BLOG: Week of 10 February –LOG: Week of 10 February – First
Week at MBIE
Really enjoyed my first week at work. On Thursday evening we had dinner with my mentor at Victoria
University (Kate) and her husband at a Cambodian restaurant in town. When she heard me talk about my work life in
the US, she looked aghast and asked how I am still alive. She said she thought
her workload was bad, but not anymore. She couldn’t imagine having a 3/2 course
load and the service obligations I described, and getting any research done. Yeah, well! No kidding.
On Friday I discovered that my research proposal is not
feasible. The new strategy just has not been implemented yet (should start in
May – too late for me), so I worked on three more potential projects. I also
attended a meeting on measuring ESOL success. It was very interesting to be on
the policy/government rather than the education side of the story. The senior manager
wants measurements to know which ESOL providers are most successful in order to
know who to give funding (it would be the successful, not the unsuccessful). I
totally get that. At home, I feel the opposite about when our gov’t funds
successful, typically wealthier public schools and punishes low-performing
schools. A big reason is that many low-performing schools have highly diverse
populations, low SES families, and migrant families (who are not part of the
year-to-year population, so there is no way to fairly determine yearly
progress). I wonder how some of those factors may or may not be a part of the
process here. It is, however, quite interesting to see the differences – and to
understand them – from these different perspectives.
Friday evening Dick and I went to the Roxy Theatre for a
duck dinner and the movie “A Winter’s Tale.” It’s a very cool theatre in
Miramar, and we enjoyed both the dinner and the poignant film. Today (Sunday) we
hopped on a train to get out of the city for the afternoon, going northwest up
the Kapiti Coast to Parparaumu and take a long beach walk. It was the first
time it’s been warm enough to wear shorts! The scenery was beautiful, and we
had a great day. Even with the 50 sunscreen,
though, my face is feeling it this evening.
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