Why aren't they getting it?

Three lessons on solving equations with a lower ability set should hopefully ensure they can get liner equations with two variables in them. Three students aren't getting it, they're not any worse than anyone else and should be solid.

It's not a new class to me but there are some characters who have come up from an even lower set and I've been spending some time with them more than I should. I also think that I've underestimated the students who have come up.

I reckon it's because I've sat the kids that I know next to each other assuming they're stronger, as I'm not sure it's the case I think I need to mix it up a bit....must check up on them though.

AFL

Well this is enjoyable, on the recommendation of a colleague at the IoE I've started something pretty good. Each student in my class has been given a red/yellow and green card and if they understand what I'm saying and what I need to do then the green card goes to the top of pile....I'm sure you can get the rest.

I'm only a day into it but one lesson in it's working pretty well-I wish I had done this before-the moment someone is brave enough to change their piece of paper I know what to do-change the explanation and task.

Bang-job done.

Laminating

I now have my own laminator at home-I'm not sure this says anything good.

Working even better

Mental, barmy, foul, assholes, unteachable....well 11b5 are starting to grow on me. OK, most of them are functionally illiterate, most of them have the handwriting of a 9 year old, all have criminal convictions, are some sort of register and broadly .

They can also work out the general rule of an arithmetic sequence of decimal numbers (DECIMAL NUMBERS FFS!!!). It wasn't even that difficult-all you really needed to do was show a little bit of enthusiasm and not get wound up when they looked around you. Throw in a few moment of active learning, throwing a ball about to make sequence for example, direct the TA to deal with some of them, humour them ('The Don' Jerome) a little but more than anything just don't get wound up. If you do they'll sense blood and pounce on you.

I just wonder about the teachers who just shout at their students all day. Firstly they must have a rubbish day, most importantly they are making the kids mental, barmy, foul, assholes and unteachable.

I can work with this.

Bottom set year 11s. The lowest of the low...there's something to work with. They're clearly really weak and clearly 50% are going to end in up prison pretty quickly but there's something there to work with.

On the other hand 7b1. Keen, eager and really full of spirit. A little too talkative but I can bang that out of them pretty quickly

9b4/8b4.....practically exactly the same class. Stamp on them a bit....be a bit more interesting than other teachers, don't be so didactic and get some good results.

10b1...I'll find out tomorrow but have a pretty active starter activity for them.

Decision maths and Economics.....can't wait to get my teeth into them.

Well that went well

That went well.....apparently maths is all about 'numbers, dividing, shapes, multiplying, compass and circles'.

At least it was at the start of the lesson. Towards the end we all agreed that maths was more about asking the right questions, problem solving and being logical. What worked well was linking the starter to the main part of the lesson. After then had their silent debate I ignored what they wrote until they had done an activity which wasn't related anything they had done (a little game about sitting and standing) and then brought them back to make a point. I will do that more.

Today's homework was to produce a list of mathematical questions about one of Dan's video:

http://vimeo.com/13968850

Let's see what they come up with.

Silent Debate

Wow, I've actually been to a good whole school inset. Here's a good idea I'll be using this term, starting tomorrow with my new year 7s.

A Silent Debate-pose a question (I'll be starting with 'What's maths and what skills do you need?') and rather have a conversation/debate where students can be passively involved in the lesson get them in groups of 3/4/5 and express their ideas on paper-giving everyone a chance to get involved.

I'll wager £20 that not one of them (top set year 7s) will mention measuring.

They'll be doing lots of that with me this year.

New

Right, new year, new head. Lots of plans. Here are the things I want to do.

• Active learning 80% of lessons
• Produce more resources myself
• Complete the NCETM regional project excellently
• Get better Decision 1 results
• Do really well on the masters
• Get the year 9s in a position so 30% get their C. (very low ability)
• High profile Maths quiz
• 4 Golds in UKMT Challenge
  
• Blog everyday
• Get really good on the IAW....REALLY good.

Oh, and must blog everyday.

So are they from Venus

Last lesson of term befroe everyone went home and so I decided to break with tradition and show them a video of something. I decided to show them the brilliant 'Wonders of the Solar System' presented by the person I could have been in another universe, Brian Cox. He's a professor of physics, used to be in a rock band, is married to a model and despite being 41 years old has wonderful hair and teeth. I hate the man.

Anyway, Brain happened to be talking about Venus when he suddenly cut away to a busy street in India.

'Sir....are those people from Venus'.

'No Michael, but could you go to the science department and ask them for a fallopian tube'.

I don't really get this

I haven't been writing much here of the past week and a half as I've been applying for jobs and also going on interviews.

I had the first interview yesterday and it went very well.

"We'd like to offer you the job...I think you'll be very happy here and I'm pleased you'll start in September"

"Well I have another school to speak to first but I'm really pleased about this"

And the after about five minutes they decided to withdraw the offer. I explained I made a commitment to both schools.

They said it showed a lack of commitment.

A lack of commitment to a school I didn't even work for? What?

The arrogance was incredible, they waved the fact they got a decent ofsted inspection in my face and expected me to change my whole professional life for them. What other industry wouldn't even give a candidate 24 hours to decide on a position.

I saw a much better place today.

Great

On a simialr note I find it incredible just how bad some school''s websites are. It's probably the first impression someone would have of a school (ofsted inspectors included) and 50% of them look like they've been made by the stupid children as part of a project.

Powercuts

A brand new building. Less than two months old. No power.

We all went home.

Easter is Upon us

So its time to start revising. It's the most important part of the year so every year 9, 10 and 11 lesson will include some past paper GCSE questions and it's the time we all need to stop doing a good job and start 'teaching the test'. No need to whine, this is the job. Getting kids to pass the exam.

This year I'm going to something a little different.

1) Let them know how to study themselves. Each class is going to get an hour of maths study skills so they can do it themselves. Detailed and more accurate guidance on the use of livemaths.co.uk which is what we use.

2) More emphasis on vocabulary-particularly in Statistics there are so many examples of students who simply don't know what the word means so they get confused. It's a real weakness of my teaching and I need to do this more regularly anyway but I'm going to get students to do their own word wall which I'll make myself refer to each lesson. If I use then so will they.

That's my focus while doing revision this year-already printed out the questions on boxplots for the year 9s.

I can feel myself getting tired already.

Formalising

We have a pretty rubbish consultant, employed by the local council rather than the school which use them, who nobody really likes. She seems to think that merely playing games and having activites which are rich is good enough in a maths department. It is not.

The trouble with maths teaching in this country is a focus on process and a narrow range of skills which is desired. So all this week so low ability year 8s did lots of rich activities on sequences and how this could be linked to graph. They drew some lines, they made their own shapes with some blocks and saw links between them and could draw some conclusions from this. Good. Could they answer some exam style questions about sequences? No.

So on Friday they had a very teacher led prescriptive lessons where they simply did the sort of questions they will see in a GCSE exam in two years time. They found the general term, they found the 50th term they had some multiple choice questions, they saw sequences that went up, they saw some that went up by non-integer values-they can now pass an exam.

And our department lives and dies by its results.

Do the rich tasks, let them play games then for then give them the boring stuff. They need it.

Making Something boring Interesting

Today an email from a colleage was roundly taken the piss out of because he sent links of these videos:

Flying Bread

22 Bricks

and suggested they could be used to teach estimating and accuracy. Other than being a little annoyed at the maths department for taking the mick out of something well meaning I was also thought that the email itself was rubbish.

'How about this for teaching accuracy and estimation'

He should know he audience, we are all incredibly busy people with better things to do than interpret what someone might do. The mian reason why maths teaching is so poor in primary schools is simply because the message isn't tailored to the audience (women of child bearing age since you ask), if the bloke who sent the clips to the teachers had also included a message bout how he had used them and if they worked well in his previous classes then people would have been a lot more receptive to him.

I just need to work out how to use them myself now...there's the germ of a good idea there.

Politics

One line manager told me to do x

Another said y

A member of SLT asked to go on z meaning I couldn't do x or y.

They had an argument.

It was decided I would do x,y and z and it was all my fault.

I agreed.

They'll all thank me on Friday for the hard work I put in.

'Sorry for being a dickhead'

Some of the best things about teaching in East End is the ways of people expressing themselves where at the time it's deeply inappropriate and needs to be checked but also has an underlying tenderness. One of the best examples of this today was as a student walked from a lesson and apologised to a teacher.

'Sorry for being a dickhead sir, I'll do better'.

Let's ignore the swearing for a second. The kids was apologising (and also acknowledging) that he had done wrong and was promising to sort himself out. The swear word was coarse and unpleasant-its also derived from a lack or articulacy and a representation of where he was from. So I was hearted by the teacher's response.

'Thankyou for apologsing...just don't be a dickhead tomorrow'.

Cheeky, funny...there's a shared understanding.

