australian Rock/Pop/Singersongwriter:
Powderfinger, Living End, Washington, Missy Higgins, Josh Pyke. The latter two who will be at Falls, so i hand picked some of my favourite tracks. I've also put on some Jezabels and Fleet Foxes because they will be there, but they're not in the playlist. 


The rest is filled with "new" music that is good for a sing-a-long. And if we get tired of my music, there will be three other ipods to choose from! And yes, the Glee is there because they're good singing songs!

No, that's not just the way it works.

I mentioned briefly back in June in my love letter to Twitter about how it has changed my view on so many things, from the way i see and speak about people, to politics and the media. 

But i think the thing that it has changed my view on the most is the way the world sees, speaks and thinks about women, and the level of gendered insults and misogyny thrown at and around women. 

I've also embraced the tag feminist.

It was interesting thinking about myself as a feminist, and how my views on it has changed. I grew up in a fairly typical, although in the country, lower-middle-class white household. Six kids, parents still married. I don't remember ever really thinking about my gender as being something that would ever affect what i did or where i went. Sure, stranger-danger was instilled a bit, but it was the country, there were no strangers. I grew up with dolls, but also played 'war' with my brothers, and was always told that i could do what i wanted. 

My mum is interesting though, while encouraging me to be educated and accomplished, i have clear memories of her bemoaning that i wasn't 'lady-like' enough, and she was often rather constant with the fatshaming sometimes... another issue for another day though.

I didn't really encounter feminism in a way that made me want to name it until i got to uni and my attention was drawn to the Wom*ns committee/room/section in Lots Wife. And i hated those people. I hated this idea that we were so different from men, that we disliked them so much to remove the e from the word women as not to be associated with them. I hated the fact that they seemed to have a vendetta against the boys i lived with at Halls because they were massively sexist and horrible people. I, like so many women my age, did not want to be associated with the word feminist because that's the only image we have of it, scary man-hating women. 

And I didn't want to be a part of it so much that i think i began to overlook the bigger picture stuff that they were campaigning for, the stuff that Twitter, and actually now Reddit (quite love   http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/ but it does make me angry for a range of reasons...), has made me stop and think about so much that it makes me angry. 

This year has been a big one for my anger. I realise now it had been a slow boil thing, my thinking about sexism, my changing opinions about the way the world perceives women. Then slutwalk happened and all of a sudden i wasn't quiet any more. The constant comments on articles talking about Slutwalk stating that 'this is the way that it happens' or 'it's just the way it works' or 'well, she put herself in that situation' NO NO NO NO. So i marched. And felt so powerful that day. It might not have had any measurable difference in terms of things changing for the wider society, but i guess it changed me.

I no longer shrink back from being called a feminist, i no longer simply dismiss sexism as something that is 'just the way society is.' Because if it is just that, if it is fine for a woman to be made to feel intimidated and sexually harassed simply because 'that's the way it works' then something needs to be changed and i'm not a silent any more. 

I've noticed more and more slut shaming since i went on slutwalk, i notice more and more sexism, and i've started calling people out for it. Almost broke my heart this afternoon when discussing a woman with a year 8, the first thing she asked about them was 'is she pretty?' That the same girl asked me last week 'what makes a girl a slut?' and these girls want to set learning goals like 'be thinner so boys like me'. So within my own little community I'm making a stand now. I want to help these girls recognise that feminism is about equality. That we should be talking about girls and women in ways that isn't how many people they've slept with, or how pretty they are. And it has to start when they're that age, i think. 

I'm wary though. I don't want to come off as a feminist that i hated at uni. I think that's potentially more damaging and isolating. I just want to change the way they see themselves and each other.  That they value their academic achievements over the battle with their scales. So i suppose it's a softly softly approach with the whole year level, not just the girls. Coz feminism isn't something that's just for girls..

Music Listography 3: Songs to Sing

Previously on Music Listography: I covered cover songs  and my top songs of the 00's today i'm going to do songs i love to sing along to. 


I've always sung. I went to an "interesting" primary school, it was tiny (until grade three there was just one other girl in my year level and we never had any more than 42 kids at the whole school), and the teachers were incredibly diverse in their abilities. My 3/4/5/6 teacher was, amoungst other things, a music lover and on every friday afternoon the whole school would gather in the multipurpose area and sing. Most of the time it was those songs we all learnt, like We Are Australian and Bound for Botany Bay, but we also learnt songs like 'Love is All Around', 'Saltwater' and 'Yesterday.'
In high school i was in the musical, in any incarnation of a choir we had (once performed Waterfalls by TLC at presentation night) and happily found a group of friends who also liked bursting into songs at random points in time. 
It has gotten to the point that i don't know that i'm doing it, that i don't realise that i'm singing to myself. My Lab Partner in 3rd year Zoology used to hate it, (what happened to Jesse i wonder. We did awesome Attenborough imitations together...) and i've had Year 12's mention in thank you cards how they loved it when i sung. Just this morning a Year 8 girl caught me singing along to my headphones as i walked through the school gates. 


