We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For

A groundbreaking documentary. A landmark, independent film. Or so I am told. I have only, so far, watched the trailer and I must say I’m interested to watch the whole thing.

“We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For” premiered yesterday and can be requested online from www.wearethepeoplemovie.com. It will also be syndicated free with the Guardian on Saturday 28^th November.

The film follows the lives of five Swindon-based teenagers and the challenges they face during their education. The world is changing rapidly but is our education system keeping up?

The film reveals how education could be. It explores innovative examples of education in other countries: education that is flexible and capitalises on individual talents, rather than trying to make all pupils fit into the same academic mould.

Inspired and guided by Lord Puttnam and Sir Michael Barber, the film includes views from high-profile figures including Sir Richard Branson, Germaine Greer, Henry Winkler, Bill Bryson, Sir Ken Robinson and a wide range of education experts from around the world.

Is our education system out-dated? This film may provoke an interesting debate.

We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For

I'm Watching You!

Help! I’m being observed!”

Being observed can be horrible. It does not matter how experienced a teacher you are, the words “lesson” and “observe” in the same sentence can be more daunting than class 7B on a bad day.

And this teacher was only being observed by the very unscary me. I was even less scary at the time – a mere PGCE student. Her cry for help was written in a note to the technician.

“Please organise stuff for the acids practical. Help! I’m being observed by The Student!”

As “the student”, I was in awe of this teacher’s senior management position and well run department. I was surprised to learn of her fear, which goes to show that even the most brilliant teachers can feel a sense of dread when it comes to being watched.

It is human nature, apparently. Social psychologists have been studying the phenomenon for years. It is called Impostor Syndrome.

Read more from I’m Watching You in this week’s SecEd.

I'm Watching You!

Potato Provenance - Chickens Lay Potatoes?!

It makes perfect sense. Sort of. One in ten children aged 7-11* think that potatoes are laid by chickens. And I can see where they’re coming from. Potatoes are almost egg-shaped and almost egg-coloured. If you’ve only ever been presented with potatoes on your plate (or in your chip-carton), it’s little wonder that an egg springs to mind when you try to imagine the origin of the humble spud. They grow in the ground? Who’d have thought it?!

And one in five children don’t realise that chips are made from potatoes.* I expect crisps are a mystery too. Given the array of anonymous-looking, processed food that lots of people consume, I’m not surprised that so many children are ignorant as to the origins of what they eat.

*Source: McCain survey of 1500 UK children aged 7-11.

Who cares? Does it matter where our food comes from? In the end, it all just comes from the supermarket, right?

Wrong. I happen to think that it Does Matter where our food comes from (I write for LovelyCompanies.com don’t I?!). It matters that our food is farmed by human beings. Are they healthy? Are the well paid? It matters that food production impacts the environment. What chemicals are used? What habitats are affected? I also care what I put into my own body. How processed is my food? What nutritional value does it have? What toxins does it contain?

It’s not ok to be ignorant about food provenance. Which is why, when McCain contacted me to request a mention on my blog, I was happy to oblige.

McCain (as in chips!) is running an educational campaign to teach children about food provenance. “The Potato Story” bus tour is visiting 30 UK schools but even if your school is not included, you can still access the resources on The Potato Story website.

Here you will find sections for children, teachers and parents with activities, videos and educational resources to help get the message across.

Because hens lay EGGS for goodness sake! Unless I’m very much mistaken.

I’m still imagining the look of surprise on that hen’s face…

Potato Provenance - Chickens Lay Potatoes?!

Sending Children Home From School

Should we keep them?

Some parents would rather we did. But Ethan has a particularly obnoxious way of coughing that has me reaching for the ‘phone.

Teachers face many tough decisions. Not least the ‘should they stay or should they go?’ decision that has to be made when a child tells you they are feeling ill.

Should you believe their claims to be Too Poorly to stay at school? Should you think of the germs potentially spreading amongst other children? Or should you keep the child at school, mindful of the inconvenience to parents who will have to leave work or arrange childcare?

I’d send them home. Every time. Well, almost every time.

Generally, if a child claims to be ill, I trust them and let the parents decide whether to send them back into school the following day. Most children like school (believe it or not) and are not malingerers.

