(Sorry for any grammatical errors but this is written on a phone)
Well, despite a bad experience with Skype and no spare pair of trousers, I enjoyed my first day of the national college conference so I awoke with a spring in my step and ready for day two.
First up a speech by Pam Warhurst about her propaganda gardens as part of her edible incredible scheme. This was fantastic and inspiring and a testament to how far a simple idea can go, if you let it and if you take other people along the way. There were some great ideas here: if you eat: you’re in, sometimes action is more effective without a three year action plan, give people a real opportunity and they will contribute back a future investment worth ten times more, and people don’t, it turns out, vandalise food. Talking to another head about starting this food for the community idea in our own schools we found ourselves thinking too far ahead. We had to stop and think about Pam’s key message: start small and let it grow and evolve naturally. I can’t wait to see how my own school propaganda garden starts and ends.
Then it was Charlie Taylor, the new chief executive of the national college, who took to the floor to put across his vision for the national college. To say he delivered a clear and concise mesage would be like saying Skype is a reliable replacement for a state of the art satellite link. He began with an anecdote about an inadequate lesson he did as a young teacher, very funny and we’ve all been there. But then he decided to follow this up with a fairly inadequate speech, now this was either nerves or a post modern attempt to allow us to relive the bad lesson experience from his past, looking back I’m still not sure. He mentioned education being school led, then he said something about sharing good practice, then something about governors, then something about ignoring government. All of this whilst drinking more water than I would have thought was humanly possible. (Seriously, don’t get into a drinking competition with Charlie because you will lose.) Maybe Gove had said to him beforehand “Look, I’m on after you and it may be a tough crowd, so do me a favour and make sure I look good’. I can’t be sure. He seems like a nice guy but if you want to find out what he was trying to get at, I suggest you read the blog put out by the national college afterwards.
A chill came over the room and twitter went into a frenzy as people began saying Gove was in the room and indeed he was, not to give a speech but to take part in a q&a session. A mix of agreed in advance questions and ones straight from the floor. As a politician, Gove is always worth the price of admission. To start with he said that he was accountable to all us head teachers; there was a healthy laugh that spread around the room and at that point he actually winked at us, either to say ‘I know, I don’t believe half the stuff I say either but it keeps me amused’ or to say ‘bring it on bitches’. He delivered a professional politician’s performance: talked a lot but didnt really say anything, responded to questions without ever really answering them and managing at times to come across as a ‘listener’. He only offended the room once or twice: ‘think of the children’ got a fairly angry groan and saying that he ‘doesn’t like to look to the past’ got a big laugh and even he seemed to acknowledge that this was pretty funny.
From the pair of them, the gist seems to be that ‘school led’ improvement translates into…you do it on your own without any authority support. If you do really well you should develop by taking on/over other schools, if you don’t do well, then, well, you’ll be supported/taken over by other schools. Gove wants to listen to us but he seems to lack any emotional intelligence. Yesterday Sir Terry Leahy talked about how leaders should trust their employees; I cant think of another time where those in education have felt so untrusted by the people in power: those who are meant to be our leading lights.
Anyway, he didn’t shout at us and it was all in fairly good spirits and humour so I didn’t feel too dejected, plus I knew Mick Waters was on at 2.30pm.
And I’m pleased to say he didn’t disappoint. He was so good. Interesting, bang on the money about the wealth of educational potential that is being wasted by a stifling curriculum. He showed us fabulous examples of how children achieved incredible things and how schools are responsible for helping children achieve their potential and learn about the wider aspects of the world. Highlights included using the news to teach the full curriculum; Mick saying that if he had his time again he would pretend he couldn’t write; and a video clip of him trying to convince a primary pupil that they are called SATS because you do them sitting down: ‘otherwise they’d be called stands wouldn’t they?’ He also provided a far better analysis of Gove’s speech than I have. He got a huge round of applause and I promptly went and bought his book.
Now, I’m off to buy some trousers.
Author: theprimaryhead
Seizing Success Conference – Day One
(Sorry for any grammatical errors but im writing this on a phone)
I’ve been waiting to come to the National College conference for years – ever since I became a Deputy. So it was with great excitement that I packed my overnight bag and waited for my lift to arrive. We set off and even though my driver had been coming for years, we missed the Motorway twice. Not to worry: we made it…eventually.
First of all we registered and took a stroll around the exhibition hall and then went into the main hall for Jane Creasy, the conference facilitator, to welcome us and introduce the first speaker, Susan Cain. It was an interesting talk on introverts and extraverts, not sure why it was chosen to open the conference but it was interesting all the same. Plus, and no disrespect to Susan, we were all waiting for the via satellite link speech delivered by Sir Ken Robinson. Things didn’t go well for Ken, the satellite failed so we were treated to the wonders of Skype (other video link communication services are available, I hope).