Let's put that in comparison to a meeting I was having with a parent and a head of year about a child's ongoing desire to fight with everyone in the year group.

'Well Angry needs to tell a teacher if he's being picked on'

'That's not the East End way Mr Scouse....he needs to fight back'.

Both are coarse, both are vulgar. One's cheeky and humorous, the other feeds into a culture of fecklessness and a disregard for authority.

Both need to be stamped out if the kids going to really succeed anywhere.

Yes

I'll post this in full because it's so right. From one of the best blogs about education I read.

Here is one of my private assumptions about education innovation that could use some public criticism:

If [x] is going to change teaching practice at scale, then [x] needs to be easy, fun, and free for both the teacher and her students. [x] needs to be all three of those things at the same time.
Realize that if you're a teacher and you're reading a blog post, you're automatically seeded in the top 10% of innovative educators. You'll try anything once. Let's also go with Jack Welch and assume that 10% of educators are hopelessly and/or willfully incompetent.

Convince yourself, then, that 80% of teachers exist on a sliding scale of innovation and are basically up for grabs. Those who don't want to try [x] aren't necessarily bad educators. They may have made a rational calculation that [x] isn't easy enough, fun enough, or free enough to adopt.

There are implications here, some obvious, some subtle:

"Good" doesn't matter. This is a little sad. But most of those 80% already have [y], which they consider "good enough." They won't pick up [x], however superior it is to [y], unless it is easier or more fun. This puts the burden on the reformer to make something easy, fun, and free that is also good. Good is the Trojan horse of education innovation.

You'll have to package [x] for Internet distribution. Because it's the only way to distribute at scale for (nearly) free.

Learning should always be fun, though I'm not talking about "fun" as it exists in "unlimited rides and deep-fried Oreos at Six Flags." Rather I'm talking about the profound sense of satisfaction and accomplishment inherent to good learning. Just to be clear.

Learning isn't always easy but learning tools should be. Just for instance, last week, I saw groups of students clicking the same download link over and over again in Safari not realizing that they had already downloaded the attachment. The download window was open but obscured by the browser. Anecdotes like this make me skeptical of Scott McLeod's argument that computers are to teachers what checkout registers are to grocers. Many of you have vastly overrated the ease of educational computing.

The field of easy, fun, and free innovations that are also good for students isn't exactly crowded but, for the record, I have bet on two horses. I expect these picks to strike certain readers as simultaneously naive, deranged, or self-obsessed but these innovations, more than any other I've used or observed, are ones that sell themselves:
Google Reader.
What Can You Do With This.

No further comment

AfL for parents

Well I suppose that was a cathartic experience for us all but I wonder how useful it really was. With the odd exception each student dragged their parents around to teachers who told them the same thing for five minutes. Each parent must have heard the same thing on repeat for an hour and then left.

I felt really sorry for Bonkers' mother who was simply told what a crap child she had. All she could really do in return was have a go at him. As enjoyable as it was to see him with his head bowed meekly saying 'Yes maam, yes maaam' to each criticism we had of him it seemed cruel on both parent and child.

Why not organise it in such a way that each parent sees only one or two teachers and then spend the other forty minutes on training the parent on the best way of helping their child. It's good we tell them how they behave in school but why do it for so long. Let's spend half an hour teaching them how to log on to and use webstes we recommend effectively, good simple activities they could use with their child as they live with them....adding up or estimating shopping bills...games and resources they could buy. Simple easy ways of improving their children rather than merely letting them know how much we like/dislike their children.

For a profession who talks so much about assessment and feedback we're not great at giving it to everyone.

So much better....

Today I was out of school all day long at a session aimed at Gifted and Talented children run by a few people who run this perfectably acceptable website. Some parts of the day were great, they introduced a topic on sequences and mapping in a slow methodical manner which really teased out the 'correct' answer from some students who weren't allowed to reveal the rule. They used different, more difficult numbers before encouraging students to write the rule algebraically themselves. I was really geared up for a great day.

This was followed by an hour long lecture where our year 8 children sat and listened to them.

WHAT???

Then they had 90 minutes to do an open ended investigation. Most of them did it for about 45 minutes with little help and weren't sure what to do next, as they were given no instructions they sat and talked to each other. Who could blame them.

Then an interesting part of the day, an hour long conversation about listing questions the students wanted to answer about straight line graphs. I thought this was great, really solid important pedagogy which made link between what they were doing and how 'real' mathematicians operate.

Again....another 90 minute investigation which they could get stuck into for 45 mins.

