More of a wisp of smoke

My experience of glow today :-(

Goodbye Mr Apple

I've just finished talking to my daughter Sarah who's got only 3 more days in Hawke's Bay before they move down to Queenstown. They've had a great time so far touring and applepicking for Mr Apple and his friends, and discovering that some farmers can try to take advantage of casual workers. But it's a tougher proposition when it's a Scottish casual worker with a charming smile and a determination to get what's fairly due to her :-)
MSN + webcam is really good - she can talk to several of us at once and it's good to see her looking bright, happy and beautiful.

Communications

Communicating with some parents seems to be much harder than you’d expect. You’d think we’d all know that we are on the same side and that we all have the child’s best interests at heart. You’d think that last would be a given. But no.

Our homework approach has been changed recently to reflect the principles of A Curriculum for Excellence, and to acknowledge the changing expectations of the future world our children will work, create and play in. Before we changed, we consulted parents and children, we looked at research and we developed the new approach to give parents more flexibility and opportunity to be as involved as they wished, and to give children more involvement in their own learning. More specifically, we have changed the approach to home learning in reading, spelling and maths.

We are giving the children more choice about the book they take to read at home, and giving the parents more choice about what they do with it at home eg parents now decide whether and how much their child is to write in a reading diary. The emphasis however is on reading for enjoyment, and extending the range of texts they choose.

Instead of dishing out weekly spelling words 10 at a time, we use the Highland Literacy approach and give parents all the words for the stage at the beginning of the session, with a list of websites and games they might like to play together to reinforce the words.

Instead of tedious and repetitive worksheets, we decided to collect a stock of appropriately levelled Maths games for children to play at home. (The preparation of this was expensive, time-consuming and labour intensive and could not be done by support staff as each game had to be evaluated for its suitability both in maths and in reading level for age and stage, and then bagged with labels and counters, dice, cards, etc. )

Our home links with topic work are often through personal projects on an aspect of the topic, and suggestions for local visits, websites and other links are included in PLPs.


When I was a parent of primary children, I would have been delighted with this approach, giving me much more flexibility and enjoyment in sharing learning with my children. I would have welcomed the removal of the pressure of artificial deadlines, and would have been pleased that my children’s teachers were spending more time teaching my children and less in preparation and marking of paper exercises of extremely dubious value.

But parents at my school? No. A vocal few want a return to the teacher setting the reading book and the number of pages to be read (“Because the children won’t do it unless the teacher has said they must.”) They want 10 spelling words issued on a Monday to be tested on Friday and the results posted on a noticeboard. (“So motivating”) They will accept Maths games as homework, so long as traditional worksheet homework is also supplied, set, marked and returned by the teacher. (“Lets parents know where the children are in their learning”) Oh, and a weekly report on each child’s progress…

We thought it would be good to have some information evenings to let parents know how we teach things these days. We thought we’d start with Maths – the teaching of which has probably changed most since these parents were at school themselves. We imagined an evening of 15-minute workshops on things such as place value, processes of addition, smartboard games, how we teach fractions - the things parents have told us at parents evenings that they would like to be better informed about.

So the self-selected subgroup of the parent council was asked to find out from parents what specific topics would be most helpful. Disappointingly, they seem to want “monitoring and assessment” and “how you stretch the most able and support the less able” - the sort of areas we’d expect HMIe with some professional knowledge to consider. It’s hard to see this as anything other than these parents’ distrust of our professionalism.

These are the parents who say things like “I want my daughter to know she can do anything she wants.” We nod. “If she wants to get to Cambridge she will have to be pushed.” We stop nodding. “It’s so important therefore for her to be given the structured homework that will ensure that she can achieve this.” Internally we shake our heads sadly, knowing that this 10-year old would be much better served by being taught some self-motivation, some social skills and given some opportunity to have fun – real fun, as opposed to scheduled activities.

As a result of this pressure, I have seen excellent teachers in our school questioning themselves, their effectiveness and their abilities. Some of the most committed and creative individuals I know have been needlessly pushed to the point of wondering if they are in the right job. We all know it’s good to question our practice, and are always open to the possibility of change as a result of our reflections. We constantly evaluate what we do, and have “I want to make a difference to each child” stamped to the core of what we are. With all our hearts, we would like each child to be given all of our time and focus, and for each lesson to go according to plan.

