Are teachers-in-training making themselves redundant?

This is a fairly long article for the just: Student teachers live on their cell phones, even in the classroom. Who needs a person dedicated to their phone, more than the children they are teaching, sitting at the front of the classroom? With projects like ‘Hole in the Wall’ taking off and granny clouds of retired individuals skyping en masse learners, should the upcoming teachers be so attached to their phones, that they actually can’t give the learners the 100% attention they deserve and need? If the phone is more important than the educator, why have an educator there, when Google can supply information? Why hire teachers who don’t focus 100% on engaging learners, when children can be given phones / tablets to stare at too?

It has been terrifying over the last decade to watch the new student teachers coming into schools to do their teaching practicals. Not only in South Africa, but around the world. Upon chaperoning a trip to Europe this year, along with my other international teaching experiences, it was evident that this is an international wave, not just a South African one. I also read an article recently at how high the new teacher drop-out rate is overseas.

Looking at the London schools I taught in and the metal detectors I had to go through. Listening to a teacher at a school in America where children get marks for arriving in class, and for putting the correct information at the top of the page they hand in. Hearing at one point that Australia had the highest teenage suicide rate in the world. Having our Greek Tour Guide tell us that she believed we were good teachers and that there weren’t many of those left. Has left me despondent at where the ancient practice of teaching is heading.

Our Greek Tour Guide spoke of the many school tours she had guided and how the unruly children usually had teachers who did not care, or teachers who were just there to do a job and take home a pay cheque. She spoke of how the teachers even went to nightclubs with the children. Yet, there we were, three seasoned teachers with a group of teens who had a Greek Town ice-cream shop giving them free ice-creams because the owner was so thrilled that they were so friendly, polite and well-mannered! Our Greek Tour Guide told us that this was only because of the teachers, us, taking our roles seriously and being dedicated to our role as role models, thus creating the well-mannered learners that we had brought with us. Of course, the trip was not without the usual need to curb teen behaviour, but for the most part, times were kept, discipline was maintained and education was happening.

From our side of the conversation, we were confused, because being a teacher was a calling with a purpose to be role models and upskill young people to be the best that they can be. We knew our role was to be the parent in parental absence (and not the ‘friend’), so discipline would be issued when the need arose and rude behaviour would be dealt with immediately. Our Tour Guide told us that few of the tours and teachers she had encountered saw their roles as we did. As we listened to Ancient Greek history, we were told that the Olympics were for the body, the Universities for the mind and the theatre for the soul and moral teaching of the nation. As a drama teacher, I know that Dramatic Arts is always on the bottom of the selection list for learners (and budget for schools), yet that is where morals are discussed in depth through text and empathised on stage. As I watch new teachers making themselves redundant through the umbilical cord to their mobile phones, and their inability to empathise with the learners wanting to engage more, I am terrified at what the future holds. Machines to teach a textbook, no discussion. An elimination of the Arts as they aren’t ‘reason’ subjects, but reality-empathy-internally focused subjects, creates an environment for computers alone. A creation of a generation of individuals who are unable to engage with others; and their inability to engage is affirmed by their teachers, horrifies me.

The Tour Guide’s opinion was then confirmed on our ferry ride to Italy, where a teacher with another group left the teenagers to do what they felt like, include pester our young boys, right next to our teachers’ cabin. We literally went out of our cabin numerous times to ask them to leave us alone and go to bed, but they were relentless in being annoying and showing themselves as desperate to get to the boys, it was a horrible experience, especially as one of our boys was badly seasick in the process – the foreign girls, however, felt nothing, and have probably never encountered the concept of empathy, their teacher did not assist us or even check on any of his learners once. Having seen illegal refugees climbing under the trucks boarding the ferry and later having things stolen on the ferry (not that these two things are connected, by any means), we were surprised that the other teacher really had no interest in the safety or behaviour of his learners.

