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.