Category: Teaching

What’s the first thing you would do if I gave everyone at your school a list of all classes and their value-added?

I suspect that most of you, with a slightly tight feeling in your stomach, would scan down the list to review your own classes. “Please don’t let it be bad”, you’d think. If you’re anything like me you’d go straight to the class that you think is going to be the worst.

If it confirms your suspicions then you’ll get that sinking feeling. All the nagging doubts will come out. You’ll reflect on whether you’re a decent teacher, you’ll bring back all the other times that you’ve doubted yourself, and you’ll feel terrible.

Next comes the thought that the managers and all of your colleagues will see the same thing. Maybe you’ll feel scared, maybe you’ll feel angry. Perhaps you’ll start finding those reasons why it isn’t fair. You’ll probably feel angry at the kids, angry at the school, and angry at yourself.

The thing is, most of us will go straight for the negatives. Whether its exam results, value-added scores, internal tracking data, pupil satisfaction surveys or anything else, we beat ourselves up, and label ourselves a ‘bad teacher’.

The fact is, the huge majority of teachers also have really great classes. Every year they deliver inspirational lessons, beautiful lessons, and I-wish-someone-had-observed-that lessons.

For any teacher to have stayed in teaching for more than a year they must have had a few of those amazing moments where the students’ eyes lit up, and ‘Aha!’ moments were occurring all around the classroom. Teaching is just too hard for anyone to survive without them.

The data cannot tell you if these wonderful things are going on in a classroom. No one piece of data tells the whole story, but it can reflect some of the realities in the classroom and can be useful when the class teacher uses it to constructively reflect. But if the process stops there, you’re wasting an opportunity.

In the classroom where things aren’t working perfectly you may just need a nudge in the right direction. A little bit of inspiration, and maybe some support, and things could really turn around. Maybe one of your colleagues has the answer, but in the ordinary school culture you’d never know, and you’d be scared to ask for fear of looking weak.

If we could create environments where teachers could proudly share their best ideas, and could confidently ask for help, we could all have more great lessons.  We must foster a supportive culture that eliminates the fear of sharing ideas and data. If teachers can collaborate then they can grow.

Data by itself is not enough. Replace fear with sharing, and keep thinking review, reflect, and collaborate.

I’m going to risk being controversial but the avalanche of commentary in the last few days has really made me think. Since Michael Gove announced the new slimmed-down curriculum there has been a huge clamour:

• RS teachers fighting to get their subject into the Engilsh Baccalaureate,
• ICT and arts teachers claiming their subjects are no longer valued,
• citizenship teachers pleading to keep their subjects mandatory,
• and many more.

Yet in the past few years and we were hearing “the national curriculum is too prescriptive“ and “2/3rds of teachers think it has too much content“.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know some of the current complaints are about an enormous increase of prescription in History and English, and I can entirely sympathise with that. However, possibly controversially, I’m afraid I don’t sympathise with all those people seeking to have their subjects made mandatory. In fact, I’d quite like to have just English and Maths in the core curriculum (and this comes from a Science teacher).

Choice is great! Schools should be entirely free to set their own projects, do their own assessments, and let kids follow their interests. I’d love to do project-based science, create portfolios of interesting research and experiments, and really get kids following their noses and exploring areas of interest to them. Put it in the curriculum and we’re back to standardised testing for all, set ‘must-learn’ topics, and a big lid on the fun.

Of course a great school will get kids to be creative and follow their artistic ideas. They’ll inspire them with incredible ideas about using technology, and they’ll engage in fascinating comparisons and debates about religion, ethics and philosophy. A great school will create informed, engaged citizens with an interest in language, literature, and music.

Try and write a one-size fits all approach on paper and you’ll stifle innovation. Just because an expert couldn’t have got to where they were today without learning about Electromagnetic induction at age 15 really doesn’t mean its the right thing for every 15 year old to do. Just look at the amazing things going on a places like Big Picture learning and the way they create personalised curricula for their students. Just think how inspired kids can be when they follow music because they love it, and take exams when they’re ready. Nobody would argue we’d create more musicians and a better country by making everyone learn the same music, on the same instrument, at the same age.

Have faith in the schools, trust the teachers, and let the kids follow their interests. Don’t prescribe.

Am I right? All disagreements and comments very welcome – I love to learn.

