Shanghaied

Lots on Breakfast telly this week about Chinese Maths teachers coming to teach and train English maths teachers.
Couple of interesting points firstly Chinese Maths teachers just teach maths at primary age whereas english teachers are 'expected to be jacks of all trades' which was said in a very disparaging way.

Secondly and it was said by a Chinese teacher right at the end of the interview and probably missed that Chinese children don't start formal school until age 7.

There's a lot of talk of school readiness in early years usually meaning are they ready for a diet of listening and sitting in one place!  But it is right that children need to be ready to learn.  And I wonder as we head towards assessing and therefore some would argue failing children age 2 if we are going in the wrong direction.  It's the one thing that government ministers don't notice when they visit these places - the children are older!

TEA

I have started drinking tea.  I don’t really like it!  I like coffee, strong black coffee, espresso ideally.  But I have found that I really can’t drink it after noon or I just do not sleep. 

The reason I have started drinking tea is because I am trying to fit in.  People drink tea.  They are a bit weird about it with their ‘teaspoon of milk’ or ‘just wave the bag over the cup’ and their ‘two and a half sugars please.’  Anyway it appears to be a social thing as much as anything so in a vain attempt to be ‘part of the team’ I have started saying ‘Yes please’ as an answer to the query ‘Tea?’ instead of ‘Yugh! Why would you?’  I’d like to say that I really like tea and it’s changed my life.  But it’s still a bit yucky.  It’s all right but I could give it up tomorrow or right now!  But I mustn’t ‘I need to fit in’.  So I am drinking tea.  Small thing I know, but I do think it’s a bit needy of me. 

It’s because I have been told that I need to fit in.  It’s all part of being in a team.  Being a valuable member of staff.  Valuable or valued? I think it’s a bit of a lie myself about the value of people in some school teams.  Because if for whatever reason you go off sick you are soon replaced.  I know you have to be – I get that entirely before the point is made about the children needing a teacher in that class (actually there’s a whole question for 5X5X5 there!) but our place is like Chile in the 70s we have our own ‘disappeared’ – teachers do just vanish and nothing is said.

Actually my main motivation for trying this whole team thing is otherwise I am going to be stuck on the same pay level for the rest of my career (Ha! Career? I crack myself up sometimes?).  Though I think it says something about my attitude, understanding of money, that I have been 6 years on the same pay grade (apart from the 40% reduction along with the 40% in hours) and not noticed! D’oh!  I thought that UPS1 was a pay band and there were points within it … But there aren’t! Oh dear? 

Anyway to progress you have to be an extrovert. No sorry I mean you have to make substantial contributions to the school.  All a bit tricky on a part time contract, even trickier if you thought you were making a contribution and nobody noticed.  Actually there is almost no difference between UPS1 and UPS2 in terms of expectations. 

The sad thing is I am drinking tea because I am trying to fit in and be liked.

There’s no I in team but there is me! And tea! And meat.

Why Would You Do That? Why?

I’m an introvert in an extrovert world.  Not just the world itself but education is becoming more a hang out for extroverts.  Which makes it hard for introvert learners!  The whole system is geared towards extrovert children.  The whole ‘3 B4 me’ culture – which is basically as a learner you have to go to three ‘friends’ before you can bother the teacher with something you don’t understand. There is an emphasis on groupwork and being part of a team.  Now as a youngster I enjoyed team sports, football but only when I knew my role and was happiest as cross country or 800m runner.  I get team.  I’m just not sure I want to be part of one!

Case in point: Had two training opportunities this week – well that’s how they were described to me.  Not sure that they were really?  There’s a lot of so called CPD – continuous professional development that’s very amateur and does no developing.  Seem to spend a lot of time looking at tiny graphs. 

Quick sidetrack – if the graph is illegible in colour on the big screen what makes it more legible on those black and white powerpoint printouts they give you at these events – you know the ones!  And if you don’t, well you are very very lucky!

Anyway, at both of these events it was said ‘Go and talk to someone you don’t know.’  Which apparently some people find very acceptable to both say and do.  They are happy to go up to strangers and give them their opinions and hear what that stranger has to say. They even enjoy it.  I think these people might be extroverts. 

I, on the other hand, DO NOT WANT TO TALK TO SOMEONE I DON’T KNOW!  Why?  BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW THEM!  You answered your own query.  And I don’t understand why you would want to talk to someone you didn’t know.  Didn’t you people get the stranger danger talk when you were little.  Were you not listening?

Yet at every so called ‘training event’ I go to, I am asked to do this.  I find it hard enough to talk to people I do know.  People who may even call me a friend.  And when you are uncomfortable in this situation which I am – it is made out to be a fault of some sort.  People ask ‘If anything is wrong?’  Well apart from the whole situation!!  Apart from the whole world!  No, everything is fine!  It’s not that I don’t have thoughts and feelings about this – I just don’t feel the need to share them with you! Thanks!

Please don’t ask me to talk to someone I don’t know, especially with no time to rehearse what I might say.  Especially without at least half a bottle of a good red wine inside me!

It's Observation Time Again

Remind me


What's the point of classroom observations?

CraPD

It was as pointless as one feared!

We were asked to write a tag line for School Without Walls/5X5X5=Creativity as usual I thought of the perfect tag line after the event!

I should have gone with: Early Years Lite.

Training! What Training!

CPD – stands for continuous professional development – I refer to a recent e mail I have received. If you can find any professional development in it, I’ll be most impressed. (I apologise for the strange formatting but it was an e mail)

Subj: School Without Walls - CPD meeting Wed 8th October, the egg

Sharing our Glow Moments

Wed 8th October

4.15pm - 6.15pm (refreshments at 4pm)

the egg theatre

Hello all,

We look forward to welcoming all St Andrews' and St Michaels'

 teaching staff and Headteachers to the egg for a chance to reflect together on our individual Glow Moments of our School Without Walls experience.

We would like you all to bring in an object, quote, image which 

describes your SWW experience, or a moment in that experience for you which was 'illuminative and glows'.

We will be using this session to directly influence our meeting with 

the Right Hon. David Laws MP on 16th October, where a small group (including children from both St Michael's and St Andrew's) will have a short time with him to inspire him with our work and this holistic approach to learning.

I’m sorry but sharing ‘our glow moments’ really?  My ‘glow moments’?

OMFG as the young people say!

Extrovert V Introvert

Someone says (THE HEAD TEACHER) "We need to have a conversation."

Extrovert: "OH Great!'

Introvert: "OH God!!"

NUT Magazine

The NUT – National Union of Teachers (when I started teaching you had to be in a union – not sure with the rise of Free Schools and Academies whether that is still true?) of whom I am a member have sent me their new school year magazine with ‘a manifesto for our children’s education’.  I have had a quick read through and am shocked by the number of letters and articles and references to the apparent ‘culling of 50 plus teachers’ – that’s age not waist size!  Though the latter may well be vulnerable as well.  It looks like there’s a lot of it about.  Nobody wants us 50+ teachers, male or female! Apparently.

The main method of getting rid of them seems to be competency and lesson observations!  Hmm my last one was RI (which seems to be the acronym for ‘Requires Improvement” – like I have said before show me a lesson that doesn’t require some improvement – I digress!) and I hear ominous cello music in the background … There’s an encouraging letter, name and address supplied, from someone who managed to go to tribunal and get an unfair dismissal verdict and one hopes a good cash payout.  But it seems most just drift off quietly, like Scott’s Antartic explorers!  Feeling the chill, someone close that tent flap!

As was so kindly pointed out to me on our First INSET day – I am the oldest teacher in the school!  Oh there are ancient teaching assistants amongst the teachers I am the oldest. Actually the head is a year or two older than me but I am still in the classroom.  I think I should be treated like the leader of the house!  It was interesting in a recent staff meeting where we were tracking data that I was the only teacher who knew what the current year 6 children were like as infants (they were my second year one class after moving down from Year 6) and therefore the only person who knew where they had come from.  I think it’s important that a school has people who can do that, who know the children not just as data on a spreadsheet.  I do so love a spreadsheet.  It’s quite hard to type sarcastically!

Anyway it’s time for my nap.  Peace Out!

How Long?

I did wonder how long it’d be before the spectre of OFSTED (the inspection body not the cat! Long story) would be used as a threat/motivation.  Answer 3 weeks well 2 and a half as it was the third staff meeting!

I would like to make the point that 90% of staff meetings have nothing to do with EYFS and what we do!  And I might be being generous with the claim that 10% do have something to do with us!

