PPTA

I described PPTA as being 'apolitical' recently and then immediately thought "oops don't think I used the right word", Kevin Bunker (PPTA General Secretary) always carefully describes PPTA "as not supporting any particular political party". So to Wikipedia I turned

"The state or quality of being apolitical can be the apathy and/or the antipathy towards all political affiliations. Being apolitical can also refer to situations in which people take an unbiased position in regard to political matters." 

Wiktionary took it further

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Decisions are made by those who make themselves heard ... and those who vote

Not only is it election time where, next month, we get to have our say on what the future of New Zealand will look like and under whose leadership;  but over the next fortnight secondary teachers will have the opportunity to vote on the leadership of PPTA. There are two nominations for president and three nominations for junior vice president (JVP).

There is a saying around elections along the lines of "we get what we deserve" - i.e if you don't vote you'll just have to put up with the result!

The leadership of PPTA, an incredibly important voice for teachers and public education,  is too important to leave to chance.

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Having just read Teacher in a strange land: Regular Teachers, Regular Schools  it got me thinking about conferences/forums and how often (when I do go to these events) I get to meet 'regular teachers'. It certainly can be an issue, who speaks for teachers - who the experts are and who nominated those experts to speak for and/or about teachers/teaching? An issue that extends beyond the boundaries of conferences and forums to areas such as submissions processes and the workings of advisory groups.

Although, you could add 'who is a regular teacher and what is a regular school' given the number of extraordinary teachers working in extraordinary schools :-)

PPTA National office this week has annual conference on the collective mind. Conference is where the elected representatives of NZ secondary teachers get to discuss and work towards a better secondary school education system.  PPTA Annual Conference is 18-20 October  - the programme is online and conference papers include:

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Well this whole blog thing has been a bit slow. Nearly everyone was keen, some even promised to blog weekly and possibly more often. But with the exception of Observer's sharp blogs the intentions of 'nearly everyone' didn't quite make the reality. Then came the day that the boss instructed- "there WILL be a blog every week - it's a roster- if you are responsible for facilitating the advisory team meeting on Monday - you are responsible for the blog that week".  The result would suggest we either don't have meetings on Mondays ... or don't follow instructions too well?

So here I am, thinking we either take the blog off the website or someone takes responsibility. I don't have anyone to delegate to ... and suspect disabling the blog would have been a "no-can-do" from the boss, which means I have to think of some regular PPTA or education fodder that has a little bit of interest/use.

I've started following, on Twitter(!), Dave Armstrong @malosilima, a co-writer of Mr Gormsby - and that got me thinking about Mr Gormsby - Gormsby occasionally  referred to PPTA National Office so that's my fodder.

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Proof that you can do anything with words.  Anything at all.  The following magnificent sentence comes from the Government explanatory notes on changes to the ERA:
[On union access to workplaces]   “Providing more discretion to employers over how and when unions can access workplaces could result in stronger working relationships between employers and unions because employers would feel more in control of who is visiting, and when.”
Don’t you think that’s clever?
And if unions were banned altogether, ooooh, just think how strong the working relationship would be! 

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