what’s your story morning glory..

Such fun!

Where to start? Both my parents were in education, and both did further education when I was a child. We were a eat dinner together, listen to National radio kind of family. I think I can say that my Dad is a nerd and an alternative thinker, totally rational. My Mum was “smart” in an unassuming way and extremely smart about people and passionate about the environment. They were also both idealistic and socially conscious.

My first stories about education are the ones my mum told about me as I have the memory of a fish. I can believe I loved Playcentre with my mum. I sure loved it with my daughter – as much as she loved it even.

When I started school, my mother made an arrangement with the teacher that I would only go 4 days a week, and on Wednesdays, I stayed home and made stuff. My mother and my teacher both believed I would be better? do better? and cope better with school if I only went 4 days. My mother said I would be so full of ideas that I needed to be at home inacting them. I do not remember this, but I still compulsively make stuff. I was possibly a weird kid.

I do remember that there was a train on the wall of that classroom that your name went in when you had dirty fingernails, seems an amazing concept now – a friend remembered that you also had to have a hanky!

I remember my next teacher was Welsh, and I took a tea towel of Wales to school in the hope that she would get homesick and go back to Wales… The narrative my mother told was that one day she relieved for this Welsh teacher and wanted to inact Billy Goats Gruff and asked for my help and I said “I don’t know how to” and the other kids in the class told my mum I always said that. Apparently,  I was about to be ‘put back’ a class. I had read everything and didn’t want to re-read anything. I wanted to be left alone, I was just waiting to go home. I found out quite early that teachers would accept work that was not my best work.. and if I did anything really good, I would get attention I didn’t want. I also worked out that the stuff I wanted to learn was not what I was being taught. I remember not wanting to go to school. My mother got me to buy the bread on the way home as some kind of responsibility bribe. I would eat all the white squishy stuff out of the inside on the way home – possibly an expensive bribe.

Another narrative my mother told, was of me doing a petition at my next school over some blackboards that the school wanted to paint over. My parents always told this story with pride. The school of course painted over the blackboards, a pale yellow, and we had one less thing to do. At that school, I had the misfortune to be in an Open-Plan classroom. In some ways, it suited me in that all I did was SRA cards, I remember it was noisy, but I have no idea who my teacher was, I just waited to go home. I had a “friend” who used to play me and another girl off against each other, so for a while, I went home from school for lunch, that was allowed. When I didn’t want to go to school, I would have the kind of ‘tantrum’ that meant my mother couldn’t even touch me, let alone man handle me to school. Our stint in Palmerston North was when my mum stood for election for the Values Party. My teacher did a whole class thing over the election, and they put Fleur, the most popular kid, in my Values party team. I was sure even then that they did this so I would not get picked on. Now I get that they were well meaning, but I really did not care at all. I have some kind of internal confidence about my values, they are rational. The only thing I remember with a sense of any emotional feeling at all was from the playground. I do not know if this was a one off or a regular thing – an awful game of “no bags Jane Doe (I do remember her name) germs” which even saying in my head makes me feel sick to my stomach. I don’t know if I feel sick because I played one time (hard to imagine), or because I knew it was awful and I did nothing. Maybe that is when I realised my powerlessness – after all a petition didn’t work. I remember the girl. She was one of the few Māori kids who was obviously poor and wore dirter clothes than the rest of us. Those who think Lord of the Flies is some kind of fantasy didn’t perhaps have contact with small town racist NZ of the 1970s. I would have been Piggy but stick shaped, maybe Simon…

That school was not a full primary, so we moved to the country so I wouldn’t have to go to an intermediate (the Anne couldn’t cope idea, but so true). School 4, was a 5 teacher school, where my mum taught. I didn’t mind that school, maybe I’d learned to accept it. We had to bike several kms to school and home again or wait around for mum to be ready to leave. Mum was a new entrant teacher, but the older kids thought that she was too strict – she sent them outside at lunch-time. We got the odd prank call from my classmates. I was more bothered by the Springbox tour and the Falklands War. Having moved a lot and having been to many different schools, I cared more about my family, and I was very happy with my family, our family’s values, and my extended and chosen family.

I did 3 high schools: small town with a large catchement of country schools (streamed classes), an Area School (12 in my 6th form class and no 7th form), then a central Wellington School (kids with mohawks!!). I was good at school in that I was silent, well behaved, straight B student unless I felt some boy needed to know I was smarter than them, cooperative, usually at least a little interested in the subject. I can’t imagine that I was at all memorable. I do remember an incident where an english teacher asked us to pretend to be cats in front of a fire (drama?) and one of my classmates did and was told off as he portrayed his cat as stretched out long with his legs in the air – as cats do. Teachers often don’t reflect the truth. My reports always said, “Anne must participate more in group activities.” Why should I? they never told me why.. and I do not think my classmates would have wanted that. I was an adult child.

