I’m so proud and happy for all the teachers and educators and staff who are on strike today across Queensland.
It’s their first strike since 2009, and it’s well and truly needed.
Teaching has become a physically and mentally impossible job in this state over the past 50 years, and they deserve everything they’re asking for! (Scroll down to see the needs they’re asking for from the Qld government.)
As a student teacher (called a preservice teacher in Queensland), I was so hopeful going into my first prac this year.
But although the students were DELIGHTFUL, and the school itself was excellent, and I was receiving positive feedback from my incredible supervising teacher, I’m starting to think I may never be a teacher in this state.
If you’re ready for a hilarious and engaging listen this weekend, start with Pod Like A Girl’s breakdown of the charity fails by “The Better Blokes” podcast.
You can listen to Pod Like A Girl on all the podcast apps, or visit the website to listen to it there:
Or you can watch this important conversation with video on YouTube:
Or you can even download the mp3 file to listen to it another way.
Full disclosure, it’s not just amazing, it’s also enraging, but only because we’re talking about the unashamed misogyny and idiocy of these two man childs.
And Rach and Mia are absolutely the right women for the job, because they’re intelligent and informed.
They’ve also spent years advocating to eliminate misogyny, sexism, and violence from Australia’s culture – and advocating for victims of this misogyny, which we know also harms men themselves.
The men who are going to The Better Blokes project for advice are more likely to be harmed, not helped, by what these blokes are spouting.
It’s the Aussie brand of the Andrew Tate manosphere, where men are encouraged to be a real man, and women are NOT welcome.
Like their videos telling women to “shut the f*** up” and let men speak (direct quote). 🤢 🤮
Which is a problem, because their governing legal documents, their charity charter, says they exist to improve men’s mental health… Not to indoctrinate men with misogyny and encourage violence against women, non-binary people, and even kids.
Today a tradesmen came to do the front door to replace the broken lock on our door. That’s right, burglars, don’t even bother trying. We’re Fort Knox, baby.
But he came to the door and my brain immediately thought, Aaaargh I forgot you were coming today. The place is a mess and I haven’t even vacuumed yet.
He was there less than half an hour to do the job and we’ll never see him again, and why would he even care what our place looks like? Gosh, what a waste of mental energy it was to stress about it.
It led me to wonder, if I’m letting my poor brain stress out this much – even momentarily – over what a total stranger thinks of me in a non-creative situation, how much am I stressing my brain out about what readers are going to think about what I write?
Have I been writing a terrible novel because I’m worried that readers aren’t going to get it?
“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” ― Anne Frank
Image Source: Scientific American
Do you need to be happy to be inspired? Or do you need to be a tortured artist in order to be inspired? It’s an age-old question, and there’s a growing body of science providing answers to it.
I’ve been studying a psychology unit through edX Berkeley online called GG101 ‘The Science of Happiness’, and the experimental studies that have been performed in this area of creativity-and-happiness have been fascinating.
TJ Withers 