In having worked through other situations, and having personally seen the power a teacher has to create the entire ambiance and ethos of their class’s behaviour; I know the great power that one human being has to change the way an entire class of children see, face, deal with and encounter their daily life. How can this happen if the teacher’s focus is “self” and “phone”? An example of my ambiance point from many years ago: One group went through our high school starting in grade 8 together and moving on up to grade 12 through the years. In the one subject, there were two classes, each with a different teacher. The one class entered a final practical examination supporting each other and sharing information and helping each other, the other class held onto their information, wanted to ‘be the top student’, and were underhanded in some of the things they said and did. After observing what I had, I spoke about my observations to a colleague as I couldn’t figure out why the two classes were so very different: what would cause such discrepancy, when they were all of the same year? My colleague told me to move my thoughts to the teacher in charge. When I did, it became clear to me what she meant. She said that our classes become who we are as we lead them and those two classes had each had the same teacher for that subject for three years, thus they had taken on the life approach of the respective teachers. The one teacher being a sharing, caring, let’s do this together teacher, and the other being a controlling, competitive teacher who preferred to work in isolation. The realisation scared me. Who was I as a teacher? How were the learners be manipulated, and changing their approach to life, through what I was subliminally teaching them? Which was the better approach to have? Looking at the classes, the sharing and caring ones were undoubtedly happier and far more relaxed than the ones who were fearing failure and building up insecurities they may never even realise they had.

This influence that a teacher has, that goes beyond the intellectual and academic, is very real. What would a computer-taught child thus become? Human beings who are becoming teachers just to get a pay cheque at the end of the month are fast becoming a norm in the classroom. Student teachers came in to a school do their practicals a couple of years ago and some of them slept in the computer room during the day. On several occasions they ‘forgot’ or ‘didn’t know’ that they were supposed to teach a class. Even with a bare minimum timetable, they were unable to be prepared enough to teach the lessons. I have even had student teachers where I have had to correct them because they weren’t teaching correct factual information because they didn’t understand the concepts themselves. There had been no initiative to find out, only the thought that the children will believe whatever they were told.

My honours lecturer came into one of our lectures the one evening ready to break things because about 50% of her education major undergraduates had sat messaging their friends on their phones throughout her lecture, not even looking up to read the presentation slides on the screen. New teachers and interns are continually asked not to be on their phones in class. I have had observation lessons where a student has spent about 75% of my lesson distracting me as they sat on their phone at the back of the room, barely even lifting their head. Showing no desire to learn, no desire to grow, no respect for the teacher and no respect for the children.

In an altercation at yet another school: the live-in student teachers / stooges / interns decided that they shouldn’t have to do night duties in boarding and that the school should give emergency phones between the duty student teachers’ area and the boarding house, so that if there was any emergency, then the children could phone them. What shocked the experienced staff even more than the idea of leaving children without an adult present, was the self-orientation of the future teachers. It was like all the years of devotion and sacrifice of the older teachers to create helpful, considerate and giving individuals, who put others first, were a complete waste. The new era of up and coming teachers were showing them that the safety of the children was less of a priority than their personal comfort and the use of a phone. That knowing the children had an adult present was less important than the students being able to be where they felt like being. That behaving like an adult / a parent / a person who can be trusted to look after children was less important than being a teenager themselves. Thankfully, the ruling remained and the duties stuck so that the children would have adult presence 24-7, but even so, the shock of the truth in the approach of these soon to be teachers was like a punch in the stomach to those who teach out of love and sacrifice to make the world a better place for all and not just themselves.

Maybe, if the future of education is now in the hands of selfish and immature individuals, then maybe this idea of electronic education with no unsuitable role model on their phone at the front of the classroom, is not a bad idea after all… I know I had teachers who changed my life through their love and selflessness, and I’m not sure real teaching can happen without those gifts.

Resignation Letter to Learners from Dramatic Arts Teacher

Dear Learners,

RE: My resignation

Firstly, I would like to apologise for stepping into your classroom with my own agenda – to see if I would like / could teach within the private school system. I left the state syllabus as I had taught it for so long, I desired something new. I wanted to teach in a new environment and make sure I was accurate in my decision of where to settle for my last set of pension earning decades. I made the decision and accepted the post because I believed that God had firmly positioned everything, literally everything, for me to move over and be of service in a new school, with a new group of learners.

Now I sit in major doubt as to how I can serve.