The concern is that our 4b+ results for last year are not as good as the previous year and it’s apparently a worry that HMI or OFSTED might in a ‘desktop exercise’ notice this and despite our ‘good’ OFSTED rating come to the school and sack the governors (volunteers so can they be sacked?) and the headteacher and/or the senior management team.  Well as I’m none of the above can I just say ‘Bovvered!’ 

Anyway during the ‘discussion’ where the head took on the role of the OFSTED questioner someone, naively in my opinion, said that the results were down to cohort. To which the head replied ‘So you’re blaming the children?’ 

I have thought about this and I think my answer would be yes!  Then I thought I’d better qualify it.  If children were like say pizzas or cars then the difference between the performance between one year and the next would be a concern.  But children are not cars or pizzas!  They are human beings and therefore more like complex dynamic systems like the weather, where one little factor can change the outcomes.  It’s the butterfly in the rain forest, flooding in China analogy.  A little story, a few years ago there was a weather man, Michael Fish, who said that there would not be a hurricane striking the south of England and pedantically he was right there was no hurricane but an extreme wind event (as it was referred as) did take place and they had to rename SevenOaks!!   Apparently 3 of the 30 computer models of that 24 hours weather predicted high winds but 27 didn’t so the weather people went with the majority models! Oh how wrong they were!  But children are more like these complex chaos theory models there are so many variables many of which are outside of a teacher’s control.  So the same teacher can give the same input to a group of children and you may get varying results! Actually because of the small cohorts slight differences are skewed even more!  When a single child counts for 8% or more it doesn’t take much to make a mockery of statistics!  Interestingly the national statistics for all these tests vary very little from year to year it’s only at the micro level that you see the distortions – quantum theory anyone? Anyone?

Mark Twain – ‘There are lies, damned lies and statistics.’

Peace Out

PS I am loving my new babies and looking forward to the new year – staff meetings not withstanding!

Home Truths

You think you know a person, yourself, and then find that you don’t!  Apparently though I have never seen it, but then I guess I wouldn’t, people tip toe around me.  Adults not children!  Children skip!!

Now I like to think of myself as fairly easy going.  I’m not good at small talk I know, mainly because I’m not sure if I really care.  Oops!  I do but …

But that is not how it is.  I am quite difficult to read.  I am a mystery wrapped in an enigma in a booby-trapped surprise box!  Can’t see it myself but I suppose I wouldn’t! Being difficult doesn’t stop people pinching my stuff!

The ironic (?) thing is that the harder I try to be helpful and make a positive contribution to, say, a staff meeting the more likely I am to mess up and end up offending people.  In fact the couple of times I have been censured for have been those times when I thought I’d really properly engaged and contributed.  How wrong was I?  I must have a very sarcastic voice or something.  If you can fake sincerity you have got it made!

The problem is I don’t know what to do about it. 

My dilemma is that if I contribute to a staff meeting I am seen to be subversive and if I keep my head down and stay quiet I am seen to be difficult.  Not sure there is a middle path?  I guess I could wait until I am asked to contribute and buy snowboarding gear for Satan or I could…?  See what I mean?

I remember a certain teacher at St Andrew’s nicknamed the boy wonder who once on a night out drinking asked drunk people what people really thought of him?  It did not end well!

There's No Help For You People

A few years ago I went with some friends to New York.  What a place!  Anyway one of the tourist things we did was the Empire State Building – it’s odd I don’t really like heights but because New York is so massive it didn’t feel that high.  Anyway once you come out of the lift, sorry, elevator, before you walk up and onto the viewing platform they try a big sell to get you to buy, hire a audioguide.  I’m a cheapskate and will avoid spending money if I can.  But? These are Americans, these are New Yorkers and they can sell.  The spiel basically went; ‘This is your last chance! There is no help out there for you people! Sure you can see a bridge but you have no idea which bridge? Once you go past there is no help for you people’ and so on.  Nevertheless I resisted and managed to avoid the photo as well in a very British style. ‘Sorry I’m English, I’m afraid I can’t understand a word you are saying.  Thank you! Thank you very much. No! Sorry haven’t a clue what you are saying!’  Trust me it works, especially on Americans, just be extra polite and put a posh accent on or broad London one.  Sounded like Vinnie Jones!

But it has stayed with me.  And that’s what happens with lesson observations.  There is no help for you people.  That’s the judgment – deal with it! 

