My friend Joe sent me an article by Malcolm Gladwell , who I believe is better known for a book called The Tipping Point, that has been on my “I will read this” list since the reflective practice project that started this blog. I read the article in a bit more detail last night and basically it suggests that you can’t tell if teachers are going to be any good until you get them in the classroom, plus there are no other measures that can really tell you if someone will be good. It compares this to trying to decide if someone will be a successful NFL quarterback.

I think that good teachers have to work hard; after that, I’m not sure what the magic is. They certainly can train to be better; sometimes a lot better. But it’s true that some people will never be good teachers, the same as some people are very quickly very good teachers.

Anyway, I was responding to the article and a response (that I don’t have permission to publish) from Joe’s Dad, who used to be a headteacher, and my response was as follows:

“I don’t know about Hanushek’s figures saying there is a year’s difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher. That seems to ignore the fact that most of what students learn is outside the classroom, and ignores the difference between ages. It also suggests that students’ “amount of learning”  (and that in itself is a problematic term) can be measured by material. Nonetheless, the point made on the second page reinforces something I really believe – that teachers get too many chances to get it right while students get too few (usually one).

I like the “x walked over to the powerpoint and while waiting for it to boot up, the classroom descended into chaos”. That’s exactly what I’d expect of a teacher unprepared for a lesson AND not able to adapt to the situation. In fact, I think not being prepared is the primary reason for any behaviour problems.

I think Gladwell oversimplifies and overcomplicates what it takes to get students learning. Oversimplifies in that it’s not just about techniques that engage students in their world (though this is one of a ‘box of tricks’ – and I don’t think being a teacher is about having a box of tricks either) and overcomplicates in that it’s not necessary to allow students to learn in their world – the reference to the student leaning in sounds like he should have been allowed to, but this doesn’t mean that any behaviour is ok as long as students are inquisitive/ learning (I’m aware this could provoke controversy – I might write a longer blog post on this because it does invite the question “Why?”). There is an element of socialisation that goes with schooling (the debate about whether there should be or not is another one) and that includes how to behave (I’m not here talking of poor behaviour) and one’s position in social settings, including in a classroom.

The reference to individualised feedback is nothing new – what they are praising, on about the fifth page, is formative assessment. This has been rebadged as an initiative called “Assessment for Learning” in the last ten years and is based on the work of Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black from Kings College London. “Assessment for Learning” is a useful term to me because it immediately invokes comparisons with “Assessment of Learning” (summative assessment) which is only useful is we use it formatively or if we want to compare students, institutions, or otherwise.

I really like the reference to stopping the chain of poor behaviour before it starts. Very usually this is about engagement of the learners, so your lesson is more interesting than anything else. How to get this is of course the holy grail (and I recognise the contradiction between this and what I referred to earlier where I said that not all behaviour is ok!)

Gladwell also shoots down a straw man regarding the IQ tests for quarterbacks – no-one believes that makes a difference any more in any sphere (do they?)

Meanwhile, one might remark that financial advisors are a poor model to look at (this was written at the end of 2008 when the global economic crisis was, relatively speaking, in its infancy) given the last eighteen months or so. I do think we as a profession recruit too easily. I mean we recruit graduates with the requisite qualifications too easily, whereas a better probationary scheme than the hoops people have to jump through at present would be far more desireable. I also think financial advisors are good at what they are employed to do in their world (it’s their being successful that partly led to the economic crisis) – aside from those expected to have a macro and long term view. Last night, while I was working on my school’s Self Evaluation Form, my partner was watching an old episode of The West Wing; somewhere towards the end of the first series, where Sam Seaborn said, in a rant to a woman he was trying to date, that teachers should be paid highly, treasured, valued and so on. I think we need to make teaching attractive again, financially, by status, and so on – but this also means that it has to not just accept anyone. We need to weed people out when they can’t make it very fast!

I also don’t think that the article says that teachers are born and not made. I think there is a balance here – there are teachers (or more usually trainee teachers) who are new in their careers who have no chance of being good teachers, and we do want rid of them. There are, of course, a great many who become good via a combination of experience and training. And there are those who seem to be ‘good’ by whatever measure very very early in their careers (usually not in the first two years, which is why “Teach First”* is such a stupid idea). But I do think poor teachers can be identified early.

