Education
Show us the money! APU’s Australian Universities Accord response (Part 1)
The Australian Universities Accord Final Report (the Final Report) was made publicly available on 25 February 2024 by the Federal Minister for Education, the Hon. Jason Clare MP. It contains 47 recommendations for the reform of Australia’s higher education system over the next few decades. As one of us noted shortly after the Accord’s interim Continue reading »
What’s missing from the universities review
Reaction to the release of the Final Report of the Accord Review of Australia’s universities has been relatively positive. However, while some university administrators recorded their appreciation and perhaps their relief, there is little in it for academic staff. As campuses filled up again last week for the start of the academic year, the signs Continue reading »
Labor’s complete capitulation to elite private schools….again!
A few hours of testimony before the Education Committee of Senate Estimates exposed the canker at the heart of school funding in Australia. The canker is the double standard applied to the funding of public and private schools. The Assistant Minister for Education, Anthony Chisholm, announced that a tax rort worth hundreds of millions of Continue reading »
The Arizona School Setting Kids With Autism Up for Success
Like many students across the country, 16-year-old Ayden von West has high hopes for his education and career once he graduates from high school. “I want to get into engineering,” he says. “I’m probably going to go to college for aerodynamics or aerospace engineering because I want to get more into the engineering and flight design of drones.”
Statistically, however, von West faces a more difficult path than most do when it comes to achieving his dream. That’s because von West is autistic.
Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) face tough odds after high school: According to a study published in the medical journal Pediatrics in 2012, only 35 percent of 18-year-olds with ASD go to college, and of those who graduate, only 15 percent are employed. More recent studies have similar findings: Only 36 percent of young adults on the spectrum attempt postsecondary education, including two- and four-year colleges or vocational schooling. Of those who do, only 38.8 percent will complete their degree. This means that only about 14 percent of students with autism go on to graduate from college.
High school math teacher Supreet Kaur, AZACS’ STEAM and Innovation Director, leads students in coding and robotics using Go Pi Go. Courtesy of AZACS
In many cases, what stands in the way is not the youths’ intellectual faculties or physical capabilities but instead the lack of specialized education and transitional support services.
In Phoenix, Arizona, one woman — and one school — is seeking to change that.
Diana Diaz-Harrison is the founder of Arizona Autism Charter School (AZACS), the first and only autism-focused charter network in the Southwest.
A former teacher, Diaz-Harrison was working in broadcasting and Spanish-language media when her son, Sammy, was diagnosed with autism at age two. Finding it difficult to access quality public education or affordable private schooling as he got older, she immersed herself in his care and the educational best practices for the disorder.
Courtesy of AZACS
“People who don’t have expertise in the neurodiverse, or autism, might look at Sammy and think, ‘Just keep him busy; make sure he doesn’t get in trouble.’ But he can do better than that.” –Diana Diaz-Harrison, AZACS founder
“I did pay for private school for a couple of years, but that was not sustainable,” she recalls. “I learned that there were autism charters in other states, and I thought, ‘You know, somebody here in Arizona should start a tuition-free autism charter school in the state.’ After a lot of knocking on doors, I realized that that person had to be me.”
In 2014, Diaz-Harrison established the first AZACS campus for kindergarten through fifth grade. In its first year, the school served 90 students. Today, AZACS has expanded to almost 900 students across four campuses in greater Phoenix, including a high school and a fully accredited online component. And, in fall 2023, it opened a campus for grades six through twelve in Tucson.
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With an average student-to-faculty ratio of three to one, AZACS is set up to help students master the foundations in reading, math and science and help them develop behavior and social skills that will benefit them long after they leave the classroom. Learning modules based on Woz ED, an individualized STEM curriculum designed by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, teach both academic and social skills. Students can also participate in sports, fine arts, dance, gardening — they can even take care of the school’s two desert tortoises.
Caring for the school’s desert tortoises is among the activities open to students. Courtesy of AZACS
Nisha Sharma has been teaching middle school math at AZACS for three years. “AZACS takes a much more rounded approach to the education of our students,” she says. “I’ve worked in schools where they were very much targeting just ELA (English language arts) and math. We use a lot of hands-on tools, and we have smaller class sizes, which allows more one-on-one contact with our students and allows us to better prepare them for all those different fields.”