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I have enthusiastically embraced new technology this term. So far I have tried

• Jing videos to explain algebra to my year 9 Maths class
• Blogs and Wikis for my A-level Physics (year 12)
• A good practice blog for staff

I just finished preparing an online unit for GCSE Physics for students to learn about sources of energy/power stations and help prepare them for a debate on the future of energy. It’s all exciting.

Sometimes though, despite being a great advocate of there not being any miracle answers in education I still get carried away with these things. So I guess I was just a little crestfallen when:

• Half of my year 9s failed to log on to see the videos or had difficulties with Flash.
• 5 staff put some entries on the good practice blog and the rest haven’t seen it as enough of a priority to do anything yet.
• Some of my sixth formers found the wiki inspired them to write crazy things, but not a great deal of content.

So, amazingly, I discovered that:

• Not everyone is enthusiastic about the same things,
• That some students can be lazy,
• And that sometimes computers don’t work.

In this brave new world of technology, which I still find ridiculously exciting, despite this, it’s rather reassuring to know that just as many things can go wrong with new ways of doing things as with old. I suspect, just like any good teaching, that perseverance, enthusiasm and patience will get my students and colleagues there in the end.

If you have encountered some of the above problems and have suggestions, I would very much welcome your comments below. Come on trusty Twitter and Blog – you won’t let me down now, will you?

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After my inspiring training day on Tuesday I have been trying to put some of my new ideas in to practice. The three main aims were

• Start getting my students to produce their own learning materials
• Produce some flipped-learning resources for the kids to study before the next lesson
• Encourage some sharing of good practice at my school

So far, a very inspiring week. I’ve made some examples of rearranging formulae for my Maths class using Jing:

I’ve got my A-level Physics class to produce some simulations of wave superposition in Excel which they are putting on to our school Moodle, and I’ve set up a Sharing Good Practice blog in school, where we’ve already got some ideas on:

• Giving students questionnaires to get their feedback on the teaching and learning, with some previously-used examples.
• Setting A-level Maths questions in chunks before lessons, doing targeted help during the lesson, and setting a mini-assessment in the next. This helps improve independent learning and reduces homework-marking load.
• A huge set of innovative ideas for getting all year-groups to reflect more deeply on History.

Everyone I’ve asked to contribute has been genuinely thrilled to hear somebody thinks their practice is worth sharing. It is a pleasure to ask them, and it is a pleasure to see their ideas. I can’t wait to see more ideas and share them with you – hopefully I’ll get everyone’s permission to share the link to the school blog.
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The first day back at work after the Christmas break is not traditionally a time to look forward to. It’s dark, it’s cold, and the next holiday is weeks out of sight. But today, for me, was no ordinary first day back. In fact, having just finished, I’ve just driven back home down the motorway to my home in London in a fairly dreamy state. I don’t think it’s good for road safety, but I also don’t think my teaching will ever be quite the same again.

So what exactly made this day so special? Well, here’s how it went – you be the judge.

Twitter

The reason I bounced out of bed this morning was that my head is full of inspiration. I joined Twitter on 22nd December 2010, and I feel more enthused in the past 2 weeks than any time I can remember before. I have read about teachers using technology in exciting ways, I have heard from teachers who value independent learning as much as I do, and I have heard the results of experiments in many other classrooms around the world. I am in touch with educators I could never have heard about before, and my professional network already spans the globe.

I have already told several members of staff at school. I intend to try and persuade key members of senior management to join, and the head of Maths has promised to have a dabble. For a school that is struggling (although currently succeeding) in maintaining its staff training budget in the face of harsh cuts (particularly in sixth form funding), this could well be just the way of improving teacher-learning we’ve been looking for.

Learning and sharing

This year my school has set sixth form (that’s 16-18 year-olds) learning as it’s professional development priority. We had an interesting survey and talk from Villiers Park last year on ways to improve our lessons. Today all staff sat in cross-discipline breakout groups. When we first arrived, in the typical British cynical way all talk was about “Oh what a waste of time”, and “How quickly can we finish this?”. However, even just a few minutes later I discovered my colleagues have some amazing ideas under their belts as fevered discussion and sharing ensued:

• One occasionally sets chapters from the Maths textbook as a homework in advance of teaching it, and asks students to collaborate and teach each other. In the next lesson he sets a quiz between the four class teams to assess what they have learned, and to correct any misconceptions.
• Another teacher sets passages from English texts as homework, and asks students to come in with 10 questions for their peers, or 10 subtle true/false statements, or 10 plot points in the wrong order to be sorted. They swap, mark, and then she assesses both the questions and the answers.
• A Chemistry teacher rewrites the specification and, over time, gives one to three students a section to prepare for the next lesson, with handouts. They present at the start of the next lesson, and must go through a Q&A with the rest of the class.