What the article fails to point out is that they are usually identified by those they teach, and their lives, at least in the schools I have taught in, are horrific. They leave, and often leave early. This is a slightly flippant point, but if you’re not a good teacher, it’s often the clients that let you know and the clients that do something about it.

I wouldn’t mind us throwing open the gates to the teaching profession, but to become more selective of teachers once they have started teaching, which is what I think Gladwell is also suggesting.

I wrote this while reading it, so I might change my view on the start of what I wrote by now, but I’ve got to get on with some work. Hence it might seem a little muddled.

Last, if you said to me “what does it make to be a good teacher?” the answer is that I don’t know. But if I had to pinpoint one thing that all good teachers have, it’s a work ethic. I do not believe you can be a good teacher unless you work hard. There is no guarantee that hard work will make someone be a good teacher, but there is a guarantee that without it, they won’t be”

* I’ve worked with some very good, hard working teachers from Teach First. This is more an expression of disappointment that most of them don’t stay in teaching, when I know they are potentially going to be outstanding teachers with a few more years experience.

This won’t be a very controversial post. I haven’t met a teacher who is uncritically supportive of OFSTED in its current form. But then, in my career, I’ve never met a teacher who is uncritically supportive of OFSTED in any form since its inception. I remember everyone would blame Chris Woodhead, and I think now people just can’t understand how the school is judged and it’s just unfair.

Perhaps this is because in my career I’ve worked in schools that have served what are sometimes termed “challenging circumstances”, and it seems that the accountability framework is not “fair” to those schools. And that is the case at the moment. There appears to be an unrelenting focus on national standards, and things like Contextual Value Added are no longer given any importance, or certainly not any significant importance. So some of my colleagues are quick to point out that such schools are disadvantaged by reference to national standards.

I should point out, at this stage, that most of my colleagues, despite the impression of some of the unions, are not opposed to a framework of accountability, nor “tough questions”, but they are opposed to a regime that seems to change its mind about priorities often, and works with a significant fear factor attached.

I know that some of my colleagues, probably while I type, are engaged in activities to satisfy OFSTED (we are due an inspection any minute) rather than what they think is best for the students. I can’t ignore OFSTED, but the challenge for leadership at my school is how to marry to will to satisfy OFSTED combined with what we genuinely feel is best for the students we serve. And there is no question that this is a fine balancing act. I want to monitor and hold accountable every adult in my school, but sometimes I have to hold back, because I (and we as a leadership team) know where the issues are, where the successes are, and where we need to focus on, and yet we feel some pressure to monitor more.

It is important for us to remember that monitoring colleagues performance more doesn’t mean an improvement in performance. In fact, it can mean the opposite, and so we need to address the issues, repeat and spread the good practice, and ensure all our students are provided with the best we can deliver. It’s a bit of a “ditto” with the tracking of student progress (something very in vogue now because of the focus on standards that OFSTED brings with them); there’s no point if you don’t intervene with the information.

So this has become a bit vague and waffly, but I think what I’m saying is that we need to review our accountability regime very closely. I think I welcome the move (that I think is going to happen – everything is pointing that way) that the School Improvement Partner takes on a significant part of the role of OFSTED inspections, and I think that while school leaders face the challenge of marrying accountability with development of outstanding 21st century practice, risk taking, developing a curriculum we can be proud of in this technological and uncertain world, in short what is best for our students… while school leaders need to marry accountability for public money with what is best for our students, surely the country’s leaders could similarly marry the need for accountability for public money that is spent on inspecting (rather than intervening) with what is best for the country’s students, and have that as their priority.

For now, I’m going to make sure our paperwork (the school’s self evaluation form: over 60 pages), is up to date, and my colleagues will spend a number of hours jumping through hoops, but I’ll try to ensure they are jumping through hoops that also reflect our students’ needs.

LECT Study Trip to Australia, August 2009

Introduction/ Aims:

I have seen a large number of Australian teachers teach in the UK in several schools I have worked in. A generalised impression would be that colleagues who have trained in Australia seem to be more naturally able to plan lessons taking into account individual students learning styles. Anecdotally, being a part of colleagues planning together at Rush Croft, I have seen colleagues trained in Australia talk about the individuals in their class and the reason for certain activities.

So my interest has been piqued about how learning styles are integrated into teacher training and professional development in Australia.

