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?