Today, I arrived at work, to the job I love, feeling a little blue. On Sunday night, I handed in my first Masters assessment for a course called Transforming Education. It was awful. I was not pleased with what I wrote. But I did learn a lot that will be useful in the long term…

• Moving a lot does impact ones ability to focus.. there seems to be a lot of energy that gets taken by sorting things out and developing new routines in new places, and when it is a lot of places, everything is just chaos!
• I can’t write when I am not sure what to say… I can’t write most of the time. It takes me a lot of effort/energy to organise my thoughts. AND I really hate edu speak.
• Some understanding of what it is like when I ask my child a  question and she is not sure what I am looking for with my question. That whole thing about wanting to give the right answer even though one isn’t quite sure what the actual question really is.
• It is hard to quantify what one learns… or thinks about, and the methods we use to assess this are fallible. People always think that being able to use big words and remember specific details is how to express this. Maybe it’s true in which case I will always fail.
• That conforming to a particular genre that one isn’t used to is so difficult, particularly when the genre is academic. I am still feeling totally thick and inadequate. FAIL…
• That despite all my raging against working to the rubric (which I can do well) when given a rubric that was hard to quantify I was lost.

So the day started off so awful (I also fell over twice!!).. then I was outside all day, I watched some kids be really, really happy, so engaged. I learned a better way of making bows and arrows – after 5 years, I thought I had it sussed, but I had a total break-through after watching what some kids were doing! Then I made some awesome goop, and my daughter H and her friend put some on a chair, then found when it dried that it was like plastic. They are now doing experiments to make biodegradable plastic! On top of our other experiment, we are waiting to see if the pollutant that was in our local stream settles out (not yet). We even called the council, and the kids went up the stream trying to find the source…. Awesome. I love that the kids were so indignant about someone polluting into the river and were so worried about the life in the river. I loved that the Regional Council guy got his pad out and took notes, and listened to the kids.

And my lovely big H (who I have known since she was 2) was working with me… in a job I helped her get, that she is soooo good at. Today, I brought a page of newspaper from one of the kid’s shops for 3 bamboo leaves (I managed to get for a dollop of goop), which had the Codecracker in it. Big H hadn’t done one before, so I started it with her, and she liked it and finished it. I loved that she enjoyed it, that she got to sit on a chair in the sun while kids were busy.

I forgot that Transforming Education was more of just a play around the edges, I forgot that I was feeling totally thick, I forgot that I felt inadequate, I forgot that I was trying to fit into an elite group where I don’t belong.

I had a butterfly on my head for a bit and took home the used cocoon of an Emperor Gum Moth… I belong on this field, with a bunch of kids who want me to make them goop. I am successful. I work with my extended family.