Though Barbara Prashnig lectures in New Zealand, the proximity (at least in my head) of these two countries, coupled with the truism that they share a first language led me to believe that Learning Styles (Prashnig’s forte) are a focus in schools in Australia and Brisbane, and getting underneath this was a real aim.

I therefore wanted to try to uncover how leadership in schools in Brisbane encourages and embeds innovative teaching for all learners.

In addition, in the context of recent apologies to aboriginal natives in Australia from the Australian Prime Minister, I wanted to look at how this is played out on the ground, and its resonance with our own recent developments around Community Cohesion. Waltham Forest schools have embraced Community Cohesion as a concept, but talking to colleagues would suggest that this is played out in different schools in different ways. I think this is a strength, but wanted to uncover how similar initiatives are evolving under a different political, social and (to some extent) economic situation and establish what we can learn in Waltham Forest.

Finally, in my career I have found that the highest quality of professional development I have experienced has been when I have had the opportunity to have extensive conversations about pedagogy, leadership and the fabric of schooling with fellow professionals, and though we were flying to the other side of the world, I was anticipating a high degree of stimulating collaborative professional conversations and practice. In all of the above, my focus was on leadership and the impact or potential impact of leadership.

The Trip:

I will not try to outline all of the activities, but the ones that had most bearing on my practice back at home. This section will act as a part-commentary on those activities.

Upon being greeted by our hosts (the Queeensland Independent Education Union) in Brisbane, it was clear that the itinerary for the week was predominantly religious schools. In fact, seven out of the eight schools we were to visit were religious schools where a significant section of the school population (or in some cases, virtually all of the school population) were paying school fees (and in some cases very hefty school fees. Like many of my colleagues, I have only worked in state schools in the UK and the notion of “free education” is one that is established in my psyche – I cannot imagine working in a school that charges fees; I cannot imagine working in an Independent School, let alone an overtly religious one!

My first impression, therefore, was that there was unlikely to be very much that I felt I could learn from these schools. In fact, I felt very disappointed even prior to the first school visit, as my perception (as an outsider in every sense) of both religious schools and independent schools is that they are a world apart (let alone half a world away) from the experience of the students in the school I teach in.

The first school we visited, St Paul’s School in Woodridge, is a Primary school in a less affluent area of Queensland. A large proportion (though not a majority) of students are on subsidised or free places. I remember being inspired by the head teacher, who was intensely proud of both her school, and of her students. The identity project that she showed us; students taking part in a photography project related to themselves in their surroundings, was of the highest quality, and represented for me a very significant development of an understanding of the self and others.

St Paul’s is a Catholic school, and we could see overt religious symbols and instruction to pray in every classroom and at regular intervals. However it was not this that dominated the discussion. The discussion at St Paul’s was dominated by how to get the community involved in the school, and furthermore the schools efforts over the past few years, and ongoing efforts and plans, to place itself at the centre of its community in Woodridge. This was a value communicated by every member of staff we spoke to, backed (albeit modestly) financially and was integral to the schools planning processes. The head teacher could speak ably and with passion about how this value, or community, family (in a broad sense) and catholic values had turned the school into one that was achieving.

Following this visit, I was less reluctant to visit schools that were overt religious schools as I felt I had experienced a school that was ‘working’, and I could see how it reinforced our own priorities around developing ourselves at Rush Croft as a school integral to the local community.

Our discussion that evening were dominated by our collective and personal changing perception of religious schools per se. Some members of the group were not as reluctant as I was to visit denominational schools, but it is fair to say that we were not as closed towards those schools as we had been.

The following day the visit to St ThomasMore College in Sunnybank was as inspiring as the visit to St Paul’s. In many ways, STMC felt to me like the secondary equivalent of St Paul’s. The highlight of this school was the students. This seems like a drab statement that actually says nothing, but the students were as passionate and articulate as the head teacher. They believed in their school, had a genuine say in how it was, and could talk at length about the improvements. It is fair to say that all the schools we visited had a great deal more space than our schools in Waltham Forest, but it is also fair to say that this should not be used as an excuse not to be inspired by what we saw in Queensland. STMC takes student voice seriously, not because they have to (and in many ways, I have seen and even been a part of taking student voice seriously “because we’re ticking a box”) but because it is a genuine lever for school improvement.

