Dean is my artist partner in the reflective practice project. He is also Kate’s partner. I’ve found reflecting on here very useful and Dean has fed into that a lot, but Kate prefers to talk and do that face-to-face, so I tried (not very successfully) to let Kate have most of Dean’s time in his visit today.
It’s a bit strange having a non-teacher in your lesson. I wasn’t nervous at all because Dean is very approachable and I didn’t feel like I was being judged at all. When Robert and I were putting the bid together for this project, I remember us saying that we wanted any observations of lessons to be something else – so that they weren’t stressful I think we said we’d call them “listenings” or something – and though this never really stuck, I didn’t feel like I was being observed today.
Dean arrived at our school this morning at about 8.45. He didn’t want a cup of tea or anything, and I took him to Kate’s registration. He spent the morning in her registration and then in her lesson, before coming to my Year 11 lesson during period 2.
I can honestly say this is possibly the first time I’ve had someone in my lesson where I have done nothing different. I mean, I think I did introduce Dean and told the students (because I don’t see the point in making anything up) that Dean was helping me to be more creative in my teaching (chorus from the students: “he needs help!”) but didn’t structure my lesson differently or tone down on my jokes or worry at all.
It was a coursework lesson. I find coursework lessons boring. So do the students, as one student told Dean – she knew what to do (in fact, this student has made a lot of progress over the last year or so) but said “It’s so boring!”. I have absolutely no idea how to make it more interesting. Compiling statistics is a laborious process and though it suits some people (and some students) I’ve no idea on how to make it more interesting or exciting. I also have no real will to, for as I’ve said before, there will be no coursework at all next year or beyond, so I don’t need to get the students to jump through these hoops any more.
I was aware that Dean might be bored (I get bored observing a lot of lessons), especially as he was observing two more of Kate’s lessons (I think Kate is an inspirational teacher, and it’s nothing to do with her lessons; just that he was observing 4 lessons in one day!). One of the more fascinating anecdotes I heard from them both when we were talking later was how in a Drama lesson they just acted as though he wasn’t there, to the extent that he was in the middle of them rehearsing and they just worked round him like he was a post or something. However, if he was bored, he was too polite to say so.
I was pleased I had the opportunity to show off my forum – where students can get help from me at any point of any day (and access my lessons on powerpoint, and get revision notes and so on) because I’ve spent a long time on that and I think some of the students really value it! Some of them are going to do Philosophy A-level and said today that they’d like to communicate with me about their Philosophy when they’ve left my school. I’d love that, as I don’t feel like I use my degree at all!
Anyway, I enjoy the class and though one (usually quite difficult) student left for a few minutes without me even noticing (he went to get graph paper, which is an improvement on his usual intentions!) it felt like a good lesson – even if it was boring and lacked creativity.
One thing that was interesting is that there was a lot of collaborative learning going on, but this led to an amount of noise. At one point about 8 students were talking and I was getting agitated. Dean asked me if I considered it noisy and I said “very”. He reacted that he thought it was quite subdued and quiet. Is this because I always feel comfortable with a quiet classroom? Does this go back to the start of my career when I was scared of bad behaviour and hence comfortable with no noise?
During the last period of the day Dean and I went for a tour of the school. I got this idea from when Robert S and V went on a tour of the school and she was simply buzzing afterwards. I think I learned a lot from this tour (I purposely sat back; didn’t challenge any students out of lessons and didn’t worry about what was happening – just watched).
We started in the foyer, which the students characterised as the happiest place in the school. You can see why really. Tables that allow them to sit and talk socially, music, food (particularly breakfast in the morning) and so on. Additionally, the quad that it looks out on is actually really nice – and has two ducks there. Dean asked if it was used and I said it wasn’t, though I don’t know why. It seems like an excellent space for Art to use, or for a mentoring session with an angry student. Our school has several open air quad type spaces that work well to get natural light into classrooms, but perhaps we could do something else.
We then walked down the corridor to the library. I talked to Dean about the Happiness activity I’d done with the students, and when we went in the library he said it felt happy, and like a primary school (and not like a library). I said that I thought the reason the students like it is because they get a really nice welcome and smile when they go in there. Something for us all to learn I think.
