Mapping an uncertain future

At the recent lgfl conference, Stephen Heppell (@stephenheppell) used the following allegory to describe the contemporary approach to assessment and prediction: If we hold a rock in our hand whose mass we know, and throw it with a known amount of force, physics will tell us exactly where that rock will land. If we replace the rock with a bird, no amount of physics can help us predict where it will land if we throw it (assuming, of course, it's neither flightless not dead).
Are our children rocks or flightless/dead birds? Or are they unpredictably unpredictable bundles of potential? Who are we to map their futures when we have no idea what that future may be?

Who wants their future mapped on the basis of how they performed in a test aged 7/11/16?

When I'd finished my GCSEs, back in the dark ages of the 90s, I did a thing called the Morrisbey Test. It took the number of s's I could write backwards in a minute, multiplied it by the square root of my blood group and extrapolated from the outcome that I'd be an excellent army officer, architect or binman.
I considered the first, studied to become the second then, after some years spent drinking and getting fat (aka working in finance), travelled the world teaching English before becoming a primary school teacher. I'd been given a "map" but life was a far better guide than any teacher, parent or exam result.

What am I saying? Well, we should be providing the diurnal residents of our classrooms with the skills and knowledge with which to navigate the worlds they encounter,not mapping it out for them. Point them to places they might want to see, but let them get there on their own accord.

Send them on their way with a sturdy stick and a spotted handkerchief brimming with "Well-done!-You're-good-enough-for-anything."

Every day's a school day ...

One of the reasons I love this job is the sheer unpredictability of each and every day.  Sure there are moments when you feel plagued by déjà vu, when you just wish that you didn't have to reproach a child for the fourth time that lesson for doing the same thing as that for which they were reproached the three previous times.  Then again, that's one of the things about working with children.

My current class had a pretty terrible time last year.  They were mauled at the hands of innumerable supply teachers who exhibited abilities ranging from the mediocre to the abysmal, and were victims of the kind of stability that only Italian renaissance architects would have considered as suitable for building upon.  They came to me unsure of themselves, unsure of each other and undoubtedly unsure of me.

I've worked hard with them and at the end of last term they were beginning to exhibit the behaviour I'd usually witness at the start of Year 5.  Furthermore - bonus point for a hopelessly outdated and seldom used connective - one of my colleagues, who takes my class for ICT while I teach his French, recognised a significant improvement which is always reassuring.  We're getting there.

This room is littered with what Bill Rogers might refer to as black spots.  Sometimes it feels like those black spots abhor a vacuum and fill all the surrounding white space with their disruptiom; other times, when one of them fades to grey, a symphony explodes between your ears that would make G. F. Handel's famous piece sound like muzak.

You always hope for those moments and you think of every possible way of doing it and then the smallest thing makes all the difference in the world.  "Tuck yourself in.  Do up your top button and straighten your tie."  If I'd know that was all it took!

As I've already said, we're getting there!

During this on-going Microsociety project, there are moments when the children unwittingly underscore so much of what we as teachers pencil in the margins of our minds; information that, during the handover process, becomes another layer of complexity daubed on the paisley print wallpaper and lead-filled paint of a bygone school year.  Information that a chance meeting would never reveal and which the children themselves often don't know exists.

On other occasions their idiosyncrasies burst on to the scene with the guile and subtlety of an out of control Mardi Gras float.

Today, following some sage business advice on the things to consider when setting up a business, the children had to answer a series of questions, the scores of which indicated - vaguely - whether they were more suited to starting their own business or more suited to working for someone else.  Of the 30 children in my class, 27 of them fitted into the first category ... and I was not in the least bit surprised.  In the other class, it was a half and half split.

While I was not surprised by the outcome my class presented, what was interesting was that, despite knowledge of the outcomes and what they implied, there's not a single person who has decided that they want to set up on their own.  It seems that, in spite of the bluster and swagger, there are some serious insecurities.  At the moment it is all friendship groups (with one notable exception) and it's going to be very interesting to see how they actually fare when we get around to trading and sorting out the nitty gritty.

I'm hoping ... I don't know what I'm hoping.

Part of me wants this whole experience to help them develop as conscientious individuals who look out for each other and don't revert to the bickering and "she told me to do it" attitude that is still so prevalent.

Another part of me wants the whole thing to go for a ball of chalk: not because I don't think it's a worthwhile project, because I do - I think it's amazing!  But, and it is quite a powerful but, the debrief stages of this project are when the real learning is done; when ideas are shared and opinions voiced and everyone has their say.  In the words of Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame, "Failure is always an option" and I think there's more to be learnt about them and by them from their interpersonal and social failures than in their successes, particularly from the neutral perspective of Microsociety.  Things which in the playground are raw and real can be dealt with in the abstract but with reference to real life.

This class has so much to learn, and so much potential in so many ways, but their highly self-centred view of life, the universe and everything has tied their shoe laces together. 