I am well aware of your ability to adapt and adjust and get on with living and doing your tasks. I am sure that you would understand my situation and can carry on fairly unscathed by my actions. After all, I have taught you – in my brief few months here – not to let people who do so little for you, control so many of your emotions (courtesy of Mr Will Smith). And that is where I now find myself – as someone who can do very little for you in your context.

You see, your educative environment is purely ‘mark’ directed. All of you place your worth and your level of esteem and ability in the hands of your teachers and strangers who apply a letter to your efforts. I hate that. I hate that your efforts are compared and categorised when you are SUCH unique individuals with so many strengths and abilities that cannot and will never be ‘markable’; yet you don’t see it that way. You haven’t been trained to see it that way. You have been trained to take that chronological number that has been assigned to someone’s categories of worth, and you make that assumptive value your personal value. I hate that. You are not the value of some other human’s assessment and judgment of you. Your value is that of gold and silver, refined in THE Refiner’s Fire. Sculpted by THE Potter’s Hands and sealed in The Kiln of The Most Awesome Creator. Your abilities are limitless. Your talents span the width of your imagination, but therein lies the rub: educators, often people who don’t even believe in themselves, people who have suffered under the same marking system that you are suffering, are in control. I hate that. I hate that people who are not called to teaching, are teaching. They are inflicting their insecurities on you, and contorting you to bend to their whims and their rules and comfort zones by squashing you into the boxes created by random numbers, otherwise known as: Percentages. And you, in your innocence and ignorance as children, accept it. You accept the forces of control and irrationality, and the confines and restrictions the syllabus and system impose on you and brand into you. I hate it.

I sit in this moral conundrum. Who am I to judge? Isn’t it only God who should judge? Who am I to say this is worth an “A” when the learner has been lazy and then just uses God’s Given Talent at the last minute on stage? Who am I to say that the learner who has worked so hard, given everything and stretched themselves into empathy, passion and courage at the highest level, is only worth a “C” because she doesn’t have the acting technique that I prefer? A for Ass, C for Courageous… A for Arrogant, C for Committed… A for Algebra, C for Calculus? The marks assigned by strangers in Drama, for an Exam are meaningless to me, for such reasons. Yet, for you, for my learners, they mean everything. I find it absurd, absolutely absurd.

I find myself now in turmoil over what you expect, what your requirements are for a teacher – someone who will get you an “A”, when some of you are just not in possession of the “X-Factor”, you are not categorically, by the piece of paper and the blocks I have to tick, an “A”… but your parents, your family, your friends, your teachers who have you as their ‘pet’, are telling you that you are an “A”. Why do they say that? Because they love you and that is what they see, that is what they know. Because they don’t have assigned tick boxes. Because they have no idea what vocal characterisation is, or what it entails. They don’t have a clue about projection and body dynamic and the technical “have to have’s” for an “A” in a Drama Exam. They are right, God has created you as a potential “A” candidate, but that “A” is not in Dramatic Arts in the private school system. In the state system – yes, there you can get an “A” because your interpretation, your ability to stand cold on a stage and use only yourself to engage with an audience is considered “A” material. It is not so in the private system… and this is where the private system clashes with ME.

It clashes with my belief in all of you and your incredibly hard work being worth that “A”. It clashes with my belief in the examiner being open to everything s/he sees on stage. It clashes with my belief that an actor with nothing on stage is more powerful than an actor who needs the prop of a prop… I can see your soul, your integrity, your truth in the character when it is only you up there, when I am not distracted by a tea-towel in your hand or an item that you throw across the stage. I am not cut off from you when you have a table in front of you. I am not subjected to being an observer of your conversation with a statue on stage. I engage with you, you move my soul, I see your soul has moved, when you interact with me, the soul in the audience who is listening to your message, hearing your words and forming a soulful bond with the character you have taken on in order to take me on a journey. I cannot watch you giving soul on stage and place it in boxes. I cannot tell you that your everything is worth so little, when it is not. I cannot train you in my way, I cannot ask you to act to my style of laying your soul open on stage, when your external examiners want props, want set, want pure type-cast, stereotypical, by-the-book, copy-and-paste, done the same over and over, performances. I am not made that way. I can’t expect every 17/18 year old to contort their body into the assumption that a 50 year old has no strength and must change their body to be ‘old’! I can’t force you to assume that you know exactly what a playwright ‘made’ a character to be, and that anyone on the planet could recreate a stereotype of something someone else thinks. You are not parrots or monkeys. You are not made to ‘fakely’ copy another director’s perceptions or preferences. You are you, with your own ideas, your own interpretations, your own directorial perceptions, I cannot and will not force you to lose integrity with yourself to copy and paste your work to be that of someone else.

