This is a story about a school, a teacher and a group of
\nstudents. The school is a girls’ high school in the suburbs of Melbourne.
\nThis area is quite middle class and many of the school’s patrons think of
\nit as a state grammar school. Indeed many of the girls have a brother at the
\nlocal boys’ grammar. This is not to say that none of the students experience
\npoverty at home \u2013 the school is the local high school for girls and accepts
\nall the students within the zone who apply for it \u2013 however what poverty there
\nis is well hidden.<\/p >\n
The teacher is the author of this narrative. I came to the
\nschool in 1983 after spending seven very succesful years in a nearby co\u2013educational
\nstate high school. In fact, I came armed with a very recent teacher assessment which unanimously rated my current teaching
\nperformance and suitablility for promotion as excellent and highly recommended
\nrespectively. I was confident that I could tackle anything that this school
\ncould throw at me. It was with some excitment then that I accepted the role
\nof Mathematics Co\u2013ordinator even though I did not consider myself an expert
\nin mathematics. (Most of my previous efforts had been directed at the teaching
\nof Physics and the use of computers in schools.) For reasons that I hope
\nwill become obvious as this narrative unfolds, I will leave the school, three
\nyears later, a battered but not defeated soul.<\/p>\n
The students are a fairly normal (albeit all female) group
\nof young teenagers. A group I have watched change from an assortment of wide\u2013eyed,
\nenthusiastic children just out of primary school to young people who have
\nbegun to experiment (to various degrees) with life \u2013 whose innocence is starting
\nto fade into a memory. I met this group at the beginning of my second year
\nat the school. I had decided that I would have a Year 7 class as I had had
\nno junior classes in my first year and was eager to try out the ideas I had
\nbeen espousing.<\/p>\n