Just outside of the library on the concrete is a number of picnic tables and seats. There are also big sections designed for plants. I think it looks like a nice area, but it’s a bit secluded and we don’t supervise it so it’s not really popular. Dean asked why there were no plants there, and I think that’s a good question. It might be a nice project for some of our disaffected students. I wonder if we can do something like that on what is known as our “Challenge Day” (where a day is spent off-timetable doing ’something different’ – historically it’s been to do with learning styles).
We then walked through the corridors where we discussed how small they are. Dean said they feel “quiet” during lessons which I think is a good thing – even though I like the hustle and bustle of schools, I associate quiet corridors with students in lessons, and that’s a good thing.
I showed Dean the climbing wall and felt the same attitude that I felt when I saw it when I was being interviewed for the job at my school – I wanted a go. It’s really phenomenal that we have it and perhaps we don’t use it enough. I also showed Dean the newly built astroturf pitches.
We then walked across the playground to the new building. We saw some Science labs and some artwork. Then we saw some technology labs and the Maths area, followed by a trip into the Art rooms and then we saw the music rooms.
The most fascinating part of this was that Dean had an opinion on each and every room and section of the school, and his opinion almost exactly mirrored how happy the students had said they were in each of those rooms. The rooms that are cut off, or far away from the centre of the school, are unhappy, and lighting and mood make a real difference. I’ve always said that environment is important to learning, but I thought that happiness was dictated first by the quality of the teacher and that dictated the quality of learning and hence happiness. I think now I might have underestimated the extent to which the classroom plays a part, because the same rooms that Dean felt cold about were ‘unhappy’ rooms. The music area, despite the noise, Dean said “doesn’t feel like a music area”. Given our potential investment from BSF, that’s a serious consideration.
In both of our opinions, the back staircase in the new building is horrible. Dean said that he could imagine that getting a group of students and teachers to try to understand the space and the potential of the space, and then transforming it, might really help. I’ve seen something like that at Brampton Manor school in East London, so it’s possible to do. Some murals and artwork has been painted on the walls but it looks dilapidated and ignored, and looks like somewhere that trouble happens. It feels unsafe, even with no-one there. I wonder if such a project is possible?
We then saw a little foyer at the top of the front staircase in the new building. It is begging for a couple of benches as it’s somewhere students can reasonably congregate to chat (or learn, depending on whether it’s lesson time or break time) and I hope we consider things like that with our BSF bid.
One thing that I was pleased Dean noticed was that there was no graffiti – we obviously clean it off quickly so it never looks acceptable, and we do the same with litter (though our colleagues work very hard on this – we need to help students to stick more litter in the bin!)
We then went to the rest of the school and then our Learning Support Unit. It’s a bit cramped (it used to be a caretaker’s house) and I think that feels unhappy – but the LSU manager says he thinks it’s a happy space. Because we were talking about the use of space he took us to the garden and showed us his plans for the garden. This includes a variety of activities that students can get involved in, including teambuilding, problem solving and so on, by using a “hide” and a meadow and a natural pond and so on.
It was fascinating to look round the school! I’d recommend everyone takes an hour out to do it!
Following this, Dean, Kate and I met for about two and half hours to talk about our day. We spoke around a wide range of subjects to do with teaching and I can’t summarise them all, but they’ll all come out on this blog in the coming weeks and months I’m sure.
Kate said she wanted to focus on developing the skills of problem solving in her lessons. I think this idea came from one of the questions we were asked in the start of the evaluation “Are students in your school good at problem solving?” Dean and I talked about what we’d seen in the plans for the LSU relating to this. We then discussed how you could teach it – because giving someone a problem presumably tests if they’re good problem solvers, but doesn’t necessarily teach them how to become good problem solvers. We discussed “what makes a good problem solver” and I thought that the ability to look at your own learning, to learn how to learn (and associated skills like mind mapping and so on) was probably where we’re going.
I decided that this blog has really helped me to look at my own practice in terms of being a teacher and being a leader, and that the time/ space afforded me to do things like walk around the school or talk about my lessons is really important. It’s becoming obvious to me that this kind of structured talk (where you stop yourself wandering off to talk about the football or whatever too much) is something we need to try and give all colleagues the opportunity to do. How? I dunno yet.
Phew! This has taken me 45 minutes to write!