I am not made to follow man and fit into the whims of mans’ insecurities. I walk in the knowing, the absolute conviction, that God has placed me where He has in order to touch souls. In order to awaken the inner light that is so dull inside you, so that you can believe in yourselves, so that you can know the truth of what eternal is. So that you can walk away having experienced something ‘out of this world’, something that has allowed you a moment of ‘touching God’; and then gone a step further by giving you a stage, a platform, an audience, to help them touch a moment with God, with themselves and their truths and insecurities, to open their hearts and know that ‘it is ok’, ‘you are not alone’…

The problem comes in – I cannot get you the marks set by this system, this syllabus, purely because I don’t believe in the system or the syllabus. I don’t know how to dance to the tune of materialism and worldly judgment. I only want to dance to the tune of truth, of praise and worship, of love, honesty, sincerity, authenticity and all that is so hard to achieve in our current society.

I sit, disturbed at a very deep level. I sit and type this letter to you in confusion with regards to the rigidity and conformism that I have found is dictated into ART, into an EXPRESSIVE and PERSONAL TO THE CREATOR subject. I am not made in a capacity that can serve you in this ‘private school’ context. Its non-transparency, for very real reasons I am sure, as I have had to personally deal with you annihilating me for ticking boxes that you disagreed with. I have had your parents annihilate me for not giving you the “A” they “know” you deserve. I have seen teachers with unhealthy “preferences” and completely subjective “reasoning” sway examiners with nonsense to get marks “improved”. I know firsthand why non-transparency would be chosen… even so, non-transparency with only ONE examiner is not right or healthy. It is secretive and beyond subjective. The State system, with its full transparency, will have a minimum of two external examiners and then open discussions with teachers, thus often having four examiners deciding on a mark. This is healthy, this is objective, this eliminates personal preference and personal subjectivity. One examiner, on a bad day, could skew an entire set of marks. One examiner who does not like a particular style, or has his/her own agenda can completely whitewash a year to poor marks because s/he ‘didn’t like it’, or has ‘seen it done better’, ‘or preferred the movie’ or ‘was raped herself and that is not what it looks or feels like’, or ‘I haven’t studied dance, or danced myself (I’m not that talented) but I wouldn’t say that was good’… Sub-conscious jealousies, personal agendas, self-righteousness, lack of understanding of a piece; all of those can factor into a single ‘examiner’ and how s/he allocates his/her personal choice of marks… I don’t believe it is right or fair to have one solo adjudicator who bears the burden of allocating marks without confirmation from another, and who gets sole control over setting a judgment over another human being’s creative work.

I find myself despondent, at my wits end trying to work through this, trying to fathom how I can work in such an unfair and distorted system. This is why I am resigning my dear children. I don’t want to be aligning you with my dreams and goals and lighting your souls, when your goals are the marks given by one person, in one moment, making one judgment call on you. I am not in the business of teaching for marks, of teaching to make some single other person able to put you in a box, ‘the best box’; because I don’t believe in ‘boxing’ anyone’s creative efforts…