No real conclusion, no bringing together of results. I doubt there is one child who could say what they learnt today. That would have got a 3 in an ofsted observation.

I should have loved the session today, I think investigations and projects are great. I love giving students the opportunity to investigate their own questions. I also really like straight line graphs. I'm really good at them. what a wasted opportunity though. You can't just leave children with a bunch of questions and expect them to get on with it and find something very meaningful because they might only find something half meaningful. I'm sure our students have half an idea that one of the numbers has something to do with where the lines crosses one of the axis. I doubt they could be really specific about which number did what and why.

Why not formalise what was learnt, why not be a little prescriptive and tell them something after they've some so close to learn something for themselves. I think most of our children left feeling like they were bad at maths because they couldn't put the final piece of the puzzle together.

If the last piece doesn't quite fit, maybe it's better to hammer it in.

I'm so good at teaching.

I gave up a whole lesson to merely writing today. My years 8s bottomish set had just finished a statistical investigation into a football match, had made posters and written and report about the game in addition to collecting and recording the data themselves.

Well today, after a good competitive starter about writing out their 3.5 times tables ('just think of it as repeated addition was a controversial thing I told them) we had a class conversation about what went wrong, what went right and how we would change the investigation if we had to it all over again. After than they wrote up their thoughts in silence. I thought it was a great exercise for them, it was evaluative, not really teacher led, it asked for higher order thinking skills, they had to justify their decisions and explain why they thought what they did. If was meaningful self assessment. As I pointed out to them these were skills which could be used in any classroom, and more importantly, in any situation after.

It was a great way to end off a project and, amazingly, there wasn't one person who muttered 'why are we doing this...this is English'. They were making links between topics and understood why we were doing the task.

Great lesson.

This Week

In addition to normal lessons:

Monday: After school classes until, free periods and lunch taken up with a journalism project, got home planning until after dinner then played football.
Tuesday: After school meetings followed by going boxing gym (I need some tips to keep the year 9s in line)
Wednesday: Enrichment project at a local university getting home late, piano lesson (grade 3 since you ask-until 8.00)
Thursday-Astronomy club after school, meeting with a parent followed with writing year 8 reports
Friday-Decorated my classroom with new posters to make it look decent. Really battered the whiteboard speakers with a John Digweed mix. Member of SLT looked perplexed by noise.
Saturday-Got up at 7.45 to watch my year group play football, went to the Institute of Education library to swot up in preperation for my masters
Sunday-Got up at 7.30 to mark year 11 books, went boxing again. Now to plan my A-level class.

Same again next week.

Aren't I a whiny little martyr.

Must write about maths-it's why I set this blog up.

What I really love...

Bonkers is one of my favourite students in my form. Not at all clever, daft as a brush but also quite endearing and not at all malicious.

This week he strode into the classroom beaming from ear to ear opened the bin and swished the liner round with his hand.

"YESSSSS....That's brilliant'

Totally perplexed at this not untypical behaviour I asked him what he was so happy about.

'I love bin liners sir. I just love the feel of them. When I'm at home alone I get one of them out and just play with it when its empty. This one time I filled one up with vegetable oil and it went all squishy which was great. Then I got a hole it it and it whooshed out [he was miming all of this as well] all over the kitchen"

'What did your mum say"

'She beat me sir"

I can't really blame her.

'Sir.....I'm sorry but this is Bullshit'

Normally that remark would warrant a telling off or even a detention depending on the situation but the apologetic and weary way it was said elicited a laugh from me.

'What do you mean?' I asked Suspicious (who is on the borderline of failing his GCSE).

'Well I just don't see the point of this....'

One and a half lessons of changing the subject on a formula in and he didn't see the point, I sighed. 'Well if we start with this formula, it tells us the cost of hiring a car, however if we.......'

'No, I get that, it's just rubbish though, I want to pass my exam.

'erm....yes. this is going be on it'. All I'm doing is exam style questions (All I ever do with that class in that year is exam style questions-frankly it's all I'm allowed to do. Three X teaching-example, explanation, exercises. But what a good explanation and method I teach)

'But I want to pass with a C'

'erm....yes. What's wrong' as I pointed to the grade B on the board'

'But we're just reversing, that's not difficult'

'Inversing Suspicious, but no. It's not. Look....that's a grade B level work'

'Are you sure, it doesn't seem so'

Amazing and horrible. Here's a boy who's on the point of failing and is able to rearrange a=(b+c^2)/4 to make c the subject.

That's practically an A grade questions. Clearly I'm the best teacher in the whole of East London.

