Inspirational Teaching
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Well, my fabulous yr 11s are now well ensconced in various sixth forms and I admit that I miss them! However, the lovely R, mentioned several times before, particularly for his wonderful Dragons’ Den performance, got a double A*! I was absolutely ecstatic. He wasn’t the only one to achieve this, but he’s the one I have to admit, I was most pleased about, since he was so terrified when he first joined my class.
I’ve since been told by several members of that class that they thought I was really scary at first. I asked them why they believed that and for how long were they scared?
They told me that I wasn’t like the teachers they were used to having (apparently no one else climbs on chairs in Doc Martins to declaim Shakespeare or perform a random poem!) and that they were scared for approximately one lesson! So that’s all right then!
What is really satisfying however, is that since this class has gone on to the sixth form, the core members (other than R as he’s gone to another college) seek me out for chats, advice and opinions. In fact, I decided to run some voluntary seminars on assorted pieces of literature to widen the experience of those students studying English Lit for A Level. I thought that it would give them a good grounding for university. I offered these ad hoc sessions to both Yr 12 and Yr 13, but curiously enough, only the Yr 12 were interested, possibly because they are the core members of my Yr 11 of last year. So far we’ve had a fascinating debate on Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing) as a role model, Don John as a really pathetic villain, Iago (Othello) as the consumate villain and Desdemona – heroine or wimp? The next session is about Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens! Weird choice perhaps, but the point of these sessions is to encourage debate and to widen their literary experience. I do however, plan to look at some Chaucer soon! I enjoy these times with my students and I think they enjoy them too, as they were the ones who pushed for me to do them and they’re clearly not scared any more!
It’s a real joy to work with these incredibly bright and articulate young people (it would have been nice if R had been there, but you can’t have everything!) and it reminds me again why I do this job and why, at times, it has to be the most satisfying job in the world.
Today I had fun.
It probably shouldn’t have been fun, but it was.
The management at the school have decided to do what they call a ‘learning walk’. What this involves is members of the senior management team going into lessons for 10 to 20 minutes, observing, then
using OFSTED criteria, telling the teacher what they thought of the lesson. So yes, another observation.. Oh joy.
We had about a week’s warning, so in theory, much detailed planning should have happened.
We were told that they wanted to see an ‘average’ lesson and not to panic about it or make any special arrangements.
Well, my lesson was going to be with my new Yr 10s. It’s a fast pace group, but as yet, they are, of course, a little green and at the moment, getting used to their crazy, Doc Martin-wearing English teacher.
A few weeks ago, I decided, much against the grain, to try to follow the new rules regarding lessons and fit myself into a micromanaged box. I tried to follow, to the letter, a detailed lesson plan and ignore my natural instincts to keep the lessons fluid As you can imagine, that was an unbelievable disaster! I got the timings wrong and felt that the class hadn’t ‘got’ what I was trying to teach them.
So, this time, I decided to ignore the ‘powers that be’s’ desire for paint by numbers lessons, climb out of this box that I felt I was being pushed into and do what I do best. Teach.
The lesson was one I’ve taught before, involving telling the class a well-known story from the viewpoint of a character in the story. So for the first half hour or so, I was the Bad Fairy from Sleeping Beauty, expressing her chagrin at not being invited to the Princess’s christening party and justifying her subsequent behaviour.(See Narrative Perspective).
As every teacher is, I believe, a frustrated actor, I had great fun performing to my heart’s content. Once they twigged what I was doing, the kids were in hysterics, clearly wanting to see in what direction their weird new teacher would take the story. In fact, I follow the story quite closely (sort of!) I mean, it’s not too big a leap for the prince to carry a chain-saw is it?
By the time the member of the senior management team was ensconced at the back of the classroom, I was in full swing and the kids were joining in. Within minutes of my taking my bow (with the Bad Fairy escaping the wrath of the king by returning to her cosy little cottage made of gingerbread in the forest – yes, I know it’s not the same story, but that’s just part of the fun) the kids were coming up with ideas for their own narrative perspectives. They were hysterically funny and satisfyingly witty (I have high hopes of this lot following in the footsteps of my lovely Yr 11s from last year). I then watched the deputy head walk around the room talking to the kids, smiling broadly.
She then approached me and told me that it was a wonderful lesson, that the kids clearly enjoyed themselves, were totally engaged, understood what they needed to do and were passionate about English….
So it seems that following my instincts to make the lesson flow naturally and ignore that box had been a good move.
If , however, she’d asked to see my detailed plan for the lesson, that would have been another matter….I think I might have had to call upon the services of the Bad Fairy!
.
The results are out and my lovely Yr 11 did brilliantly!
They were a totally fab class and I miss them desperately. Knowing that I had a lesson with them used to make my day. The rest of the day could have been appalling, but if I knew that I had them, then it suddenly looked brighter
And joy of joys, the lovely R, (Time Travelling and Crossroads) who brought a wonderful camp humour into the lessons, achieved 2 A*s! Woohoo!! The wonderful A, a girl I’ve taught for 3 years and who has probably read more books than I have (!!) also got 2A*s.