I am reminded of the story of the visitor to heaven and hell who noticed that there were few differences between the two and that the residents were provided with very long chopsticks with which to eat.  In the former they had worked out that they could feed one another and so be nourished.  In the latter, they were so focused on themselves that they forever went hungry.

http://ifindkarma.tumblr.com/post/14953420087/kittie-heaven-is-mousie-hell

Here's to the end of hunger.

Microsociety Week 2: Currency to Current-cy

“This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”  

Adams, D.N., The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Apostle Paul recognised it and pulled no punches in one of his numerous letters to people who didn't know him (in this instance, Timothy): "the love of money is the root of all evil."  Such a sentiment may be stretching things a little, but in this possession-laden society in which we live, it certainly has some clout.

This week in Microsociety we were looking at currency and some of its key aspects.  We considered what could be used as currency, what was necessary for a currency to work and some of the features - such as divisibility and the ability to save it without it spoiling - that made some things more suitable than others.  In light of last week's /un/successful scarcity session, the children were much more alert to the aims of Microsociety and, with some curriculum tweaks, the buy-in was further enhanced.



It just so happens that we are finishing up a unit on persuasive writing.  We've written adverts and looked at the language of persuasion.  Time to move on.

It was very kind of the Secretary of State for Education to be quite so fecund in his outbursts over the Easter holiday and so it was we got on to the topic of the proposed lengthening of the school day.  We wondered what we could do to let our feeling's known.  We cogitated over the arguments for and against such a change.  We sought evidence to support our arguments.  We wrote our letters to Mr Gove outlining the way we felt (with a strong emphasis on the children writing their opinions, not mine!) ... we became active citizens.

The letters will be going in the post later this week once they've been proofread, edited and typed up nice and official, like.

"But, Mr L..., what happens if:

• Mr Gove doesn't read our letters?"
• he reads them but ignores them?"
• he reads them and answers all of our concerns?"

What indeed ...

Pascal's wager states that it's better to believe in [insert supernatural being of choice] than to not; In this instance, sadly, Mr Gove is all too real, but - and this was the key point - by taking the initiative to write, by making their views heard, by being active citizens, whatever the outcome, they have taken an element of control of their futures.

It was one of those moments that, without the backdrop of Microsociety and the little societal aspects upon which we touch each day, could so easily have been lost.  In fact, from now on, during this unit, we're not just going to write to the head teacher trying to persuade her to change something in the school, we're going to find something real and become real activists, not just playground ones.

P.S. Just as an aside, I'm not in the business of politicising the children in my care and so have taken great pains to ensure my neutrality: I don't find fence sitting particularly comfortable, particularly when oxidisation and barbs are involved as they are in this albeit metaphorical instance, but for reality's sake, I wanted them to feel free to give their opinion.  

I apologise, now, should school days be lengthened in light of the letters received from any of my children!

Suspicions Confirmed! - Microsociety Week 1

On Tuesday, as the new term rubbed the sleep from its eyes, stretched its sleep-addled limbs and picked up almost exactly where it had left off two and a bit weeks earlier, my class set out on a journey under the guidance of My Voice London; a journey into the world of Microsociety where, in the words of My Voice, "Pupils create their own society and set up the institutions required by that society - government, a civil service, an economy, businesses, and a legal system."

The first of twelve sessions introduces the children to the concept of scarcity, something which, in my class at least, is understood but the global impact of which is not really grasped.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's not grasped at all.  Through the medium of an imaginary world called Justenuf, the children consider how resources are best shared and the different ways in which this can be done.  Cue a wealth of the kind of responses that the children know that they know that the teacher wants them to say. 

All very much as expected ... to now.

What followed I personally could have scripted knowing the children as well as I do.  It was slightly depressing, in many ways, but utterly intriguing in so many others.

There is a well-established Christian Aid Trading Game that My Voice London have adapted for a younger audience; a game which I had previously played as part of my pre-departure training for a VSO placement.  The premise is simple: each group is given a varied selection of resources and set the task of producing perfectly proportioned products in order to earn points: A 10cm diameter circle scores 10 points, a 10cm square, 5.  The team with the most points, wins.  Simple.

But ...

The resources that each group starts the game with are wildly different: some groups (A + B) have all the tools needed to make the products but no raw materials, while others have the raw materials but not the tools (E + F).  Another group have a bit of everything (C + D).  The idea is that "trade" happens between those who have the raw materials and those that have the tools for manufacture.  Each group is also given a small number of counters worth a fixed amount (5 points).

As I said, the idea is that, recognising the imbalance, "trade" happens.

My current class are an intriguing group of children who had a pretty torrid time last year with no stability at all, and have only recently begun to resemble the Year 5 classes that I usually have at the start of the year.  If you had asked me to predict what would happen over the course of this game, you would have found little difference between my prediction and the outcome.

Groups A and B realised that they had no resources and, for the most part, sat at their tables saying, "We haven't got any paper.  We can't do it.  It's not fair."  One child in one of the groups suggested trading with one of the other tables but her team mates told her that then they'd lose the resources they had.  Eventually both groups arrived at the conclusion that by handing in their counters they could score points without manufacturing anything at all, and so they did!  25 points to both teams.

