Musings, mutterings and bright lights

Above: the home page of Write Away. As a teacher of English you also teach writing: they go hand in hand at all levels. The same for other teachers of language: literacy and its underling, writing, are at the core. In my case, I taught some high school English but for most of my career I taught adult migrants. Writing can be as simple as form filling and as complex as a job application, a short story, a difficult letter,  or the recounting of some experience. From basic notes to literature.  I encouraged writing of all kinds with my advanced students on a wide range of topics. Such student writing resulted in a print magazine called Write Away. Subtitled "a showcase of writing by Australian adult migrants" it went to print in 3 editions. A small group participated across AMES. We did the design, layout, collating,  and the offset printing for the first two issues. Desktop Publishing (DTP) was emerging in the 1980s and I was keen to master it. I still treasure...

Strengths and Weaknesses One’s strengths and weaknesses are at the heart of any self-analysis but they are more often at the centre of self-denial and just muddling on. We don’t reflect on these traits very often ignoring Socrates’ famous maxim, Know Thyself. This is better than Kid Thyself. Self-deception is a bad form to wake up to. A healthy life requires a clear focus on this life balance or edict: be mindful of your strengths and weaknesses. Don’t obsess about your strengths, or be coy, or in denial, about your weaknesses. When a job interview is approaching people may revisit this topic as it’s often high up on the list of possible questions. It gives roundness to your personality and suitability for the advertised position.  This may be related to technical skills required by the position and therefore weaknesses become a barrier that is not negotiable. But the questions may be probing soft skills such as personality, motivations, teamwork, organization ability, a...

The migrant wave and we fellow travellers I want to go back to the days when multiculturalism was on the rise and valued in Australia, and I and my friends and colleagues in the Adult Migrant English Service (AMES) were on the frontline of this progressive period in Australian history. Changes to this outlook are a setback: migration policy was then bipartisan and not the ham-fisted mudslinging of current politics, particularly the heavy hand of right wing nationalism grasping for a return to monocultural 1950s.Today xenophobia and racism, largely from Pauline Hanson's One Nation, a contradiction in terms as exclusion is the name of the game, are on the rise and groups like Reclaim Australia darken the skies above us. Being from an Italian migrant family I grew up in both a bilingual and multicultural environment in the post-war days when Australia needed population growth and a Good Neighbour Council existed to assist new arrivals. At a primary school age I can recall accompa...