I have also now encountered a horror of truth in the examination assessment that I have had to live through. In the feedback I asked for help, because I had been told that I had to tell you what to do. . . a.k.a. “Direct you.” Me? That if you aren’t working, if you aren’t getting the interpretation that the examiner wants from you (bearing in mind that I am not even told what that interpretation or expectation is with regards to what marks they assign – so I am expected to orientate myself around some invisible ‘standard’ / ‘expectation’); then it is my ‘fault’ – so … this means that your exam mark, your ticked box has nothing to do with your performance and everything to do with MY directing! Who is the most important part of any play? “The Director”. Who is the cog in any show? “The Director”. Who gets nailed with the criticism and torn to pieces if a play is ‘bad’ (as dictated by some person ticking their own random preference boxes)? “The Director”.  It’s so completely twisted that I would be required to tell you how to act on stage and then MARK MYSELF! I am not into teaching practical Dramatic Arts to have myself come in and tell other people what to do. I did not go to University to become a Director; I studied my second qualification to TEACH. The goal of this teacher is to create INDEPENDENT, self-aware, capable to handle the real world learners, not DEPENDENT on me human beings… Yes, there are wiser people than ourselves out there, yes, we go to others for advice, yes, input from others is always advisable, but telling others what to do and how to do it? Surely not… What happens when my poor direction then reduces a learner to have lower marks because I didn’t notice something? Then, what about when you refuse to listen to my direction? When you do what you feel like and then I get slammed for it? Not fair, not ‘right’.

On top of all this, apparently, if learners don’t type up their programmes, then I must do it for them? What the? What on earth is that teaching any child? If you don’t do your work, it’s ok, someone else will do it for you and because that other person does it so well, you can get a great mark and call it “my mark”? How is that healthy? Helpful? Truthful? I am not employed to be a slave, or someone who is going to take on all responsibility for people who are apathetic and couldn’t care… I am not made to hide mistakes and flaws, I want them revealed, I want consequences for actions and behaviour to happen. I want learners to learn to be responsible for their own work, their own future, their own lives.

This in totality means, I do not fit the private school system. It means my values; my ethic and my purpose do not align with the methodology and learning system that you (and your parents) have chosen for your education. It means I am not fit to provide the service you are expecting or the mark alignment and mark affirmations that you crave and build your lives around. It means I am not fit to be your Dramatic Arts teacher.

You are amazing learners and the potential within you to become awesome adults is great. I truly wish and pray that you know it, see it, believe it and become proud of yourselves; and that you achieve in fabulous ways in all the years ahead… how you gauge and assess your level of achievement… well, I hope it is not by some tick box or the ratings of some “Body” that some humans have declared “important”. I hope that your assessment of yourselves lies purely in the depth of your Souls and how you engage with YOUR FATHER IN HEAVEN. In the darkest part of the night may you be able to say: “It is well”, “It is good”, “I am content, I am at peace, I have served a mighty purpose, and an amazing God in a loving, kind, true and eternally pleasing way today”. Amen.

Stay blessed and know you are Loved,

Sir.

Copy and Paste – Teacher’s Practical Exam Experience

My friend had his first experience of external grade 12 practical examinations in the private school system… the start of his email read: “Horrible”. He recently left a state school to teach at a private school… The state methodology of transparency is something that he told me he now rates as WAY better and WAY healthier than the set up that he had to live through. He emailed me frankly and mentioned these, amongst other points, to express why he was so bleak about the experience – some of his email:

• You get ‘feedback’ that is general and offers no specific help or guidance in the way of the necessities. It is generic with ifs and buts and cannot be applied to every learner. On top of that, hints are made with regards to the performances that were shown and were not ‘of standard’.
• That need to control… it kept resonating in me. That need to put across what they want done and how they want it done. This examiner was rigid, in that he believes there should be minimal learner interpretation and that they need to play the character only to the truth of the playwright. . . so therein comes a big problem – the playwright is dead. An 18 year old IS NOT 60 or 70 or 45 years old. An 18 year old does not have the life experience or background to tap into what someone decades older than themselves would be feeling or how their body would be shaped. This means that the examiner wanted the same OTT, type cast, non-interpreted soulless ‘acting’ that is merely ‘copy and paste’ from the original. I AM SICK TO DEATH of COPY AND PASTE! It’s plagiarism on a larger scale. They can’t plagiarise in their projects or exams, so why are they then having to on stage? UGH!
• It’s not the learners being marked, it’s me! The teacher! The examiner said that there have even been times when he typed up the programmes FOR HIS LEARNERS! Saying ‘you have to do what you have to do’… so adults are making themselves sick with stress and working many unpaid hours of overtime. Losing time with their families and time with God, to do the work FOR lazy-ass learners who don’t feel like doing it for themselves?!?! Are you serious?? Yes, he was very serious. He will do the work FOR them! That is SUPER insane! Then the learner gets a mark for the work and it’s ACTUALLY the teacher’s work. That’s technically fraud! Putting someone else’s name on your work for an exam mark. How is that ethical or legal? When teachers send learners home to do their homework and the parent does the project instead, and the teachers get angry … Hypocrisy! How can you get angry at a parent doing a project for their children, when you type up entire programmes for your learners yourself?
• No transparency – it blows my mind that one person and all their subjectivity and personal baggage, beliefs and preferences makes a decision on his own without knowledge of anything but a once off performance. It’s crazy. The exam system is crazy. One moment, one mark, here, take your box that is represented by a letter of the alphabet that someone, somewhere in history decided to apply to a number they decided to call a percent. There – that letter with a number, that’s what we are going to value you at for this moment, for the rest of your life… all gauged on a once off performance – – – why is humanity still doing this? Maybe learners have learnt the pointlessness of it. The meaninglessness of the mark for that moment. No wonder learners are apathetic these days. How can you motivate a group of soul-hungry, spirit-starved, technology-zombi’d learners with “here, come boy, come, get a mark”? Society and her boxes! It infuriates me so. Learners in the 21st century are more street smart, observant and exposed to hectic realities than any generation that has come before. Sex, drugs, rape, trauma, war, pollution, depression, divorce, immature parents, broken parents, broken homes, animals becoming extinct, technology, abusively orientated television, films and play stations… and examiners want them to roll out “cut and paste”… It’s like this idea of ‘growing’, of ‘engaging with your mind’, applying truth, is just a farce. Examiners still want the same repeated and regurgitated stuff they have always had. It’s like the same regurgitated stuff is the examiners’ comfort zone, what they understand, what they want to see, what they feel comfortable with.

My friend, I’m battling, I’m battling BIG time. I believe in Soul Journey, I believe in the Individual experience, I believe in Individual development into their Own Personal Story, not a generic ‘copy and paste’ reproduction of what someone else did. Not some warped twist to make things plagiarised ‘legally’. I believe in preparing learners for the difficulties that lie ahead in an unknown life that is moving faster than humanity has ever moved before. I believe in learners reaching into themselves to find their own strength, their own character, their own creativity through the tools blessed to them by amazing playwrights. I believe that learners are using the playwrights’ creations to explore the emotions and depths and context of the characters in their own exploratory ways, safely guiding themselves through empathy and depth, truth, authenticity and finding inner peace.

• The examiner pointed out the strongest performer that he felt was the best in the one group, and I was shocked. The learner had little emotion, little truth, little ability to hold an audience, pronounce the words, or even use diction… the second piece was a whirlwind without technique or story or soul; it was ‘copy and paste’ sans emotion, sans truth, sans believability… The examiner liked the fake / acted / ‘copy and paste’. The bolshie, over-the-top reproduction of the mainstream original. Once again, HUGE conflict for me, huge inner turmoil. I believe performing should mean you have the audience in the palm of your hand; you take the audience on a beautiful journey. Once again, that is MY directing style, my choice, my way of making theatre a living experience that will move Souls and enlighten the Spirit of the Audience members… The examiner wants fake replications. Meaningless copy and pasted musical pieces. Seriously? How can I now continue to teach these learners, knowing that my agenda is not for them to go out and copy and paste, but to go out on a journey with themselves, a journey that goes deeper into themselves and moves their humanity to touch a place of integrity, empathy and wisdom?

I’m stuck in a system that I don’t believe in, but that the people around me have vested their everything into, their limited personal journeys of truth marking my learners’ in depth journeys with their truths… how does that work?