Here's a boy who can do an A grade question really easily and doesn't believe that it's difficult. Clearly there's something wrong with the test.

Probably (hopefully) a bit of both.

Decisions, decisions

Well it appears that choice in school is the issue of the day. I can't really remember if it was an issue when it was decided what secondary school I would be going for. My parents had rejected sending me to a public schools nor were there any Grammer schools in the local area. The local comp it was then. It was a decent one with nice facilities and decent teaching.

There's a feeling in the country, at least one you can pick up if were to happen to read The Guardian, that choice in public services is a bad thing for some reason. I think the tacit admission that public services are different for different people sits uncomfortably with some people and I'm not entirely sure why, if you have an organisation of 300 people it's unreasonable to assume it's going to have its own culture and its own identity and what's more reasonable than for a parent to what culture and identity its own child should grow up in.

I think it's reasonably healthy in all walks of life that people are able to consume differnet product s and thus make a decision about what's good or bad. I'm sure there was time when being discriminating was to show good judgement. It's good to discriminate of certain grounds-people will reject what they don't want and there will be more of what people want.

People want good schools. they want poor schools to be shut down, they want rubbish teachers to be fired and children to spend time in a productive, challenging and improving place.

The idea that some children will flourish in a poor school is probably true, some will, most won't. Children, like adults want to fit in to a culture and are easily impressed with poor behaviour and morals. If they are in a culture of poor behaviour only the very best will ignore it however most will just go with the flow begin to copy. What wrong with talking while the teacher does if everyone else does it, does it really matter if I don't do my homework, nobody will really notice what's really wrong with telling the teacher to 'fuck off'? Particularly if they know a teacher is so busy or incompetent they won't say or do anything in return.

So let schools close, it's a good thing, lest people decide what's best for thier own children, and lets not condemn parents for making these choices.

Now we wait....

Preparation done, 5 hours of constant teaching to some with an extra two hours after school for others. Most have really worked hard, others didn't, and if they won't work the day before an exam they never will, not today nor at any job in the future.

Thousands spent of resources, website passwords have been provided, twelve years of education have been building up for tomorrow, for some it will be the fourth attempt to pass this GCSE module, for others just the second.

Far too tired to write a lot today, not just for the day at work but also as I played football after-I scored the winner. Hooray for me.

Good luck boys and girls.

*I'll write about this at length tomorrow I think. I don't agree with a word.

Drop Day

Module resits are on Tuesday next week so in preparation of this we do a drop day for our studenst. Rather than follow thier normal timetable we have them all six periods. 5 hours of maths.

It's probably the worst type of teaching we could probably do. I really doubt anyone learns anything of any real benefit.

With the students I had on Friday I went through four past papers covering each question in detail and then got them do a similar question from a revision booklet we had prepared for them. It's everything I hate about teaching. Teacher led, little conversation, following and remembering rules with no real though about why they're doing what they are doing. By the end of the day everyone's tired, bored of each others' faces and really hates maths.

It's the most important day of the maths department's calender.

I lied. They do learn something, they learn how to pass a test, they can remember some rules, they can follow some process. A school, a department, a teacher, a student all lives and dies by their results and drop days, as boring as they are improves them dramatically. I am left wondering if we actually needed to do them if the kids were all taught properly in the first place from the moment they started primary school and before.

I just hope they don't forget everything within 24 hours.

Repeat in full

I've just got back from a great night about teaching....I'll make comment in the morning. Here's someone else saying something I agree with:

Who is this man saying that Angela Gordon's primary concern should have been her children? Who is saying how dreadful it is that only manslaughter was the verdict when it should have been murder? Who is saying that because Social Services never carried out an investigation, Khyra is now dead? Who is this man claiming that the Local Authority was irresponsible?

Khyra's father.

And what of HIS responsibility? What of his role as her father? She was starved for MONTHS! Where on earth was HE? He didn't even know that his ex-wife was living (as was his daughter) with a man who he knew from his mosque! Incidentally, this man used to beat poor little Khyra with a stick and pour cold water over her when she searched for food.

So where was her father when all of this was happening? Where was he when his child was literally dying?

ABROAD!!

He had to fly home when he discovered she was dead!

And he dares to take the moral high ground and criticise the perfect strangers who took more interest in his child (by being in the country and visiting the house) than he did himself?