An elective culinary program offers high school students the opportunity to work in a professional commercial kitchen. Upon completion of the course, the students can receive their food handler’s certification, which helps to qualify them for jobs in the restaurant industry. The school also operates a student-run coffee shop, Puzzle Press, that provides drinks to the teachers and other staff members.
“Kids make the coffee. They learn measurements, payment, money skills,” Diaz-Harrison explains as she sips from a to-go coffee cup, the label of which showcases a puzzle piece logo. “Autism is a spectrum. There are some kids who are very intellectually impacted like my son. Yet he can be productive. He helped make this coffee. He made the label. People who don’t have expertise in the neurodiverse, or autism, might look at Sammy and think, ‘Just keep him busy; make sure he doesn’t get in trouble.’ But he can do better than that. Every human needs a certain level of feeling productive, having a reason to get up in the morning.”
Courtesy of AZACS
“Maybe they want to go into web design or the more technological aspects of the career paths, and here they get that option before venturing out into the real world where even we, as neurotypical people, struggle with the day to day.” –Tyler Sherrill, AZACS middle school science teacher
School initiatives like Puzzle Press are aimed at improving employment prospects for individuals with ASD — prospects that are statistically as dismal as those for higher education. A 2015 Drexel University report found that “only 58 percent of young adults on the spectrum worked for pay outside the home between high school and their early 20s.” Those who do work often hold low-skill, low-paying jobs.
To date, AZACS has produced two small graduating classes: four students and six students, respectively. “We just had our first kiddo who went on to a four-year college, to Grand Canyon University. He’s in a special program there, but he’s doing well,” Diaz-Harrison notes with pride. Other graduates have gone on to attend Scottsdale Community College or join the workforce. One entered his family’s auto mechanic business.
“We’ve come a long way in providing education, but there’s a lot of work to be done regarding what happens post-school,” Diaz-Harrison explains. “It’s amazing that some of our kids can go to college or other career paths and have that intellectual ability. They just need help with executive functioning and social skills, but they can be trained on that and be wonderful. That’s why we’re taking matters into our own hands and building something that’s a good bridge between when they age out and we technically can’t serve them as a school.”
Supreet Kaur shows a high school student how to correctly use code to control the dancing robot as part of AZACS’ Woz ED curriculum. Courtesy of AZACS
In Arizona, charter and public schools can only serve students in grades K through 12. However, students with special needs can remain in school until they turn 22. AZACS’ culinary program and coffee shop are part of the school’s Post-Secondary Innovation and Entrepreneurial Career Education (PIECE) Academy, which provides career and vocational training for students ages 18 to 22. It includes a specialty STEAM lab where students such as von West learn how to do things like design, 3-D print and fly drones — and at the end of the module are eligible for an FAA drone license. A vocational lab and internships with local businesses also are part of the academy and help make students work-ready.
And recently, AZACS was awarded a new state contract that allows it to offer supported employment for young adults past age 22.
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“That’s a very vulnerable time for [young people], because for those who are not necessarily eligible to go to college or need supported employment, there’s not much for them to do after 22,” Diaz-Harrison says. “Our students who age out or graduate can flow into this if it’s a good fit for them.”
To that end, in 2023, AZACS purchased the building that houses its administrative offices. On the ground floor of the structure, which is adjacent to the school’s main campus in midtown Phoenix, it will open four businesses that will serve the public: a shipping and receiving depot, similar to a UPS store; a community-facing branch of Puzzle Press; a retail shop that will produce and sell branded items, such as shirts and jackets; and a coding and gaming design studio called Game Changer Studio. Students and graduates will operate the businesses.