I just can't stop, and won't apologise for it. 


So this is my list of songs i sing along to at the moment. I noticed that it's all modern music. That i didn't include any Beatles or anything that i may have sung in my childhood. Because it's not the same. They don't regularly come up on my ipod or i don't seek them out to sing... It just makes me feel a bit weird that i don't ever seem to include any "classics" in my lists... 


Powderfinger - These Days.

I've been singing this since i was in what, Year 10? It doesn't stop being good. i don't care what anyone else thinks

Washington - Sunday Best

The dilemma whenever I make any of these lists is do i put multiple songs by the same artist in them? I don't like doing it, it feels weak, so I had to spend some time whittling down my Washington list of songs, coz while I don't have her amazing voice, I find her songs incredibly singable. Sunday Best wins. It was going to be Cement, which I will say I enjoy more as a song, but find this more singable I guess... Holy Shit you sure can turn it on....

Ben Folds - The Luckiest

No comment needed right? Wish i'd seen him with an Orchestra. 

Always Be - Jimmy Eat World

Birdy - Skinny Love

Yes I know it's a cover version. Yes i heard the Bon Iver version before hers. Yes i like the Bon Iver version too. It'd be in my top three favourite Bon Iver songs. But this is a better singing version. No muttering, i suppose (is that against the Bon Iver rules, to say?)

Elbow - The Bones of You

Bones of You or On A Day Like This? I will not lie and say that i put them on back to back and walked around for a bit singing them both. Bones of you won. (uh duh)

Tim Minchin - Drowned

In another #hatersgonnahate moment, I love Tim Minchin. I love that this isn't a comedy song, but it still makes me smile every time he sings 'Like the overuse of metaphor' though. Try not to want to belt out the bridge though. 






Naturally, this list doesn't include any Disney songs. I felt if i started on them, i wouldn't stop and my whole morning would be consumed with watching You Tube clips of them. But if pushed? I'd say A Whole New World from Aladdin, Now I See The Light from Tangled and Reflection from Mulan would be my top three Disney Sing-a-long songs.


I also didn't list songs from musicals on here, because it's a slippery slope you know... It'd become a whole list of Rent songs with maybe Edelweiss (but the one at the end of the movie where Christopher Plummer breaks your heart) thrown in. Top three Rent songs? I'll Cover You Reprise, Goodbye Love and Finale B (i know right, no Seasons of Love!)




Oh, and as an aside, the songs i like to sing from my favourite bands? Stolen From Dashboard Confessional and For You and Your Denial from Yellowcard (used to be Keeper)

The itch.

Last night at Boy-o's house he was showing me pictures of his travels in a rather wistful way that left no doubt that he missed places he'd been. Funnily enough i had just spent a considerable portion of my day being equally wistful for travel. It's disappointing that work didn't give me the leave that i had wanted, i was looking for 2 weeks on top of the 2 weeks school holidays to spend a month in Germany/Scandinavia and they denied it. (said i could have December. Coz December in Scandinavia is the same as May). 
Looking at the places he has been, which are mostly different to the places i have been, has made me itchy to travel again. I know, i know, i really have just gotten back from Bali, but a week in a private villa getting spa treatments is not the same as wandering the streets of a foreign city, discovering the funky parts of a town, being excited about architecture or the weird quirks of a place. 


I came home this morning and spent some time looking at my travel pictures and wanting to go somewhere, anywhere. Well, not anywhere, Europe again, States again, Canada... 

here

or here

or here

or here

even here

maybe here

 And they're just the places i have been. He was talking about Chicago and i could totally go there, or Vancouver, or San Fran, or Munich, or Toronto, or Seattle. 


So now, at the moment, i'm back to thinking about going away in 2013 for the year. Teach for 6 months in the UK and six months in either Canada or the States. I'd have seen my original lot of year 7's through to graduation, i'd still be young, i have experience, i should have completed my Masters by then, potentially making me more employable... whole year to save... couple of months travel time in the middle of the year when they're all on summer break...  Mum could come and meet me somewhere and we'd travel then.... 


It all seems like a good plan, right?