Don't get me wrong: clearly Social Services did not fulfil their duties. Clearly there is much wrongdoing in this story from various parties. And Khyra's father does admit to having 'failed' her. But when one overlooks one's child so fundamentally as to fail to keep them alive, does this not humble one to a position where one would not dare be critical of others? Apparently not. Not in sense-of-entitlement, 21st-century Britain anyway.

The man is scum. Mr Delroy Frances, oops, I mean Mr Ishaq Abu Zaire. No doubt a bored, useless, waste-of-space 2nd generation Caribbean twit who found salvation in converting to Islam. Too bad the great prophet Mohammed was unable to teach him the importance of family, personal responsibility and love of one's children.

Delroy Frances brought a child into this world and left her to a madwoman, expecting an unknown governmental body to protect and raise his child while he went gallivanting around the world. Does the media question him? No. Does the judge ask 'But where was her father in all of this?' No. All anyone has to say is that Social Services is at fault - which they are of course - in part. But what baffles me is how people don't instinctively know that first and foremost, a child is her parents' responsibility and all of us who are charged with the upbringing of children should not shirk that responsibility, however many 'state services' claim that they can do a better job than we can, at raising them. The most important people in a child's life are, after all, her parents.

Isn't that obvious?

May the lovely little Khyra Ishaq who lived such a short and very sad life, finally rest in peace.

* Actually I rereading this. I got back really quite drunk and now think this is self evident, preaching and a bit dull. I'm new to this blogging stuff....must not post while drunk. Still need to say what happened.

My best resource

It's a bit of board outside the office. Here it is.

Each week I put a new openended question on it-usually related tangentially to topics my students would do in class and also open enough for anyone to get started. I've had simple algebra, some probability, all asked in a way which encourage conversation and logical thinking. So far I've got all the puzzles from a great game I played a few years ago called Perplex city. Currently they have to solve a Petals around the rose problem. A timid year 7 was having an argument with a year 11 about this today about how his rule was wrong because it didn't fit every example. It nearly ended in a fight. Good.

If a student gets it right they get 50p and their picture taken to be put up on the board which they take more pride in than actually winning the 50p. I've had crowds of students around the board arguing passionately about why they're right or wrong. It encourages a huge amount of talk in our corridors

The winners are from years 7-11, from lower to high ability. It's simple, it's cheap, it's fun but above more it's engaging and a real focus point of our department and office. Everyone should try something like this.

Dispatches

I suppose it would be remiss of me not to comment on Dispatches on channel four. I thought the central premise of the show was sound.

• Primary children aren't very good at maths.

• If they're not good at maths at age ten, they'll have given up by they're fifteen.

• If they've given up by 15 they'll be poor when they become adults.

• This won't help them in the workplace.

• If they have children they won't be able to help them with maths, provide them with maths skills or encourage an enthusiasm for maths.

Simple, and it weren't so important it would be trite. But what I didn't feel the show did was take that premise on step further

• Adults become teachers.

• Teachers without maths skills or maths enthusiasm can't teach maths

• Teachers like this need to sort themselves out and they need help to sort themselves out
  

But how to help teachers become good teachers. This problem strikes me as quite simple but you have to firstly judge your audience-they's no reason becoming angry or self righteous about this issue, there's no reason why Primary teachers should be good at maths. If you leave school with a B in maths, go on and read English at University you can be a great teacher with poor maths skills.

Rightly or wrongly most of our teachers are working mothers, this is a simple fact. If we need to teach these professional working mothers better maths skills we need to make it easy for them. Currently we're not. They need to take six month long modules, often weekly or in the evening or at weekends so they're not being taken advantage of. The method of teaching needs to be in hour long chunks, ideally online so these can be learned when they want to be learned with clear links being made to methods of teaching and learning. These are professional earnest people who want to get better at their jobs, but they need help doing it and it needs to given to them in a way that's easy for them to digest or they'll carry on working hard in a pointless way misrepresenting a subject the children they care for need in the future for a good life.

It's complete madness it's not being made easy for primary teachers to learn maths and leaves another generation of children being exposed to poor maths teaching and leaves another generation of poorly trained teachers dreading the mandatory 50 minutes of numeracy each day.

And who on earth can engineer enjoyment in something they dread.

Good Lesson/Bad Lesson

This year, for the first time, I'm making sure I'm doing more open ended projects with my classes, particularly in Key Stage 3. I'm trying to make sure it's all I do with one of my classes for the rest of the year-a lower ability year 8 class. They won't see a text book this year-they are all rubbish and boring. At times I slip back into giving them a series of closed questions, especially on algebra topics I need to cover but will figure out ways to link these topics to shape and number in the future.

