Oldie but a goldie

What They Said . . . And What We Did

According to the story, after every Quantas Airlines flight the pilots complete a 'gripe sheet' report, which conveys to the ground crew engineers any mechanical problems on the aircraft during the flight. The engineer reads the form, corrects the problem, and then writes details of action taken on the lower section of the form for the pilot to review before the next flight. It is clear from the examples below that ground crew engineers have a keen sense of humor - these are supposedly real extracts from gripe forms completed by pilots with the solution responses by the engineers. Incidentally, Quantas has the best safety record of all the world's major airlines.

(1 = The problem logged by the pilot.) (2 = The solution and action taken by the mechanics.)
1) Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
2) Almost replaced left inside main tire.
1) Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
2) Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.
1) Something loose in cockpit.
2) Something tightened in cockpit.
1) Dead bugs on windshield.
2) Live bugs on back-order.
1) Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
2) Cannot reproduce problem on ground.
1) Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
2) Evidence removed.
1) DME volume unbelievably loud.
2) DME volume set to more believable level.
1) Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
2) That's what they're there for.
1) IFF inoperative.
2) IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.
1) Suspected crack in windshield.
2) Suspect you're right.
1) Number 3 engine missing.
2) Engine found on right wing after brief search.
1) Aircraft handles funny.
2) Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.
1) Target radar hums.
2) Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.
1) Mouse in cockpit.
2) Cat installed.

Fairlane Story

The ZD arrives.



The ZD Fairlane brochure cover.

An excellent teacher for every child

by Geoff Masters
The Rudd government was elected with the promise of a “revolution” to provide Australia with a world-class education system. Why is an education revolution required, and what forms could it take? According to a recent OECD report, 13 per cent of Australian 15-year-olds are at risk of not having the basic skills necessary for work and future citizenship. The situation is worse among Indigenous students (40 per cent), in remote parts of Australia (27 per cent) and for the lowest socioeconomic quartile (23 per cent).

Although these percentages are not unusual by international standards, they highlight an important element in Australia’s current skills shortage: too many young people are leaving our schools inadequately prepared for the workforce and adult life. The personal, societal and economic costs of this problem have been extensively documented and present governments with a challenge that may well require a revolution. But which of the levers available to government are likely to be most effective in raising standards among our lowest achievers?

The factors leading to low achievement are complex. Often they are related to broader social and health issues beyond the control of the education system. Government initiatives in education have included improved testing and identification of children with low levels of literacy and numeracy, clearer reporting to parents, the provision of additional tutoring for at-risk students, and the better preparation of teachers to teach fundamental skills such as reading. At a general level, educational science suggests that the most effective lever for improving the performance of underachievers is to improve the quality of classroom teaching: to get all teachers doing what our best teachers already do.

While excellent teachers are not identical, they do have some characteristics in common. For example, they create classroom environments in which there is a belief that all students can learn successfully, where students are motivated by curiosity, value learning for its own sake, and feel supported and safe to take risks. Learning cultures of this kind are more effective in the long term than “performance” cultures in which learning is driven by external demands, competition and the threat of failure. Outstanding teachers also monitor the progress and learning needs of individual learners. They take time to understand children’s interests and motivations and to diagnose individual difficulties and misunderstandings.

This is a challenge in the average classroom in which some children can be five or six years ahead of other children of the same age. But excellent teachers understand that teaching is more than delivering a fixed curriculum to a class of students. They appreciate the importance of catching learning problems early and know that, unless educational needs are identified and addressed, some children will fall further behind over time.

Having identified students’ learning needs, outstanding teachers use evidence-based strategies and interventions to target those needs. They draw on a body of professional knowledge about effective methods of teaching: what works, for whom and under what conditions. They are eager to learn from research and practice, to experiment and to share successes and failures with colleagues. They know that becoming a better teacher requires ongoing learning and that teaching expertise, like other forms of expertise, requires years of work. The emphasis for these teachers is on seeing every child make substantial progress. They recognise and celebrate such progress, even if a child is still performing below most children of the same age.

So what can governments do to get all teachers doing what our best already do? Part of the answer is to attract the best possible people to take up teaching as a career. This, in turn, will depend on making teaching more attractive. One way for governments to enhance the status of teaching is to work with the profession itself to clarify what it means to be an excellent teacher, to support the development of a national system for certifying teachers of excellence (perhaps similar to the CPA for accountants), and to pay more to teachers who meet these high standards. If the Business Council of Australia had its way, our best teachers would be paid substantially more - up to $130,000 a year.

