Getting Kids Back Into School

One The Guardian this week was a superb article about the Improvements in public education in Argentina. Sandcastles against a Tsumani it may be, but any positive story on education, in Argentina or anywhere else, is worth a read in my opinion.

Physically getting kids into school and involved in the institution is the first in what is a long journey to success. Education is one consistent differentiator between where someone is born and where that person end up in life.

And, whilst I am being pious, allow me to offer my own solution in this link - let's get these kids back into school: quick fix here. 

Watch and Think

Sir Ken Robinson: thought provoking and brilliant.

Tips For Teaching, Newport Style

On my first teaching placement, I was sent to Duffryn High School, a shining jewel in the Welsh crown of a town that is Newport.

I hadn't thought of Newport, or Duffryn, for quite a while, until Dylan forwarded me this absolute classic from youtube.

Truth be told I loved it. As a trainee teacher, you couldn't fail. As long as you got through the day without breaking down, you were considered a star. The staff were incredible, and the bell ringing for the start of classes was the modern day equivalent of the whistle signalling the troops to go over the top, except in place of German machine guns there were happy slapping slicked back hair gold hooped earring wannabe Goldie Looking Chain types staring you out down the corridor.

Actually, put Duffryn High into youtube a you get a fair idea of what the kids were like. I think Giant Conger Line says quite a lot. Let's all do the conger? Possibly kids I taught English to, come to think of it.

Anyway, here are 5 pieces of advice I was given while I was teaching there. I don't think you'll find these in the school handbook, nor in any other manual on teaching, I'm just passing on what I was told:

1. Day 1, during our introduction from our Professional Tutor who'd be looking after trainee teachers: "Well, the good news is that if you can teach here, you can teach anywhere. Then again, thinking of our staff, that can't be true, 'cause if you can teach anywhere, you wouldn't be teachin' here."

2. "Never be on time for a lesson. Let them get the fights and all that out the way first, and then go in." Head of English.

3. Professional Tutor on first day tour, as we were cutting across the car park between two buildings in the pouring rain. "Oh, we don't go down the covered passageway. It's a kids' zone, really. We call it the Bermuda Traingle. I think we had a supply teacher go down there once: never heard of him since..."

4. While I couldn't get any attention from my Year 11 class. Kid at the front, feet on desk, offered this: "Just shout at us, Sir. It's all we understand."
I shouted. No reaction.
"Never mind, Sir. When we're not in the mood, we're just not in the mood."

5. Year 10, while I was observing a lesson, without pasue for reply. "Sir, you got a job here? Do you want to teach here? Don't teach here."

Bless.

Resources

It's exam leave time, which is a truly wonderful thing in the life of a teacher. It's like waking up in the morning, about to go to work, and you realise it's Saturday. You're so used to your timetable by this time of year that you completely forget you're not teaching. A thing of beauty...

And at this time of year your forgotten little ones - the little year 7s - finally get the attention they have been craving. Naturally, when preparing 18 year olds for important International Exams, a teacher can focus a little too heavily on the 'exam classes', leaving the enthusiastic ones slightly out of the limelight.

It's not like you don't teach them, you think, quietening your conscience, you just teach them quite well, rather than brilliantly.

Now, I didn't realise the true state of affairs until this morning. Having spend a good hour preparing resources for the lesson - something interesting and engaging, even writing an example answer myself - I bounced into the room, excited to deliver a brilliant lesson, rather than the only quite good ones they are used to.

My first clue was when I opened the folder to smugly and safely save as a joy foever this thing of beauty, and there was, worryingly, but one file in my entire Year 7 folder. Very worryingly, it was labelled almost exactly a year ago to the day. Truly, deeply worryingly, it was simply saved as: "A resource!"

Not to be deterred I bounded down the corridors to the eagerly awaiting recipients of my planning and erudition.

"Morning guys, how's it going?" I asked, with typical enthusiasm.

They looked up, in retrospect, kinda surprised. They had that look of bemused but pleasant surprise, now I think of it, like the look you give your Dad when he asks you a question that indicates he's actually been listening. That look. Multiplied by 24 (faces), or 48 (eyes).