There are obvious exceptions, of course. Gemma in 8B, for example. If I sent her home every time she claimed to be feeling sick, she’d never be in school. No, the Gemmas of this world need less sympathy and more, “You’ll be fine!” to get them through the day.

As a parent, I would rather my child was sent home if she was feeling unwell than be kept at school to suffer. Some parents disagree, saying that teachers are too quick to send children home. They feel that their children (especially older children) could cope quite well at school and needn’t incur parental time off work.

So teachers are left with the tricky decision to make.

I can usually tell who is genuine and who is not. Gemma, get back to class, please. But Ethan: That cough! Go to the office at once!

Sending Children Home From School

Perils Of Taking A Day Off

Just don’t do it. Not unless you really have to. And by ‘really have to’ I mean:

• You are physically unable to teach (having totally lost your voice, for example)
• You have something genuinely more important to do (a funeral might count)

Otherwise, just Be There. Don’t take a day off. Classes are left at your peril.

Because time away from school is just not worth it.

For a start, you have to leave work for the pupils to do in your absence. This includes printing out detailed lesson plans, photocopying resources, setting out equipment and books, making sure there are enough spare pencils etc. It’s a lot of work and requires much more effort than if you were going to teach the lessons yourself.

And that’s not the end of the matter.

When you return to work, you will regret it. Those fleeting moments of rest and freedom will never compensate for the mess you encounter back in the classroom.

Because the staff that covered for you will have Done It Wrong.

If a colleague has covered for you, they have lost a free period. They will have rushed from their previous lesson at the far end of school, done their best to follow your instructions and then rushed back at the far end of school for their next lesson. With the best will in the world, they will have left the classroom in a mess: they simply didn’t have time to hang around at the end and pick up the pieces.

A supply teacher might have covered your lesson. This could have gone well (if you have a very efficient, disciplinarian supply teacher) or, typically, it will have gone badly.

Supply teachers are, usually, temporary and pupils know this. They are strangers who will be tested and pushed to their limits. Not only does the supply teacher have to decipher your instructions and find all the equipment they need, they have to do this whilst being hounded by over 30 pupils, whose names they do not know.

When I return to work after a short absence I tend to find that my classroom is a mess, equipment is scattered and damaged, there is litter on the floor and in the sinks, books are torn and new graffiti has appeared on the desks. The work I set has not been done, or has been done to such a poor standard it may as well not have been done. I spend my first few days back tidying up and re-covering the topics that were insufficiently covered in my absence.

So don’t. If there is the slightest chance that you can be there in person, don’t even think about taking a day off.

It’s just not worth it.

Perils Of Taking A Day Off

Breathing Difficulties

Oliver’s lungs are black. Emily is disgusted. She says they look unhealthy. She is proud that hers are pink. In my opinion, it is the sort of pink that would worry the doctor or at least have him reaching for his sunglasses, but I decide not to mention it. Joe has only got one lung. It inflates nicely, though. His is orange.

Class 9B proudly display their models. Except for Adam. Adam has no lungs at all. “I need to go to my locker, Miss. Pleeease!” he begs. I consider his request. The head would not approve. She says that pupils are not to be allowed out of lessons unless it is a matter of life and death importance. Sorry Adam.

I am teaching the deceptively tricky subject of…

Continue reading Miss’s article on Breathing Difficulties – A Matter of Life and Death in this week's SecEd.

Breathing Difficulties

What Am I Going To Do With Him?!

Jack was well-meaning. He tried to try his best. He almost succeeded.

Jack liked to please the teacher. He was always trailing round after Miss with his hand up, brandishing his exercise book containing his latest hastily scribbled offering.

Jack was quite clever. He knew most of the answers in our end of topic tests. He knew them, that is, if I asked him directly and sort of pinned him down to think for a moment. In actual test conditions, Jack was still swayed by the idea that it was better to finish first than to get the highest score.

Jack followed the rules. Unlike other children in his class, who fidgeted, wrote notes, started up surreptitious conversations and doodled on the corners of test papers, Jack knew that when you finish a test, you take out your reading book and read quietly.

Jack always had a reading book with him, which is more than could be said for a lot of people.

