The unfinished tome

THE PARADOX OF PEDAGOGY         The cornerstone of my teacher training in the mid-seventies was in pegging those events and processes that would lead to a group or class of students learning something. It may seem like I’m stating the obvious but methodology was all-important in those times. Moreover, such methodology would be as applicable to a science lesson as it would be to a physical education session out in the playground.   The ‘lesson plan’ soon became the currency unit in both my training and probation years as a teacher. In fact, lesson plans played a significant role in my first decade on the job……. and maybe then some.   Typically, the lesson plan would comprise an introduction to the topic or skill, the body of the lesson including the teaching points and subsequent consolidation and, finally, the conclusion. Now what occurred in each of those phases might change depending on the subject and the material or skills b...

  THE BRIGHTEST AND THE BEST           There was never an actual time that I can nominate when the decision to become a teacher was made. Certainly, no revelation pointed me in the direction of the school gate and I have no recall of anyone advising me that teaching was the career of champions. But teaching did provide an avenue for attending university and I desperately hankered for sandstone enlightenment.   After a fabulously mediocre Higher School Certificate performance in 1973 (my second attempt!), I matriculated and gained a place as a first year Bachelor of Arts student at Sydney University. Luckily, I also secured a teacher’s scholarship and nominated myself as a potential social science teacher destined for high school hysteria.   During the last year of my arts degree, it was suggested by the Department of Education wigs that I reconsider my original decision to work in the social sciences and concentrate ...

INTRODUCTION     With little fanfare and with even less opportunity for thoughtful revisionism, I officially left teaching on 26 January 2015. My employer, the Department of Education and Training, referred to it as a ‘separation’ and, in important ways, I guess it was.   Teaching and Paul Anthony Regan had cohabitated for thirty six years and, like any long marriage, both partners had infected one another with positive and negative ‘stuff’. There was no acrimony between the parties at the close of business or none that I was aware of at that time. Rather, this separation was initiated by your humble author achieving sixty years of age. It was time to move on for both of us and those journeys should take quite different directions.   I had always bored colleagues in my latter years on the job by regularly asserting that ‘separating’ teachers should not be permitted to enjoy the largesse of their retirement benefits and superannuation unless they ag...