Groups E and F both set about the manufacturing of the products with gusto, but without any means of measuring or indeed cutting, they both resorted to tearing and folding their paper in increasingly varied and haphazard ways.  Individuals did their own thing without consulting any of their group members and eventually ran out of resources.  Both teams handed their counters in and so scored at least some points. 5 points apiece.

Groups C and D had enough resources and tools to not need to rely on anyone else.  That said, their fortunes varied massively.  Group D were unable to measure or cut accurately and so didn't manage to make any 'saleable' products.  One of their number did try to borrow some of the manufacturing tools from Group A but the latter did not consider trading.  Group D ended up handing in their counters to save their blushes. Group C, on the other hand, not only managed to manufacture products that were precise enough to score points, but also handed in their counters and, therefore, won. Group D: 10 points; Group C: 30 points)

The conclusion of any Microsociety session consists of a team-based, in role debrief and feedback, followed by a more generic debrief, out of role.  There was a great deal of discussion about the unfairness of the distribution of resources, tools and 'money' and it was during this part of the session that the concept of trading reared its ugly capitalist head!  Interestingly, the two children who had suggested trading didn't, at any point, raise this during the debrief.  In discussion with my colleague who was doing the same in the other Year 5 class, the concept of trade had come up during the Q and A session before the game began; a question that was asked by probably the most able child in the year group.  Trade had happened in their class.

I have to say, from my point of view, sitting back and watching the children play this game, observing them doing what they do, listening to the conversations they were having and their very self-centred approaches was utterly fascinating.  I wish, in some ways, I'd done it at the beginning of the year but, then again, they are a very immature group and I don't think they would have gained much from it.

It will be very interesting indeed to see how their approaches to life and one another, as well as the way they interact with the world around them changes as we proceed through the project.  Session 1 one was amazing; I can't wait to see how the rest pan out.

If ...

This first week of the Easter break has been intriguing.

The final week of term and the seemingly incessant stream of I don't know what that streams from the Union's annual conferences in its crude form and in the, ahem, refined, sensationalist manner that is typified by the popular - and, indeed, unpopular - press has irked.

The irking is largely, apparently, of my own doing.

At least it is if the press are to be believed.

Teachers have featured quite heavily in various articles launching themselves off the back of, in particular, the NUT Annual Conference, with which I have little* (* read "nothing") to do.

I was, until relatively recently, a member of said union but their rhetoric has been standing more and more at odds with my own beliefs and so it is I moved elsewhere. And yet still I am, in the popular conscience, tarred with the same brush as my more militant peers.  People - by which I mean the general public, they whose taxes pay our salaries - will see the word "teacher" and think that that means all of us.

I don't know how many delegates there are at the NUT and NASUWT conferences but whatever they're saying or voting on isn't what I think and I don't think it's what a lot of my colleagues think either. I think many of the headline's are daft - and probably apocryphal - and the hot air could be better used winning parents over to our side, as outlined by Peter Wilby here.

If parents were to march on Gove Towers demanding that he stop assessing their toddlers and children and just let them be just that then he might listen. Our duty as teachers is to educate and not just the children in our classes but their parents and carers; teach them, tell them about where our concerns really lie.

I think that the draft National Curriculum is over-stuffed with boredom.  I think that the creativity and enjoyment of learning is being squeezed out by perpetual assessment and unreasonable expectations.  I think that parents are as guilty as government in their excess of said expectations: Level 4 in English and Maths is no longer good enough; we want some to be achieving level 6.  I think there is a lot that we can learn from other countries but I think the mantra of "learn less better" should hold.

I also happen to think that we're paid a perfectly reasonable salary.  I didn't enter the profession for the pension nor for the holidays.  I didn't enter it through some misguided desire to change the world.  I became a teacher because I wanted to teach.  I've done numerous things before this and it is, without doubt, the most absorbing and engaging thing I've ever done.  Sure it has its frustrations but what doesn't.  I'm sure we'd all love to neither mark nor assess nor do the 101 other things that we do because we care.  Juggling the roles of teacher, phase leader, PE Co-ordinator, Teacher Governor, husband, colleague, friend, sibling, son, etc was never going to be easy but, guess what, I knew that, yet still I manage.

I don't think I'm alone in this and I think parents have a right to understand if and why we grumble.  Pension based grumblings hold little water in a community where work is casual and pensions generally non-existent.  Grumbling about marking, planning, assessing and the umpteen other things that we as teachers are contracted to do ... erm, it's part of what we do.  Grumbling about a curriculum that steals children's childhoods and defines a child as failing when they're 4 years old, that's worth a grumble I'd have thought.

You may well be asking yourself, "Why the peculiar title?" Well, as I was gathering my thoughts I toyed with tweaking Kipling's classic but upon reminding myself of its words I realised that I didn't need to; everything I wanted to say, he's already said.