A Class of Her Own

So......here we are again. Four weeks into the new term. I am now a full time SEN teacher; so no more travelling between sites for me to teach the GCSE curriculum to ungrateful year 10s! I was almost reclaimed by the upper school to teach additional literacy, but I stood my ground and continue to be full time with year 7 and 8 (for the moment at any rate!)

The year 7s are finding their feet (and their mouths!) The quiet wide eyed little babes of week one are rapidly morphing into the surly teenagers of term 2!

The school has had a big turnover of staff this year and we have a different senior manager on this site. The teaching structure has changed too. All forms are mixed ability and then the children go off to lessons in 3 different bands: either Q, P or R, depending on ability. This is the first time we have tried streaming at KS3 in this way, so time will tell. Most of the focus for teaching support is on the R band were the majority of SEN children are. The problem lies though in the fact that some statemented pupils of higher ability have been placed in higher teaching groups and we are struggling with the resources we have to provide them with support.

One particular group has quickly been labelled as the ‘most difficult' with even heads of department declaring them ‘un-teachable!"

I'm made a few very clear conscious decisions this year too, not to take work home (unless it's reading!) and to go to bed earlier, have breakfast and actually make plans at the weekends! So far, so good. I love my job, but I love my life too! And it's payday tomorrow - doughnuts for the department I think.

Like all well informed Londoners I get my daily news updates from the Metro. But I don't commute. I must have randomly subscribed to receive the online version and so I get a little email link in my inbox every morning. (It makes a good teaching tool by the way, because it is represented on screen just as it is as hardcopy.)

My attention was drawn to an article on page 7 of today's edition, ‘5 year teaching licence to weed out bad apples.' The aptly named Ed Balls has announced a number of ‘reforms' for schools in a white paper, including teachers being reassessed every 5 years and either relicensed to teach or not. (Presumably if not, they'll move into politics and create education policy.)  Although it seems to me that education policies are mainly devised by people who have no idea about what goes on in schools day-to-day.

I'm all for a more open doors approach to schools, and a short while ago the buzz words were ‘extended schools' and ‘building schools for the future.' The idea was also that children's services work more closely together to share information for the protection and welfare of young people. Let's see this happening before we try more hap hazard initiatives.

Teachers already have to have many observations each year; as trainees, as NQTs, every year under performance management reviews, during departmental reviews by senior management and often by external practitioners.  

More proposals on the white paper include good schools being about to share their ‘brand ethos and identity,' (I hate this idea that schools are now somehow akin to The Gap or Nike.) Parents will also be able to take schools to court (presumably this means the Head) if they are not delivering, although Mr Balls said ‘this would be the last resort.')

Well, let's not worry about last resorts just yet hey!  Shadow secretary Michael Gove dismissed the plans as gimmicks saying, ‘They will not solve the deep problems we have with bad behaviour in schools.' It's a sad day when I find myself agreeing with a Tory MP.

Brown really wasn't thinking when he put Mr Ed Balls in charge of education -‘ Ballsing' up our ‘Education' system, anyone!?

To teach: “To impart knowledge or skill to somebody by instruction or example.”

Increasingly, (sometimes with joy and other times despair,) I have come to realise I am not a ‘teacher’. According to the Government that is what I am. If I am to fill in a form under occupation I would write ‘teacher.’ I get paid a ‘teacher’s’ salary and the Tax Man thinks that’s what I do.

When someone asks what I do though, I find myself saying “I work in a school.” I think I started to say this because my role within Education has changed quite a lot, but increasingly I find that saying “I work in a school” is more apt than “I am a teacher.”

It (teaching) has become just one part of the job (and I do try to do this!) The pastoral side, (particularly in inner city schools where there is often high levels of children with SEN, children living with difficult home situations, etc) is becoming increasingly important, and I would say, increasingly more challenging.

In the school I work in there is a high level of young people presenting challenging behaviour, children with communication difficulties and children experiencing emotional situations which are negatively influencing their ability to have a positive attitude towards their education.

There are fundamental issues that I see in the children on a daily basis which are preventing them from going through the day having a positive experience of the education system. The same children are seen outside of the classroom lesson after lesson. The same names appear on the day sheet, which monitors a form’s progress throughout the day.