The biggest comparison between the two schools was the presence, in everything that was said, of the school’s values. The students spoke of catholic values and of how they dictated the school’s priorities, and it was inspiring to see that these values were shared by students and staff.

I have no doubt that the “best” (for want of a better word) students were picked, but even that notwithstanding, I found the students engaging young people who were clearly prepared to leave their mark on the outside world, and that’s what I’m in education for. This introduced another theme of the week, which was that in Queensland there didn’t seem to be anything like the same level of pressure regarding exam results and testing. Indeed, there are no mandatory tests at all in Queensland (even at school leaving age) and though it may be changing (and to be fair, the colleagues we met across the state were split as to whether it was a good idea), there was no artificial standardisation across states, nor is there a national curriculum (something that is definitely changing, and something that is a shame, in my opinion).

In the afternoon of Tuesday 4^th August, we visited Lourdes Hill College in Hawthorne, a girls secondary school in an affluent area with perhaps the best views of any school in the world. Situated on the Brisbane river, this boasted some of the best facilities (and examination results) of any school in Queensland (and a price to match) including the Sailing lessons on the actual river. The recent building works were unbelievable, the plans amazing, and the whole experience a little surreal. Though I was amazed by the school, and once again the passion of the staff and the level of articulation of the students there, I found it hard to take anything different away from the school. This is not to do it a disservice though, because what I did take away was the real focus on values. I also noticed that it was the third school that mentioned the apology to the Aboriginal people, though despite my original aims I didn’t talk at length about the impact of this nor enquire what the school was actually doing at length. It was becoming clear, though, that there were several layers to the values that we were seeing. The element of Teamwork, that Lourdes Hill took very seriously, wasn’t just present in every discussion, but was present in every classroom, and there was a big competition board for teams to compare performance each week. This was very well resourced financially and students took it seriously. But additionally, there were values of Australian schools displayed in every school. Asking about this, I established that this is compulsory, but it did strike me that it was more than a display; colleagues in the schools actually believed in these values and they did dictate practice. I wondered if it is possible to – on such a macro level – establish that kind of buy-in across another whole country (and I don’t think it’s been done with Community Cohesion – yet!), and wondered if it even had been.

Anyway, Lourdes Hill illustrated the values particular to the school, particular to the Catholic schools collectively, and particular to Queensland and Australia – three different levels. Values were becoming a big part of the trip and dominated our discussions that evening. I think it’s fair to say that the majority of colleagues from Waltham Forest didn’t share the Catholic values that were being promoted, but the idea of collective values being behind everything we do in school was a very positive one.

St Peter’s Lutheran College in Indooroopilly was the most spectacular school we saw in Queensland. We literally had to be bussed about the campus – there were three major sports facilities and it felt like a well resourced university. As one would expect, it had a price tag to match, but by now I felt that there was something we could get out of every school, and in particular something we could contribute to every school. Without wishing to be disparaging, this was the one school where I did feel that there was some contributions we could make, particularly with regard to curriculum, but it felt like we were being “sold” to. We were not able to speak to any students at all, and though the facilities were impressive, and the impact of values very evident, it was not clear how the college got around it’s sheer size. It is several schools within a school, so there is a level of personalised provision, but it felt very very, well, big.

The main impact of St Peter’s on me was to start thinking about the impact that marketing can have. Having studied Economics, I’m always aware that it appears that a system with a large degree of marketing and advertising always seems to me to be particularly inefficient. But I started to think of marketing not just as us selling ourselves, but selling our students achievements; of selling them their achievements. This was something I continued to ponder later in the visit when we went to St Paul’s school (not related to the school in Woodridge).

Our visits to primary schools Our Lady of the Rosary in Kenmore and St Edward the Confessor in Daisy Hill were stimulating, but by now much of the discussion had been shaped. The impact of “values” and shared values was becoming prevalent. We had a number of conversations about what we felt our values are. I spoke about sport, and the essential characteristics of teamwork, competition, fair play and so on, and I also spoke about fun and the primacy of learning. I genuinely can’t say that I feel those values are shared either with the entire school community or with the community outside of school. I cannot claim that at my school we have done enough work on establishing core, shared values.