Working one to one, or in very small groups, at a time and in a place that is conducive to learning, (as parents have the opportunity to do with their children) would allow each child to make maximum progress of a sort. But the real world isn’t like that. Even if, usually, teaching time is protected, there will always be those days when we have to interrupt the teaching of our exciting and interactive lesson on remainders to explain briefly to Keira why it wasn’t nice or necessary to make Lee cry about the fact that his Dad’s now living with Danielle’s Mum and their new baby, and to ask Jordan to give Hannah’s new glitter pen back, (yes it is Hannah’s; yes, it really is; no that word isn’t acceptable in school, nor is throwing a pen at Hannah; yes you did, I saw you…) and to let the P7 eco reps talk to the class about what the theme will be at next month’s fundraiser. This is reality. It is not helpful to pretend it is otherwise, but it can make us feel guilty that we didn’t “get through” as much as we’d hoped, or don’t manage to give full attention to every one of the 30 children, every day.

And when faced with sometimes quite aggressively expressed negative comments from just a few parents, it can be hard to remember the many parents who said at parents evening how much they appreciate the skill and commitment of the teacher of their child and, since the new approach to home learning, how much more they are enjoying all aspects of their child’s learning, and how much more valued they feel as contributors to and partners in their children’s learning.

Sink or swim?

Recently things have been rather hectic. There have been times when, I must admit, I’ve considered the possibility that I might have taken on too much. Mostly other people’s responses – “I don’t know how you do it!” – “Where do you get the time?” give me a sense of achievement, and so far I haven’t had to cope with a “Why didn’t you…” or “You’ve let me down” although there have been things that just haven’t made it to my priority list.

I am a fairly organised person (though this definitely does not apply to my domestic duties) and would normally get things done in advance of their deadline. Recently however, things stacked up rather, and I have been forced to cut it fine on several projects. This “just in time” approach is the way that my Head Teacher usually chooses to work.

Previously I had observed that it put rather a strain on other people, who would often have to drop what they were doing in order to ensure that our HT’s higher priority activity happened. I sometimes thought of this as unfair and stressful for the others involved. However this last week has engendered much “team spirit” and a sense of community as we all worked hard and with common goals right up to the wire on such events as the highly successful Burns Supper, and the warm and appreciative gatherings of pupils and parents, and then later present and former staff to mark our long-serving and much-loved janitor’s retiral.

I have some fairly important and stressful events to organise in the coming weeks, some of which will require nerves of steel. Perhaps I should look on them as opportunities for “just in time” practice which will build a sense of community. Perhaps I should look to involve others more, rather than do it all myself. I don’t know what happens if you do sail too close to the wind. I suppose I might capsize, but I can swim. There are usually lifeboats around waiting for just such a call. It’s risky but I might give it a go.

Dr Kawashima

Ha! My brain is getting younger, even if my body isn't.

I've just taken part in a weekend of music making. We were studying Mahler's 1st Symphony (this isn't us!) a work of some difficulty for all, especially us first violins, and I could have done with weeks not hours to get to grips with the notes.

Our conductor was Garry Walker, a gentleman of prodigious talent, both in musical terms and people skills. Starting from a pretty low base, he persuaded a large group of people to perform at ever greater levels of musicality, insisting on listening to each other and fitting in.

The people I sat beside were a delight. Because of the business of our lives, the three of us attended all the rehearsals between us, but not all at the same time until the final one this afternoon, so I had the opportunity to benefit from the eoncouragement of 2 very good players, who both tolerated with good humour and patience, my attempts to render accurately Mahler's quavers in the upper register, helping me with fingerings and so on.

I don't know how else you could recreate the sheer joy and elation, when after the violent storm of the last movement, we turned to the final page and suddenly, at the glorious climax, the sun actually came streaming through the windows bathing everyone in a golden glow.

Precious moments.

New Year Brain Age

I'm quite pleased about this for three reasons. Obviously this score is pleasing for someone with a 52 year old brain. But also I'm ploeased because I've never used a Nintendo before. When the children had Game boys I could never get enough motivation to learn how to do any of their games.

So not only have I improved from my initial age of 72 (!!) on the first day, I have also learned some new technology with relative ease.

And the third reason? I gave the thing to Mr C for his Christmas, and couldn't get it off him to play with it myself until this week - that's what I call a successful Christmas toy :-)