Flexible

At the start of this semester we moved into our brand new flexible learning spaces. Not part of the BER, but funded by the state government as part of a regeneration project, these spaces, or villages, are purpose built to facilitate more inquiry based learning with flexible delivery options. In non-education jargon, we're stepping away from the teacher being seen as the one with all the knowledge ready to give to kids who know nothing, and don't have the access to the information. This is not your traditional classroom. It is not (usually) about standing up the front lecturing. This is not about copying notes down from a book. Yep, skill and drill is sometimes necessary, i think particularly with maths, but there are times and subjects where things need to be different. I went and saw QI live last night, and in the opening monologue Stephen Fry spoke about the availablity of knowledge. He expressed frustration at people exclaiming they didn't learn whatever at school, pointing out that learning didn't stop the moment you stopped being in a classroom. The thing that stuck with me was this:

"People complaining about not knowing something, not being taught something, is like living in a society where you have to wade through gold coins to get up the street and being approached by a beggar asking for a dollar. Knowledge is everywhere. Stop and pick it up" 

That's what we're aiming to do. Skill kids in a way that they pick up the interesting knowledge, seek out the things they want to seek out, and know where and how to look to get an accurate idea of what is knowledge, what is opinion and what is propaganda. We want to give them the skills to be able to convey this knowledge and understanding to other people. 

While i knew this was possible, or more possible, for Investigate (our inquiry based subject that incorporates English, Science and the Humanities in Project Based Learning) i've always found it more of a challenge in Maths. Yeah, somethings can be project-based, but sometimes it just feels like the kids need to practice something. To be able to apply their understanding to situations they first need to have an understanding. Skill them up. 

But the best thing that has come from the new spaces is the way they're skilling up. It's not coming from me. I walk into our investigate space, mark the roll then the kids divide themselves up. I have four groups of kids in four different spaces. Two bigger groups of about 10 in bigger areas, 2 groups of about three in our planning rooms. I give them all a whiteboard marker and am blown away. Kids who either need constant feedback in class or have zero confidence in their maths ability are teaching the others. And correctly too. Accurately drawn diagrams that are then used to solve the problems. They do it in their own way of speaking and explaining that allows their classmates to 'get it' faster than they probably would have if i was out the front explaining it to 24 kids. 

They take it in turn of writing on the boards, they correct each others mistakes and encourage each other when they get things right. They come out not feeling like a complete idiot for not getting things. 

And it makes me excited for what we do. To keep doing what i'm doing. 

But (coz there always is one) it makes me just as frustrated with the people so quick to dismiss the way we're doing things. The people who bemoan "losing the ability to teach" or it not being academically rigorous enough, or being too different. From the people who are scared to let go of the fact that just because you're not up the front doesn't mean that they're not learning. 

Which skills are going to be more useful? Problem solving as a group, talking and explaining in front of a small cohort of peers, reflecting and correcting work as a group OR sitting quietly and listening for hours on end. (overly simplistic? Maybe). 

I like what we're doing. I see what it does to kids beyond their academic understanding. And it makes me happy to be where i am. 

Extra

I had a PE extra today. I usually hate getting PE extra's. Mainly because, like getting Food Tech extra's, the kids are disappointed about doing something different than what they were expecting. The group i had today was supposed to be doing Gymnastics, so my options of Netball, Basketball or indoor soccer were surely going to disappoint them...

But it was brilliant. For one, i had the girls from 8D and E, who are by far the nicest girls in Year 8. I have them for Maths and Science anyway, so they know and like me. 

They chose netball and enthusiastically set up the poles, organised themselves into teams and fished out the bibs. 

then i spent the next hour running. I had to umpire and their came was fast, but not whip fast. I've been a bit off the running thing the last week, exhaustion, and well, life got in the way. I run after work (i catch a 7:30 train, there is no way i'm getting up before 6 to fit a run in) and the last week was busy, so i had trouble fitting them in excuses excuses excuses. So it was nice to be active for this one period i had. 

It makes me wish i taught at a fancy school that had it's own gym. Or simply just had a treadmill i could bust out half an hour on before i go home every night. 

The thing i noticed is that dashing up and down the court felt good, not an effort. I was enjoying sprinting up and down, blowing my whistle.

a couple of days in my brain

If i had to pick a facebook relationship status to have with my brain and my body it would be 'it's complicated'. But even then that's an upgrade from when i was 16. Then i would have been blocking my body and reporting it for harassment.

The past week:
Saturday: 'oh body you're awesome! You fit into smaller clothes! have you seen your calves lately!?!'
Sunday: "i hate you. you're ugly. that coldsore means you can't even kiss The Boy. Fat load of good you are. Your arse is too big for that dress"
Monday: "why aren't you running today? You walked 6km in an hour. like that counts. You need to run. work isn't an excuse"
Tuesday: "Oh that new dress is super cute (and a 12!) and look how cute The Boy thinks you are in it! And you got a Distinction in that assignment. We're not a bad team!"
Wednesday: "Too many calories. cut them down. go running. but don't forget about work. and your Masters."
Thursday: "i'm too tired to care. one thing at a time. one priority at a time. This salad is tasty!"

So tired. But the simple fact is that having two good days is progress from when i was say, 16. I may still have issues, but i have confidence too. And if i could go back to my 16 year old self it would be to try and convince her that she has reasons to be confident too...