At high school when holidays didn’t overlap I would help mum out in her classroom (new entrants plus at a 3 teacher school). She was an advocate of play based learning before it was called that, she did come from playcentre. She had a Wendy house in the corner of the room, she never raised her voice, everyone in her class was treated with equity and affection. She was able to bring joy to the kids. I remember her once deciding that it was too nice a day to be inside, and they all went out with magnifying glasses to look in the grass for bugs.

I was never able to be bullied. Kids tried, but I really didn’t care about their opinions. I had no desire to be liked, especially by the kids I knew at school. I was interested in the wider world. I met my people at University. I don’t have any friends from school. School was just a thing I had to do. I am pretty sure that other kids thought I was weird, ‘grannie annie’, but I don’t think I ever thought I wouldn’t meet my people. You do spend most of your life as an adult. A teacher tried to bully me once, it led to me being excused from PE for the rest of my time at that school. I was fine with this and it was undoubtedly better for him. I can do passive resistance, (family of active peace activists) and he was diminished in the eyes of others by having no power over me. I knew I was smarter and happier than him. I don’t even remember his name. Possibly now the school would diagnose me with something.

I went to university because having been institutionalised, I was not ready to break out on my own, and I didn’t have those kinds of skills. I chose botany because I liked plants, and I loved drawing them (still do) – I did keep going to university after my degree finished to do physical geography as I was intertested in the subject, it really adds to my tramping experiences… I did not have to pay for my education, so I did not have to think about it as job training. None of my further education has helped me get a job but it has enriched my life. As a nanny, I was asked about the last school I went to as if my tertiary education was less important.

My first independent ideas on Education came in my mid 20s when I read an old book, so long ago I can’t remember it’s name, of the kind with a plain fabric hardcover, possibly by John Dewey… It was written by an American teacher who was given a class of low socio-economic kids, 1950s maybe, and they couldn’t reach them, so they tried an experiment in what would now be called democratic education. They talked about how hard it was, but the results were dramatic and so positive. That was at the same time as I was a nanny and not having had experience with preschool children I was learning alongside the children. My first boss said she had no experience with children until her own, so why would it be a problem that I didn’t. I was able to be myself, un-observed, no Porse, no curriculum, no rules but my own. It turns out I am someone who doesn’t want to control others, and wants children to direct their own learning, to decide for themselves their interests. I see them as fully functioning humans. (I am not as good with my very own child, so tired?). I would do something I wanted to do that I thought they might like and use that as a springboard, and if they didn’t like it at least I did which is great modeling. My references say things like I was providing an exceptional educational environment. I had so much fun. Once we, me and two under 5s, had an art exhibition after going to an art gallery, we made up long winded titles, served drinks and stood around pointing. Their mum was awesome and played along. Sometimes I wish I could be a governess in the middle of no where, then I remember only rich people could afford me.

Then I came back to New Zealand to get a “real” job and went to teachers’ college. I was an adult student, and my experience was different to others – some had no children whereas others had experience only with their own children. I was already questioning what education is? and who is it for?- but I wanted to pass. At one of my first TEs my assessor said I had a problem with the role of teacher. I think I had a different idea of what a teacher should be doing. Fortunatly one of my practicums was with a teacher, considered a total maverick in her school, who actually had a classroom where the kids were in charge. Her student, teacher and parent conferences were exactly that. Her students taught in the classroom. I also started reading about the Summerhill school and democratic education. My main takeaways from teacher’s college were; follow the rubric, and people say one thing but do something else. Very similar to what my father learned studying economics as an adult and as a questioning student. 

When I started teaching at a real job in a Catholic school where I couldn’t use my name as my name and I had to be Ms Bieleski it was disastrous and I ended up having a breakdown. Trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. After a summer of housepainting, outside and totally tangible, I started relieving and then went teaching back in the UK – where it is all paint-by-numbers but the money means you can travel. When I returned to NZ I was fortunate enough to relieve at Otari school in a Montessori classroom. I ended up working part-time there and learning more about the Montessori philosopy, both of which suited me better (on going theme/schema of part time) and doing art school as well as working in public health research. Then came National Standards. I was already questioning when and what we teach as after all someone made it all up. (Some of my high school maths was what my father learnt at university! As soon as people achieve we move the goal posts further and further away,  why? high dominant paradigm standards?). I left Otari school, end of contract, pregnant and very anti National Standards. I then did Playcentre. Playcentre is the ultimate education; parents and community are involved and present in the education, the styles, ideas, and interests totally reflect the variety of the community. We all made it up together. Schools could learn from this model. I have visited Tamariki school in Christchurch which was founded by some playcentre parents and follows a playcentre model. When it was time for my daughter and I to leave playcentre my child said “I won’t go, you can’t make me” about the school I had taught at and that we had been picking up kids from after school for 3 years (it took her two years to play in the school’s playground)… Due to my experience of school and observation of my child I decided that she was correct and school probably wouldn’t do her any good, and having watched what it did to one of her close friends I let her make this decision. (One of the Immersion teachers was the only one who said that this was the way it should be). There was also the stick – as a solo parent on such a low income that it needed proping up by the government I knew that I could get scantioned and have my benifit removed if my child was truant. I have always been aware that there is less separation between politics (in many ways the seller of the dominant paradigm of the day) and education than most believe. Homeschooling, unschooling, and reading around that has further confirmed my ideas about children and learning (sample size of oneish). I also started reading Peter Grey and about the Sudbury Schools in the USA, the Reggio Emilla ideas of multiple teachers and of the third teacher being our environment.