A rendering of the future public-facing Puzzle Press branch. Courtesy of AZACS
“A lot of times as teachers, we hear the questions, ‘Why does this matter? Why do I need to know this?’” says middle school science teacher Tyler Sherrill, who has been with AZACS for four years. “These businesses will let us say, ‘Here are four opportunities where you can use these skills.’ They will allow the kids to branch out and see where they want to go — do they want to be in the back of a company, such as with our T-shirt-making business, or do they want to be up front dealing with customers at our Puzzle Press coffee shop? Maybe they want to go into web design or the more technological aspects of the career paths, and here they get that option before venturing out into the real world where even we, as neurotypical people, struggle with the day to day.”
According to Diaz-Harrison, the businesses, complete with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, will open on June 15 — Sammy’s 22nd birthday.
“Part of my goal is changing the narrative and showing the world what students with autism can do and flipping that narrative,” Diaz-Harrison says. “Yes, the challenges are real, but these guys with the right support can overcome them and do amazing things.”
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Broken Windows, Warped Mirrors, and Jammed Glass Doors: On the Fascist Politics of Book Banning
In Rudine Sims Bishop’s influential essay Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors she addresses the importance of representation in readings; “When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read…they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part” (1). Over the past several years [...]
Teacher bashing: Grattan joins the chorus
The release of the latest PISA results provided another opportunity to bash schools and teachers. Amy Haywood and Jordana Hunter, from the Grattan Institute joined the chorus of denigrators. They, along with most academics, mainstream media and, of course politicians ‘validated’ our students’ performance in the International Student Assessment or PISA tests is in decline Continue reading »
200+ Doctor Who Scripts & More Available For You to Download for Free
Over 200 Doctor Who scripts (including the 60th Anniversary episodes) and many other BBC show scripts are available in the BBC Writers Room.
The power of play
A while ago I was – reluctantly – watching some television footage about the catastrophe in Gaza. To my amazement, a fleeting image appeared of two little girls, about 7 or 8, playing a hand-clapping game. I don’t know what nationality the girls were, or the location of their play. They could have been Israeli Continue reading »
Poisonous Pedagogies and Social Media: The Need for Feminist Discourse When Considering “The King of Misogyny.”
“Feminist critical pedagogy, like critical pedagogy, is concerned with questions of power, equity, and authority in the classroom, but it adds gender as a critical factor into the equation” – Gesa E. Kirsch (1995). Now more than ever, classrooms have become a place where educators must take their students through processes of unlearning. Through the [...]
The Over-50s Turning to Teaching
At the age of 55, Deepak Swaroop left his global role as a senior partner at an accounting firm to embark on a new path as a startup founder. Lacking the change and fulfillment he was hoping to find in this world, he then dabbled in retirement, only to feel unsatisfied by his new activities of golf, walks and trips to the library.
He’d read about Lucy Kellaway, the Financial Times editor who left journalism to become a trainee teacher and went on to found Now Teach, an organization that helps people change careers and become teachers, in 2017. After sitting in on lessons at five different schools, his mind was made up: He would retrain as a high school math teacher.
Deepak Swaroop now teaches high school math. Courtesy of Now Teach
Three years on, Swaroop feels energized and inspired — even if he is now earning a fraction of what he used to.
“Money wasn’t really the make or break for this option,” says London-based Swaroop. “I was keen to do something which had a purpose, so I could contribute back to society in a way. My view was that I don’t think I can contribute a lot of money to charity, but I can definitely contribute my time.”
Finding a new purpose in the classroom
Swaroop is one of the 850 people who have left careers like finance, IT, medicine, science, engineering and more to retrain as teachers through Now Teach, which relies on both government funding and corporate donors. Now Teach helps them gain a Postgraduate Certificate in Education, which typically takes one to two years depending on whether it’s done in a full- or part-time capacity. Now Teachers are also encouraged to apply for the many scholarships and bursaries on offer.
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Teacher vacancies in England have doubled since before Covid, and the government is well short of its target to recruit new trainees, as the Guardian reports, fueled by a lack of pay increases and failure to improve the heavy workload and long hours, plus more attractive opportunities abroad.
