Nine To Noon for Wednesday 28 August 2019

 

09:05 Clash over learning support coordinators

Principals across the country have until the end of the week to decide whether to boycott the recruitment of learning support coordinators for children with special needs at around 1000 schools preparing to welcome them. It follows concerns raised by some schools and the New Zealand Educational Institute that the new roles had been poorly distributed by the Ministry of Education. Martyn Weatherill is a Principal of Laingholm School in West Auckland, and member of the NZEI 's Principals Council. Leanne Otene, is the Principal of Manaia View School in Whangarei and executive member of Te Tai Tokerau Principals' Association. She says the Far North has missed out altogether from the new roles.

09:20 Focusing on siblings of children with serious illness

What is the impact on healthy siblings of the diagnosis of a serious illness in a brother or sister? Massey University Masters student Katie Armstrong is researching the unmet needs of the siblings of children with cancer, Type 1 diabetes and cystic fibrosis. She says when a child is diagnosed with a serious chronic illness it affects the whole family but healthy siblings can often be overlooked, and that more research is needed on the impact of siblings in New Zealand.  She's seeking over 400 participants in her survey which she hopes will be valuable in the development of support services for siblings. Lynn talks with Katie and supervisor, Dr Kirsty Ross, Director of the Massey University Psychology Clinic.

09:30 Study tips from a super tutor

According to Joe Norman remembering what you love is a key part of revising for exams, acing essays and doing well at school. Joe Norman has been a tutor of children aged 10 - 13 for fifteen years to help them get into academically-selective schools in the UK. He himself won an assisted place at Britain's Winchester College and studied at Oxford University. His book is called The Super Tutor.

09:45 Trans-Tasman blindside by ScoMo?

Australia correspondent Karen Middleton looks at Scott Morrison's announcement Australia and New Zealand were proposing a voluntary set of reporting protocols to get social media companies to report attempts to upload extremist content - was it dreamed up with little consultation? She'll also reports on Labor in New South Wales under pressure to explain illegal political donations from a Chinese-linked businessman and memento hunters have paid thousands of dollars for trinkets and pieces of furniture belonging to the late Prime Minister Bob Hawke, who died in May.

10:05 Reform school horror. Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead has based his book The Nickel Boys on the horror happenings that have come to light since a Florida reform school closed. The Dozier School for boys closed in 2011 and subsequently 50 unmarked graves were found at the site. Over decades boys disappeared, and those who survived were subjected to racism, sexual abuse and cruelty in what has been characterised as a chamber of horrors.The Nickel Boys dramatises this strand of American history - telling the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish existence of the Nickel Academy reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. Colson Whitehead's previous book The Underground Railroad, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 

10:35 Book review - The Secret Hours by Santa Montefiore 

Elisabeth Easther reviews The Secret Hours by Santa Montefiore, which is published by Simon & Schuster.

10:45 The Reading

Home for Dinner by Rachel O’Connor told by Alex Greig.

11:05 A little bit of country music

RNZ Music's Kirsten Johnson goes country, with a look at newly formed band Highwomen - a name playing homage to the legendary Highwaymen, deep-south Kiwi singer-songwriter Jenny Mitchell and Lillie Mae, a fiddle-playing country star from Tennessee, Lillie Mae.

 

11:20  Tiny houses. Is living smaller the secret to living better?

Brent Heavener is the founder of the number one Instagram feed @tinyhouse. His new book, "Tiny House: Live Small, Dream Big" contains over 250 striking images of the world's most creative small homes, from treehouses in Spain's Basque country to mobile homes traveling the open roads of Australia.

11:45 Could kānuka stop kauri dieback?

Science correspondent Siouxsie Wiles looks at new research suggesting kānuka produces compounds with the ability to paralyse the spores that spread kauri dieback. Could differences in the shape of the mouth's hard palate in people of different ethnicities influence small differences in the way we pronounce vowel sounds, and what's in a scorpion's toxin that targets the 'wasabi' receptor to stop mammals eating them?

 

 

 

Music played in this show

Artist: Ladi6
Track: Diagonals
Time: 10.43