• A talented actor can stand on the stage with nothing and make the audience feel everything. A talented actor doesn’t need props or costume to bring the stage to life and engage with the audience. A talented actor uses nothing but who they are and who they can become and the rawness of bare-naked truth, exposing themselves completely. . . But, you have to have an engaged, switched-on, open to interpretation, Spiritually activated and responsively intuitive examiner to ‘get’ the talent and efforts of the child, as I see them. You also need an examiner whose love language is words… An examiner who cares about the words and deeper meaning, not just the spectacle and entertainment that can be created by someone who can contort their face into various facial expressions to ‘keep an audience member’s visual attention’. If you look at the majority of the world’s population, they do not use over-the-top facial expressions. Most are so guarded in everything that they do that they don’t reveal anything in their facial expression… So if there is a learner whose facial expression doesn’t exude ‘ott’, then that learner is penalized for what they are physically unable to do… isn’t that discrimination?
• 17 / 18 year old Drama students are NOT professional performers, so why are they being marked on a level that is expected from professionals? And aged professionals at that.
• 17 / 18 year old Drama students are not taking Drama to go into the profession of performing arts, about 90% of the learners do not have the ‘X-Factor’, but they are giving a whole lot of heart and soul… Surely an academic subject should have different criteria to a professional performance?
• I have to teach and direct to a performance standard that I have never seen and do not know. I’m required to play to the feedback of the one examiner who I hopefully will not have again next year; but the next examiner may have a completely different preference of style… how do I orientate myself and my learners around a continuously changing and unspecified set of criteria? This process really is pure lunacy. Humans trying to exam creativity, it is pure lunacy…

And puts me in the space of: What am I doing here? How can I help these learners achieve the marks they are so unhealthily desperate for, when I don’t believe in marks, I don’t believe in ‘awards’, I don’t believe in this human world setting the standard for life and creativity? How? If I believe in the beauty of every learner and every performance, how can I be in a system that doesn’t? If my style is facilitation towards learner independence and I am working in a system that believes in teacher control and learner dependence, how am I helping? This is a broken, hurting world, why are we teaching a ‘copy and paste’ work ethic when we need to teach a coping and healing life tools? Why are we teaching ‘reward’ instead of ‘altruism’? Why are we sticking to rigid controls and ‘black and white’ answers in a world where truth is based on perspective and experience and no-one’s interpretation will ever be identical to another’s?

I sit here, stuck. Caught between a knowing of what is truthful and real and what is constructed by people wanting things to be as they want… well aware that as I type, I am wanting things to be seen from ‘my perspective’ and I have no less right to be ‘right’ than anyone else. The boxing system, being applied to people who should be ‘out of the box’, ‘no box required’, is absurd. Drama was never made to be categorised and marked, it was made to explore humanity, reveal humanity to itself, expose truths that should not be kept secret, and open up life to be engaged with on all levels… I feel like the examination session was the antithesis of all I believe, with its secretive, non-transparent marking system, its grids and criteria, its list of boxes that need to be ticked… Dramatic Arts Examining is the Antithesis of the heart and soul of Dramatic Arts… What do I do when the system is opposed to my heart and soul, opposed to my knowing and everything I believe in…

Do I keep going and expose young minds and young lives to my truth, or bow out and let the system of boxes dictate their self-esteem and move their truth into the realm of ‘copy and paste’ for some marks?

Who is setting life’s standards in the 21st century, what are they? why?

I’m not sure if I’ve blogged about this before or not, in all honesty, I’ve never managed to keep up much over a long period and the fact that I now have over 180 posted blogs over a span of years has quite surprised me! So now I may end up rewriting on topics that I’ve already blogged about, sorry if I do, but I know people who repeat the same story at every gathering they are at (do you have that family member too?), and I’m not doing that, so I forgive myself. This time: Standards.

I’m once again being confronted with the notion of: “Shannan, your standards are too high.” This bothers me, it has always bothered me. “You can’t expect things from people.” For example, twice now within the last few months I’ve given birthday gifts to others for their significant birthday, and I didn’t receive a “thank-you” from either of them. Upon texting the first to explain the origin of the gift, I didn’t even get a reply. The second, I messaged a week later and she replied with an apology and sincere thanks. So expecting a “thank-you” for generosity and giving my time and finances is not on… When did “ingratitude” become an acceptable standard? So my moan is not about the expectation, it’s about the now ‘accepted standard’ of: “you are supposed to give a gift/s”.

