So I was lying awake last night after watching the second and third episodes of the third series of The West Wing, and thinking about work – as I guess I do most nights.

I was thinking about what we’re going to do on the ‘Student Council annual conference’ on 21st January, when the Student Council – which I sort of imposed myself on when I joined my school 20 months or so ago – meet for their annual conference.

I really believe that the students need to have a voice in the central activity of each school – and that means learning. So I’m going to kick off our work on the changing curriculum with them. The challenge is to keep them engaged for four hours, and simultaneously ensure I give them the opportunity to ‘own’ the day.

I was awake thinking about this and I got up to jot down some notes. They’re still upstairs by the bed, and I don’t really need them. Writing them down was enough to remember the important things.

Here’s where my mind is at the moment. I’ve mixed in the management issues with the actual plans for developing learning on the day.

Jan 3rd/ 4th: book venue, lunch, ensure all Year councils (these are the representatives from each form meeting as years) know there are meetings for each of them week of 7th and that the student council will be meeting on the 21st.

Jan 7-11th: Year councils meet on their agenda. Spare places on the school council are taken by vote. School council reps receive letters informing parents regarding 21st and provisional agenda. School council told to meet 14th January to discuss how they’d like to adjust/ shape/ change the agenda.

Jan 14th: School council meet to finalise agenda for the day.

Jan 15th: Agenda published to whole school via school council notice board along with delegates.

Jan 21st: Whole day conference.

My provisional agenda will be (and part of the day is developing a student view on “What are we trying to do at school?”):

* What do we want learners to be like when they leave school.
Here students draw a stickman of the perfect learner and allocate write skills, attributes and knowledge that the perfect learner would have (skills near hands, attributes near the heart, knowledge near the head). They share their ideas and then, on other people’s stick men, attach Red, Amber or Green dots to those things, to try to explain how well they think our school does these things.

*Compare what QCA say learners should leave school with with and what we are saying
This will involve looking at the QCA PLTs framework and trying to fit the students’ versions into that framework (I’m going to need to think about this carefully, so that I’m not met with blank faces or boredom!) This may also involve the students rewriting QCA’s ideas for them!

* What makes good? I think this will involve students reflecting on the ‘green’ things in part one. What do teachers do, or do they do, that develops these things. Why? How? Where? (again I need to think about this a bit further).

I think there’s about 2.5 hours worth of ’stuff’ there, so plenty of time for their own agenda, some reflection (www/ ebi) time, and some input from Citizenship if they think they need it! The students also did a ‘happiness’ project in school a year or so ago, detailing where in the school they felt happy and/ or not – I’d love to do something to follow up on this.

In writing this I’ve realised there’s some thought to go, but I’m quite pleased with some tired musings from about 3am last night. I’m also pleased because halfway through this post the computer crashed and yet the system recovered it (I swore, a lot!)