In parallel, there needs to be an investment in the professional development of teachers and school leaders specifically focused on the attainment of advanced standards of practice. The focus should be on developing skills in diagnosing learning needs and implementing targeted, evidenced-based teaching methods. To support teachers and school leaders in addressing the needs of all students, most schools would benefit from increased technical and paraprofessional support. A common complaint among teachers is that they spend too much time on external demands and non-teaching activities. Increased incentives also are required to ensure that our best teachers teach in schools where they are most needed - particularly in rural and remote schools and schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas.
Providing every Australian child with excellent teaching certainly will require an education revolution. But can we afford anything less?

Letter

A rather old fashioned lady, always quite delicate and elegant, especially in her language, was planning a weeks holiday in Sydney with her husband, so she wrote to a particular camping ground and asked for a reservation.

She wanted to make sure that the camping ground was fully equipped, but didn't know quite how to ask about the toilet facilities. She just couldn't bring herself
to write the word "toilet" in her letter.

After much thought, she finally came up with the old fashioned term "Bathroom closet" but when she wrote it down, she still thought she was being too forward, so she started all over again, rewrote the letter, and referred to the bathroom closet as the B.C.

"Does the camping ground have it's own B.C." is what she wrote.

Well, the camping ground owner wasn't a bit old fashioned, and he just couldn't figure out what the old lady was talking about, so he showed the letter around a few of the campers and the only thing they could come up with was that B.C. stood for Baptist Church, so he wrote the following reply.

Dear Madam,

I regret very much the delay in answering your letter, but I now take the pleasure of informing you that a B.C. is located nine miles north of our camping ground, and is capable of seating 250 people at one time.

I admit that it is quite a distance away if you are in the habit of going regularly but no doubt you will be pleased to know that a great number of campers go there and many take their lunches along and make a day of it. They usually arrive nice and early and stay quite late.

The last time my wife and I went was six years ago, and it was so crowded we had to stand up the whole time we were there. It may interest you to know that there is a special supper planned there to raise money to buy more seats so that everyone will be able to sit in comfort.

I would like to say that it pains me very much not to be able to go more regularly, but it is surely no lack of desire on my part, just that I am so busy most of the time.

As we grow older, it seems to be more of an effort to go, especially in the cold weather. If you decide to come down to our camping ground perhaps I could go with you the first time you go, sit with you and introduce you to all the other folks.

Remember this is a very friendly community.

Fairlane Story

An intriguing decision considering that the ZC Fairlane could be fitted with a four-barrel carb equipped, 290hp version of the 351ci Windsor V8, similar to that fitted to the XW GT Falcon.

Pay attention

“It is difficult to see the picture when you are inside of the frame.” - Author Unknown

Start building the awareness habit: STOP and PAY ATTENTION. Set an intention to become aware of how you automatically react to different things in your life.
For example, how do you react to the alarm clock, the shower, traffic, work colleagues and situations, your partner or children? How do you react to anger or fear in someone else? How do you react to your own anger or fear? Become a witness to your own life. Pay attention to how you do things.

“What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.” - Abraham H. Maslow

Flags

A visitor from Holland was chatting with his American friend and was jokingly explaining about the red, white and blue in the Netherlands flag. “Our flag symbolizes our taxes,” the man said. “We get red when we talk about them, white when we get our tax bill, and blue after we pay them.”
“That’s the same with us, the American said, “only we see stars, too.”

Fairlane Story

However, in a somewhat retrograde step, the dash became much more plain, and the extra gauges vanished.

10 Ways to Move Beyond Bully Prevention

(And Why We Should)

By Lyn Mikel Brown, Education Week Vol. 27, Issue 26, Page 29

I’ve grown concerned lately that “bully prevention” has all but taken over the way we think about, talk about, and respond to the relational lives of children and youths in schools. So, from our group’s strength-based approach, I offer 10 ways to move beyond what is too often being sold as a panacea for schools’ social ills, and is becoming, I fear, a problem in and of itself:

Stop labelling kids. Bully-prevention programs typically put kids into three categories: bullies, victims, and bystanders. Labelling children in these ways denies what we know to be true: We are all complex beings with the capacity to do harm and to do good, sometimes within the same hour. It also makes the child the problem, which downplays the important role of parents, teachers, the school system, a provocative and powerful media culture, and societal injustices children experience every day. Labelling kids bullies, for that matter, contributes to the negative climate and name-calling we’re trying to address.

