Thursday, May 31, 2018

Best laid plans

You know those days when you've had a great idea and in your head it's going to be brilliant.
The children are going to love it. 
You're going to love it. 
Learning can't help but happen, be it incidental, accidental or wholly intentional - and, in your head, trumpets trumpet, klaxons klax and the whole orchestra soars upon a crescendo of awe ...

... and then you do it.

The trumpets don't turn up. The klaxons are on strike and the whole orchestra has been replaced by a solitary party whistle with a hole in the end.

Yep. Had one of those this afternoon.

We've been looking at maps. Talking about cities. We went outside. Opened the Loose Parts container and constructed a city using what was there.

In my head this was 
a feast of tower blocks,
winding rivers of blue plastic. 
Tarpaulin parks,
and Guggenheim-esque edifices.

One group built a miniature skyscraper (so far so good). Another built Arthur's Seat. Another built a canoe and all climbed in ... some others built a bench and sat on it.

STOP! STOP! STOP!

Did I not mention "SCALE" ... Ah. OK. So. "Imagine you are giants and humans are the size of your thumbs ..."

All it took was that and they were off. We had cranes and canals, footbridges and fountains. We even had a Statue of Liberty.

They stood back. Admired their town planning skills and then I got them to draw a map of it. 26 bird’s eye views drawn to some sort of scale.

Sound the trumpets. Klax the klaxons. Bring out the kettle drums.

We got there. We all learnt something.

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Let's flip this thing.



The Scottish Government takes great pride in the fact that A Curriculum for Excellence is one of very few curricula in which both Outdoor Learning and Learning for Sustainability are carved into the very bedrock of everything that it stands for.
Outdoor Learning will almost certainly be discussed (again) later on so Learning for Sustainability is to be tonight's focus.
Learning for Sustainability. It's a huge, nebulous mass of stuff that, much like a Magic Eye image, can only really be seen if your eyes go a bit fuzzy. There's so much in thrall to its gravitational pull that its hard to get your head around.
The phrase for starters is brilliantly* nondescript. It alludes to something but can anyone say exactly what? It seems to encompass everything but consist of nothing. To my mind it has all the hallmarks of an excellent basis for any kind of curriculum planning.
Take, for example, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Image result for sdg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Sustainable_Development_Goals.jpg

The children in our classes need to know about these. As someone said in a room I was in somewhere recently, "there will be 1.8bn young people globally by 2030, whose fires have already been lit regarding the SDGs; we need to feed that fire."
Why are they (the SDGs) not at the heart of our planning? A sustainability-based curriculum that would be able to incorporate all other aspects of the curriculum. Maths, literacy, science, health and well-being, art, social studies and a whole heap more.
Lots of us are doing lots of things to do with lots of them anyway but we get blinded by the need to focus on numeracy, literacy and health and well-being.
Let's flip this thing. Flip it and start with these and see what we can do with them?
Just a thought.


*read 'frustratingly'

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

The Definite Article

A Curriculum for Excellence.
What can I say?
I like it.
There. I've said it.

In the OECD report of 2015, it was advised that the Scottish Government needed to continue to be bold and to strive for the "full conclusion of a curriculum that is to be built by teachers, schools and communities."
How awesome does that sound? A curriculum built by teachers, schools and communities. Not a constant storm of excrement from On High but a curriculum tailored, by teachers, to the needs, interests, aspirations of the community it serves. What's not to like?

I first engaged with A Curriculum for Excellence in 2014, full of enthusiasm and excitement. It took about a term before I'd been told by almost everyone that, and I paraphrase, most people wanted to go back to the old 5-14 curriculum. They wanted their hands held. To be told what to teach and how to teach it.

Four years later, the naysayers are still braying for the "good old days" when teaching was a "turn to page 17" type of affair. When the diligent did and the disenchanted didn't. When children were angels to a person and a stern look and a talking to from the head teacher was all it took. When handwriting was immaculate and everyone knew their times tables to 29 by the age of 8.

The cynicism that greets the arrival of anything new is understandable. Most people don't like change. Most people like the status quo. Most people like the comfort of the unbroken. Particularly if you've only got a few more years before you can retire ... what's the point in changing?

Well, the world has changed and education needs to move on.

I like A Curriculum for Excellence. I like its promise and the trust and opportunities it affords me as a teacher. I like that it treats me as a professional with an opinion. I like its flexibility.

What I don't like is how its been constrained by well-meaning but ultimately misguided attempts to, er, guide it. What I don't like is the fact that, despite the promise it appears to show, it's being coralled into a one size fits all box.

Let's embrace THE Curriculum for Excellence. Let's revolt and bring it back under the control of those who are at the coal face.

Monday, May 28, 2018

Once more unto the breech ...

Everything below this post was before.

Everything after this post is after.

I am the same me.

These opinions are mine.

Feel free to join in the discussion with my inner monologue.