Let's Move On From Here...

I'd be a rubbish Darth Vadar! I have had fun this half term setting up this blog. I didn't realise how much I had to say and I have gone a bit mad this week. So here's the last of the holiday outpouring! I had a conversation with a colleague a few weeks ago which set me thinking about first impressions and how much they matter. As an NQT, I can clearly remember being told - quite seriously - by several veteran teachers "Don't smile until Easter". The idea was to instil an appropriate sense of fear and trepidation in the little darlings and to promote the idea that I was a force to be reckoned with. If they heard Darth Vader's theme in their heads as I approached them on in the corridor, then I had achieved my goal. I tried hard to do as I was advised, I really did. I lasted about five minutes into my first lesson. In my first year of teaching, I was described by a child as "the smiley, curley one" and another described me as "the one...

Teaching is incredibly stressful: too much is out of our control, we have too much to do and too little time to do it in. Targets are set for children based on spurious assessment data and we have to move heaven and earth to ensure that they reach these targets. If attendance falls below 95% we must show evidence that we are intervening. Books must be marked in different colour pens, the correct stickers applied and then students must respond to our marking before we respond to their response. Learners must make progress (whatever that means) every 20 minutes. We are learning-walked, observed and scrutinised. Some teachers are asked to submit short, medium and long term planning for scrutiny. No wonder that so many of my colleagues have taken time off with stress, anxiety and depression. But this is the profession we have chosen and we have a choice - we can leave or we can deal with it. Nine months ago, I dealt with it by finding a job in alternative education. I am still working he...

I have mentioned my fondness for precepts in a previous post, and one of my favourites is, "be the adult in the room." This was said to me many years ago by a very wise colleague and it has stuck with me because it is surprising how often I come across colleagues NOT being the adult in the room. In its most extreme manifestation, I have seen teachers and TAs (not just newbies either) behaving like children in order to curry favour with them. I once heard a veteran colleague say that he liked to mess with the kids because it "kept them on their toes" if they "didn't know what he was going to do next". He would do things like throwing books out of the window. I am not kidding. He once sat in a lesson observation and kept knocking the table of a child who was trying to work. He thought this was funny. If you want to entertain children, get a big red nose, some face paint and call yourself Mr Giggles - there's good money to be made at birthday partie...

I have been thinking a lot recently about rules. Every school has them, although we call them things like "the behaviour ladder" and "classroom expectations". When I first became a teacher, I was given all sorts of advice about rules and routines - a long list of dos and don'ts for children. Don't shout out. Don't answer back. Don't turn round. Put your hand up. Underline the date and title. Keep your blazer on. Do your tie up. Don't set the girl in front of you on fire... A few years ago, I asked a very lovely form group to reduce all the "school rules" to a few guiding principles. What, I asked them, was really important for a happy classroom? This is what they came up with: Be respectful Be positive Be safe It took a while for them to distil the rules - in fact the process lasted several weeks - but in the end they got down to what's really important. Discussion revealed that my lovely mainstream Year 7 class shared a su...

As a mainstream form tutor, I used to worry a lot about what my learners brought to school with them. I used to do equipment checks on a Monday morning: pen, pencil, rubber, ruler. I was big on the alliteration and rhythm! I would worry about the kid who brought an almost empty bag and help them out so they didn't have to ask for a pen every lesson. Other kids brought bags groaning with everything they would need for the week: all their exercise books, giant Science text books, PE kit. I used to worry about their shoulders and backs being permanently deformed. I was of the opinion that what kids brought to school said a lot about them: how prepared they were to learn, how organised their home-life was and how committed they were to their learning. I still think that what learners bring to school is important, and I still think that it says a lot about them and their readiness to learn, but what the children I work with now bring to school is baggage of a different kind.  Ha...

If teachers could have a pound for every time we hear, "Miss! I'm stuck on..." we could all retire to the Bahamas. Being stuck is uncomfortable - just ask Pooh - it's frustrating and if you stay stuck too long you can start to feel like a failure. So surely as teachers we should make sure our learners don't get stuck, shouldn't we? And if they DO get stuck shouldn't we pull them out as quickly as possible? I'm going to make the case for being stuck being a good thing. Look at it this way, if your learners never get stuck, how do they learn to get unstuck? How do they develop the resilience to stick at something until they get it? Short answer - they don't. The kids I work with get stuck A LOT. They have missed a lot of school for one reason or another and so have huge gaps in their knowledge and skills. They will hit a point every day where they don't know, don't understand or aren't able to do something. They come to us ashamed, ...

These are five words that I use every single day with the children I work with. I am an English teacher in the Midlands of the UK. I have worked in a variety of environments in my 20 year career: I have taught everything from exceptionally gifted and talented individuals who have gone on to glittering careers to the most vulnerable children for whom just getting to school today was a push. I currently work in complimentary education - also known as an alternative provision - with children who are not cut out for mainstream school - or if you prefer - I work with children who have been failed by the system.   The one thing that all the children I have taught have in common is that they get stuck. We all get stuck - that's life. We get stuck in out relationships with others, we get stuck with a problem at work, we get stuck in traffic jams...  As one eleven year old philosopher pointed out one day, "Life is sticky isn't it Miss."  I probably said somethi...