During my time at playcentre I was briefly a point one at Otari school, and I took “Bush Guides” which was a programme where the kids would come to Otari plant museum to learn about the bush (I took my toddler – a roots of empathy idea) and to learn to be guides able to take other schools on tours through the bush. The kids would ‘apply’ to be part of this group. I let anyone in, so at one point, I ended up with a few kids who had never spent any time in the bush – they were after some ‘slacking off’ time. At the end of each session, I would give the kids free time to play in the bush (to be like children in te taiao), and these kids had no idea what to do. They were at a loss and wanted their phones and ended up quitting. When I was in the senior (yr 5 to 8s – why do we teach in single age bands, it makes no sence) Montessori class, I would take the kids into the bush weekly for a ‘run’.  We had a boy from Auckland come into the class who had never walked in the bush in his life, never walked on an uneven surface before. The first few times, I had to hold this tough street smart kid’s hand until his confidence came in, and with it came an associated jump in his confidence in the class, and he became more cooperative, he knew we had his back. 

After many conversations about such educational matters at playcentre, a friend there started Everyone Out – a free play outside holiday programme, now also a one day nature school 4 days a week and in two locations. This friend is an engineer who came to education via playcentre, after her children were born. Her educational experience was of a dyslexic who had to advocate for themselves. I see this as an example of how we need people from different backgrounds, including those who education didn’t serve, how we need unconventional entries into the educational sphere and the necessity of people who have different ways of thinking – my friend was able to start a business which is something I could never do and she provided me with my dream job, which I not only love but feel successful at.

We are biological beings who evolved in a natural world it should be part of our lives, how can we get people to protect what they don’t know or understand? I personally have noticed that the more time I spend in Te Taiao the more that I feel and understand mātauranga Māori and ako. I can feel myself becoming better than I was – that I have my place in Aotearoa. I am making observations of the real world and so are the children, we are sharing this knowledge and feeling a deeper connection to mother-earth.  When I was approximately 14, Donna Awatere Huata was calling for pākehā to go home. Other than a stint in Australia for dad’s work I only knew Aotearoa (only one of my grandparents was not born in NZ) and found the idea that home was somewhere else profoundly disturbing (it was also the time of Rogernomics and massive changes in NZ). I had long been disgusted with NZ’s mainstream culture, very much of the one story back then – I had a double sence of not belonging.  Having now lived in the UK (where I got to be totally foreign) and come back and spent even more time in Te Taiao. I have started to know the names of places and some of their stores and I know in a different way that I am truly home, that my small cultural group is part of this story. I have been toying with the idea that is like our culture was a child, having black and white ideas, accepting the culture of it’s parents and now it is finally growing up (except for current coalition government of dinosaurs) to be able to see wider and understand the relationship of place, culture, and people better and take on cultural ideas that are better and more in keeping here than those we had…. maybe a better analogy is evolution rather than growing up into something I would like to be part of.

We come into the world wanting to learn, needing to learn – it is biological. We learn best in the circle of our families, culture, and the wider community of ALL ages. The age we start to want to learn something varies greatly, and why should we limit this to being of school age (don’t get me started on Gerry Brownlee breaking community education). What we want and need to learn varies widely between people. Learning what we want is a lot more motivating, and in doing this, we learn skills of how to best approach our own learning and discover our own agency. We, adults/the powers that be, do not know what another person will need to know until they need to know it, so why do we get to decide what to teach and how and when? Why do we have to learn what we are told? It feels to me that at school we are told that what we want to learn is not as important as what we are being told to learn, and then we wonder why children are ‘not learning’ are ‘put off learning’ and don’t have agency.  I personally absolutely love learning. I absolutely love watching kids explore ideas and learn even if it is something stupid like pokemon. (I have written on this sort of thing many times on homeschoolery). I think our whole education system is in need of a major structual change.

Wo this story turned out way longer than I expected and so much more logical and structured….. it may almost even fit some kind of magical thinking structure, definitely not a straight line, and peppered with having to support the dominant schooling model to earn some $$, so being part of the system. As an introvert I lack the ability to be the person to stand up and fight.