The sound was patchy, the vision and sound out of synch but if you squinted and really concentrated you could just about tell what he was saying. There was an embarrassed tension around the room as it became obvious that Sir Ken wasn’t aware of the technical issues he was battling against, a bit like watching Richard Madeley being unaware that Judy’s boobs had popped out during the tv awards (except less booby, nobody wanted it to stop and we all like Sir Ken). Then, just as everything settled down and we got used to it, an echoing feedback began to blast out of the speakers. Even Ken thought this was too much and he made some apologies and went off to sort it out. I wasn’t sure if he had gone off to switch Skype off and on again or if he had taken a broom to the ceiling to silence some neighbours. Sadly he never returned and we went and had an early coffee.
Soon we were back for Sir Terry Leahy to learn some tips on how to run a supermarket. We learnt about audacious goals, vision, customer satisfaction and most of all become number one. Again, very interesting, especially when he started to talk about his role in the redevelopment of Liverpool. I think this would have been a more pertinent focus for the whole speech as it incorperated all his themes set against a more complex context of meeting the full range of needs and desires of a city wide community for the good of the community, rather than meet the (in comparison) small needs of a customers shopping trolley for the good of the shareholder’s wallet. Still, an interesting perspective of corporate leadership and success.
Day one ended and I returned to the hotel to find that I hadn’t packed another pair of trousers, suddenly I remembered that one of Sir Terry Leahy’s targets had been to expand Tescos retail focus to beyond food so I popped out to the local tesco metro…but alas no trousers.
Hook, line and stinker?
As it’s half term and I am simultaneously getting away from work but trying to get on with it I have spent an unprecedented amount of time on Twitter and reading a mass of blogs. It’s been brilliant and in many cases extremely insightful. I have been immensely impressed and stirred by the very ‘giving’ nature of all the professionals who contribute high quality resources, ideas and thoughts to what is, in my mind, a very special online network of educators.
Sometimes I can’t tell what is more engaging: the ideas or the follow-on arguments that occur between followers. It’s all highly dramatic but I have yet to dip my tweet (urgh that sounds horribly euphemistic, sorry) into the choppy waters of a twitter argument. Not for fear of losing both the argument and followers (although I am highly precious and needy) but often because I can see both sides and the last thing I want is for both parties to gang up on me, accuse me of fence sitting and un-follow me (like I said, I am very precious and needy).
The reason why I often agree with both sides is probably partly due to the limitations of twitter’s 140 characters and that a good debate should contain a strong argument. What you get from this is a world of blacks and whites. Now although I like this as it challenges me to reflect on my own beliefs it occasionally feels, from the outside looking in, that it creates a sense of polarisation that could be dangerous.
I worry that as some of us can come across a little too dismissive of ideas and thoughts about how to teach, it may stop others giving such ideas a go. Teaching evolves constantly-not just the system and the fads but individuals. No one is teaching today the way they were two years/ten years/twenty years ago because along the way you picked up ideas and experiences and you learnt how to weave them in and out of what you do on a daily basis. You are probably not committed to one fixed approach that will last you for the rest of your career. Your principles and philosophy may not change but the nuts and bolts of what you actually do to have an impact on the lives of the people in your charge have to.
With that in mind here is the problem with the black and white approach to Twitter. As we are all on our own different paths at different stages what is totally useless to you may be of immense value to someone else. To therefore dismiss it as rubbish ‘for all’ is rather blinkered…even if you are saying so out of your experience.
As a good (outstanding…you might well think that but I couldn’t possibly comment) teacher, there are many things that I don’t have to do anymore. I haven’t, for example, got to sit and think about the success criteria in order to teach a Year 4 class about report writing. I’ve done it loads of times and really well and I have certain tricks up my sleeve that engages children and I know the success criteria like the back of my hand. I also know how to make sure they effectively use ‘Level 4’ elements of writing and how to place it all in the real world to make it purposeful and fun-I even wear a hat and everything.
The same cannot be said for lots of teachers around the country right now for lots of reasons: they’re just starting out, they’ve never taught Year 4, they’re not yet brilliant, Literacy is their weak point, their partner teacher always planned the literacy, etc. So, they will need to look at success criteria, marking ladders, planning documents, a range of resources, pick learning styles appropriate for those lessons, create targets…buy a hat. These are the hooks that are out there in the world of education that allow you to grab onto something tangible in order to teach a sequence of lessons effectively.
When you have been successful you throw the hooks that helped back into the water as you take on your next challenge to see if you get any future bites out of them. After a while they may not be as successful so you will find other hooks to use. Every now and then you’ll pick up a hook that you discarded long ago and find that it now works. And so it goes.
Any hook or process that allows an individual teacher to make sense of how to do the very difficult job of getting children to learn and gets them to be successful is fine by me. Use an approach, assess the impact, judge if it’s worth using again. Therefore when on Twitter these ideas get slammed, because they are being treated as if they are being touted as the only idea out there as opposed to something to try, I worry that it will put some people off from giving them a go.
Levelling ladders may be crude, Ken Robinson may be nothing but aspirational air, average point scores may detract from real teaching, kinaesthetic learning styles may be ineffective, planning may be a waste of time….for you. But for some they are the little hooks that will support them to get better in the setting they’re in.
So I don’t want to curb people’s passion for or against any ideas out there and I certainly don’t want to not read those interesting, thought provoking and often very funny black and white comments. But I hope that no one ever reads a 140 character long barbed comment and swallows it Hook, Line and Sinker.
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