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You can find previous Brain Dumps here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21. Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28.

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A new year and a new trimester await me in the start of March, I managed to do better than expected for the last assignment and so I will finish the first year of my Masters of Education with pretty decent results. However, still no practical placements yet as I need to complete the Literacy and Numeracy tests for placement... no big deal, but I was waiting until I was in Australia so that I could sit the tests in person and not have to faff around with online testing and proctoring. Seriously, those thing seem like a real pain in the arse, and I'm not particularly keen to install such invasive programs on any of my computers!

Anyway, the two subjects that I will take to do a part-time load for this first trimester are: Secondary Mathematics Education (11-12) and Aboriginal Education. One of these is completely new to me... well, actually, the topic matter is completely new. Teaching Mathematics in a classroom setting is also a touch new... but at least the actual subject matter is pretty damn familiar!

In some ways, I'm really looking quite forward to the teaching of Mathematics Education in Years 11/12 topic. This feels like home turf for me, but I have no doubt that it will be a good deal less about Mathematics and a lot more about education theory and tactics... so, I guess I will be a little bit at sea with those things. But if the past assignments have shown me anything (and my wife complains that I never learn...), it is that I'm decent enough at the theory side of classroom teaching, and the construction of the lesson plans and all of that. I guess time will tell if that knowledge translates well to the practical parts... but as I had mentioned previously, I doubt that I will pursue classroom teaching as a full-time job... but might be interested in it more as a casual relief sort of thing, or as an extra feather in the tutoring/private teaching space.

The Mathematics topic is also the last in the subject specific electives for my Maths/Physics stream of secondary school teaching. It is nice to be done with those, although there are still the compulsory general teaching topics to go... and the quite interesting selection of general free-choice electives!

Speaking of the compulsory subjects for the general teaching stream... the other part of my study load for this trimester is the Aboriginal Education topic. I have to be perfectly honest and say that I have ABSOULTELY NO IDEA about this aspect of teaching which is quite specific to the Australian realm of education although, I suspect that there are many countries that have similar sorts of topics.

I have struggled in the past assignments with making differentiation for Aboriginal students... in the later Maths/Physics topics, the differentiation that can be introduced is sometimes quite contrived and irrelevant. Which irritates me when it is supposed to be addressed front and centre... However, in the middle year Science and Mathematics topics it can be better addressed in a more authentic manner... in fact, during those assignments for middle school, I did find some really cool and interesting things about Aboriginal culture and knowledge that I had no idea about (on the other hand, I was starting at a pretty low starting knowledge...).

However, I did struggle quite a bit when I was doing Quantum Mechanics and Magnetism... those topics, I found it next to impossible to incorporate an Aboriginal element to the lesson plans. Thankfully, I had a marker and lecturer who were sympathetic to my dodge... I made the point that it was better to not have a differentiation for those topics instead of having a contrived and inauthentic attempt. I hate ticking boxes for the sake of ticking the box...

So, I'm quite keen (and more than a little bit nervous) about how to bring the Aboriginal knowledge and culture in the topics that I will be teaching. However, I fear that hte course will designed for the humanities topics... and be pretty useless from the Mathematics/Physics

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