Anyway, for the next three weeks we're doing a project on 'ProZone'. ProZone is a compnay which analyses football matches from a statistical perspective and sells their results to football clubs for an obscene amoun of money. My students know all about the company from their PE lessons and they also know that on Friday they'll be watching the second half of Spurs against Bolton (Lincoln City Vs Chesterfield was soundly rejected by them which I think it a shame) with the overall plan of designing a poster and written report about the Statistics of the game. This lesson they had to plan a data collection sheet, some of the pupils presented what they did to others in the class and others commentated on what they liked and didn't like about the work and, more importantly the problems they would face when recording their data while watching the game. Talk. Talk. Talk. Its only recently that I've been encouraging them to talk about maths identifying it as a weakness in my lessons and they're still not at all used to this way of teaching but slowy they're getting used to communicating mathematically verbally.

I loved this lesson, the students could see an outcome and purpose for what they were doing, they talked openly about each others work and were mainly respectful of each others ideas and opinions. They were able to plan and be forward thinking about their work, skills which can be transferred not only to other lessons but also to beyond the classroom. Great. I'm looking forward to their results and more importantly getting them used to talk about maths-something which is done really infrequently in maths lessons in this country, something I'm more than guilty about myself.

Then onto my intermediate year 11s. They've an exam soon. I told them about substituting values into formulas. I gave them some questions. Some of them did the work. Some of them needed help. Some of them will get the question correct in the exam next week.

They will all have forgotten the skill the week after.

The sad thing is most of the classes I teach are like this be it due to a lack of time to plan appropriately or that there's an exam coming up soon and they need to be taught what's on it. It's not good enough at all and this type of 'traditional' maths teaching is endemic in schools from primary through to A-Level by either lazy, pressured or poorly trained teachers. It's not good enough. It's a misrepresentation of what maths is all about, maths isn't a series of procedures to be remembered and regurgitated, it's a vibrant, logical and expressive way to communicate the world. We over test our students and it results in poor teaching and not enough creative problem solving, communicative tasks. It's a trite and repeated opinion however it's also very true. I don't feel that from years 9 to 11 I could do a 'Prozone' type investigation with my students despite feeling it's the best way for them to learn and be engaged with maths. I fully understand that I live and die as a teacher on my results and I also understand why. It's such a pointless, counterproductive way of doing work.

As my colleague, Irish, like to say 'Pick the Daisies'. She is so right. I had a great lesson with my year 8s and will have a good two weeks with them that's what to remember because they'll remember that lesson for a much longer time than my year 11s will remember theirs.

My Department

Columbian is a colleague of mine who teaches maths and remains one of my favourite people I work with. He's dedicated, articulate (despite being EAL), witty and works hard. He's also hugely liberal, cares about the environment, is engaged to a ceramicist, volunteers at a zoo and reads the Guardian every day-despite these aspects of his personality I still like him.

On the final day before we broke up Pretty Boy, a year 10 black boy who fancies himself far too much, came to our office to get a password for a website we encourage our students to use. As Columbian was finding it for him South African, the head of department, strode in and spoke to Pretty Boy, made a few jokes at his expense about his increasing height (he must be about 6ft 1) which he laughed at and asked him where he was from.

'[Local Estate], but my Parents are from Nigeria'

'Bandefor are you then' replied South African, this being a mildly derogatory African term for someone.

'Nahhhh, hahaha' the Pretty Boy laughed

'Here, this is the password Pretty Boy' said Columbian and started showing him how to access and use the website....before following this with 'dis is de technology for the 21st Century for de village' in a mock African accent. Everyone in the office burst into laughter, Pretty Boy included. Columbian kept interceding this accent into his explanation of the website and also while he talked about the best way to revise over the half term.

'Thanks sir' he smiled as he left the office to catch up his friends who were waiting outside.

'I bet you never thought that two years into your career you would start racially abusing the children' I said to Columbian and we laughed about the exchange.

'Never....that's what this school does to you'.

There's many ways to think about this exchange, some friends, and particularly my mother, was shocked at this, I didn't really think anything much of it until I listened to her prim and shocked opinion of it. She found it to be hugely inappropriate thought it encouraged a separation of races and reinforced negative stereotypes of Africa and Africans. And this was from someone who reads the Telegraph.

But that completely detaches the story from the situation, everything that was happening during that exchange was positive for the student, we've created a warm and welcoming department and office for students where they can come and speak to us quite openly. Part of this is appropriate banter which both students and us as teachers and adults enjoy and understand. Would it be less appropriate for a year 7 student-yes, would this sort of banter work with a girl in our school-no, I don't think it would. Would it work with all the boys in year 10, again probably not. Conversations like that need to be directed to the right child.

