Some of My Experience As a Teacher

[RonPrice]

The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional qualifications or credentials from a university or college. This was the case for me, and I obtained these qualifications in the 1960s, from 1963 to 1967. These professional qualifications included, for me, the study of pedagogy, the science of teaching, and a range of special subjects which I hope to outline here at a future time. Teachers, like other professionals, may have to continue their education after they qualify, a process known as continuing professional development. This I did from 1970 to 1988 in a variety of ways.

 

Teachers may use a lesson plan to facilitate student learning, and I did this in my first years as a teacher. I also provided a course of study, called the curriculum, which was determined by the educational instutution which employed me. A teacher's role may vary among cultures; my teaching was done in: Ontario, the NWT of Canada, & nearly all of the states of Australia. Teachers may provide instruction in literacy & numeracy, craftsmanship or vocational training, the arts, religion, civics, community roles, or life skills. I taught all these subjects and many more. For more on the subject of teaching go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher

 

Lecture is a word which comes from the French word 'lecture', meaning 'reading'. It is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical information, history, theories, background, & equations. A politician's speech, a minister's sermon, a businessman's sales presentation, among other oral presentations, may be similar in form to a lecture. I worked as a lecturer from 1975 to 1999 with several years during this period working at other jobs and tasks, roles and professions. Usually the lecturer will stand at the front of the room and recite information relevant to the lecture's content. For more go to:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lecture

Edited July 10, 2015 by RonPrice
To update the wording

[dmjg]

Whats the Learning Intention of your post? Im not sure.

[RonPrice]

My intention,

 

dmjg, was to state my experience briefly and, in the process, see if there were any others at this site who have worked as a teacher or lecturer in Australia. Others might like to discuss their experience. I'll say a little more about my experience, in this case about teaching creative writing, and see if there are others who would like to respond.-Ron Price, Tasmania

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THE HINTERLANDS

 

Part 1:

 

Creative Writing courses at universities are relatively new: the sixties in the US, 1971 in the U.K. and at various times in other countries in the last three to four decades. Romantic theories of creativity have often been democratised in Creative Writing pedagogy whereby students are encouraged to develop their individual styles by the process of finding a voice. This is a result of the influence of Progressive Education on the Creative Writing movement in American schools in the 1920s, and in English and Australian schools in the 1960s and 1970s. Having been part of this movement, first as a teacher in primary and secondary schools myself in the ‘60s and ‘70s and, then, as a lecturer in post-secondary educational institutions from the ‘70s to the ‘90s in Australia, I came to it by the turn of the millennium as a writer myself in cyberspace.

 

In her handbook on Creative Writing Dorothea Brande, writing in the year of the outbreak of WW2, warned against the danger of a contagious style, of writing after the fashion of admired authors. "The important matter," she asserts, "is to find your own style, your own subjects, your own rhythm, so that every element in your nature can contribute to the work of making a writer of you." Brande's advice for achieving this was to tap into one's own unique and individual unconscious via a series of writing exercises, thus drawing out original material. Brande wrote these words more than two decades before Creative Writing found a place in university curricula and in the other sorts of post-secondary education in which I was involved as a lecturer, as I say above, from the 1970s to the 1990s.

 

Part 2:

 

If we accept that what underpins Creative Writing pedagogy should be a critical reading practice, then reconfiguring this reading practice in an application to Creative Writing may enable those who would be successful creative writers to more productively engage in the several disciplines that underpin Creative Writing and in Creative Writing itself. Yesterday on the ABC’s Radio National program “The Book Show”(20/2/06; 10:05-10:30 a.m.) Patricia Duncker, a professor of creative writing at the University of East Anglia where Creative Writing as a university subject began in England, and a writer herself, talked about being well-read as an essential foundation for writing. Duncker’s emphasis, and Brande’s, on finding your own style certainly fit into my own approach, my own understanding, of how to develop good writing.–Ron Price with thanks to Paul Dawson, “Towards a New Poetics in Creative Writing Pedagogy,” TEXT, Vol.7, No.1.

 

I’ve lived, learned and taught

through an era of new ways

of looking at writing is in its

many forms, uses and styles.

 

I’ve lived, learned and taught

so many books that I now

settle for them in doses so

small that cyberspace has

become my home, hearth.