Further to this, in my classroom, the learners have said that my standards as a teacher are too high, that being from both learners and some teachers. That I’m too passionate, I work learners too hard, do my job too well, and I shouldn’t be or do as I do because it only creates stress i.e. if I stop being so passionate and working to achieve high standards, then I wouldn’t get tired or be stressed…
So my ‘standard’ of doing my job to the very best of my ability is: ‘too high’. So what’s ok then? Half a job? Half commitment? Low standards and expectations? So I’m not tired? When did society and human beings decide that settling for less is ok? How can that be ok? I had a professional in a different field tell me to change careers the other day because teaching is too much stress and hard work and I should go with something that makes me more money and is “easier”… I told him straight how tired I am of people thinking that lesser-IQ-intelligent, lazy, apathetic and less passionate people should be teachers (which must be their meaning by their reasons for telling me not to be a teacher). If we let the less organised and less-proactive individuals become teachers, in my opinion, then the cycle will ‘re-cycle’ itself; it will replicate itself, and lazy, apathetic, disorganised and uninterested learners will be created, or: frustrated, under-mentally-nourished misfit deviants will make everyone know that they exist and are unchallenged. The microcosm of a school will become the eventual macrocosm of that society of learners. It only makes sense to me to have THE TOP Educators in Schools, to get them in, to pay them, to develop them, to embrace them as the artists who will be carving the morals and standards of the generations moving through schools and into the business world. We have cluster meetings with people from numerous other schools and their principals aren’t at school to approve things, because the principals are at their second jobs where they make more money… Is that the standard? Why do people tell me I’m at fault for my standards when I see it that anything less is going to create far less?

A significant other: “Just go have sex already, your standards are too high, guys will be intimidated”. Seriously? How can a human being think that way? I can’t even comprehend how people can think that my standards of honesty, respect, manners, upholding my dignity, being kind and helpful and generous are “bad”? How? They get upset that I won’t go out and spend hundreds on getting drunk like they do, so I can vomit it up like they do, have car accidents like they do, get arrested for drunk-driving like they do, destroy my liver, kidneys and brain-cells like they do… why? I make enough mistakes in everyday conversation without needing to add alcohol to the mix to make it even worse. I think that when God gave me such bad physical reactions to alcohol in the first place, when I was in university, that He did me a BIG favour. Same as when I tried smoking and it made me vomit the taste was so bad. When did our standard become: Cool for sleeping around and gathering diseases; cool for getting so trash-drunk that you can’t walk or find your way home; cool for sticking poisonous sticks between your lips and making everything around you smell horrendous? When did it become a “bad” thing not to be sleeping around, not to be drunk every weekend, not to be smoking your funds away?

Relationships: I wouldn’t hook up with a guy who had a girlfriend and that made him bleak with me… when did it become ok that the person doing ‘right’ was treated as being ‘difficult’ / ‘wrong’ / ‘too good’? Can there be such a thing as “too good”? Being honest with another person and telling them exactly how I feel and where I’m at… why does that make me a “bad” person who shouldn’t be spoken to anymore? I wish more people were always honest with me, it would be so much more helpful than trying to fix the hell that lies create, especially as that trust can never be built up again. I want to be trustworthy, I want to be loyal, I want to be honest, healthy, real, genuine, open and the best that I can be, so why does society keep trying to make me feel like I should be less than that?

Who do you want teaching your children? Lazy? Apathetic? Couldn’t care less? Disorganised? More interested in their tea break and eating cake on Cake Day? People…

Who do you want to marry? Someone who’s dishonest? Disloyal? Untrustworthy? Angry all the time? Insecure? Continually changing to suit others? People…

Who do you want to have children with? Someone unreliable? Drinker? Smoker? Materialist consumer-addict? Someone purely image conscious? Only out to please other people, no matter what? People…

My every answer to all those questions is “No!!!”… so how can I “drop my standards” and “expect less”, when I desire to live a life that had a gloriously uplifting and helpful impact on the world?

I’m so tired of this “do as I say, not as I do” approach to others; “do as I do”, that’s what it should be. Full Stop.
People – Why can’t they all just hook up with Jesus Christ and His Standards for Life? If His standards were a ‘norm’ instead of the ‘low’ standards I face every day, then I’d be a MUCH happier person!