Delivery

In our last few meetings, we have looked at how to improve on a few areas of classroom practice. To knit these areas together, we should consider our delivery. Do we fall back on the same patterns and routines? If we do, is this a good thing? If it is, does it need changing or considering differently regardless?

If you switch it up, change it round, develop a new approach, it only strengthens you, and can only help to keep your charges on their toes. It's not change for the sake of it, or reinventing wheels under a flash new name; it's simply seeking improvement. It's not necessarily radical or something you'll turn into a worksheet and flog online.

I'd wager it's always worth reflecting on how we do things. More than one way to skin a horse; cats for courses. Or something.

Enjoy Sunday, and let's have a focused, reflective and positive week.

The Mind Drinks.

“More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don’t have to think, eh?  Organize and organize and superorganize super-super sports.  More cartoons in books.  More pictures.  The mind drinks less and less.”

This nightmare vision of the future has not, yet, quite, happened. But it will, and it threatens all of the time. Our culture aims to engender stupidity and ignorance in the masses, creating an acquiescent population of consumers. We do our bit, jamming them through an increasingly narrow set of doors to adulthood. 

Of course, I'm only joking. However, the underlying point has the ring of truth about it. The mind drinks less and less. In a world of techno-frippery and ever-connected self-importance, we can nourish the mind. Well chosen journalism, poetry, novels, extracts, topics for debate will make the thirsty mind drink, will at least bring the proverbial horse to the metaphorical water. 

We make the mind drink. 

Create that sense of awe, that sense of joy and curiosity and wonder, make clear that English takes one mind to another, one world to another. Create that climate of thirst.

Examine what?

What should we examine? A pertinent question in education at the moment, amongst the shifting sands of policy and amid the near constant changes to curriculum and exam processes. There are many viewpoints on this. The traditionalist school is strong at the moment, with progressive ideas taking a regular battering.

However, I think this chatter and debate misses the key point. We should, simply, examine what we do and how we do it. This is, simply, all I ask of you this term. Be honest and constructive with yourself, don't beat yourself up without reason.

Simply questions such as 'Why was that successful?' or 'When did that lesson lose its focus?' or even 'What was I thinking?!?!?' could be simple ways to maintain your improvement. Ask others. Look back at some of the notes we have made.

What have you tried to develop this year? How's it going? Let's push through to the half-term break knowing that the next five weeks can make a significant difference. Record that progress. Assess cannily.

Enjoy your job.

WHITEBOARDS...

Sorry for the shouty title. But WHITEBOARDS. Use them. We've got enough pens and boards for a set in each room, and they're great for encouraging real progress, as well as showing that other, phantom type of progress that isn't real but which people (like me) might wish to see when they stumble into your classroom because they're bored of marking / left the classroom / wanted an easy life roaming about schools judging people.

DIFFERENTIATE. Obviously and clearly. Tasks. Timings. Other Ts. Some of them are easy to do, don't require a dozen different lesson plans, and I'm still not seeing them clearly enough when I pop in. Make it bleeding obvious, flick back to the key slide, or come and tell me that you've done some dope differentiation and I'll write it up! Evidence needed, of course - I'm not the right dishonourable Anthony Charles Lynton Blair and these aren't fake WMDs in an oil rich Middle Eastern country. Oh no.

That's the shouting done. Let's keep ensuring we teach well, evidence progress and keep a careful track of it. We'll be stepping up the monitoring and looking for areas where progress is less than great - don't be shy about coming forward with any problems in terms of pupils making progress. We need to work together to ensure that we get the most out of our valuable young charges - for both them and our performance management. But mostly them, of course.

Hopefully, you have all had a relaxing and spiritually fulfilling break, storming stores on various days when instructed by the media, and over-indulging in food and drink that you wouldn't normally go near, whilst watching derivative nonsense on the box. Or something. maybe spending time with people you care about.

Come Monday, we'll be putting on (un)ironed shirts, and chasing ignorance out of the classroom. Once more, we can make a real difference, enact meaningful change in people's lives. We have a common purpose, a common goal, and we need to keep working hard to achieve this.

It's worth it.

Finally, please read this. It will hopefully give you the belief to stick to your (metaphorical, I hope) pedagogical guns.