At Yeronga High school, the only state school we visited, we saw what I would consider a far more comprehensive intake than previously. The Deputy Head that showed us round spoke about the integration of students of Vietnamese, African and Australian descent (and other ethnicities) and the work they had done for this. I did, however, find it very difficult to get around the feeling that there were excessively low aspirations at the school. I am not a fan of this phrase – it’s associated with OFSTED in the United Kingdom, and I reject most of it’s usage, but I heard “these type of students” referred to a lot. It was also noticeable that for its mixed intake, there were no multi-racial groups of friends mixing amongst the students and the answers to questions about this were very evasive. I spoke to a colleague of mine and we agreed that in the UK we would have called it complacent, but said that this perhaps reflects the difference between multiculturalism as an established political movement in the United Kingdom, and as an emerging one in Australia. I was disappointed with the visit but encouraged by our work in the United Kingdom, and particularly in Waltham Forest.

In many ways the final visit, to St Pauls, an all through 3-19 school, could have the most written about it, but I don’t feel the need to. It is a school which charges large fees, has a significant marketing budget but not a very good recent past. The new headteacher, of approximately 2 years, had been a headteacher in a different state and was, in his words “disgusted” by the money spent on management facilities and things the students would never see. But you could see his disgust more in his actions. He didn’t just speak with passion about his plans and pride about the schools achievements, but “walked the talk” when speaking to students and with the things he had done (study/ life skills sessions for groups of students were going on that very day). He said that he had interviews for a Director of Learning and Teaching (which is co-incidentally, my role in my school) and wanted to know what he should be looking for, because he recognised his limitations. He had built a Senior Leadership Team he trusted, and delegated to appropriately but with expectation, and the students told us how the vision he had was making them proud, once again, of their school. St Pauls was a real eye-opener for leadership, and the effect of a good leader having vision, being student centred, and working very very hard.

Conclusions:

I didn’t answer the questions I set out to, but I didn’t care, because the trip was a success with what I was bringing back. The conclusions are as follows:

Primary conclusions:

1. At my school, and in Waltham Forest, we need to look deeply in our communities; the communities that we serve, at our core values. All the schools in Australia had this. They knew their core values. They were printed everywhere but they lived and breathed them, and as a result, they were values that dictated everything that happens in the school.

2. We need to do the same thing – looking at other school with fresh eyes, in our own schools in Waltham Forest. There is so much to learn that I wasn’t expecting.

Secondary conclusions:

There were other noticeable things that I think we can use at Rush Croft, in Waltham Forest, or in the UK:

House system at Lourdes Hill. The houses students are in is big, brash, publicised everywhere, and really used to develop a team ethos

Name badges: All staff had professional name badges. Not lanyards, but metal name tags and this made it easy to have conversations with those colleagues. Professional conversations. I have come to the conclusion that dress is important in schools in the UK, or rather that professional dress is important for staff, but the name badges were a small thing that I think can have a big impact.

Bags outside: Bags were not a problem in classrooms as students were expected to leave them outside the door. This meant nothing valuable was ever in them, plus they didn’t get in the way of learning

Unions: The Queensland Unions and the Education authority seemed to have a far more grown up relationship than in the UK. In particular the relationship between the unions and individual schools was mutually beneficial and something I think unions here should look at.

Exams: The exams system in the UK is flawed. Queensland is going to go the same way and shouldn’t. I’m not devoting space to this here because it won’t happen, but I wanted to mention it.

Impact:

The largest impact of the journey on me personally has been in the rewriting of the Learning and Teaching policy at Rush Croft. I have established, with my colleagues, an expectation of consistency and purpose, and more importantly, am establishing that the policy should actually lead the practice, rather than be stuck in a folder somewhere.

It will come as no surprise to anyone reading this report that the work on values is planned. I don’t know how it will happen yet but we plan to revisit our core values, and to ensure that they reflect the values held by our students, our parents, our staff and our local community. We further wish to establish that this will lead everything in our Learning and Teaching policy. This has already been the subject of a number of discussions at our Senior Leadership Team and Middle Leader Forums. A logical next step will be that all our policies, procedures, and more importantly practice come from these shared values. My understanding of the need for vision to synthesise the core values of a community of thousands of people is developed keenly, most effectively by the illustration of the leadership of the Headteacher at St Paul’s, and I saw the type of headteacher I wish to become.

