Learning is delightful and delicious …

Another case of the meeja finally catching up with something we’ve known for years – Clever boys dumb down for fear of being bullied – or worse.

Sadly, it’s all too true. The insult of choice in most secondary classrooms these days seems to be “gay” – but “nerd” or “boff” seems to be running it a close second at times. I regularly come across boys who don’t want to answer questions or appear to be good at something (other than football) because then they’ll get labelled as “clever”. And it’s not just boys, although as the article points out, it doesn’t seem to be quite as bad for girls.

Now, I know this is nothing new. I’m sure this will come as a shock to those people who know me, but… I was the school swot, and back in the dim and distant past (aka the seventies) when I was at school, my nicknames were, variously, “prof” and “boff”. But guess what? I liked that other kids thought I was clever – and most – if not all – of the time, those nicknames were used good-naturedly.

But I just don’t understand this need to ridicule someone for being good at something. Oh, I get where it comes from, sometimes – but we’re all good at different things, so why should a child be ridiculed because they’re good at maths or french or music? They might – like me – be utterly crap at PE, so it evens out!

But there’s another thing. It’s okay to be good at sport. Why is that “allowed”, while being good at an ‘academic’ subject “isn’t”?

And yes, that’s a rhetorical question. Although you should feel the freedom to tackle it if you wish.

This article from the BBC – Pupil TV habits concern teachers – dares to suggest that parents should take more responsibility for what their children watch on the telly.

Of course they bloody-well should! I sometimes let my eldest (she’s nine) watch documentaries that not made for children if it relates to something she’s studying at school – but I either watch with her, or watch it myself while I record it for her so that I can check it’s okay for her to watch.

Although of course, the article talks more about Big Brother and soaps, neither of which we touch with a bargepole in this house, although I will confess to enjoying Little Britain. It’s absolutely true that all the staff at school used to be relieved when the show went off air, because we’d had enough of hearing “compu’er says no” or “eh, eh, eeehhh”, every ten seconds. I deal with Vicky Pollard-types every day and much as I loved Lauren (Catherine Tate’s horrid, yet so accurate mouth-on-a-stick schoolgirl), I could have throttled Tate for creating her!

Is there a way to get kids quoting Aaron Sorkin instead? That, I could live with.

I’m just sayin’.

I’m not a History teacher, and I’m not a “trained” Historian – but the idea of kids learning even less history than now isn’t something I regard as a good idea. I’m not an expert, but I’m very interested in the subject and know a fair bit about certain periods. My eldest daughter, who is nine, is a complete history geek and has been ever since she was introduced to it via the Great Fire of London in year 1.

I’m a firm believer in the idea that, if you’re going to have a true sense of who you are and where you’re going, it’s important to know the “backstory” – where you came from (and I don’t just mean personal or family history) and how you got ‘here’. I remember talking to a class of year 7s who were moaning (again) about having to learn French – about the Norman Conquest. They had no recognition of the date of 1066 and no idea who fought in the battle or who won. One of the most oft-quoted dates in British history and they hadn’t got a clue. Okay, so that’s going back a fair bit, but it has a relevance to the evolution of our language, our legal system and many other things besides – and … nada. Zip.

So I think we should be teaching more history and not less.

And on top of this, comes the great idea that kids should be taught How to Blog.

Now, I’m all for promoting a greater facility in the use of the written word. I’ve often said that it’s… rather ironic, at a time when the written word is being used more than ever, what with emails and texts and blogs and Facebook and the like – that the general ability of people to use words correctly is shrinking greatly. And I’ve also said frequently that people need to be very careful about what they write and send or post, as it’s very easy to misconstrue something that you read when you can’t see or hear the person with whom you’re communicating. But that’s not something you learn how to do in IT, is it?

I think we have a shorter school day now than when I was at school, and yet the-powers-that-be are trying to pack in more and more. The article I linked to above talks about an “overloaded” timetable – so for Pete’s sake, stop trying to shoehorn in silly, faddy things like a GCSE in Twitter and leave room for the “proper” subjects, like History.

I’ve had a totally crap day today. One of those days that make me wonder what the hell I’m doing and whether I can actually teach for toffee.

Wednesdays is always a bit frantic, but it started quite well. I have a bottom set year 8 French class, and although it contains the two boys who “threatened me” before Christmas, the class as a whole is doing quite well. Generally, I have a TA in there with me, which helps a lot, and I managed to get a reasonable amount of work out of them. So all in all, not bad.

Second up is a year 8 middle set for music. I don’t have a music room for this lesson, so I’m stuck trying to find things that I can do which don’t involve anything practical. Yeah, great, seeing music is a fairly practical subject. The kids are pissed off and I’m pissed off. I spent four terms having to plan and deliver lessons with practically no facilities due to the rebuilding work going on, with the promise that at the end of it, I’d have a new room and better facilities. Needless to say, that hasn’t happened, and I don’t think I should go into details here because I think the situation is quite unique and I don’t want to identify the school. But I’m tired of trying to do my job without any tools with which to do it.

Anyway, I got them down to work and things were okay until about the last fifteen minutes, when things just went downhill rapidly. I’d said that when they’d finished the work I’d set, we’d have time to do some karoke (shut up, they like it!) but my laptop seemed to suddenly stop talking to the projector and I couldn’t project the lyrics onto the screen. And of course, while I was fiddling around, the kids took that as the cue to piss around, and next thing I know, there’s a large-scale paper-throwing battle going on. (Paper throwing seems to be the current craze).
Now, I know what they tell you when you train. “If you raise your voice, you’ve lost.” So what do you do when you’ve got about fifteen kids all clustered around a couple of tables who are yelling and screaming at each other? Stand there and tell them to stop in a normal “inside” voice? Stand and “wait for silence”? (which is an effective tool, but not in that sort of situation where half of them can’t see you and the other half have forgotten your existence.)
I do have a loud voice – and I yell rather than scream, by which I mean that I drop the pitch of my voice when I shout so I don’t sound hysterical. But they still continued to ignore me. I ended up keeping the majority of the class in for most of break. I’d told them they needed to sit quietly – that they’d wasted a lot of my time, so I’d waste some of theirs. But they still couldn’t shut up. This was their breaktime, and they were moaning about losing it – BUT THEY DIDN’T HAVE THE BRAINS TO REALISE THAT IF THEY STOPPED TALKING THEY’D GET OUT SOONER!!

As for PSHE, which I have after break… I really dread that lesson each week. I share the form with another part-time colleague, and they’re really a nice lot of kids. But as a class, they’re horrendous. I’m not trained to teach PSHE – we have a teacher in the school who co-ordinates it and provides resources for us, and a timetable of what we’re supposed to teach when, and that’s it. But okay, they’re subjects I can deal with and about which I can usually think of things to say and do. I try to get group and class discussions going, and role play activities – but they’re just not interested. They seem to have no imagination whatsoever. Anyway, today, I decided that it was time to organise the work they’d been doing the last couple of terms, and put it into folders. Pretty boring but they were happy doing that, and chatting. At one point, I had to leave the room to make a phone call about a pupil who was being difficult – and I went back in to find one boy (who is known to have a temper on him) had kicked over table and was in the process of storming out (kicking over another table on the way), telling the class that he’d “had enough of this fucking shit.” Now, the kids in the class know that this boy is a powder keg, and so they wind him up – but he’s not blameless either; he can be an annoying little so-and-so. Anyway, once that had happened, that was it. The class was completely unsettled for the rest of the lesson, and I didn’t stand a chance. And then towards the end, a couple of the nicer girls asked me if they could leave a couple of minutes early, because they wanted to get to their next class a bit early, to speak to the teacher. I said okay – and then the rest of the girls in the class decided that this permission applied to them as well and they all left. I pointed out that leaving without permission would get them all a half-hour detention – and they went anyway.

The final lesson before lunch was year 7 french with a fairly tricky class. Long story short, there was one boy, who is bright and was doing very well until recently who, despite several warnings, wouldn’t settle to work or stop talking when asked. I very quietly and reasonably pointed out to him that the Deputy Head was teaching in the room opposite, and that as she had a small class, there would be room for him to go and work in there. I’m sure he really thought I wouldn’t do it. But after another couple of warnings, I’d had enough and made good on my “threat”.

The discipline at that school has been going steadily down the pan for some time. Until this year, we had a “three strikes and you’re out” system. The kids knew where they were and so did the staff, but this year TPTB decided to abolish it, as it was open to abuse by certain kids who just wanted to get thrown out of lessons. Well, okay – but I still haven’t worked out what system has replaced it.

Added to this was a girl in my form who is in my year 8 music class. She’s a bit of a handful, but really it’s all an act, and she really does have a heart of gold, deep down. But this week, she’s been completely bonkers, and came into the lesson and promptly sat down at the front of the class with her back to the board. I asked her to move a few times, and then gave her the choice of moving, or I’d call “on-call” and have her removed. She wouldn’t move. When the on-call member of staff arrived, he asked me what the problem was, and I explained. I could see in his face the “so wtf have you called me for – just because she won’t turn around??” Well, yes – she’s not following my (very simple and clear) instructions, so what else am I supposed to do? And of course, the minute he spoke to her, she moved. What a ridiculous waste of time and effort, in addition to making me look like an idiot.

A fellow blogger, Ranting Teacher, recently posted about feeling tired all the time. Days like today have a lot to do with it.

I really don’t know where to start when it comes to this latest government initiative, to cut the time taken for ITT (Initial Teacher Training) from a year to six months.

Listening to “Today” this morning, Evan Davis (or was it John Humphries?) made the point that everyone likes to think that their job is incredibly difficult and requires a huge amount of training in order to be able to do it. But teaching really is incredibly difficult in some schools (like the ones in which I work). I’m sure there are people who used to work in the City who could train for six months and teach a nice, well behaved class of year 7s in a grammar school or top comprehensive. But it would be a much smaller number who could walk into an inner city comprehensive after six months and teach. Hell, it’s hard to do that after a year of training, or after years of teaching!

So no, I don’t think six months is long enough. I entered the profession in my 40s, and qualified via the GTP (Graduate Training Programme). I was fortunate enough to have a fabulous mentor who instilled many good practices which have stood me in great stead. I was teaching solo on about my second or third week of the course, but I knew others who were team-teaching for most of their first half term or so. I have no idea why it was felt that I’d be able to cope so early on – maybe because I’m “older” than many trainee teachers – but whatever the reason, I did okay. But there were others on my course who clearly weren’t ready so early. That’s not to say they were bad teachers, just that we all progress at different rates, and cutting the training time to six months seems a daft idea.

And when you consider that in Finland, teacher training takes five years… no wonder the Scandinavians have one of the best education systems in the world!

I have to say that my first reaction on hearing this news was – “they go on about wanting to improve the quality of teaching in this country, and now they want to cut the training time in half.”

Well, that’ll do the job alright.

I’ve got too many thoughts on the subject running around in my brain to be able to write a cogently argued post right now, so I’ll just pose these questions.

1. What happens when these newly recruited teachers realise that although they’re working as many hours as they did when they worked in the City, there’s no big bonus at the end of the year?
2. What happens when they realise that the £21k (ish) that’ll be their starting salary is no compensation for being sworn at, spat at and generally treated like shit for most of the week?
3. What happens when “things” pick up and suddenly there’s a shortage of w bankers?

None of us goes into teaching for the money. Like others who blog about life as a teacher, I bemoan the lack of respect we’re afforded by pupils and parents, the low esteem in which the profession is held in general – but I do like my job. I couldn’t do it if I didn’t. But I really don’t think there’s enough awareness “out there” of just how difficult things have become in many of our schools; and think a large number of these new recruits are going to have a massive shock.