![]() We are all mad! Spoiler Alert: I’ve got a bit of a dry sense of humour. My mates say it’s the Welsh Dragon in me. That, or they were calling me a dragon… Why do I gleefully make that rather fiery statement? Well let’s see if I can take you on a bit of a journey in order to explain it…. I often tell the students that travelling gives you extra lenses with which to see the world. With more lenses, you can see more of the spectrum of the world and understand it better. For instance, an infra-red camera will give you a different understanding of the world as opposed to a UV camera, just as having being brought up in one culture helps you to see the nuances of another culture, which may not be so readily seen by the culture’s own people! Education, travel, languages and work experience helps you gain new lenses with which to see the world. Mostly, my year 13s stare blankly at me and just ask me to continue entertaining them by putting on a thick Welsh accent to describe some science. When I came to teach at OGs my prior work experience had made me understand teaching with certain lenses. I have to say, that OGs has given me so much more of the beautiful spectrum of education and the teaching profession than I ever knew was there. Thank you everyone, especially for teaching me that wellbeing of staff is just as important as the wellbeing of students. Let’s tie that last paragraph in with my initial statement that we are all mad. Well, to qualify that let me explain my teaching lens from the UK… ![]() I worked at a Grammar School which specialised in Science. Great, I thought! I get to play with expensive equipment and have some great PD. Which was true. I did get a great lab to myself and a fantastic interactive white board, with an awesome physics technician, to help me out with setting up the experiments and demonstrations that were mandated for every single lesson! We worked hard, but then, parents were buying second homes in the catchment area (just outside London mind) in order to get their kids into the science specialist school. We had to work hard. But looking back, it was a ridiculous workload:
I am so grateful that OGs gave me an opportunity to return to the practice. Why? Because you are fantastic! You all work tirelessly for your students and your colleagues. You support one another in the practice. You recognise that teaching is a practice, that we are always practicing at getting better at. You have really done well with using technology in your lessons. I’ve yet to see another school using the Google Suite anywhere near the amount that you are! It’s great for training up the students for their futures. Your professional development program has helped me to feel part of a community of professionals and opened my eyes to new ways of improving and playing! Yes, I do think that teaching science is about playing. Obviously I consider it as serious play! But all girls need to know how to play at making electromagnets and zapping people with static electricity, it’s their fundamental right as children! So how then are the students different at OGs? Believe it or not, they seem happier to me. They are well rounded and supported in their non-academic activities. They are encouraged to be individuals! I may be a bit skewed from the classes that I taught here… but I can honestly say that it was a pleasure to be able to see the students as individuals and celebrate their achievements outside of the science lab! Being involved in sports day was a great eye-opener for me! Us science teachers were scared of the PE teachers in my last school! They were the only teachers who could shout louder than us! By understanding students as whole individuals, not just learners of science, I felt more able to bring who they were into the classroom and tailor the science to them. Teaching the classes 4 times a week really helped with this. I think that this respect from the teacher towards the students individuality, helped the students to be happier in class (mostly)! Well done OG’s for supporting your students! In life and the universe there has to be balance. So then what is the pay off for happier students? Well if they have more time to spend on being happy, they have less time to spend on their science education! When I first got to NZ and saw the education system, the first thing I saw was the apparent lack of science that some students do in intermediate school, and so when they come to high school in year 9, it feels as though they are 2 years behind their British counterparts. It’s taken me a few years to see this through a different lens, and that lens now shows me that it is better to have happier students in society. I think… Why then do I think that we are all mad? Well, you know the answer to that! When was the last time that you had a full evening off work? An evening where you didn’t go to bed wondering