Finally, the unseen (and largely unwritten about here) conversations with colleagues every evening, on the travel bus, over meals, and walking to get coffee has had a far greater impact than it’s possible to measure, and it’s only when making a contribution at a meeting, talking to the young people at my school, or working with colleagues and students that I see something that has come from my trip to Queensland. I can’t measure that, because it’s often forgotten, but it has to be mentioned, and it has already led to a very significant increase in collaboration between myself and others in Waltham Forest schools, and the intention to formalise this further

So a friend who had a friend who randomly found my blog reminded me of it’s existence today.

I remember the benefit of reflecting on my professional life and I’m going to try and resurrect this blog – after more than a year! Firstly, that’s some time, and secondly, well will I have the motivation. At some point the “tipping point” mentioned in another post wasn’t a “tipping point” at all.

When I came on here I was simultaneously surprised at how the layout has changed from a year ago, and then immediately resistent to the change. I guess that’s how a lot of my colleagues feel about the changes that are imposed on them.

In truth, some of the changes, such as the new OFSTED framework (they’re going to be in lessons a lot again, Assessment for Learning is explicit on the report, lots of stuff on the progress of groups of learners, Satisfactory is not good enough [I know, I think they need a dictionary], the Headteacher to almost lead the OFSTED team, big emphasis on the leadership of Learning and Teaching [which is my job title]) are unavoidable, and I just have to spell out to colleagues what they mean. For other changes though, I seem to be constantly trying to persuade colleagues that they’re not really big changes, and that we’re just tinkering – and I think that’s because of fear of the reaction to change.

However, I also believe that change is something we shouldn’t be scared of. I can’t remember if I have repeated the story that Tony Buzan mentions in his book “embracing change”, but the upshot is pretty much that change happens, and if you don’t embrace it, then it happens to you.

In the meantime, one of the reasons that I’ve been crap with the blog is that I embraced the change that was happening in my life, moved house (twice) and have done the first year of a Masters course. And I’m really happy. But this is a professional blog. I will write a lot more about my Masters, however – another time – I better get back to work!

I wrote a while ago that I went to a happiness conference in Belfast and Dr Carol Craig of the Centre for Confidence and Well-Being spoke about the dangers of the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) programme.

I’ve just found a link to her paper, and though I don’t have time to read it tonight (I’m preparing for the new term and more specifically, our INSET day tomorrow) I’m sticking it on here, so that I can read and comment on it (hopefully tomorrow evening.

I’m back to blogging as the new term starts. I’m quite looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, but that might be because the summer wasn’t as great as I’d hoped it was. The new term brings me back to work full of hope (results were identical to last year, which is good as they were the best ever for our school) and the football season has started!

Cheers!

Oh, the paper

Most people working in education will recognise that ‘Time’ is a common cry from teachers, support assistants, students and all who work in schools. I was having a conversation with a colleague today about encouraging staff and students to develop relationships (via activities) and the only real problem is that, as she said “we need to create time”.

It’s impossible, of course, to create time, so what we’re really saying is ‘prioritise’.

At our school in previous years we’ve had a challenge day towards the end of the year. This is where students compete against each other in a host of challenges which test different learning styles. Part of the purpose is relationship building, part is about developing awareness of learning styles in staff and students, and part is about encouraging colleagues to take a risk and do something a bit different – so that they might use that in their lessons. And of course it’s partly about having fun. The challenge day model is a bit tired in our school now, and so we need to do something different. I still absolutely believe that the development of positive relationships is important – it’s no accident that teachers who go to see the netball team play are the same ones that have few behaviour problems. So we were talking about the potential of having a day a week where our timetable is different…. the conversation arose out of next year’s timetable, where she is going to have a difficult Year 9 group in History on a Friday.

So on a normal day we have 8.45-9.05 registration
9.05-10.05 Period 1
10.05-11.05 Period 2
11.05-11.25 Break
11.25-12.25 Period 3
12.25-1.25 Period 4
1.25-2.15 Lunch
2.15-3.20 Period 5

We could do the following
8.45 Period 1
9.45 Period 2
10.45 Break
11.00 Period 3
12.00 Period 4
1.00 Lunch
1.30 Period 5
2.30-3.30 Relationship building

Of course, this would require some goodwill on the part of colleagues – it’s extra and it’s been taken off the lunchtime and breaktime.
An alternative is to remove period 5 and have 2 hours of relationship building in the afternoon. Of course this could mean that whatever is timetabled period 5 will suffer, but in reality you could miss period 5 one week, period 4 the week after (so the four periods are subject 1, subject 2, subject 3, subject 5), period 3 the week after and so on.
Or remove period 5 and do it on a Friday one week, a Thursday another week, a Wednesday another week, and so on.

