Learning is delightful and delicious …

I’ve spent a lot of time and effort since the beginning of term organising a year 7 trip. More precisely, six year 7 trips. We had the chance to play a Gamelan (a percussion orchestra from Indonesia) which is currently housed at a local school, and seeing that this half-term’s topic is “cultural identity and diversity”, it seemed an ideal way in which to cover that aspect of the curriculum.

I took two classes last week, am taking two more this week and the last two after half term.

Kids are notoriously bad at remembering to bring forms back (well, they are at my school!) and so I’ve reminded and nagged at every possible opportunity – lessons, assemblies, when I’ve seen kids in the playground etc. On Monday I reminded the class I’m taking tomorrow that they needed to get their letters back, and said that the groups I’d taken last week had done very well and that it had been fun.

The response?

“They tole us it woz borin’. All they dun was sit an’ play instruments.”

Er… what? The letter explained where we were going and what we were going to do. It’s a MUSIC trip – what do they expect? To sail the seven seas or scale the north face of the bleedin’ Eiger??

Oh, no, wait. If the kids at my school were given the chance to do that it’d be “too ‘borin’.”

Honestly.

I’m feeling distinctly frayed around the edges lately. Not so overwhelmed as I felt the first two or three weeks of term, but frazzled nonetheless.

I like being organised. It’s the only way I know how to function really – I’ve never been a seat-of-the-pants kind of person, which can sometimes be a bit of a disadvantage in teaching when something goes off track or in a direction you hadn’t anticipated. It doesn’t happen very often, and I’m pleased to say that when it has, I’ve coped with it. I suppose what’s bugging me is that there are things “out there” which prevent me from being as organised as I’d wish.

Narrowing it down still further, the problem is PSHE. I’ve come across very few schools where the kids have PSHE lessons with someone who’s qualified and or experienced in teaching it. And by that I mean teachers who teach it as an actual subject, not by form tutors like myself who find themselves dumped in at the deep end trying to plan an interesting lesson that will engage the kids with whatever it is they’re supposed to be thinking about that week.

It’s not that I can’t teach the subject. Anyone who knows me will know that I can usually offer an opinion on pretty much anything – so that’s not the problem. The problem is that I’ve got some plans here written by someone else (who co-ordinates PSHE across the school) – which are telling me to use some of the information I’ve been given in a certain way and then that I need to give examples of where (in the world) that information doesn’t apply. Which would be fine – except that I haven’t been given any of those examples. Which means that I either have to go trawling the internet to find them or ignore that part of the lesson plan.

See why it bugs me? I don’t have time to plan for this – not with everything else I have on my plate, and it’s not as though, like some form tutors, perhaps, I’ve done this scheme of work before.

Honestly, if PSHE is to be taken seriously by the kids – and in my experience so far, with year 8s and older, it isn’t – surely it should be taught by someone who a) knows what they’re doing and b) who has an interest in it, because quite frankly, I don’t. Not that the topics chosen aren’t interesting and relevant – often they are; I just don’t have time to spend on it. Often, the first time I look at the lesson plan for that week is on Friday morning when I get into school (my PSHE lesson is first thing Friday) – usually because I’ve had so much else going on that I’ve not been able to get to it before that. And that being the case, I need a lesson plan AND resources so that I can just give the lesson and not have to worry about it.

I know I’m not the only one in this position – it’s just bugging me to the extent that I have to vent.