There were so many more brilliant ideas, from students self-assessing their effort, through regular “how is my teaching” questionnaires, to students blogging/saving outstanding work on Moodle, our VLE/LMS/CMS (take your pick of acronym!). This was just one of 7 groups that included someone from most departments and a couple of learning support and special needs assistants. I can’t wait to hear what the rest of them came up with!

In our subsequent science department meeting we decided to focus on expanding blogging during and after lessons, moving to some ‘flipped teaching’ for topics that suited it, and expanding our online resources. For a department with reputation for cynicism, this is wonderful and inspiring, and I can’t wait to get started.

Jing

My final excitement today was from a discovery that I read about, of course, on Twitter. Jing is an insanely easy to use way of recording a video of a portion of the screen, with sound from an attached microphone. I borrowed a microphone from our language department, plugged it in, installed Jing, fired up our interactive whiteboard, and away I went. I recorded 10 worked Maths examples for my year 9 class on using formulae this afternoon, and intend to try them out as a homework for my set tomorrow, with questions from the textbook to follow. It is so easy! I can’t wait to share it with my colleagues – this could absolutely revolutionise our teaching.

Education can be so creative, so rewarding, and so exciting. Now I’m looking forward to putting it in to practice, then carefully assessing its effect on student understanding and engagement, and finally discussing, improving, and sharing the ideas with others.
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Harvard business review has a superb article by Tony Schwartz on how any company can be a great employer. Education officials, school leaders and teachers can all learn from these four principles which he talks about.

1. Sustainability (physical)

The most basic need he talks about is that our physical needs our met. Are we getting good food, is the working environment safe, and are we comfortable? How many schools ask teachers and students to work in unpleasant buildings, on uncomfortable seats, and eating sub-standard food? The article’s author, Tony Schwartz says this:

How crazy is it that companies are willing to invest in preventative maintenance on fixed assets such as their machinery, but typically won’t make a comparable investment to enhance and sustain the health and well-being of their employees?

2. Security (emotional)

The second need is that employees are valued, recognised, and appreciated. If your schools are appreciated only for their test scores, employee’s perform less well. If you never give any recognition for achievements of your teachers, they will feel less motivated to achieve. If you concentrate your efforts on students’ mistakes and under-performance then they won’t feel intrinsically motivated to push themselves. As Schwartz says:

The vast majority of employers fail to recognize a simple and immutable truth: how people feel at any given moment profoundly influences how they perform.

Everyone knows the sure-fire way for a teacher to demotivate a class is to spend your time shouting at them and criticising them, and yet government and media seem remarkably enthusiastic to concentrate solely on the negatives of schools and teaching.

3. Self-expression (mental)

The third need is to innovate, be independent, and set your own path. Think about the time you enjoyed learning something most. Perhaps it was a game where you found your own way through a puzzle. Perhaps it was a book where you chose when and where to start reading. Perhaps it was a mathematics problem where you struggled and found your own way through.

This is a widely recognised truth, with such eminent psychologists such as Ryan and Deci, and Carol Dweck, who have conclusively shown that being cajoled and forced into work is less successful and sustainable than being inspired to do it. We enthuse our students with great literature, fascinating experiments, with trips and visits, and we know that extra curricular activities chosen by the student will be some of their most inspirational learning experiences.

Somehow legislators feel that the way to improve teachers and schools, on the other hand, is to hand down dictats about “three part lessons“, effective grading, and so on. Just as bad, sometimes, our own enthusiastic colleagues’ blind insistence that their solution is the only way. (e.g. “data is king! fire the bottom 10% of teachers on this basis” or “all data, all tests are terrible, remove them all completely”). Give people choice! As Schwartz says:

Treated like children, many employees unconsciously adopt the role to which they’ve been consigned. Feeling disempowered, they lose the confidence and the will to take real initiative or to think independently.

4. Significance (spiritual)

The final need is for significance of purpose. Schwartz again:

Once our survival needs are met, most of us long to feel that what we’re doing truly matters.

We are incredibly lucky that nobody in education ever really needs a “mission statement”. Any teacher who has ever guided their students to “A-ha!” moments knows forever more what their mission is. It isn’t for them to get some test scores, it is to inspire them, to enable them to lead fuller lives, and to enthuse them for lifelong learning.