 

Now I bring my buried life

of reverie, memory, feeling,

dreams into the foreground

of my consciousness & mix

it liberally with the flowing

waters of the sweet-scented

streams which have seen &

been running to the sea of

my life from rivers far into

hinterlands where I rarely

travel any more now in the

evening of my life, my 70s,

2014 to 2024, and 80s.....if

indeed I last that long: 2024+++

 

Ron Price

21/2/'06 to 24/9/'14.

 

 

 

 

 

[Keith and Linda]

A bit too heavy going for me, others may participate though.

[Bobj]

A bit too heavy going for me, others may participate though.

 

Rather be mowing the lawn...

 

Cheers, Bobj.

[RonPrice]

A bit too heavy going for me, others may participate though.

------------------------------------

We each find our own place in cyberspace; sometimes it is easier to find our place on the internet than in the real world. More than half the world still has no access to the world-wide-web. But for those of us who do, it is a wonderful resource. As I say, "to each their own".-Ron Price, George Town, Tasmania

[Quinkla]

Thank you for this informative post. I had wondered what lectures were as I didn't go to any when I was a student, but now I know.

[RonPrice]

While Bobj mows the lawn, and Quinkla learns something from my post I learn, yet again, the great variety of response to all things literary.-Ron Price, Australia

[dmjg]

Are you looking for a job, Ron?

 

Im not sure how your thread is either asking for help about education in Australia, or providing information about education for those thinking of immigrating.

[RonPrice]

I'm just musing, dmjg. I'm a writer and author, poet and publisher in these years of the evening of my life. I post at many sites in cyberspace and in the process collect a few readers. After a 50 year student and paid-employment life, 1949 to 1999, I reinvented myself and now do online blogging and online journalism, editing and research, FYI.-Ron

Edited July 12, 2015 by ali
link removed as already in signature

[starlight7]

Ahh, these Tasmanians...

[RonPrice]

Yes,

 

starlight7, some half a million now, and located at the bottom end of the world, the last stop on the way to Antarctica if you take the western-Pacific-rim-route.-Ron Price, an Australian-Canadian hybrid.

 

 

[CaptainR]

Just curious Ron, what sort of response do you receive elsewhere when you make posts similar to this.

Many of the posts on forums are intended to engage in dialogue, but yours seems to be more of a monologue. Certainly very different to what I was expecting.

[RonPrice]

I'll give you quite a detailed answer, CaptainR, to your question.-Ron

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PIONEERING OVER FIVE EPOCHS

A. MY TYPE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING

1. Everything I do with other people online is part of my particular type of social networking across the vast landscape that is cyberspace. My social networking is associated with three basic activities: (a) the creation of a personal website that serves as a home base, a central hub, for my writing, for teaching and consolidation, that is, community building, for service and social activism, as well as for feedback from others---should they wish; (b) the creation of a detailed personal profile(see Appendix 1 below) which I post at over 8000 internet sites which readers at these sites can access, again, if they wish; and finally © posting my writing at these 8000+ sites, and interacting with others about my posts and theirs. In the process I promote my website, and my writing, at these 8000+ internet sites.

 

2. In the last dozen years, 2004 to 2015, I have created an extensive audience or readership. I address myself to a circle, a crowd or single individuals. I try to make of my interactions more than the typical ones found at sites like Facebook and twitter. The interactions or connections at such popular social networking sites often reduce friendship to a feeling or an image, a sense of connection to faraway or nearby friends about everyday things based, for the most part, on very short, pithy posts. Such connections involve posts that usually contain little about one’s true difficulties and feelings in life and, when they do, it is in the form of sort and pithy posts increasingly with lots of images and aphorisms from popular culture and elsewhere.

 

3. A world of privacy and an image is created. There is nothing wrong with that, with this type of site and networking style, but it is not my style, not my approach, not my MO, modus operandi, to use a who-dun-it term. I post a great deal about what I think in the form of prose and poetry, generally more extended pieces of writing than the posts found in the Facebook and twitter world. My posts are far beyond the one-liners, the jokes, what I did today, what I ate for dinner, I poke you, I like this and I don’t like that, the ‘here are some photos of this’ and ‘here are some pictures of that’, ‘here is a video of this’ and ‘here is a piece of music,’ etc

4. Social networking exposes readers to this or that book, this or that video or piece of music, this or that restaurant, food dish or pleasurable activity, this or that idea or cause. To each their own as we all navigate this parallel universe in our own ways.