how you could better teach that topic, or if that student is ok, or if I overstepped the mark by asking (in jest) my HoD for $4000 to buy some new science equipment? Or even, are we mad for putting up with the government’s offer of money when the teachers were striking about conditions and workload models? Madness. :) ![]() So why do we tolerate this madness? Well, I don’t know about you but I have found every other job boring in comparison. I love me a good challenge to relish I do see (Welsh grammar that is). But also, when you look at cute photos, of Ariane for example, I can’t help but want to do my part at making it better for her generation. Are these reasons similar to yours? One last note… Thank you for supporting me through an awful time over the sudden and unexpected loss of my Dad. I can’t begin to comprehend the pain that I feel over it myself yet. Having your support and hugs when I needed them, really helped with my wellbeing, and that of my family’s. Just a week before my Dad died, I skyped him from OG’s tennis courts and showed him the school. I told him how wonderful it was, especially this new sense of how important wellbeing is. My dad was overjoyed that I finally found a good and healthy work environment and that I was teaching again! Then he blinking died before we could take all the grandkids to disneyland. Madness. ![]() One more bit of madness…. I’m doing the LOTR ending thing… it’s appropriate. This is a picture of my Godfather, Rory Taylor. Some of you Dr Who fans may recognise him. Rory was my Dad’s assistant at the BBC. He was also the photographer at my wedding. It wasn’t until the wedding did I find out that Rory was born and bred in DUNEDIN!!!!! I was already living in Dunedin at the time, and I never knew. I just always thought of Rory as my Dad’s friend with the funny accent. Imagine that, ending up in my Godfather’s home town, on the other side of the planet, by complete fluke. It gets more mad, at my Dad’s funeral, I found out that Rory’s mum was an alumni of OGs. 🎵 Link to its a Mad World…. And now for something completely different 🎵 And here’s a cute picture of Ariane and Ben... ~Alex Sims
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This has been something I have written about before in my Trickey Thoughts blog, yes I am unashamedly self-promoting. It was fascinating when I reached out to the community on Facebook around this and software developers and people from large companies were really excited to see schools interested in this way of working. If you want to see how I used it in the classroom, the blog is here. It was great to have a refresher on Agile with Phil Baskerville, it left us questioning how do we put it into practice within the classroom? Many of these conversations started buzzing around the staffroom and continued with me chatting to my sister in law. This part of the blog is going to be a bit of dreamscaping. Imagine a blank canvas on which we could paint a different picture of our education system outside this industrialised model we have inherited. If we were to use some of the Agile methodologies what would it look like? Let us look at Scrum as outlined in the picture above. In this system we would call the product backlog the NZ curriculum. The team would be your group of students - these could possibly be students we mentor. This team would look at the things they have to do in a week, prioritise and plan a two-week sprint. What could this sprint involve? It could involve setting up specific lessons to cover knowledge deficits, it could be using a design thinking process with the aim to produce something or write and produce a play first studying a classic text. The possibilities are endless in essence. Daily Scrum meetings would ensure students know what tasks need to be completed with the use of Kanban boards etc (a 'to-do, doing, done' list). After the 2 weeks, we would have a potentially assessable product with the teacher tailoring assessment to the tasks. We would reflect and celebrate what has been completed what can be improved. Students would be truly empowered to follow their passions. A team would hopefully learn the benefits of brain breaks and could schedule sports into their team time. What if teams were selected around specific Vocational pathways with some fluidity around these movements? Integration and the break down of silos would be easily done. The Amnesty group, for example, could go about organising action and this could be tied into an assessment with them writing for a true purpose. I know that some of our teachers have seen this working in other schools and there are of course pitfalls along the way, but with an agile mindset, these can be addressed and learnt from. ~Duncan Trickey