Talk accurately about behaviour. If it’s sexual harassment, call it sexual harassment; if it’s homophobia, call it homophobia; and so forth. To lump disparate behaviours under the generic “bullying” is to efface real differences that affect young people’s lives. Bullying is a broad term that de-genders, de-races, de-everythings school safety. Because of this, as the sexual-harassment expert Nan Stein has noted, embracing anti-bullying legislation can actually undermine the legal rights and protections offered by anti-harassment laws. Calling behaviours what they are helps us educate children about their rights, affirms their realities, encourages more-complex and meaningful solutions, opens up a dialogue, invites children to participate in social change, and ultimately protects them.
If we allow kids to speak out, to think critically and question unfairness, we provide the groundwork for civic engagement.

Move beyond the individual. Children’s behaviours are greatly affected by their life histories and social contexts. To understand why a child uses aggression toward others, it’s important to understand what impact race, ethnicity, social class, gender, religion, and ability has on his or her daily experiences in school—that is, how do these realities affect the kinds of attention and resources the child receives, where he fits in, whether she feels marginal or privileged in the school. Such differences in social capital, cultural capital, and power relations deeply affect a child’s psychological and relational experiences in school.

Reflect reality. Many schools across the country have adopted an approach developed by the Norwegian educator Dan Olweus, the “Olweus Bullying Prevention Program,” even though it has not been effectively evaluated with U.S. samples. Described as a “universal intervention for the reduction and prevention of bully/victim problems,” the Olweus program downplays those differences that make a difference. But even when bully-prevention programs have been adequately evaluated, the University of Illinois’ Dorothy Espelage argues, they often show less-than-positive results in urban schools or with minority populations. “We do not have a one-size-fits-all school system,” she reminds us. Because the United States has a diversity of race, ethnicity, and language, and inequalities between schools, bully-prevention efforts here need to reflect that reality.

Adjust expectations. We hold kids to ideals and expectations that we as adults could never meet. We expect girls to ingest a steady diet of media “mean girls” and always be nice and kind, and for boys to engage a culture of violence and never lash out. We expect kids never to express anger to adults, never to act in mean or hurtful ways to one another, even though they may spend much of the day in schools they don’t feel safe in, and with teachers and other students who treat them with disrespect. Moreover, we expect kids to behave in ways most of us don’t even value very much: to obey all the rules (regardless of their perceived or real unfairness), to never resist or refuse or fight back.

It’s important to promote consistent consequences—the hallmarks of most bully-prevention programs—but it’s also critically important to create space for honest conversations about who benefits from certain norms and rules and who doesn’t. If we allow kids to speak out, to think critically and question unfairness, we provide the groundwork for civic engagement.

Listen to kids. In her book Other People’s Children, Lisa Delpit talks about the importance of “listening that requires not only open eyes and ears, but also hearts and minds.” Again, consistent consequences are important; used well, they undermine privilege and protect those who are less powerful. But to make such a system work, schools have to listen to all students. It’s the only way to ensure that staff members are not using discipline and consistent consequences simply to promote the status quo.

Instead of labelling kids, let’s talk about them as potential leaders, affirm their strengths, and believe that they can do good, brave, remarkable things.
Embrace grassroots movements. There’s nothing better than student-initiated change. Too many bully-prevention programs are top-heavy with adult-generated rules, meetings, and trainings. We need to empower young people. This includes being on the lookout for positive grassroots resistance, ready to listen to and support and sometimes channel youth movements when they arise. We need to listen to students, take up their just causes, understand the world they experience, include them in the dialogue about school norms and rules, and use their creative energy to illuminate and challenge unfairness.

Be proactive, not reactive. In Maine, we have a nationally recognized Civil Rights Team Project. Youth-led, school-based preventive teams work to increase safety, educate their peers, and combat hate violence, prejudice, and harassment in more than 250 schools across the state. This kind of proactive youth-empowerment work is sorely needed, but is too often lost in the midst of zero-tolerance policies and top-down bully-prevention efforts. And yet such efforts work. According to a study conducted by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, youth-led gay-straight alliances make schools safer for all students.

Build coalitions. Rather than bully prevention, let’s emphasize ally- and coalition-building. We need to affirm and support the definition of coalition that activist Bernice Johnson Reagon suggests: work that’s difficult, exhausting, but necessary “for all of us to feel that this is our world.”

Accentuate the positive. Instead of labeling kids, let’s talk about them as potential leaders, affirm their strengths, and believe that they can do good, brave, remarkable things. The path to safer, less violent schools lies less in our control over children than in appreciating their need to have more control in their lives, to feel important, to be visible, to have an effect on people and situations.

Bully prevention has become a huge for-profit industry. Let’s not let the steady stream of training sessions, rules, policies, consequence charts, and no-bullying posters keep us from listening well, thinking critically, and creating approaches that meet the singular needs of our schools and communities.