By ‘relationship building’ this could mean just playing table tennis with a group of students. Our playground has been redeveloped with multi-sports areas and table tennis tables and as a result, several staff have been out at lunchtimes and the atmosphere is really improved as a result. I also have no doubt that those colleagues will benefit in their classrooms from this time they’ve given up to spend with students involved in play and leisure.

So the afternoon activities or ‘relationship building’ could replace challenge day. I might test the waters with a few staff to see whether I’m likely to get a frosty reception if I propose it!

The national curriculum is exciting and challenging. We’re desperate to develop it for OUR learners. I wrote this in an email to colleagues (obviously edited here to get rid of personal names and so on…):

I went to a really good session with our Awareness Learning Area (LA) yesterday delivered by the Learning Leader (LL) of Awareness (for external readers, Awareness is PSHE, History, Geography, Learning to Learn, Health and Social Care, RS, Citizenship). Here’s what I took from it that you might want to use with your teams:

When you read through the curriculum documentation it starts with concepts. When you’re reading about concepts it’s really easy to start thinking about content and get side-tracked. Of course, we want to move away from a content driven curriculum and towards skills and competencies. So instead of looking at concepts first, the LL had us look at processes. I spent some time, for example looking at the second process in the Geography National Curriculum – “select and use fieldwork tools and techniques appropriately, safely and efficiently”.

The question then asked was “what implications does this have for us?” and the first year Geography teacher (the Head of Geography wasn’t present) and I started talking about the local dog-track, about a local roundabout, about a local park and even about our BSF program. We talked about the use of GIS (I don’t understand this term either, but it’s Google Earth and stuff like that), using the websites that map that we’re on a flood plain (that I know the head teacher has talked about in the context of BSF) digital cameras, video cameras and so on (I’m not a Geography specialist, so I started waffling on about those tripod things that people stand in fields and use to do something – I don’t even know what it is) and these would need to be in our Schemes of Learning.

We then looked at the concepts that map onto this process – and lots of the concepts in Geography do, but the major ones were Place, Space and Scale. This started a conversation with the Geography teacher regarding what the Scheme of Learning might look like to deliver the opportunities for students to actually gain experience of using the skill/ process “select and use fieldwork tools…” and suddenly we started to get a picture of what we would like to put in our Geography Year 7 Scheme of Learning (or when we look at the Scheme of Learning, where we already deliver this and tweaking it).

So after mapping the concepts onto the processes, the next stage would be to select the right content to deliver these processes and concepts (the Geography teacher and I didn’t get to this stage), and then we can look at the exciting stuff around Curriculum Opportunities (which is the fourth section in the documentation). It means the colleagues in the Awareness LA are not only using the National Curriculum stuff now, but are getting some concrete ’stuff’ done and moving past the ‘thinking about it’ stage that we’ve all been going through.

The comments and discussion on the blog (though very minimal) make it utterly engaging for me to write. I suppose it legitimises what I write in a way.

When artists started contributing, and then a colleague, it was weird to see that they could. Then I remember when the head at my school first contributed. I was delighted. Then Dr Jonathan Barnes – who I’d heard of – wrote a couple of comments. That seemed serious.

I had someone from education in the Cayman Islands stumble across the blog and commented, and so did Doug Belshaw, whose blog is one of the finest educational blogs on the web (though he commented mainly because I linked to him).

Now there’s a small discussion developing around BSF from a previous post, and it feels like, well, I posted something worthwhile to other people! That’s cool!

This was very self-indulgent. My apologies.

I wrote a while ago about “The Tipping Point” in a blog post. The point at which a project, or idea, gains a life of it’s own and doesn’t need a lot of effort from the instigator to continue gaining momentum.

The outcome of the project that started this blog was “Every Third Tuesday” – the possibility that invited colleagues will, on occasion that they are asked to, go to a space off-site to reflect together on issues that are current. These may have been raised from a big poster in the staff room, or something else.

We agreed a date for our reflective sessions. In fact, the reason the name “Every Third Tuesday” was used was because we chose a date and then named the sessions after the date (which was the third Tuesday in the month).