But I don’t believe that as subject teaches we necessarily have the training or ability to cater for these most vulnerable children. We have excellent and very hardworking staff, (and we have those who have this additional training and experience in child protection and mentoring,) but given the number of children roaming the corridors, (and the exhausted expressions on the staff members’ faces,) I’d say they’re stretched to their limits right now.

When I first trained to be a teacher the buzz phrase was ‘Every Child Matters’. This has now moved into ‘SEAL’ (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning.) Within my school I am part of the SEAL working party and working alongside Educational Psychologists from the local authority we are hoping to implement a six week ‘Social Skills’ group for the year 7 and 8 students, focusing on positive experiences, interactions and reframing and managing difficult emotional situations. I am excited about this prospect and hope it will prove beneficial to the students we teach.

Right now we just need to find a timetable slot, a room, some funding, a member of staff to run it.....

When I first sat down to read the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) Press Release: Inappropriate behaviour on Big Brother and Little Britain are leading to classrooms of Vicky Pollards, I have to admit I was a little sceptical. Having studied media and journalism as part of my degree, (and before) I have always been wary of the ‘catch all' conservative claims that poor, or even criminal behaviour, happens as a direct result of film, TV or video game consumption. The worrying ‘Mary Whitehouse-ish' condemnation that every swear word or kiss should automatically receive an R rating really grated on my youthful ‘freedom of expression' mind. And while I am nowhere near these extreme views, Having been working with young people for 4 years I have often thought it is an intensely difficult time to be experiencing adolescence.

I still believe children and young people should be ‘sucking-up' all sorts of stimulus from the world around them, including Media and The Arts, but I genuinely feel that some young people are being exposed to things that they don't have the maturity to understand; to view in a detached or cynical way, rather than take on face value. The ATLs report, taking direct response from teachers and people in Education stated that ‘A school leader at a state primary school said:  "Children do not think that 'bloody' is swearing as they hear it so often on television. Catchphrases are used as retorts - 'eat my shorts' from The Simpsons. They talk freely about shooting people, stabbing, and the music videos give the boys an unrealistic outlook on females as sexual objects."

I agree with his points, and although the report focused on the behaviour in primary schools, I think the students I teach are seeing and hearing things that they can't fully comprehend because they don't have the maturity to fully analyse and understand what they are witnessing. I would also agree with another statement in the study that said students sometimes find it hard to differentiate between the ‘reality' of the real world and the ‘reality' of TV world. So often I have broken up fights, only to be told they we're just messing or joking around - I'm not being naive and understand teenagers will be boisterous and this will happen on occasion, but they often show such little regard for the impact on each other or the people around them.

Increasingly (I imagine for a multitude of reasons) it is becoming the school's ‘job' to equip these children with so much more than straightforward curriculum education, and I have to admit, I'm not sure if schools themselves are fully ‘equipped' to do this. Through my English teaching I endeavour to encourage my students to be media savvy - to understand that advertisers are strategic and manipulative; that they should question the world around them and not take everything on face value - but this is just a drop in the ocean.

Good days ...bad days

Today was a good day. A trip (Retreat) day. Coaches, iPods and caps worn backwards.

School trips often give me enduring headaches and I wasn't off to a good start when my register said 26 but I totalled 27 every time I counted! (Better to be one over than one short, I thought!) It transpired a pupil from another form had joined us, and this information hadn't quite reached me!

The staff running the Retreat were wonderful; organised, calm and clearly very comfortable with boisterous Hacker's youth!

Sometimes when groups visit schools, or we take our students to them, things don't always work out as planned. On my return today I told my Head of Learning I was joyful because I felt he students had represented themselves (and the school) positively. (Particularly as they can be a challenging form to teach.) She told me of a time, when working in another school, that a visiting theatre group had written to the LEA to complain about the student's behaviour. Now, whilst I ‘m by no means suggesting bad behaviour go unchallenged or be ignored, I think sometimes teenagers deserve a break.

