My Mondays have become pretty busy. For a long time I had three ethics classes in the morning. Well, in the morning in winter – in summer one class shifts to after midday because of relative time zone shifts between Australia and the USA caused by daylight saving time. Then a while back a parent contacted me asking for a class at a suitable time for her daughter in the UK. So I added a class in the late evening (which is morning in the UK).
And then a couple of weeks ago I got another request from a parent for specific help for her son with critical thinking, to apply to the context of his schoolwork assignments. She wanted something a bit more focused than the topic-based discussion in my regular classes. I suggested a 1-on-1 class to try a few things, and that slotted into the early afternoon. Today was the second time we did that one. The kid is bright, but his mother wants assistance with focusing his thought processes. We talked about how to approach his current assignments and I gave him a list of points to consider and ask himself when doing similar work. His mother contacted me afterwards and is very happy with how it went. So it looks like this class will continue for a while too.
This morning, before the first class, I took Scully on a longer walk, around the harbour shore and past one of our favourite bakeries. I stopped in to get a muffin – they had apple and fig, which was very nice. I had half then and half after lunch.
In other teaching news, I’m still in the CSIRO STEM Professionals in Schools program, which is the program that organised my connection with Brookvale Public School, which I visited regularly from 2012 to 2020 before COVID put an end to in-person visits. Since COVID, I’ve lost contact with Brookvale, but the program admin has put me in touch with a new school, Loreto Kirribilli. This is a girls’ high school, so different to the K-6 primary school I was working with before. It has the big advantage that it’s much closer to where I live, not requiring a half hour drive to get there. I’ve reached out to the science coordinator there today she got back and scheduled an online meeting to discuss how I can help with their science education program. She wants me to assist with mentoring individual students in work on science projects throughout the year, starting in the next school year in February. So that should be really interesting! Hopefully I’ll be able to report some positive things about that in the new year.
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