"Morning... Sir?" they replied.

"OK," I said, with continued enthusiasm, and, trying to disguise my pride, announced, "here are your resources for the lesson. Take one each!"

Silence.

Eventually a hand born of the courage of the ignorant raised itself, and ventured, quizzically, shatteringly:

"Sir. What's a resource?"

Teaching Drama, and Being Hit Over The Head With A Chair

For Emma, who gets upset when I don't update the blog regularly

I used to teach Drama. I was dreadful at it. I would be OK now, I think, but I got stuck behind the 8 ball early on and never really recovered with that class, in my first year of teaching at Big School.

I was recently asked by a colleague to state the worst 5 things that happened at my previous school. Given that at No.4 I had written: "Child tried to hit me over the head with a chair", she was quite surprised that I had "Teaching Drama" in at 2.

But it was a bit like this, you see.

Teaching Drama

When I arrived at Big School, all keen and ready for battle, and received my first timetable with the excitement of a Primary child opening a new set of Staedtler felt tipped colouring pens, I couldn't workout what the acronym Dr meant.

Drama, a helpful colleague informed me, laughed, and walked away shaking his head.

I went to the office to sort out the mistake. No mistake. I had expressed interest at interview, I was informed. Assuming this was true, I lived with my lie. After all, during an interview if someone asks you about your kite flying experience, you tend to talk up one disasterous Sunday with dad 17 years ago as a childhood dream yet to be realised, when do I start? Don't you?

It was years later that I realised that it was they who were lying to me.

So there I was, with two lessons of Drama on my timetable. How bad could that be, I thought? I can learn a few things, work with different department. I could even lose the tie from time to time, dress in black, take a coffee to lessons, swear infront of the kids, let me call me 'Doog'...?

I used to throw up before lessons.

That makes me laugh to look back on it now, but it’s true. I had break duty before the second of the weekly 2. I would stand on duty in the playground, feeling the seconds tick down to the start of the lesson. There was a disabled/staff toilet (yes, I always liked that joke) with a code on the door, and like a bulimic teen I would nip in there and hurl. Then, ready for battle, I would emerge; reeking.

And then I would get my ass kicked. But I learnt a lot. (?)

The school was growing faster than its population, so, in my first year, when you taught a 'non-core' subject like Drama, you could find yourself teaching in places like the refectory. So, 30 kids, in the refec, directly after break.

And to add to my joys the refec after break is where that famous slippery slope you read about actually ends up, with every bad kid in the school sliding down on chip fat and coke to group and congeal, like a stagnant pool of second rate DNA, a walking Daily Mail headline of low life expectations for the less than 5 GCSEs.

Lessons would start with me turfing out all of that lot, and end a long long time later.

Not knowing anything about the subject, far less how to teach it, I fell back on the work the department used. This was suicide as the department were in a worse state than me. Term 1: Group work and Improvisation. Somehow even the stupidest kids can improvise something that can make a teacher look stupid in front of a class. They might have 'Will Spend Rest Of Life Serving And/Or Eating Chips' tattoed on foreheads, but they can be a God for a 60 seconds when I try to bring them down.

Whenever I told off a kid off for fighting, or bullying someone, they would hit me with we're trying to get into character.

When they I told them to put down something dangerous, I was told it was a prop.

When they swore, they said their last teacher, the Head of Department, allowed it. I checked, she confirmed that she did, indeed, let them saying things like m*therf*ck*r and whore, as long as it was in context.

I asked her what strategies she'd used to control the class. She gave me the single most ineffectual piece of advice I have ever heard: If they misbehave again, just tell them they're throwing away their chance to get an A*. That was the last time we spoke.

It never got better.

I went to my mentor, explaining all of this. She'd also arrived that term, but had come from a properly rough school, listened patiently to my story, and said, I'll support you 100%. I'll take the class, or get you retimetabled, whatever. (Pause. Brilliant, I thought) But do you know what I said to myself when they broke my fingers? You're going to get me that f*cking easily. (Pause. Shit, I thought.)

So...