When groups of teachers, (or indeed lots of other professions) get together the behaviour is often barely distinguishable from the students they teach! Last year I went to my friend's NQT graduation ceremony. Fifteen of us from the same school sat around the one table. Someone passed round a very detailed sketch of the gentleman speaker, initiating giggles from the first recipient, the drawing and the giggles passed around the ‘highly professional' group like a Mexican wave, until all that could be seen were bowed heads and quivering shoulders! Highly sanction worthy behaviour if displayed by 12 year olds, I'm sure!

So year 7 did me proud today. The young people I work with have it pretty tough. It's hard enough traversing adolescence in 2009, I think, and the children I work with often endure experiences someone twice their age would struggle to cope with.

When I first started to take children on trips I felt exposed, like every member of the public looked upon my students with distain! That I should be controlling and reprimanding everything they did!

But they're not robots. Or even giggling adults. They are children. Children journeying towards young adulthood. Making sense of themselves and their world.

Today, the coach was on time, the journey was brief...no plastic bags were required for ‘special' usage!...The children danced, created, drummed, worked as a team....and evidently, (as one student informed me) thought the whole experience was pretty ‘sick'!

Today was a good day...

I recently watched a documentary about how schools are implementing schemes to address disruptive behaviour within the classroom. It spoke of how teachers were often reluctant to discuss problems for fear of being labelled as inadequate.  Whilst I feel that this is something that is slowly changing, I can understand why people working in education keep their worries to themselves. Schools need to cultivate a culture of transparency, of support. A situation where ideas are shared and reflection can take place in an open and supportive environment.

So if we are to become ‘leaders of learning,' delivering outstanding lessons, then we need the right environment to develop. But the crux - time.

A friend once told me that during her training year, one evening at home she had a mini panic attack and looking around at the piles of books still to mark strewn across her living room, she leapt up, grabbed each book in turn and neatly hid them away in any nook she could find. Sat back down, in her now tidy room calm and collected. Out of sight, out of mind, hey?And I can bet she didn't run to her Head of Department with this news!

So, I really should get back to it....if I could just remember where that GCSE coursework is.....

Twilight INSET Sessions [IN-Service-Training] unfortunately proving unavoidable at present.

Last week's twilight session was entitled ‘Teachers as Leaders of Learning' and required us to consider how we make ‘good' lessons become ‘outstanding' lessons. At this stage of my career, however,  I can just about get  through the day with enough energy to crawl home....have a cup of coffee, and think about the next day's lessons.

The INSET also involved exploring definitions of learning, including one provided by educational theorist John West-Burnham, (or as my colleague lent across and informed me, "the man who ‘makes' the tuna!" ) 

"Learning is a unique and personal process through which individuals are able to create knowledge, deepen understanding and so take responsibility for their development." We were then shown a slide depicting the ‘profound' concept ‘Learning is NOT (just) .....sitting quietly and writing things down.'  Fundamental and obvious, yes, but important to readdress.

The ongoing issues regarding time (principally that there's not enough of it,) for reflection, development, growth and research were touched upon during the evening. In a school you are surrounded by other people, hundreds of them. Both young people and staff, with varying degrees of experience, and all with something to offer, but even with all these personalities bouncing around the building, school can sometimes feel like a rather lonely place. Broadly speaking you teach or you plan and when you do come together as a staff, there is so much on the agenda to discuss and get through that the reflection process gets pushed to the side.

Having always lived near the schools I work in, bumping into students in my ‘leisure' time has been an unavoidable circumstance. It's not too bad really, and they are generally fairly polite when such a scene occurs. They do however look at you as if you have just landed from another universe and seem to enjoy informing me of my weekend activities the following Monday at school....

Student: "You was at the market Saturday Miss."  (Wry smile.)

Me: "Yes I Know." (Serious nod of the head.)

Student: "Yeah, saw you there." (Flashes wry smile to classmates.)

Me: "Yes. I saw you too. We said hello." (Extends serious nod to other students.)

Student: "Yeah...you was with another woman....and a man. You was looking at the cheese...but you didn't get none." (Demonstrates delight at apparent stalker levels of detail recalled.)

Me: "Yes. I remember. It was just two days ago."(Attempts to disguise mild exasperation.)

While slightly irritating, this type of memory prompting may prove crucial in later years as my own cognitive abilities fade as a result of aging... or twilight INSET sessions. More of which later.