There’s no one there to say ‘Are you okay? I hear it didn’t go well, do you want to talk?’ No, you just have to deal with it. So last thing on Friday you are basically told ‘You’re crap!’ and that’s your weekend gone.  You don’t sleep properly, you worry, you keep going over it in your head and you tell yourself that it’s all true and that’s who you are!  Well, that’s what happens to me! And when you ask for help – you are told that there is no help. Then on Monday you are asked if you can do extra and you are not even sure if you can do the basic job.  Because all your confidence has gone been destroyed in two words. 

I have said it before but that’s the problem with observation.  It is subjective! No matter what the framework says.  It’s not science; it’s not objective.  It’s one person’s opinion and basically it hurts and no one cares. And you end up hating yourself and hating your job and you can’t see how you will face going in to work the next time.  And you’ve been finding that hard for a long time.

There’s no help for you people!

Requires Improvement

Requires Improvement is there any more ridiculous lesson observation judgment?  Why do we just accept these things in teaching without asking questions?  Of course a lesson requires improvement! All lessons require improvement.  Outstanding lessons require improvement!  Anything in life requires improvement - as they say in baseball nobody bats 1.0!

Ask any teacher about a lesson and they'd probably say it required improvement.

In fact most teachers generally think their teaching is a bit crap!

I know mine is!

Political?

I’m not political.  I was but New Labour destroyed my politics for me.  Too much like old Tory.  I suppose the centre ground drift of politics generally might be good for stability but it’s so bloody boring.  That said I do watch the Andrew Marr Show on the BBC of a Sunday morning.  Today we had a double treat.  Michael Gove the Secretary of State for Education and all round twat and Tristram Hunt who is the Shadow blah blah blah! And possibly Cockney Rhyming Slang?

Michael Gove (I gove him a chance and listened?) who has one of those faces that you feel like punching,  (I bet he was the school snitch) was on mainly talking about how to battle Islamist extremism in schools.  And Tristram (not a real name surely? Tristan yes! Tristram no!) was there declaring a ‘Master Teacher in every classroom.’ Now I’d not heard of ‘Master Teachers’ apparently it’s an idea from Singapore.  The ‘Master Teacher’ would be ‘better trained’ or it would be a continued training from qualification and they would … well, that wasn’t made clear.  Part of the argument was that to progress in teaching you have to go into management so and I quote ‘Too many good teachers leave the classroom to become heads.’

Class teachers up and down the country are raising eyebrows (and a glass) and saying ‘Really?’ very slowly as they contemplate their own head teachers. 

Now I am all for the opportunity to progress as a class room teacher because that’s the job I love.  You can keep the rest of it!  But I’m not sure ‘Master Teacher’ is the route.  Who decides?

The argument went from a ‘Master Teacher’ in every classroom to one in every school in a matter of minutes.  ‘Master Teachers’, of course, would be more expensive than ‘Mistress Teachers’ – ‘Journeyman Teachers’ – I’m not sure what teachers who aren’t ‘Master Teachers’ are going to be called.  What head, went the argument, wouldn’t want a ‘Master Teacher’ in their school.  Heads like cheap teachers!  That’s the holy grail; a ‘Master Teacher’ who costs the same as an NQT! 

I have a feeling that it is too late for me.  At my age I’ll be lucky to find another job let alone be allowed to make any progression in my so-called career.  The whole system seems to be aimed at making the job untenable for people of a certain age so they can be replaced by shiny new cheap versions who last a couple of years and then burn out to be replaced by newer shinier versions.  Or is that too cynical? 

The Dark Arts

I have been a Dark Arts Practitioner for 4 years.

Recently we had an OFSTED inspection at the school where I work and it was the lead Inspector who termed Early Years as the 'Dark Arts'.  He also described the children as like 'Velcro' in that they cling to you, which they do.  They also head butt you regularly in the groin which is a downside of the job.

This blog is replacing a blog that I have kept for the last few years.  That was a by invite only blog and basically I was the only person writing on it but this week I was informed that it was closing - not by me, I lack the clout.  Any how in the other blog I was very honest.  Mainly because no one was reading it!

We'll see about this one.

Being an Early Years teacher is the best!  The children are at their most exciting and excited.  But unfortunately there is a lot of crap associated with the job such as observations.

I'll try to be honest.

Oh but I claim Story Tellers license to lie when I need to.