![]() We are all mad! Spoiler Alert: I’ve got a bit of a dry sense of humour. My mates say it’s the Welsh Dragon in me. That, or they were calling me a dragon… Why do I gleefully make that rather fiery statement? Well let’s see if I can take you on a bit of a journey in order to explain it…. I often tell the students that travelling gives you extra lenses with which to see the world. With more lenses, you can see more of the spectrum of the world and understand it better. For instance, an infra-red camera will give you a different understanding of the world as opposed to a UV camera, just as having being brought up in one culture helps you to see the nuances of another culture, which may not be so readily seen by the culture’s own people! Education, travel, languages and work experience helps you gain new lenses with which to see the world. Mostly, my year 13s stare blankly at me and just ask me to continue entertaining them by putting on a thick Welsh accent to describe some science. When I came to teach at OGs my prior work experience had made me understand teaching with certain lenses. I have to say, that OGs has given me so much more of the beautiful spectrum of education and the teaching profession than I ever knew was there. Thank you everyone, especially for teaching me that wellbeing of staff is just as important as the wellbeing of students. Let’s tie that last paragraph in with my initial statement that we are all mad. Well, to qualify that let me explain my teaching lens from the UK… ![]() I worked at a Grammar School which specialised in Science. Great, I thought! I get to play with expensive equipment and have some great PD. Which was true. I did get a great lab to myself and a fantastic interactive white board, with an awesome physics technician, to help me out with setting up the experiments and demonstrations that were mandated for every single lesson! We worked hard, but then, parents were buying second homes in the catchment area (just outside London mind) in order to get their kids into the science specialist school. We had to work hard. But looking back, it was a ridiculous workload:
Despite all this madness we still did our jobs. We supported one another and we also got 100% pass rate (it was a Grammar School). But it was never enough. Or so it felt. I am so grateful that OGs gave me an opportunity to return to the practice. Why? Because you are fantastic! You all work tirelessly for your students and your colleagues. You support one another in the practice. You recognise that teaching is a practice, that we are always practicing at getting better at. You have really done well with using technology in your lessons. I’ve yet to see another school using the Google Suite anywhere near the amount that you are! It’s great for training up the students for their futures. Your professional development program has helped me to feel part of a community of professionals and opened my eyes to new ways of improving and playing! Yes, I do think that teaching science is about playing. Obviously I consider it as serious play! But all girls need to know how to play at making electromagnets and zapping people with static electricity, it’s their fundamental right as children! So how then are the students different at OGs? Believe it or not, they seem happier to me. They are well rounded and supported in their non-academic activities. They are encouraged to be individuals! I may be a bit skewed from the classes that I taught here… but I can honestly say that it was a pleasure to be able to see the students as individuals and celebrate their achievements outside of the science lab! Being involved in sports day was a great eye-opener for me! Us science teachers were scared of the PE teachers in my last school! They were the only teachers who could shout louder than us! By understanding students as whole individuals, not just learners of science, I felt more able to bring who they were into the classroom and tailor the science to them. Teaching the classes 4 times a week really helped with this. I think that this respect from the teacher towards the students individuality, helped the students to be happier in class (mostly)! Well done OG’s for supporting your students! In life and the universe there has to be balance. So then what is the pay off for happier students? Well if they have more time to spend on being happy, they have less time to spend on their science education! When I first got to NZ and saw the education system, the first thing I saw was the apparent lack of science that some students do in intermediate school, and so when they come to high school in year 9, it feels as though they are 2 years behind their British counterparts. It’s taken me a few years to see this through a different lens, and that lens now shows me that it is better to have happier students in society. I think… Why then do I think that we are all mad? Well, you know the answer to that! When was the last time that you had a full evening off work? An evening