Anyway, marking Jack’s mock SATs paper was a frustrating process. Careless mistakes, questions misinterpreted, questions missed out altogether, illegible writing and indecipherable diagrams.

“Jack,” I said to him, “You’ve put some careless answers. Were you rushing?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “I wanted to get on with reading my book.”

I despair.

At least Jack is honest.

What Am I Going To Do With Him?!

I'm Running The Show - Colleges Week

Calling all college students…

The Association of Colleges will soon be having another ‘Colleges Week’ (9^th – 15^th November) to celebrate the opportunities provided by colleges in Britain.

As part of the week, the Association of Colleges is running a nationwide competition called, “I’m Running The Show,” in which participants are asked to imagine what it would be like to ‘run the show’ for a day. The Competition is open to all students currently enrolled on a college course at a general or tertiary further education College, sixth form College or specialist College in England.

To enter, you must submit a two minute video with the theme, “running the show”. You can be as creative as you like. The video can be an animation or film. It can include a simple speech or a song and dance routine. Just use your imagination!

Prizes include the chance to spend time on the set of ‘Hollyoaks’, an opportunity to shadow Sven-Goran Eriksson and the prospect of touring the British National Space Centre, among other things.

Click here for more information about the “I’m Running The Show” competition.

I'm Running The Show - Colleges Week

Sadly Mistaken

I really impressed Natalie. She was nine. I was her new science teacher.

“We’re going to make some crystals,” I said.

I said ‘crystals’ in a really dramatic way. Crystals? Imagine that!

I made the lesson sound way more exciting than just dissolving some salt in water and then letting the water evaporate.

“Crystals,” I said, “They’ll be square and shiny. Let’s see who can grow the biggest crystals.”

It sounded amazing. We were in a real laboratory, wearing goggles and working with real chemicals. (What do you mean, ‘sodium chloride’ is table salt?! Who knew!)

I think even those pupils who had realised that we were, essentially, just making some salty water and leaving it in a dish, had fun stirring in the salt to make a saturated solution and enjoyed finding their crystals in the dish a few days later.

But Natalie was extra-specially impressed. To Natalie, the word ‘crystals’ must have been synonymous with the word ‘diamonds’ and, somewhere along the line, the words swapped places. Natalie was super-excited when she found salt crystals in her Petri dish. She was thrilled to be chipping at the white lumps with a spatula. I could see that she was carefully transferring them into a paper towel to be lovingly wrapped and stowed in her pencil case.

“Miss!” she said, awestruck. “I’m taking my diamonds home!”

I may be good, Natalie, but I’m not that good.

Sadly Mistaken

Toys in Class?

Would you allow it? He’s cute, but should he be in the classroom? I wouldn’t let pupils bring toys into my lesson but Edmund Bear is mine and I think he has a place.

You’d be surprised. Even big children (twelve and thirteen year olds) are still really just children, deep down. Aren’t we all? And even those tough-looking Year 7 and 8s have a weakness for sweet-looking bears. Which is why I used to let Edmund sit in on a few of my lessons.

He was very popular. Pupils wanted to cuddle him. “Please can Edmund sit on my desk?” they would say. “Can Edmund help me?”

But Edmund was secretly helping me.

Edmund’s presence had an interesting effect on the class. When Edmund was around, things became possible that weren’t possible before. Whole class discussions, for example. I made a rule that you could only talk if you were holding Edmund. Edmund would jump happily from one pupil to the next, helping with the turn-taking.

Not only did Edmund make turn-taking easier, he also helped with courage and ideas. Somehow, it’s easier to make your point when Edmund is on your knee. I would occasionally invite Edmund himself to ask questions, too. Edmund asked some amazing questions that my pupils, on their own, would never have dared to voice.

And Edmund was always happy to have a go at things.

“Come on Edmund! You draw me a diagram on the whiteboard!”

Edmund’s drawing skills weren’t up to much but at least we could all laugh about it.

Edmund always wore his goggles for practical work. He always volunteered to do the disappearing in ‘magic’ tricks. He was even kidnapped a few times when ‘Miss’ felt like teaching some forensic science.

Good old Edmund. Toys in the classroom are a great idea. Just make sure you choose one that’s fully washable, ok?

Toys in Class?