Let's Move On From Here...

Should schools teach about "fake news" says the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's education director: Click for BBC News article I have no interest personally or professionally in what is in the PISA tests; they are at best an irrelavance as far as I am concerned, and at worst a dangerous distraction from the real business of education. I do however completely agree that we need to teach our young people the skills to evaluate the information that they are bombarded with. And it's not something you can necessarily put into an exam. We are bombarded with information which puports to be valid and true: the President of the United States of America tweets lies and then denies it. For Trump, and many like him, words have power but no weight - he uses words to influence the credible and then blames someone else for putting the misinformation into his hands. You have to admire the balls on the guy. History departments do a great deal toward...

Some days you just wonder if you are losing your touch as a teacher. It happens to us all - even those of us who have been teaching for 20 years and pride ourselves on our classroom management. How true it is that pride goeth before a fall! Just when you think you have got this whole teaching and learning malarky down, and have a behaviour management strategy for every occasion, along comes a child to confound you. None of your usual approaches works for more than five minutes - or at all. They laugh in the face of detentions, smirk when you tell them off and throw kindness back at you like a well aimed cow pat. You have tried limiting the options, presenting a win-win choice, set individualised work, praised all positive behaviour choices, done tactical ignoring, tried 30 second intervention at the door, phoned home, invited parents in, consulted colleagues...you name it, you've bloody tried it. Worse still, the class think they are utterly hilarious and start to join in. ...

There's an old adage that "a stitch in time saves nine". It's an old, very practical saying. Putting a stitch  or two in a small tear or hole means not having to spend ages sewing it up later on when the hole has got more serious. We apply this in schools when we intervene with younger children who have gaps in their learning. We know those gaps will almost certainly grow and get bigger if we leave them. A short, targeted intervention in year 7 or 8 saves a much bigger set of interventions in year 11. We also do it with behaviour. A thirty second intervention at the door as the child comes into the classroom can save them and you from a stressful lesson - and maybe an incident. We are not so great with mental health. We seem to think it will go away on its own. That the child will "grow out of it" when they get more "mature". Think about that one for a minute. If children grow out of mental health problems then where in the heck did all the t...