where you didn’t go to bed wondering how you could better teach that topic, or if that student is ok, or if I overstepped the mark by asking (in jest) my HoD for $4000 to buy some new science equipment? Or even, are we mad for putting up with the government’s offer of money when the teachers were striking about conditions and workload models? Madness. :) So why do we tolerate this madness? Well, I don’t know about you but I have found every other job boring in comparison. I love me a good challenge to relish I do see (Welsh grammar that is). But also, when you look at cute photos, of Ariane for example, I can’t help but want to do my part at making it better for her generation. Are these reasons similar to yours? One last note… Thank you for supporting me through an awful time over the sudden and unexpected loss of my Dad. I can’t begin to comprehend the pain that I feel over it myself yet. Having your support and hugs when I needed them, really helped with my wellbeing, and that of my family’s. Just a week before my Dad died, I skyped him from OG’s tennis courts and showed him the school. I told him how wonderful it was, especially this new sense of how important wellbeing is. My dad was overjoyed that I finally found a good and healthy work environment and that I was teaching again! Then he blinking died before we could take all the grandkids to disneyland. Madness. ![]() One more bit of madness…. I’m doing the LOTR ending thing… it’s appropriate. This is a picture of my Godfather, Rory Taylor. Some of you Dr Who fans may recognise him. Rory was my Dad’s assistant at the BBC. He was also the photographer at my wedding. It wasn’t until the wedding did I find out that Rory was born and bred in DUNEDIN!!!!! I was already living in Dunedin at the time, and I never knew. I just always thought of Rory as my Dad’s friend with the funny accent. Imagine that, ending up in my Godfather’s home town, on the other side of the planet, by complete fluke. It gets more mad, at my Dad’s funeral, I found out that Rory’s mum was an alumni of OGs. 🎵 Link to its a Mad World…. And now for something completely different 🎵 And here’s a cute picture of Ariane and Ben... ~Alex Sims
A Drama conference, if you choose your sessions appropriately, can greatly resemble what I imagine a hippy commune is like. Start your day with yoga; move into a session of ritualised stomping, group death, and reanimation; then conversely, head over to experience your birth as you exit your egg and blindly interact with a stranger. This was just in my first morning in Christchurch. Why is this relevant to you? Am I trying to get you all to experience Shaku-Hachi as part of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training? No. Although to be honest this was the most alert and present I have felt in ages. Am I wanting you to experiment with dissonant vocal sounds as you explore waving a scarf using four means of movement? No. To be honest that session, which was the last one of the weekend, was dreadful and I wish I hadn’t gone to that. Am I wanting you to explore the world blindly for the first time and have your only connection be with a stranger’s hand? No. Well, actually, yes. To be honest, I would love nothing more than to get the whole staff to try out this wellbeing exercise as it was truly extraordinary and the fact that afterwards everyone was able to locate their stranger was amazing and a bit woowoo. But I doubt I would get many willing to do that. Any takers, let me know. My Year 13s will be subjected to this in the coming weeks. What is relevant are the messages that came through again and again in these sessions about being creative, being strong, and being resilient. In order to further develop these key conference themes, the keynote address was delivered by Dr Viv Aitken an expert (unironically) on Mantle of the Expert. Aitken based her talk around ‘The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion’ by Jonathan Haidt. A subject she noted she had considered changing given recent events. Dr Aitken entwined Haidt’s theories on morality and righteousness with the theories of the Mantle of the Expert’s creator, Dorothy Heathcote. Here is where you come in. Brotherhood is part of the Mantle of the Expert process; Mantle of the Expert being the approach where participants take up the specialist knowledge required to perform a task. For example, a student could take on the Mantle of being a Roman baker and discuss bread fraud (which, fun fact, was a real thing) as part of a group’s exploration of life in Roman times. As part of this Mantle of the Expert work, you pause before a moment to think of the people who have taken a similar step/action as you are about to undertake. This could be in the present in New Zealand or throughout history and throughout the world. You are joining that brotherhood. “All those who” is a phrase attributed to this work. Aitken tasked us with adding in the opposite view too. Could we also think of “all those who don’t”? Those who would be adversely affected or would be opposed to the step/action. This is a fitting consideration in our current climate. Do you often consider the worldview of others? In fact, how can you consider the worldview of others? Have you ever considered your own? Have you, as Haidt explores, considered your righteous stances? An acting process that can be helpful in this also comes from Heathcote. This is her exercise on the 5 Levels of Meaning:
It seems a very important time to consider our actions, motivations, models, investments, and values. In education, we are not teaching the views. We are teaching that there are views. Contested and contestable. Who are your brothers? Who aren’t your brothers and why? Does it really matter? Considering our brotherhoods (a term that the feminist in me is a little snarky about using) is an interesting and illuminating challenge. Because we are not immune to the viruses of hate, of fear, of other. We never have been. But we can be the nation that discovers the cure. -Jacinda Adern ~Lauren Mackay On Christmas Eve we flew to Taiwan from Christchurch, arriving at 11.30pm to Taipei Taoyuan International Airport - where we spent the night before shuttling with our tandem bikes to a hotel in central Taipei at 7am on Christmas morning. I first became interested in Taiwan when I watched a documentary some years ago where Oscar Kightley traced his DNA roots back across the Pacific through Samoa and Vanuatu, to Taiwan. You can watch the documentary here: Made in Taiwan . As well as interesting me from the perspective of indigenous peoples (see below) Taiwan is geographically fascinating due to its duality between traditional and sophisticated ways of life. Taiwan is a mountainous island. The island has the largest number and density of high mountains in the world. There are 286 mountain summits over 3,000 metres (9,800 ft) above sea level on the island, with Yushan being the tallest mountain in both Taiwan and East Asia. Taiwan was also the site of the February 2018 6.4 magnitude Hualien earthquake. Unbelievably, this was the first time I travelled in Asia so it was a unique learning experience in all respects and a very fascinating tail-end of my Highgate Fellowship. We spent four days in Taipei and were surprised not to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people (2.6 million in Taipei and 23 million in Taiwan - a country just a little larger than Otago). Taipei has superb public transport and this enables a relative absence of cars and complete order in moving vast quantities of people everywhere. The National Palace, the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Shilin Night Market, Beitou Hot Spring Museum, Huashan 1914 Creative Park and the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines were all highlights. ![]() So how do you leave the relative comfort of an inner city hotel and jump on your bike to head out of Taipei and around the island of Taiwan? Surprisingly - just the same as the nervous anticipation when you leave the comfort of your own home here to embark on any adventure. With the help of non-english-speaking Eddie at the hotel, Google, a paper map, two policeman at the end of the road and two locals on a scooter (along with lots of thumbs up and ‘Welcome to Taiwan’ shouted from passing vehicles and scooters), we made it to the huge Taipei Bridge and exited onto a cycleway that lead many kilometres to the south-west end of the city. The cycleway was embellished by huge murals that stretched for miles - just a foretaste of the incredible artworks, sculptures, buildings and structures that we were to encounter across the island. Our route stretched down the very industrialised and urbanised West Coast, through the busy city of Hsinchu and down past the fishing nets and windmills on the No 1 Cycleway. I was pleasantly surprised not to encounter the pollution and smog I had anticipated (the wind may have helped with this). We encountered our first Bhuddist Temples and marvelled at the incense, the colour, the devotion, the detail of the ceilings and shrines, and the stories within. We saw the first of many rice padis and followed the one traffic rule you need in Taiwan - don’t hit anything in front of you! (perhaps ironic in light of my recent events!) Footpaths and carparks are clogged with scooters in cities and you have a complete right of way on a bicycle, passing double-parked cars, mobility scooters, dogs, street stalls and other unexpected obstacles in the scooter lanes which are shared. Traffic was kind and giving and many scooter riders and/or passengers (which sometimes included dogs and children) attempted communication or gave thumbs up or took our photo while stopped at red lights. Everywhere - on and off the road - we heard ‘Jia you’ which is a term of encouragement and kind of means ‘Keep going’. Even on our last days people still called out ‘Welcome to Taiwan’ as they passed on their scooters or called from the street. The 7-11s (a bit like our Night ‘n’ Days) became our lifeline to get out of wind or heat, eat something, go to the loo and just rest. Even there recycling was mandatory - and included almost everything, including takeaway coffee cups. There are very few plastic bags and no smoking allowed in parks. We saw solar bridges, thousands of electric vehicles, green spaces and dedicated cycleways everywhere we went. A highlight was the Sun Moon Lake, a steep 800m ride up to a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains and home to the Ita Thao aboriginal tribe. The Xiangshan Visitor Centre is the most incredible modern building I have seen, built specifically to frame the lake beyond. The lake itself is enveloped by a fabulous spacious cycleway that cantilevers and almost floats above the lake. Unfortunately this came to an abrupt end where it was closed due to a killer hornet nest! The Wenwu Temple perched high at the end of the lake was another highlight. We attended an Ita Thao cultural performance which was vibrant, colourful and told important stories despite the language barrier. Taichung and Kaoshuing on the West Coast were two of our favourite cities. Modern, crammed with cycleways, beautiful parks, sculptures and green buildings in all directions, these cities are visions of the future where sustainability and aesthetics are prioritised in urban design. Apart from a vertical drop rollercoaster and missing an Uber ride home in the dark on New Year’s Eve, the highlight of Taichung was the incredible Rainbow Village created by former soldier, Huang Yung-Fu, who began painting houses in his settlement, now known as Rainbow Village, to save them from demolition. Over the years his colourful artwork, which includes birds, animals and people, has spread over the remaining houses in the village. In Kaoshuing the beautiful Kaoshuing Stadium was shaped like a dragon with a full roof of solar panels and by night Love River in Kaoshuing transformed into a river of lights, beautifully lit sculptures, river boats and buskers. We biked as far south as Checheng before crossing to the East via the 42km climb to the 500m Shouka Pass. Emerging to the glistening turquoise Pacific was wonderful - though travelling through the gobsmacking roadworks and engineering feats of the new East Coast highway required some skill to negotiate the one lane construction zones. There were also Taiwanese military exercises involving bombs and fighter planes adjacent to the road as we departed the west, evidence of growing tensions in the Taiwan Strait between China and Taiwan. The East Rift Valley was a highlight. We stood on the boundary between the Philippine Sea and the Eurasian tectonic plates, were invited to refreshments in a luxury resort, went to the famous Mr Brown Avenue - a “green road of paradise”, visited a tea plantation, crossed the Tropic of Cancer and emerged again at the coast at Hualien. Unlike Christchurch there is zero evidence of last year’s devastating earthquake there - testament to the huge construction industry in Taiwan and the wealth of the nation. The absolute pinnacle of the trip was our cycle up the Taroko Gorge on Lucy’s 17th birthday. It is a 19km marble canyon carved by the Liwu River, as stupendous as Yosemite or other geological marvels around the world. At the head of the gorge we walked on the Baiyang Waterfall Trail and saw Formosan monkeys grazing in the trees alongside the trail. Cycleways, surf towns, cycle tunnels, hills and yet more stops at 7-11s led us back into the cycleways of Taipei and we finished our trip with a trip to the Taipei 101 skyscraper - the tallest and largest green building in the world. We travelled up 89 floors in 37 seconds. The building design echoes Bhuddist pagodas and bamboo and contains a 728 tonne steel pendulum that spans two floors and combats seismic movement and winds from tropical storms. In conclusion, Taiwan was beautiful, fascinating and thought-provoking. Rich in religion, culture, history, architecture, art, engineering, wildlife and scenery and having experienced rapid and recent economic development, Taiwan leads us up and into the age of the modern and beautiful. Because it has emerged so recently economically, its design and planning has been in line with the rise of sustainability, making it green, clean and gorgeous. Despite the language barrier and not knowing what we were ordering or eating half of the time, the people were warm, helpful and encouraging, with a great sense of humour. Its future is uncertain politically but one likes to think it can remain as it is - free, beautiful, sustainable and democratic.
