President Barack Obama beside Ryan Devlin during the 2014 National Teacher of the Year ceremony at the White House.
Meet Ryan Devlin, boys and girls, who is pictured at the White House with President Barack Obama during the US 2014 National Teacher of the Year ceremony, for which he was a finalist representing his home state of Pennsylvania.
So from Washington to Canberra, how come? He met Hughes Primary principal Kate Smith on a “lunar mission” at a week-long Space Academy for Educators Camp at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in July.
She recruited him to Hughes. Devlin previously taught high-school English and technology at a small, rural town 180 kms east of Pittsburgh and was the state’s youngest Teacher of the Year.
“I have been teaching teenagers for the past eight years so I am really excited to work with a new age group,” he says.
“It will be fun to create innovative and engaging lesson plans using a new curriculum.”
Devlin says he likes to use technology in the classroom and, while teaching in high school, turned his classroom 100 per cent paperless.
“I enjoy finding unique ways to make content come alive so that students are fully engaged and excited to learn,” said Devlin.
Who cares what you think?
AS unpopular Tony Abbott has painfully discovered the perils of not consulting, so the ACT Government needs to worry about the downside of insincere invitations to consult (does anyone really imagine any feedback from the current round of tram consultation is going to save a tree or change a thing?).
As Planning Minister, Mick Gentleman wants to know what we think about a super-sized Woden and, as Roads and Parking poobah, he wanted us to have our say about a new mega-blight of 40km/h zones across the city.
But the invitation was embroidered with this sort of prejudicial stuff: “Research indicates that the introduction of a 40km/h speed area can significantly reduce the risk of death for vulnerable road users.” Who can argue with that? Make a decision, Mick.
Terrify your friends
HOW sick is this? Furtively photographed interstate by a snout trawling a cheap-cheap store is a “Terrorist Man” dress-up kit that, for $29.99, includes hat, coat, shirt and trousers… and a high probability you’ll be shot on sight by a police patrol before you get to the party.
Platter chatter
ANYONE who can remember some strange ‘70s ritual called “record clubs” will thrill at being at the National Film and Sound Archive’s Vinyl Lounge, 5.30pm, first Friday of the month, to remember the “Golden Age of Vinyl” (‘60s-’80s, apparently).
Leading the platter chatter and spinning the discs will be sound specialists Graham McDonald and Thorsten Kaeding, who promise pop, rock, folk, world, funk and lounge music. Own discs welcome, too. Free entry, drinks and nibbles from 5pm.
Designs on Tuesdays
IT’S been decided (by The Design Kids) that there’s too much emailing and not enough socialising going on among designers. And a couple of local graphic designers have elected to launch “TDK Tuesdays” at Honky Tonks, in Garema Place, Civic, 6pm, first and third Tuesdays of the month.
Hosts Gabrielle Carrigy and Juliette Dudley say it’s a great way for designers to have fun, swap notes, get involved and just generally build a bigger design community.
The national TDK movement bridges the gap between students and industry within the Australian graphic design community.
Gold with that?
TO mark the Chinese New Year 2015, a company called Goldgenie is flogging limited edition Year of the Goat iPhones embellished in 24k gold and laser engraved with a Chinese symbol of the goat, “thought to bring a gentle peaceful energy into the year ahead”. Presented in a “unique cherry oak finished box”, the phone is priced at about $A5500 for a 64-gigabyte model ($999 from Apple). Reassuringly, the shipping is free.
Love is strange
WE start the dumb-research year with this nonsense from a cheating dating site that says more than 85 per cent of the 4156 Aussie women surveyed have “imaginative sexual fantasies”. And who do they fantasise most about?
Well, not the doctor (who scored an unsexy 2 per cent), not the pub barman (5 per cent), nor the partner’s friend (10 per cent), but the yoga teacher (20 per cent).
The post Canberra Confidential / Canberra chalkie meets Obama, sort of appeared first on Canberra CityNews.