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.