You can read further about the whole journey here: http://onewheeleach.blogspot.com/ Many thanks to the school and the Board of Trustees for giving me such rich learning opportunities over the past year. It has been a year of very positive growth and development for me - despite the rollercoaster journey! ~Bridget Davidson Six New Zealand teachers will learn about Indonesia and Islam up close and personal on a two-way exchange starting next week. Nicky Chapman and Lisa Taylor will travel to Jakarta to connect with their Indonesian counterparts at Al Azhar Schools from April 11 to 18. Al Azhar has some 50,000 students across the country, and Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, with close to 90 percent of its 264 million people followers of Islam... To read the official press release about their trip click hereAs I sit down to write this, Leesa and I have just welcomed a French couple, on a year long working holiday visa and a Chinese couple, on a 14 day holiday around New Zealand, into our home. Being Airbnb hosts is so rewarding. Every night you just don’t know what you are going to get and we have learnt so much from the stories and experiences from our guests. Some of them have seen more of New Zealand than we have! As they arrive we show them to their room and ask the typical questions “where have you come from today?” and “how long are you travelling for?”. We usually strike up conversation in the kitchen while one of us is cooking dinner and we help them plan their days in Dunedin. Sometimes there is a slight language barrier and we revert to miming and simplified speech. We have two spare rooms in our house and guests have their own bathroom. We never get sick of having people in our space (actually it feels strange when we have noone booked in for the night). In fact we have made some friends along the way, many of whom we plan to visit when we travel one day. Firstly there was Penny & Barry from the UK. When I told them that I was heading out for the evening to a school fundraising quiz night, they told me they would love to join the team. It was a hoot getting to know them outside of the house - even if their quiz skills were a little poor. Sophie was also from the UK. She stayed with us for a week before finding her own place in Dunedin as she was moving here permanently. Even after she moved out we have kept in touch and catch up for bookclub, runs, bikes or dinner at each others houses. Francoise was a retired French baker whose husband had died a few years earlier. She had decided after a few years of moping around home to get out there and discover the world. We thought she was so awesome for travelling solo to New Zealand. She had picked up a rental car in Christchurch and stopped at Moeraki boulders. Unfortunately she left the handbrake off and the car headed towards two low posts connected by a chain. She was sure once it got there it would stop the car. Instead it pulled the posts out of the ground and the chain scraped all the way up and over the car. She then ran and pulled the handbrake just before the car rolled off the cliff. She was telling us laughing, saying she couldn’t believe she had to ring the car company only 4 hours after picking it up to say she damaged it. She was such an awesome lady. ![]() Recently we had a farming couple from the North Island who came down for the Eagles concert. The lady informed us that we didn’t look like a gay couple and in fact she had never met a gay couple before. She had so many questions that she wanted to ask us! We told her she could ask away….. We had crepes with an Italian couple on Christmas morning and there was also another couple who told us about travelling around the world on a Yacht (which they had just sold and had just begun their journey travelling the world by land.) ![]() The absolute best guests we have had were Bianca and Waldemar from Germany. We looked forward to playing competitive Uno with them each night over a glass of wine. They have continued to send us pictures every second day of their travels and we have promised to visit them back in their home country. Most people stay one or two nights, someone stayed a month and a few people have come back to stay again. In total we have had 295 couples stay in just over two years. Being hosts has really helped us recognise and understand cultural differences and similarities, which has helped us to be more accepting and welcoming to all people regardless of age, race, religion and sexuality. Meeting people is so rewarding. It is absolutely worth racing home everyday to wash sheets, vacuum and clean the kitchen and bathroom just in time to put our smiles on and open the door to another couple. Here are the links to our listings if you want to be nosey - it is quite interesting reading the reviews from our guests
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/16674991? location=Dunedin%2C%20Otago%2C%20New%20Zealand&adults=2&guests=1&s=VP9TqEXH https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/17638798?location=Dunedin%2C%20Otago%2C%20New%20Zealand&adults=2&guests=1&s=VP9TqEXH And on a business note, if you are thinking about hosting, let me know, I get $150 for anyone I sign up! ![]() In my family, I’m the flower grower and Jim is the veggie gardener. His enjoyment of all things veg has put him on the committee of the DVGC (Dunedin Vegetable Growers Club). Being a good supportive wifie, I go along to the meetings with him, and occasionally …. when they are really really desperate for a speaker, I do a little cooking demonstration or some other random presentation. The club is fairly well attended, with over 80 members. So far, I’ve done a presentation on homemade cleaning products, homemade castile soap, preserving food and