Today is Australia Day, which is always a bit of a weird day. Ostensibly it’s a public holiday to celebrate Australia, our national day. But it’s always accompanied by news stories and opinion pieces on how it doesn’t represent the Aboriginal people, because the date chosen is when Europeans first arrived in Australia. So to many Australians, both Aboriginal and not, it feels wrong and even oppressive to celebrate today. Personally, I think this debate is going to rage on until the date is changed, and until that point it’s just going to feel more and more uncomfortable every year.
I spent most of the day working on the new week’s ethics class. I wrote the lesson, which is on the topic of wealth and poverty. And this evening I ran it three times in a row. I think this isn’t one of my best planned lessons, because the questions are maybe a bit too leading. I might try to revise it slightly tomorrow for future classes to encourage more diverse answers from the kids.
I also had to fill out a new police background check for Outschool, for their annual security update. It’s been a year since I signed up as a teacher on their site! It started slowly, but I’ve grown to offering 14 classes a week, and the ethics one is very popular.
New content today: