Methods

5 Apr 2016

What Now for Education?

Teachwell Education Policy, Political Parties, Progressive Education Conservative Party, Education Policy, Labour Party, Methods, Primary School, Secondary School, Teachers 0

The left needs to rethink. As I have argued here, much current thinking and practice in education can hardly be considered left-wing in the first place. There are certain truths that we need to face whether we like it or not.

1. There will be academisation of schools that are special measures or require improvement.
2. There will be 500 more free schools.
3. There will be some changes to Ofsted.
4. Whoever the Secretary of State is there is, for once, an acceptance that workload is far too high, and this is a bad thing. Whatever actions are (or are not as the case maybe) taken this is still an important statement from a Conservative government, who lets face are not known to be bothered by such things. It is something tangible that they can be held to account for. It is our job to hold them to account and let’s think of some solutions here.
5. It is not all about the government. If school leaders do not act to improve workload issues, then no amount of legislation or changes to Ofsted are going to matter
6. PRP is here to stay. Again the extent to this will be corrupted is down to school leaders, not the government. We need to direct action and anger wisely and discriminately if we are to negotiate these rough waters. However, a cursory glance at teacher vacancies shows that already there is a difference between schools who are considered to be good or outstand and those that aren’t. The schools opting for paying less and who don’t ask for experienced teachers even when this seems like a good idea (i.e. they are not doing well) is there. The effect on poorer children is not one to ignore. I agree there are NQTs that do brilliantly and experienced teachers who do not. However schools that inordinately take on NQTs, who they can’t support well lead to poor outcomes for children and teachers lost to the system.
7. The national curriculum is here to stay for state schools, and that is no bad thing. Hopefully, all the detractors who were hoping for a reverse will now get on with the task. Teachers and schools who have lost that fundamental purpose need to think about how their dumbing-down only leads to deprofessionalisation. If you are going to argue that we should spend our time tending to the emotional needs of pupils above their learning then what are you doing to the profession? Yes, emotional development affects learning, but our interventions need to be to support their learning. Anything else requires skilled professionals from other fields. Stop trying to save souls and start asking for more support from mental health professionals, even if the school has to buy into that.
8. We need to seek solutions that work from Speech and Language Therapists, Behaviour Specialists, etc. This means schools need to invest in them coming to us and jointly coming up with solutions that work for the classroom and not what may work if we were one-to-one with a challenging child or one with learning difficulties.

Labour needs to distance itself from the fads and the progressive nonsense. The Greens seem happy to step up to promoting pseudoscience so let them. We have always been the party to promote opportunities for all and we need to do so once again. The ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’ is real. Those of us from poorer backgrounds who are now teachers encounter this all the time and struggle precisely because we know we are giving them less than what we had. It is not our role to instigate and reinforce a two-tier system where the poor are treated fundamentally different to their middle and upper-class peers. We need to be the ones to tackle social inequality not embed it. We need to remember and reinforce the moral purpose for having a system of education for all in the first place.

23 Mar 2016

Love, Actually

Teachwell Teaching and Learning, Traditional Education Discipline, KS3, Methods, Michaela, Secondary School, Teachers, Theory 6

I have wanted to go to Michaela for about a year now. Well, I was at the Michaela debate but that was sans children. Thanks to Naureen (@5N_Afzal), who arranged it all, I finally got to visit today.

We started the tour with a chat with Katharine in her office. I can imagine her detractors see her as a Cruella de Vil figure who spends her time concocting evil rules to make her pupils lives a misery. I can only say she did an excellent job of coming across as smart, funny, warm and incredibly passionate about the students and teachers.

I am still a bit shocked at the letter she showed us, which the teaching unions thought fit to write and hand out to the pupils at Michaela. I had not known the opposition to the school had extended to that. It’s another piece of evidence for the ‘teaching unions have lost the plot’ file.

We were then introduced to our two lovely guides. Like all the pupils at Michaela, they were polite, respectful and charming. They did an excellent job of answering all of our questions (and we did have a fair few!) They spoke honestly about their experiences and how different Michaela is compared to their respective primary schools, where behaviour, was an issue. One of the children had attended a school that was rated outstanding but recalls fights and disruption.

We saw parts of two lessons. First up was Barry Smith’s French lesson. Did they passively pay attention while Barry spoke? No. They were eating out of his hands while he did. Pacy and interactive, there was plenty of back and forth between him and the children. It didn’t phase them when he corrected them, and his praise meant something. It’s the kind of praise children know they are getting because what they have said or done is worthy of it, not a bunch of throw away words to pacify them. It makes them a little taller. There was even laughter, and it definitely came from the children.

We also caught the tail end of Olivia Dyer’s Science lesson. Again impeccable behaviour, instructions listened to and followed in silence. While the children stood behind their seats, waiting for the lunch bell, they were answering questions and it was clear that this is what happens. These weren’t ‘show’ lessons to impress. These are lessons taught for one purpose – which is to enable the children to learn as much, as well as possible.

The teacher in me couldn’t help but have a look at the open books in front of the children. The presentation was beautiful. The books with their knowledge organisers were looked after. These are books that the children care about. Its obviously part of how they show they are proud of and care about belonging to Michaela.

The behaviour of the children is not the result of brainwashing or fear. It’s the behaviour of children who know where they stand, who don’t have to guess, who don’t have to keep track of which boundaries have shifted today, who don’t have to question if it’s worth behaving.

Any inconsistency at home is not compounded by the school. They don’t have to work it out in each class or with each teacher. Therefore, the school is absent from the insecurity this causes, and which has its own dynamic. The expectations are clear and the teachers are on board. There isn’t a weak link among the teachers and there is no reason why there should be. It’s never struck me as responsible or adult to disagree with the behaviour policy by not implementing it.

The children look up to and emulate the teachers, who are positive role models. This is a school where the adults are adults and take their responsibility to their pupils seriously (as opposed to themselves!).

I remarked to Naureen on the way out that the Michaela teachers just are beautiful. I don’t just mean looks or how they dress. They smile, they want to be there, they want to teach, they want to impart what they know and give the best of themselves to their students.

Katharine has set up a school that lets these teachers do what they came into teaching to do. Why should they have to compromise this because of the background of the children? Because of received wisdom? Ideology? Because other schools do? They provide these children with the kind of education that middle-class children receive without question or controversy. She also gets that teaching is a tiring and demanding job and it’s her job as the Head to keep the stupid away from her teachers.

Michaela is not perfect, nothing is.

It’s actually about what’s possible.

It’s actually about the pupils.

It’s actually about their learning and their future.

It’s actually about the teachers who make it happen.

And yes, it is about love, actually.

22 Feb 2016

Moving on from Maslow

Teachwell Behaviour, Education Policy, Progressive Education, Teaching and Learning Child-Centred, Children, Discipline, Early Years, Methods, Parents, Philosophy, Primary School, Teachers, Teaching Assistants, Theory 1

The first and second parts of this series of blogs explored the pyramid diagram and critiqued the use of his theory to devise behaviour management strategies.

I have written and rewritten the opening of this post three times now. I went for the let’s go point by point through the criticisms. Then I went full-on progressives know shit about child abuse angle. Then I thought of just sticking some diagrams in to tell the story. None of those felt right, though. I don’t want to have a go at anyone because even those progressives who tout ideas I disagree with are not doing so because they are bad people or because they are trying to cause harm in this situation.

Changing is hard for a lot of people; it can be hard on occasions even for people who cope with it well on the whole. Each new experience can be met with varying levels of courage, resistance or hopelessness.

So here are the things that I think are problematic about the adoption of Maslowesque beliefs.

All the needs that Maslow mentions are real, the idea that we are cut off from some as a result of deficiencies is something that has come less from Maslow as from others. But given how much of the received wisdom in education is a game of Chinese Whispers, one can see how it has morphed into any deficiency at a lower level means higher levels needs are absent.

Thus, we have the school of thought that says if a child’s home circumstances involve neglect or abuse we need to meet their lower order needs first – such as food and self-esteem before we can expect them to cope with schools rules based on values and ideas of right/wrong. It’s not their fault they can’t meet the expectations and that we need to accommodate their behaviour as a result.This so often turns into constantly shifting boundaries to avoid ‘punishing’ the child by enforcing consequences for rule breaking. Even though this is at odds with the fact that all children need boundaries to feel secure, it is seen humane and caring to act in this manner.

There is no evidence of this. In fact, I would argue the exact opposite. We are products of our experiences and some of those raise our consciousness and awareness. If anything, children who live in a family where domestic violence is the norm, are being confronted with moral issues and dilemmas repeatedly. They are shielded from explanations of what they are seeing and understanding their experiences, their feelings which are related to these and the ability to come to terms with it. Children who have experienced intense physical abuse are confronted with the real possibility of death during that experience. Who doesn’t experience confronting one’s own morality at a spiritual level? What evidence is there that young children don’t? The only explanation I have been presented with repeatedly is the blessed pyramid.

I find it bizarre that the very people who talk about dealing with children in a ‘holistic’ manner ignore these needs in a child so willingly.

If I am honest, I think they do so because they don’t know how to help. It’s easier to feed a child when they are hungry, cuddle them if they seem upset, placate them if they are angry, make excuses for poor behaviour and deliver discrete but meaningless self-esteem lessons. Having pushed for children to see counsellors, I have been disappointed how little impact they have on the children referred. It seems teachers are not the only one to take Maslow’s hierarchy as the ‘TRUTH’ and act accordingly.

Let’s get this straight:

Being an adult who cares does not mean that you know automatically what is needed by a child.
Growing up in a positive home environment is not immunity against entering abusive relationships. I will come to this in further posts examining the cycle of abuse, something we are not trained to know or understand.
Comparing a loving home and one that is chaotic, and trying to make up for the gap between them is not the answer. If it were, it would work, there would be no need for excuses.
Compensating children for their negative experiences with positives ones is a trivial exercise unless the negative experiences are explained and the effects acknowledged and dealt with. The problems that are causing the confusion, aggression, sadness and loss are all there. As teachers, you can’t change this by changing your behaviour because it isn’t your behaviour causing the major problems in the first place.

There is one incident from my childhood which stands as an indicator of how wrong assumptions made by well-meaning adults can be:

One of the things that happened when the tension between my parents got very intense is that family members and friends of my parents would try to intervene and mediate to help them. This would involve them meeting in what we called the ‘front room’ – the nicely furnished room for guests while we, my brothers and I, would be in the living room (that we used daily). We could hear the muffled agonising of our parents, the angry shouts, attempts to calm, etc.

On one occasion, my father stormed out of the ‘meeting’ that was being held, shouted he was off to pack his bags and leave as he had had enough. The three of us looked at each other with utter relief. Finally, there was to be an end to constant cycle of tension, aggression and uneasy compromises. I was 7/8 and my brothers were a year and two years older respectively. We were so pleased and discussed what it would mean but in the end, it was clear that it would mean some level of peace at home, which we desperately craved.

Only half an hour later this hope was snuffed out completely. One of my parents friends came in and told us not to worry because they had sorted it and dad would be staying after all. I still remember the look on my brothers faces which would have mirrored my own. We had come so close to an end to the daily misery only to be plunged back in with no end in sight. It was one of the most dispiriting events of my childhood.

But, you see, the friends and family were convinced they knew what we wanted and needed and misunderstood our unhappy faces. They thought it was because he had said he was leaving and we were still unsure. So they ‘reassured’ us some more that he would be staying. When that didn’t produce any happy response, they brought my dad in to say it, as a final reassuring measure. Then they left.

Their assumptions were understandable, based on cultural norms and what they believed was best for the child. But they didn’t understand what it was like to live in that environment day after day. The toll took on us and how it made us feel. As we were to tell mum many times, we would have supported her if she had wanted to get divorced but what held her there wasn’t us but cultural expectations, co-dependency and immaturity. Those who were supporting her were subject to the same and had normalised unhelpful attitudes and beliefs.

Those who advocate excuses need to remind themselves that they are not neutral. Being able to care for and love a child does not mean that you are not subject to:

cultural and societal norms
received wisdoms
unquestioned assumptions
narratives told from particular perspectives
prejudiced ideas and beliefs

They also need to stop pretending that they are not affected by:

unhealthy beliefs about relationships
their emotional needs
incomplete understanding of the home lives of the children they are trying to help
emotional immaturity
lack of knowledge and understanding of the emotional, moral and spiritual effects of living in an abusive environment
an underlying perfectionism which sees children growing up in these environments as perpetual victims because of the ‘damage’ done by childhood
an inability to accept that one is wrong or has made mistakes
an inability to effectively evaluate the impact of interventions
caring more about virtue signalling
wanting to appear superior to others
wanting social approval by acting and behaving in a particular way

In the next few weeks, I am hoping to collate more information from the research out there to see what we really know about the lives of children from abusive homes and why so many of the interventions in place fail to improve the behaviour of children in our classes. In addition, I will examine the conformity of the ‘excuses’ model.