I sat back because I was genuinely curious as to whether any tipping point has been reached.

It hasn’t.

I think all the participants are enthusiastic if it’s arranged for them, but none have asked me, or anyone else (to my knowledge) if they’re going to take place. That means that they’re all busy enough doing things they see as more valuable than chasing up the Every Third Tuesday sessions. It also means that I’m going to have to motivate the participants to participate – that shouldn’t be too hard if we make it a very exciting experience. I guess I’m a little demotivated by the fact that three of the participants of the project are leaving (or taking a break from) our school this academic year (none for reasons to do with the project, and not for reasons to do with the school either), but that necessitates me being more of a leader than I am being.

So I will be. Every Third Tuesday will happen in July. I’ll get onto it (with the help of at least one colleague).

I’m also hoping that it will be re-energised by our application to become a Creative Partnerships Change School – though obviously that’s a competitive bidding process.

So I’m not going on the SEAL training tomorrow as I’ve had plenty of time out of school recently. One such time was today when I was lucky enough to attend a seminar relating to Building Schools for the Future.

It was called “How learning environments can enhance teacher well-being” and was organised by the British Council for School Environments, who I’d never heard of before, and the Teacher Support Network.

There were lots of people there high up in the trade unions, architects, representatives from the DCSF, some people from my local authority, a principle from Australia, and people responsible for Health and Safety in Local Government and various consultants. As far as I could tell, there were just two teachers, both of us in leadership positions at our school.

Basically, I think they’re trying to learn the lessons of the first wave of BSF (which is massive capital expenditure on buildings) where schools have been unhappy with their product. It seemed to be moving on from the “Don’t build a new old school!” type argument (this is that you should do something suitable for the 21st century with your building, rather than just build a new school that is the same as the old one).

The main message though, was that the users of the buildings should be consulted at every opportunity. This is, of course, very important. I think we’ve done some of that, with our consulting students on “happy” and “not happy” places in our present school, and students have had a very real say in the transformation of our playground (I will write more about this another time). Staff have been consulted, probably not as widely as we would like. I blame this almost entirely on the deadlines that our Head is subjected to in terms of submitting various documents, bids, and visions. I really hope that we can consult and debate more. I think everyone accepts that a successful vision is not ‘handed down’.

I have the utmost respect for our Headteacher, and I think she’s incredibly capable. I wonder, though, if there was some lack of foresight in putting Education professionals in charge of a multi-million pound building program. That appeared to be what some people were saying today.

Some of the organisations there had done a survey. Some of the survey results were unsuprising (classrooms too small, staff rooms look like 1970s Old People’s homes, etc etc) but one of the unions representatives there was saying it’s outrageous that teachers don’t have their own classroom. I disagree with that fundamentally, because I think we need a wide variety of learning spaces to cater for the variety of teaching and learning styles that we have in our schools – and I don’t think any learning space should be ‘owned’ by anyone any more. One of our best learning spaces is our outside classroom – and that’s definitely shared.

The last thing on consultation, and I made this point today. If you ask teachers what they want in their school, they’ll say clean toilets, decent staff room, place for PPA to be productive, and modern technology in a well-resourced classroom. That’s not transformational for the 21st Century (in my opinion), but what do you expect when that’s what teachers experience and they are a product of their environment. They want the ‘bad’ things to be fixed. I think that in any consultation we have to ensure that we allow teachers to think far far wider than that – and the impression I got today is that in the (admittedly limited compared to what we would like) consultations we’ve done my school has been far better at providing that permission than the majority of schools and authorities have been so far.

I also found out that architects get blamed for lots of things, and on a recent conference I took away that we should “presume honest intentions” when you get annoyed or angry with people. The architects clearly don’t want to create new old schools or poorly heated buildings. So we need to work with them.

Lastly, I learned that making schools modern buildings with materials that, for example, deal with heat effectively, requires far more expensive materials (that meet different standards to the minimum) and with it being public money that is spent, we need to use those buildings for more than educating students for 195 days a year for about 8 hours a day. Our school is again much better than that, as I speak (or write) there are adult education classes and community sports events going on at my school (it’s nearly 9pm) and that’s another place where we’re ahead of the game. But I am starting to see where all the jargon that refers to “Extended Schools” has come from.

Oh, and as a PS, PFI is a nightmare, but being an old lefty, I think I knew that!