Yearning For Summer Heights
October 5th, 2007
This one will lose any of the non-Australian readers, but I’ve got something I want to float with people. “Summer Heights High” (you can even download episodes from the website) is very funny, and very, very wrong. But does anyone else watch that show (and particularly the Jonah storyline), and feel a really strong pull towards doing something to help kids like that. And as someone who’s currently re-evaluating career orientation, what does that say?
October 5th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
it is an incredibly funny show…my wife who is a teacher is struck by how accurate some of the characters are..
Jonah in particular but also the drama teacher….
The male teacher who is always trying to help Jonah has to be the most patient and walked over teacher ….when Jonah sent him that picture on his phone LOL..:)
October 5th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
It really is a fiendishly clever show. It takes me right back to the unpleasant parts of my high school experience. I can completely identify with your thoughts about career track Geoff. I’ve thought many times about switching tracks and becoming a teacher for exactly the purpose of helping kids who need someone to guide and mentor them as well as educate them.
A school seems like the perfect environment to do it. You get paid a full-time wage to be around kids who need that kind of input 5 days a week. It seems like such a nice neat boxed up solution, particularly for a Christian with a heart for young people. Get the government to pay you to be a positive influence in the lives of kids who need it. What more could you want, right?
It’s easy to look at it like that and not see the rest of the picture though. It would be exceedingly straight-forward to overlook all of the actual work that goes into preparing and maintaining coherent academic programs for groups of young people with varying needs and backgrounds - and when you think about it, if you’re a teacher, that’s theoretically a major percentage of the job.
I haven’t done it because I think that whilst the idea sounds really inspiring now, I’m sure that over the next 20 years my passion for being positive above and beyond the call of duty could easily be taken over by the demands of the job and by things that will come along outside of it.
If that sounds like a cop-out, that’s because it is. But if I want to have an impact on young people, volunteering as a camp leader for a week would easily rack up the same amount of contact hours that your average high school teacher has with one of their classes (as opposed to an individual student) across an entire school term. Plus, I tend to find that the camp environment takes people outside their comfort zone far more and is often the catalyst for some serious change in people’s lives.
October 7th, 2007 at 1:26 am
Amen to that Pauly. Geoff, you should take up my career I never pursued and do outdoor education… become a fearless outdoor leader. Hehe.
You have the ‘child of teachers’ bug I think.
Still… a dip-ed with teaching methods in theology and IT would be a feasabile thing for you.
What I like about the idea is that I’d be able to have serious conversations with you about educational outcomes and discipline strategies and you wouldn’t look at me like I was some kind of freak. Now that would be an exciting day.
October 13th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Careful Geoff, be very careful, or you’ll end up being a teacher… beware of the direction this train of thought is leading… you don’t want to give us all the opportunity to say “I told you so…”