 

B. MY WEBSITE

 

1. My website has been on the internet for the last 19 years: 1997-2015. It is part of a tapestry, or perhaps a jig-saw puzzle is a more accurate word, for all my poetry and prose both at my website and elsewhere in cyberspace at those 8000+ sites mentioned above. I have dozens of links at my site, some linked to my writing at other internet sites, and some linked to resources created by others. I have created a large thread of words, indeed, over 100 blog-type webpages across the internet since leaving the world of FT paid employment in the late 1990s and taking a sea-change at the age of 55.

 

2. My cyberspace creation is made by a now self-employed individual: a retired teacher and lecturer, tutor and adult educator, taxi-driver and ice-cream salesman. I am now a poet and publisher, writer and author, editor and researcher, online blogger and journalist, scribbler and sampler within the immense commentariat and bloggosphere that is the world-wide-web.

 

3. I am now 70 and I attempt to endow various themes and a wide range of subjects in the arts and sciences with many layers of meaning. In these last 19 years on the world-wide-web I have evoked a complex range of responses in readers who come upon my work, responses which range from lavish enthusiasm to utter indifference and quite intense criticism. The solitary work of literary creation requires a type of talent, some earned ability or unearned gift of grace which is almost never collaborative except in the broad sense that we all draw on the ideas of others.

 

3.1 The solitude I require to create an essay, a poem or a book requires my ability to draw on the globally interrelated, interdependent and interlocked system of the WWW to market my wares. Until my work is ready to be placed in cyberspace the activity is intensely private, although I often draw on the work of other writers in composing my own literary creations. The marketing of my work is also private, and then the feedback comes in or it does not as the case may be. Not everything I write in cyberspace is commented on by others.

 

B.1 MY WEBSITE AND OTHER INTERNET SITES

 

I will continue to use my website as the central hub for my literary work, for my internet teaching and learning activity, for my now several million words and many books on the internet in this 2^nd decade of the 21^st century. My writing is found in the form of: essays and blogs, poems and articles, ebooks and message boards, threads and special topic sites, indeed a myriad types of discussions. I do not engage, though, in any sort of aggressive proselytising or heated exchange at those 8000 websites that are part of this personal and industrious exercise. When what I write produces vehemence and invective, heated criticism at some site, I simply leave if I am unable to cool the emotional climate at the site. Sometimes I am banned before this occurs for a variety of reasons: Christians only, Muslims only or some other form of exclusivist site-policy. Sometimes what I write is considered spam and, even after I defend my case, I am sometimes excluded from some site. In cyberspace as in any real space, one cannot win all the time.

 

C. MY WRITING STYLE AND MY VALUES

 

1. I have tried over the last several decades of my life, looking back as far as my own junior youth in the 1950s, to develop a writing style which, while fusing together material from many academic disciplines, from my own life as well as from my value, belief and attitude base, aims to be both provocative and intellectually stimulating on the one hand, and light and entertaining on the other. In writing, as in daily life though, one wins sometimes and one loses at other times; one’s writing appeals to some and not to others. One’s value, belief and attitude base is a set of assumptions around which one places one’s emotions and then proceeds to act and argue one’s case before the court of life.

 

2. I possess an obvious enthusiasm for my evolving values, beliefs and attitudes as well as the several causes I promote or I would not have been associated with them in their overt form---for nearly 60 years; nor would I be promoting my ideas in a multitude of forms, subtle and not-so-subtle, on the internet as I do and have done since retiring from FT work in 1999, PT in 2003 and most casual-volunteer work in 2005.

 

D. MY READERSHIP

 

1. I now have several million readers on the internet. It is difficult to guesstimate readership precisely in cyberspace when there are now nearly 300 million sites and over 2 billion users, and when one writes and posts, interacts and reads at as many sites as I do. Many of the sites at which I post my writing and interact with others keep me informed about how many people click-on to what I have written, and many don't. Each site is again, another one of those infinite number of parallel universes to which I refer above.

 

2. I am engaged in varying degrees of frequency and intensity, in parts of this tapestry, this jig-saw puzzle, this literary product, this creation, this immense pile of words with hundreds of people with whom I correspond on occasion as a result. I keep most of this correspondence as infrequent as possible or I would drown in this new form of letter writing: the email and the internet post.