But Now Teach, and second-career teachers like Swaroop, are playing a pivotal role in helping fill the country’s teacher shortage. The organization has hit on a winning formula by focusing on an otherwise overlooked segment of the employment market: the over 50s. The average age of Now Teach teachers, the organization confirmed, is 49, with the oldest being 70. Countries like Australia are also looking to midlife career changers to meet shortages of math, science and technology teachers.
As Now Teach CEO Graihagh Crawshaw-Sadler acknowledges, many will have taken a pay cut to pursue this new path, but they’ve reached a point in their life where their priority is satisfaction over salary.
Now Teach CEO Graihagh Crawshaw-Sadler. Courtesy of Now Teach
“It’s not about the money, it’s about what this opportunity is affording them in terms of motivation, and knowing that they’re having an impact on young people,” says Crawshaw-Sadler. “We’ve got an awful lot of people who perhaps would have been looking to take early retirement, who are doing this instead. And then a large number who actually realized they’ve got a significant number of years left working. They’ve done what they want to in their current career, and it’s time to do something different. People are living and working longer, and they reach a point where they’ve given a lot to a particular profession, and they want to kind of make the next five to 15 years really count.”
This later life ambition is something Swaroop certainly relates to. “I just want to get into the classroom and teach,” he says. “I don’t have an objective of becoming a head of school. Previously, I would actively try to move up the ladder. That is being replaced by my desire to be more committed to my teaching.”
“I have had students write to me that I have helped them realize their potential and what path to take in the future. That is more valuable to me than money.”
Making schools more diverse
Originally from New Delhi, India, Swaroop is also proud to enrich the cultural diversity of his school, which, up until a few years ago, had a predominantly white teaching staff despite its highly multicultural student body. This reflects Now Teach’s success in attracting ethnic minority recruits at a higher rate than the national average and helping to close the representation gap between pupils and teachers. Thirty-two percent of its new trainees come from an ethnic minority, versus 19 percent of this year’s overall national cohort of trainee teachers and the overall national teacher rate of 21 percent, with 36 percent of pupils across the country being from an ethnic minority, according to figures shared by Now Teach. This equalizing effect also extends to gender: 44 percent of Now Teach’s intake this year were men, versus 30 percent nationally.
Indeed, Swaroop has often felt like the odd one out on the teaching staff. “My head of department is a 31-year-old man. He treats me with respect and shares things with me, but ultimately, I’m a junior teacher,” he says. “Initially, I would admit I found it challenging to be around such a young group of fellow teachers, who would think differently and would have different aspirations from me.”
Accepting that your age doesn’t match your seniority when you become a second career teacher doesn’t come easily, acknowledges Now Teach’s Crawshaw-Sadler.
“That’s the balance our Now Teach-ers have to find — being a novice, at the same time as being incredibly experienced. That’s one of the things we often focus on in the coaching support our trainees have with us, on how to tread that line and have the greatest impact, whilst also learning a brand new craft,” she says.
Beverly Melbourne retrained as a teacher in 2022. Courtesy of Now Teach
A healthy dose of humility, and adopting the view that people can lead multiple lives in one lifetime, has kept 56-year-old Beverly Melbourne grounded in her transition from government education policy advisor to high school English teacher.
Like Swaroop, Melbourne read about Now Teach in the Financial Times, and was ready to do a job where she could see and experience the impact of her actions. She retrained in 2022, and now, aged 56, is in her first year on the job.
She believes her colleagues and students appreciate the different perspective she brings based on her life experience.
“I’ve written policy, I’ve contributed to government speeches, I’ve done research. I can tell students how important it is to treat your colleagues well. I can tell them that soft skills are just as important as academic skills, because I’ve worked in meetings, created networks,” says Melbourne, who is based in the West Midlands region of the UK.
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“Those other skills are just as important to produce people that will be successful, not just for themselves, but for others as well.”
She too has left behind her ambitions to climb the corporate ladder, instead valuing the emotional reward of having a direct hand in a young person’s future.
“When you make a difference in education, the ripple effects are everywhere,” says Melbourne. “When we’re dead and gone, nobody’s going to remember what we got paid. They’re going to remember how we contributed to our family and to other individuals.”
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