The boy next door

Little Amy confided to her uncle, “When I grow up I’m going to marry the boy next door.”
“Why is that?”
“Cause I’m not allowed to cross the road.”

Fairlane Story

As with all the three styling ‘pairs’ of Fairlanes, the ZA-ZB, the ZC-ZD and the ZF-ZG, the easiest way to tell them apart is by the grille, and the tail-lights.



The ZC had a prominent horizontally split ‘twin’ grille, as seen above and in the brochure photo, and the tail-lights are of a three lens pattern - red over amber over red - as seen below, also from the brochure.

Teachers have valued role in stopping child abuse

QUT survey - Teachers have valued role in stopping child abuse

Teachers have an important role to play in identifying and reporting child sexual abuse, a Queensland University of Technology research team say. The team, which involves staff from QUT’s faculties of education and law, said teachers were in a unique position to assist children suffering abuse, but they were sometimes unsure of the action they could take.

Team member Dr Kerryann Walsh, from the Faculty of Education, said teachers were governed by differing legislation in different states, with key differences evident in the legislation of Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales. “We want to find out which state offers the optimal model, or which aspects in each state’s legislation are the best,” Dr Walsh said.

“Most teachers have a natural response of wanting to help their students, but may not know how to go about it. It is a sensitive topic; situations of abuse can be emotional and difficult.” In the first semester of 2008, the research team will ask teachers from randomly selected government and independent schools across the three states to share their knowledge, practices and opinions on reporting child abuse through a confidential survey.

Dr Walsh, who has spent most of her time as a teacher working with abused and neglected children in Queensland, said teachers have a valued role to play to help protect children against all forms of abuse and neglect. “Their valuable and unique knowledge will potentially help policy changes, law reform and teacher training for the future,” she said. Results from the surveys are expected to be released late this year when findings will be presented to participating schools, government and non-government school systems and legislatures.
The project is undertaken with the assistance of an Australian Research Council grant.
The research team comprises of Professor Des Butler (Faculty of Law), Dr Ben Mathews (Faculty of Law), Professor Ann Farrell (Faculty of Education) and Dr Kerryann Walsh (Faculty of Education).
Media contact: Rachael Wilson, QUT media officer, 07 3138 1150 or rachael.wilson@qut.edu.au

Sales technique

An inexperienced real estate salesman asked his boss if he could refund the deposit to an angry customer who had discovered that the lot he had bought was under water.
“What kind of salesman are you?” the boss scolded. “Get out there and sell him a boat.”

Fairlane Story

The redesign for the ZC model involved the adoption of the very American styling motif of vertically stacked headlights. This was quite familiar to Australian motorists as version of the US Ford Galaxie were sold there. For the Fairlane it had the benefit of raising the front wings of the car, and giving a bulk to match its raised boot and rear wings, and made it reasonably more difficult to actually see the XW Falcon that lurked underneath.

Concentration

"I kept myself calm by making sure I didn't concentrate on anything I couldn't control." -B.J. Bedford, Olympic swimmer

Insurance advice

Fire swept the plains and burned down the farmer’s barn. While he surveyed the wreckage, his wife called their insurance company and asked them to send a check for $75,000, the amount of insurance on the barn. “We don’t give you the money,” a company official explained. “We replace the barn and all the equipment in it.”
“In that case,” replied the wife, “cancel the policy I have on my husband.”

Fairlane Story

The ZC Fairlane brochure.

A New Way of Thinking

If our heads came with shiny hinges
That made our noggins lift-off lids,
I'll bet all us poor students
Would be really smarter kids.
If our ears were little funnels
That hooked up to our brains,
I'll bet all our school learning
Could be done with little pain.
Instead of notes and study,
In place of books and pens,
We'd just go up to teacher
And say, "Pour some more smart in!"
She'd lift our lids and fill 'em up
With all the stuff she knows,
And when we got our fill of smart,
We'd simply holler, "Whoa!"
And if we ever took a test
And our thinking could not flow,
We'd just explain to teacher
That our thinking tank was low.
So she'd get her pail of knowledge,
And she'd make us tilt our tops.
She'd pour good things inside us
And when we'd leak, she'd stop.
But so far I've got no hinges,
And my funnels still are ears,
And teacher makes me study hard
And expects my ears to hear.
Perhaps some day it'll happen,
And perhaps all pigs will soar,
But until that magic moment comes
I'll just have to study more!

Day in court

Judge: Haven’t I seen you before?
Man: Yes, Your Honor. I taught your daughter how to play the drums.
Judge: Twenty years!

Fairlane Story

For the ZB, the V8 engine was increased to 302ci.