 

E. THE WWW AND PUBLISHING

 

1.This amazing technical facility, the world wide web, has made this literary success, this form of publishing, possible. This teaching and learning exercise, this form of service and often social activism, among the many other functions of my writing in the now wide and extensive dialogue I now have with diverse publics is an enriching one. If my writing had been left in the hands of the traditional hard and soft-cover publishers, where it had been without success for the most part from 1981 to 2001, these publishing results with my now extensive readership would never have been achieved. Back in those twenty years I was still employed FT and raising a family. Much of my current internet profile is due to the fact that I am now retired and can reinvent myself as a writer and author, poet and publisher, online blogger and journalist.

 

2. It is my hope that what I write as a result of this self-employment, this literary vocation and avocation, this pleasurable occupation of my leisure time, resonates with both the novitiate and the veteran on the one hand, and the great diversity of people who are on a multitude of paths in their journey through life.

 

F. NOTE

 

When accessing what I write in cyberspace you can Google: Ron Price, but be aware that there are 4000 to 5000 other Ron Prices now on the web. Some of them are men of fame and others of notoriety. You can also google: Pioneering Over Five Epochs or Ron Price forums or Ron Price followed by…..many other words and phrases literally several 1000 possibilities to access what I have written.

 

APPENDIX 1:

EMPLOYMENT-SOCIAL-ROLE POSITIONS: 1943-2015

 

 

2010-2015-Retired and on an old-age pension in George Town, Tasmania

1999-2009-Writer & Author, Poet & Publisher, Editor & Researcher. Retired Teacher & Lecturer, Tutor & Adult Educator, Taxi-Driver & Ice-Cream Salesman, George Town Tasmania Australia

2002-2005-Program Presenter City Park Radio Launceston

1999-2004-Tutor &/or President George Town School for Seniors Inc

--------ABOVE THIS LINE ARE MY YEARS OF RETIREMENT----------------------

1988-1999 -Lecturer in General Studies & Human Services West Australian Department of Training

1986-1987 -Acting Lecturer in Management Studies & Co-ordinator of Further Education Unit at Hedland College in South Hedland WA

1982-1985 -Adult Educator Open College of Tafe Katherine NT

1981 -Maintenance Scheduler Renison Bell Zeehan Tasmania

1980-Unemployed due to illness and recovery

1979-Editor External Studies Unit Tasmanian CAE; Youth Worker Resource Centre Association; Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour Tasmanian CAE; Radio Journalist ABC---all in Launceston Tasmania

1976-1978 -Lecturer in Social Sciences & Humanities Ballarat CAE Ballarat, Victoria

1975 - Lecturer in Behavioural Studies Whitehorse Technical College, Box Hill Victoria

1974 -Senior Tutor in Education Studies Tasmanian CAE Launceston, Tasmania

1972-1973 -High School Teacher South Australian Education Department

1971-Primary School Teacher Whyalla South Australia

---ABOVE THIS LINE ARE MY YEARS LIVING IN AUSTRALIA AND BELOW THIS LINE ARE MY YEARS LIVING IN CANADA-------------------------------

1969-1971 Primary School Teacher Prince Edward County Board of Education Picton Ontario Canada

1969-Systems Analyst Bad Boy Co Ltd Toronto Ontario

1967-68 -Community Teacher Department of Indian Affairs & Northern Development Frobisher Bay NWT Canada

1959-67 -Summer jobs-1 to 4 months each- from grade 10 to end of university

1949-1967 - Attended 2 primary schools, 2 high schools and 2 universities in Canada: McMaster Uni-1963-1966, Windsor Teachers’ College-1966/7

1944-1963 -Childhood(1944-57) and adolescence(1957-63) in and around Hamilton Ontario

1943 to 1944-Conception in October 1943 to birth in July 1944 in Hamilton Ontario

 

2. SOME SOCIO-BIO-DATA TO 2015

I have been married twice for a total of 48 years. My second wife is a Tasmanian, aged 68. We’ve had one child: age 38. I have two step-children: ages: 49 and 44, three step-grandchildren, ages 21, 19 and 4, as well as one grandchild aged 3 years. All of the above applies in February 2015. I am 70, am a Canadian who moved to Australia in 1971 and have written several books--all available on the internet. I retired from full-time teaching in 1999, part-time teaching in 2003 and volunteer teaching/work in 2005 after 32 years in classrooms as a teacher and another 18 as a student. In addition, I have been a member of the Baha’i Faith for 56 years. Bio-data: 6ft, 230 lbs, eyes-brown/hair-grey, Caucasian.