There are moment when you need to be able to get children to snap to attention, shut up and listen be that because you want to tell them off or because you want to get a point across to them but when it's needed you also need to have a joke with them the same as you would with a colleague or even a friend. It's about building relationships with your students which are long lasting and meaningful for them. I don't think I really understood this when I started teaching when I was deliberately aloof and refused to speak to them about any non-maths related issues. What a complete fool I was, thankfully this only lasted no more than two months and now I make a meaningful effort to speak to student about their interests and what they do.

Pretty Boy left our office not only with a password but was also told how to use a website he would be unfamiliar with, got tips on how to revise but, more importantly, was happy and confident enough to also speak to three adults for fifteen minutes and know that if he ever needed help there is a place where he could come, get the help but also enjoy himself while he was there. A student enjoying himself should not an objective for any teacher but (usually) in a school is a consequence of students being in a place where they can learn and feel safe and valued. That's what the sort of department I want to work for.

'It's what this school does to you'.

A depressing conversation

Cocky is in year 11 at the moment, naturally not particularly stupid nor that clever, usually smiling and always in trouble. In year 8 while I was an naive NQT he was pretty enthusiastic about school and a little cheeky, now I hear he's rude to teachers and difficult to teach but now lads like these are the least of my problems.

'Why aren't you in class Cocky' I asked him as I walked into our office while he was hanging about outside looking at a poster. However as I see him walking around the school during the day rather than spending any time in lessons I can guess the answer.

'Got sent out sir' before adding the inevitable 'innit'.

Rather than letting him wander about in the corridor for the next half hour I invited him into the office and let him sit down and proceeded to speak to him about my plans for the half term (going to Scandinavia since you ask) which he seemed to be quite interested as I made him a cup of tea.

Making cups of tea for students isn't typical for me by the way, simply being incredibly generous as it was the last day of term.

'How often a day do you get sent out of class Cocky?'

'Every day....I can't wait before I leave this school'

'So why do you bother turning up' I thought about saying before really asking 'So what do you want to do when you leave'.

'Nothing'

'What are you going to do for money'

'Mum'

'Happy with that'

'Yeah sounds great-I just want to do what I want to do'.

It transpires Cocky's mother was fined £250 as he regularly truanted lessons, at the moment if he isn't in school when he should be the police give him a lift in at a cost of another £250 for the mother per go. His mother doesn't work, hasn't worked for ten years, lives off the dole, has lived in the same council flat she got when she was 17 and has no plans of doing any paid work. All I found out about the father is that he's a 'D*******' who also doesn't work and has never done. Despite living in in Central east London he's never seen the Sea has boasted about taking drugs to other teachers will leave our school in fours months with no hope or desire of getting a job, driving a car, leaving the country to go on holiday, leaving his council estate, joining a band, taking up a sport or anything other than watching TV with his mother. He too plans to go on the dole. This is a life he is looking forward to and smiles with genuine enthusiasm about it.

He goes to a good school. It's miserable this should happen.

Let's talk about me. This is my third year of teaching, behaviour in my classroom is good, I have a mild interest in becoming head of department but enjoying teaching a lot. I'm not a great teacher but getting better as I think more about the needs of my students rather than how I was taught myself. I didn't become a teacher to 'help children' or even because I 'enjoy working with students' (I think they can be quite poor reasons to become a teacher). I became teacher as it was a good career and I care about the public understanding of maths and this is still my first interest however when you teach, anywhere, but particularly in East London or an inner-city environment you can't teach properly unless you understand the context.

Cocky was failed. Mainly by his pathetic excuse for his parents who never gave him the moral or social guidance children need, but also in part by the school (which mainly does an excellent job for the students). Was he taught in an engaging way? Or was he just given a list of questions to do following some guidance? Was he taught any skills which an employer would be interested in? Students need to leave school with a skill to do something...plumbing, IT work, social care...anything. How well was this done? A bright cheeky funny 11 year old turned into a rude funny 16 year old with no ambition and no chance.

This is why I've decided to write about my professional life-a way to think clearly about what I do at work. Mostly I won't be talking about the lives of students, I plan to write more about the teaching of maths, which methods work, the system of education in this country, the masters in mathematical education I'm staring in April however you can only do this well if you attempt to be aware of the kids and their experiences. I'm looking forward to it.