After Thursday's lesson I would dread Friday's. Friday's I would survive and look forward to 9 working days till next Drama lesson. I was so badly in denial that I was teaching it that I never planned my lessons properly, so it just got worse and worse. It's the only singularly negative thing I've ever experienced in teaching.

And yes. Way worse than being hit over the head (well, nearly) by a chair.

Dumb and Dumber

Ah, I love this time of year, for in the UK at least, it's exam results time.

It's when the newspapers can rake through last year's cuttings, change the date on last year's headlines and repeat the same old stuff. We all know the routine by now, don't we?

Somehow you find yourself listening to Radio 1, who appear to have taken over from UCAS as the official way to find a course at university. You become aware that it's exam results season and you start reminiscing about how you found out about your results, back in the day when an O level actually meant something, and there was none of this going into schools and shouting at your teachers if you failed then. Oh no. If the results were better than last year they would light the school beacon.

Then you see the papers, and a 7 year old Asian kid is on the front of Times cause he's got 6 As all in Maths A level (Statistics, Pure, Applied, Extended Hypothetical, Hyperextended Hypothetical and Adding) and he's very excited about going to Oxford. And the Daily Mail goes absolutely berserk about how easy the questions are, and links it to immigration and complains about Sex Ed: too much Sex and not enough Ed.

Well, I used to see all of this through the blood tinted spectacles of the bullied and the thick at a London comprehensive. Quite a decent High School really, we had a pass rate of about 50% at GCSE. But let's examine those stats.

That's 50% of students achieving an A* to C. Which means that in the better subjects your Top Set would get a C or above, half your middle set would get a C, and nearly none of your bottom set would get anything.

This was one of the better schools in the area.

So in this generally pleasant place, a 50% pass rate means that only half of our students passed half of their subjects.

The headlines are seem a bit harsh on these kids. There are few conversations more difficult than trying to console a crying 16 year old who after 12 years of schooling has just got 4 Cs and a Ds, and everything she's been told about the world is that if she 'fails to get 5 GCSEs' she is screwed for the rest of her life; crying her eyes out because she desperately, desperately "did not want to end up like her mum".

This conversation is difficult enough even when you don't have a copy of the Times under your middle-class, coffee drinking, guilt ridden, cardigan-warmed arm, subtly shifting the headline: 'Even a Massive Spaz Can Get an A*' says Philemon, 15, Britain's brightest student, shown here with his 15 A* certificates. "I didn't even know it was test," he joked, through his ironic hoodie.

But in spite of my honest defense of those kids who really do try - and they exist, and really cannot do any better, and really have believed everything they've heard every assembly, every Headmaster's address entitled 'Do Well (To Make Me Look Good)' - I find that I have to, even though it pains me, I have to agree in some part with the dumbed down brigade.

And you will too by the time you read this below. These are examples of "objective testing" questions, otherwise known as multiple choice, from recent GCSE papers. Old lady, beware. The kids are coming after you in a space probe.

GCSE Science (Edexcel, 2006)
Our moon seems to disappear during an eclipse. Some people say this is because an old lady covers the moon with her cloak. She does this so that thieves cannot steal the shiny coins on the surface. Which of these would help scientists to prove or disprove this idea?
A) Collect evidence from people who believe the lady sees the thieves
B) Shout to the lady that the thieves are coming
C) Send a probe to the moon to search for coins
D) Look for fingerprints

GCSE Science (Edexcel, 2006)
Many people observe the stars using
A) A telescope B) A microscope C) An X-Ray tube D) A synthesiser

GCSE Biology (AQA 2008)
When we sweat water leaves the body through…
A) Kidneys B) Liver C) Lungs D) Skin

Higher paper in science GCSE, Edexcel

At the astronomical club Alec and Louise discuss the possibility of intelligent life existing on other planets.

Which of the following statements supports the possibility of existence of intelligent life in our galaxy?
A) The galaxy is expanding very quickly
B) The earth is over four billion years old
C) The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence has spent millions of hours analysing signals from space
D) There are so many stars in the galaxy

Satire is dead. As is Britain: The Next Generation. Long love the moral and educational panic.