You can also go to any search engine and type: Ron Price followed by any one of a number of words in addition to: poetry, forums, blogs, literature, history, bipolar disorder, psychology, sociology, media studies, inter alia, to access my writing________________________

End of document

Edited July 14, 2015 by ali

[NickyNook]

Just curious Ron, what sort of response do you receive elsewhere when you make posts similar to this.

Many of the posts on forums are intended to engage in dialogue, but yours seems to be more of a monologue. Certainly very different to what I was expecting.

 

I bet you're really pleased you asked.. :wink:

[RonPrice]

I'm pleased, NickyNook, to be able to outline my modus operandi, my MO as they say in the who-dun-its. Of course, when one posts in cyberspace, or for that matter talks in real space, one can only interest some of the people some of the time. "Such is life," as the outlaw Ned Kelly is reported to have said on his way to the gallows in NSW in 1880.-Ron

[mungbean]

What a story. Disappointing that it doesn't go back any further than conception though.

[RonPrice]

Not being a believer in reincarnation, I trust my life does, in fact, begin at conception, mungbean.-Ron

[Quinkla]

I now have several million readers on the internet. It is difficult to guesstimate readership precisely in cyberspace ...

I think your guesstimate is likely to be out by several million there, Ron.

[RonPrice]

Yes, Quinkla, you may be right in the end when my roll is called-up-yonder. I used to think that once stuff got into cyberspace it was there forever but I don't believe that any more. Meanwhile, if I add-up all those who click on my posts at the over 8000 sites it adds-up to several million. I can hardly believe it myself.-Ron

[Quinkla]

Forgive my cynicism, but 8,000 sites? That would be finding and signing up to a new site every day for over 20 years.You imply that you "pick up readers" this way as though they then follow you for ever more. I doubt that they do because the material you post is not relevant to this site and I doubt it is relevant to any of the other ones you go to. But even if they did, you'd need to be picking up a thousand users at each of the 8,000 sites to get to several million readers. Most sites hava fraction of that number as their active membership. Many successful sites have only a couple of dozen hardcore, regular and frequent visitors.

 

Ron, you are deluding yourself.

[CaptainR]

The irrelevant and out of context monologues scattered with backlinks are typical of search engine optimisation techniques, hence why many forums will consider these kind of posts spam.

[RonPrice]

Internet publishing is a whole new ball-game for those who take it seriously. My style is only one of the many ways that writers get readers. I am prepared to see my results as a certain form of self-delusion. All those who read my work read, of course, various portions of my work. It's not like readers of books and totalling-up book sales.

 

Believe me I am engaged in a publishing industry with short posts, medium sized posts, long posts and everything in-between.

PS I now have some 10 million words in cyberspace; this, of course, is a guesstimation since, after a certain amount of interchange and posting, adding it all up becomes somewhat irrelevant.

Edited July 15, 2015 by ali
link removed

[RonPrice]

Writers & authors, poets & publishers, online bloggers & journalists, editors & researchers, readers & scholars like myself get a lot of motivation out of knowing that other people will respond to what they are publishing online. Knowing, as I do, that hundreds of thousands and, since about 2009 when I went on 2 old-age pensions at the age of 65, that literally millions can see what I'm writing over my dozen years or so of writing-and-publishing online is a very powerful motivator.The popularity of my writing exists because of social media and the vast number of sites on the Internet. But my popularity, like anyone's, needs to be placed in a context;

When one exists, when one's writing exists, in a place like the internet with its 3 billion users, 1 billion sites, some 100 billion webpages, and 200 billion posts, emails, & messages sent everyday----popularity is a relative term. Some 99.9% of those who use the world-wide-web do not know me and will never read my writing. But .1% is 1/1000th of 3 billion and that makes 3 million readers, & .01% is 1/10,000th of 3 billion, or 300,000 readers. That, of course, is a very rough guesstimation and, when one is dealing with these sorts of numbers in cyberspace, it all becomes somewhat mind-numbing, and irrelevant beyond a certain point. My guesstimation of readership is, at a minimum, several million.

Edited July 15, 2015 by ali
link removed

[Johndoe]

My guesstimation of readership is, at a minimum, several million.

Why "guestimation" when there perfectly good/engines/applications/programmes/bots that will indicate just how many hits you have at your site? I'm an amateur when it comes to self promotion and yet I know exactly who has visitied my site and even which country they hail from. I'm sure a person of your intelligence doesn't need to "guestimate" unless of course, that is preferable (to yourself) than acual fact/truth.