making herbal teas. I think there are a few other ones in there but I choose to block them forever from my memory. So, a funny thing happens when you become a member of a group or a club and you do these kind of presentations. People actually believe that you are an expert!! How gullible is that? Then they talk to other people, who talk to people and so on. Hence, a phone call from our very own Mitre 10’s kitchen department. So, pretending to be Martha Stewart over the last month for two Saturdays I set up a kitchen with a small team of orange shirted helpers and demonstrated my amazing skills of reading and following recipes. Cooking and preserving in particular in the middle of a busy store, was certainly challenging. I completely underestimated the amount of time it would take to set up and look like I knew what I was doing. Together, with my team of little orange helpers, we muddled along just nicely. The first demo was jam making and chutneys. Before long the delicious smell of caramelized red onion chutney and home-made jam filled the store. A couple of hundred pikelets with jam and cream, crackers and chutney were happily consumed by those who wanted to check out the process and ask questions. Believe it or not, there seems to be a real revival on making home preserves at the moment, and I was amazed at the number of folk who were just learning for the first time how to go about this. ![]() A couple of weeks later, I did my last demo and this time it was bottled beetroot and bottled pears. Seriously, there is no comparison to the home grown delicious bottled beetroot and the insipid pale canned rubbish we buy at our local supermarket. At one stage I think I had about 20 people gathered around watching me ladle pears into hot jars whilst sampling beetroot. In this crazy, mad world, it’s nice to go back to the simple things in life. Growing good food, enjoying that same food around the family table and sharing a bit of knowledge with others who wish to do the same. Even though (with my other commitments) it made this last month a bit on the insanely busy side for me, I really enjoyed the change of environment, the lovely folk who got involved and making some new friends in the foodie world. I had fun. I know you are all probably wondering when the tv series will begin … but in the meantime, here’s my “award winning”, kidding, recipe for Caramelised Red Onion Chutney. Caramelised Red Onion ChutneyOnion chutney requires only a few ingredients - onions of course (any will do, but red onions give the nicest colour and sweet taste), a vinegar - sherry, red wine, or balsamic are all ideal, and brown sugar, together with some bay leaves and peppercorns or chilli for flavour.
Ingredients 6 large onions– finely chopped 3 cups vinegar (2 cups balsamic & 1 cup white vinegar is good) Olive oil (approx 1 tbsp) 3 cups brown sugar 2 bay leaves 15-20 crushed black peppercorns Method In a good sized saucepan heat the olive oil and add the onions. Cook until softened. Add brown sugar, vinegar, bay leaves and peppercorns. Bring the mixture to the boil and then simmer gently for 1 to 1 1/2 hours until the onions have gone translucent and all the liquid has evaporated. Pour the hot mixture straight into hot sterilised jars, seal, and store somewhere cool and dark or in the fridge. The chutney should keep for at least 6 months. To ensure the chutney can keep even longer (1 year plus), put the sealed jars in boiling water and simmer for 15 minutes. Chutney should be left for 4-6 weeks to mature allowing all of the wonderful flavours to develop and mix. Chutney Recipe Variations Additional ingredients can be added to this recipe according to your personal taste. A couple of garlic, cumin, thyme, redcurrant jelly, cloves, sultanas, mustard, apple, and tomato puree all work well. Add a tablespoon of cornflour to thicken up the chutney if desired. Recipe has been modified, but original idea came from: http://www.self-sufficient.co.uk/Make-Caramelised-Onion-Chutney.htm ~Robyn Bazika What started as the seed of an idea has bloomed into a brand new course at Otago Girls' High School.
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Many knitters have discussed white privilege and a friend shared a document with some good points. The starting point was “men's unwillingness to grant that they are over privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged”. Moving on from this, “white people see racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts them at an advantage.” |
In acknowledging “white privilege” we must ask what we (the collective we) should do to end or mitigate this.
How many of our colleagues and students don’t have these advantages?
- If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
- I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
- When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my colour made it what it is.
- I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
- I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
- I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
- I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.
- I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
- I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
- I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.
I’m writing this to generate reflection and discussion of how we function both on a personal and institutional basis. As a result of reflection and/or discussion will you make any personal changes?
I’m not saying we are racist or promote racist practices.
Although these points are written from a USA point of view, do any apply here?
I have a short version of the essay if you would like to read it.
~Kris Claman
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