21 April, 2016

First term at Burnside High complete and well into the first week of the school holidays. Taking the chance to play around with personal projects, beat up the garden and reacquaint myself with the PS4. I make no bones about my job this time around. I enjoy teaching and am in a decent school but the holidays allow me time to do the things I really want to do. The more I reflect on life the more I feel we have got it all so horribly wrong. Our organisational structures suck all of the fun out of any enjoyable activity and our endless labelling and silo-ing of skills limits any real opportunities for people to expand, learn and apply new skills in a meaningful way. Holidays and breaks between jobs have always proven to be more meaningful and interesting in my experience. It is a shame we can’t find ways to harness that and allow people to contribute to our communities and society as a whole in ways that make sense to them rather than only on tasks with commercial value.

I had a moment where I thought I’d get involved in an education MOOC but after a quick read I realised it was a lot of big words, acronyms and talk resulting in … absolutely nothing. No changes applied, no pressure put on governing bodies, no push to change schools … just a lot of posturing and talk that no doubt will be used by many for self-promotion and various personal agendas. One of the issues with having been in a number of different organisations throughout my work life is that I have seen the same issues rise up in each one and the only resolutions I have seen are either the collapse of a team of people resulting in my eventual resignation or the complete removal of an existing culture resulting in my eventual resignation. It is very hard to stay optimistic in the face of such human failure. Talk is cheap.

All that said, the school is a pretty good gig and the holidays are awesome. Our new garage goes up soon giving me the second one to strip out and set up as a workshop. There are loads of interesting things to explore over the next few years and the new domestic level manufacturing options are looking really fun (eyes on the laser cutters and milling machines). The mix of digital and physical production is really interesting. In other news the orange tree I grew from seed and planted when we bought this place has fruited. We actually have oranges on a tree in our backyard.

Time to continue recharging my batteries and general enthusiasm for doing stuff.