Along with all the other amazing grades in that group, I was ecstatic to see these two especially, do so well. They deserved it, for not only working so damn hard, but also for making my life so much fun over the last two years!
But I won’t be teaching them again, R, because he’s gone to a sixth form college and A, because a strangely arbitrary decision was taken to not let me teach the class with her in, even though I was originally supposed to do it. This decision has left me oddly angry and strangely bereft and this, along with other things (Giving Up) makes me very uncertain where my future belongs. I feel like a dinosaur: my educational philosophy is strangely out of synch with modern ideology: jumping through hoops and making kids all fit into the same shape boxes seems to have taken over from educating them.
Very frustrating and SO wrong as one of the boys from my very successful Yr13 class said in a card he sent me in which he thanked me for the ‘open and relaxed lessons’ that gave him ‘the confidence to express’ his opinions. He also, very flatteringly, said that without me, he wouldn’t have got his A!
It’s students like him and R and A, who appreciated what I did for them, that make my choices so hard, but the decisions taken over the last few months and the impression that I get that there is an attempt to return teaching to the 1950s, is beginning to outweigh the love I have for my wonderful students.
It’s suggested that a meteor strike saw off the dinosaurs, I think that hoops and little boxes will see the end of this one.
At the weekend I discovered another example of what the tabloids call the ‘dumbing down’ of Shakespeare. A Manga version of Romeo and Juliet! How brilliant is that?
When I found this book (along with Manga versions of Macbeth, Hamlet, Midsummer Night’s Dream (Yes honestly!) I was ecstatic. What an absolutely stunning idea!
The book is a beautifully illustrated graphic novel in the Japanese Manga style, which I believe lends itself naturally to the dark violence of some of the Bard’s plays. It uses the original language, but, being a graphic novel, it is, of course a bit abridged, something with which I don’t have a problem.
Anyway, I bought the book, and clutching it tightly in my hot little hand, I took it to school, with the idea of getting the department interested in buying a few.
The reaction of most of my colleagues was actually surprising. They were horrified. They couldn’t believe that someone who goes into raptures over the Bard’s language could possibly find anything remotely acceptable in this ‘travesty’. They told me in no uncertain terms that they wouldn’t give it house room and that it was an insult to Shakespeare. That students need to read the original text.
I don’t have an argument with that. But what of those students who, even after years of careful teaching of ‘genuine’ Shakespeare, still leave school hating it and seeing it as irrelevant to anyone in the 21st century? How do we get them interested? It’s not by getting all po-faced about Will. It’s not about going on about the purity of the language and the deathless verse and all that. It’s about telling a story. It’s about getting the ‘groundlings’ to understand why Shakespeare was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Without grasping that basic fact, the beauty of the language is wasted. Dead words on a page.
The people who devised the Manga Shakespeare are to be applauded. The Romeo and Juliet is updated to modern day Japan, with the families of two rival gangs. It’s brilliant because it shows how the R and J story is timeless and crosses national and temporal divides. I can see disaffected teens, fed up with being told how great Will was, reading the graphic novels and getting a handle on the famous ‘deathless verse’, because all of a sudden the visuals make sense of the words. Ideally, this would make the ‘proper’ stuff more accessible because they will be able to see for themselves the relevance of Shakespeare and it will be de-mystified. It will, hopefully, open doors; get students who would normally find Will a complete turn-off, interested.
We need to stop treating Shakespeare as if he was sacrosanct, as if he was writing for the rarefied air of academia. He was a jobbing actor who wrote plays for a living. Not an intellectual snob.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Shakespeare. I love teaching Shakespeare. But there is absolutely no point if the students simply don’t get it. Which is why I believe the Manga Shakespeare is so brilliant. It’s a way in. I think it’s an inspired idea and I honestly believe that Will would approve. It’s Shakespeare for the groundlings, for the masses. What’s wrong with that?
Manga is part of youth culture. This is a way to make Shakespeare part of it too.
Today I want to give up.
After years of teaching, I got the feeling that not only have I been left behind, but I’m also a dinosaur.
The change in my feelings about teaching started with the departure of my old friend and colleague Irene (Out with the old, in with the new) then went on through different incidents (which I may write about some day) and cumulated with ‘new’ initiatives at school.
Like most experienced teachers who have been teaching for years, I know how to do it.
But apparently, I need to be monitored. I need to present the senior management with detailed ‘paint by numbers’ lesson plans for schemes of work. In other words, to tell them exactly what I’m going to do in every single lesson.
I’m perfectly happy to provide outline schemes telling them what I intend to do with a particular text, what essays I intend to set, how much time it will take (approximately), what issues I intend to cover and of course, what my objectives are. I have no intention of informing them what exactly I intend to do in every single lesson at any given time.
This is not me being awkward, despite what some colleagues believe, it’s me being honest. While I know with each topic what my objectives are, what I intend to do and how I intend to deliver it, there is no way I can tell anyone specifically what I will be doing in each lesson.
Because I don’t know.
I may begin by planning what will happen in a specific lesson, but I don’t actually know whether this is what will actually happen, because a lesson is, to me, a living thing. It is dynamic, it changes as it happens. The kids might ask a question that leads the lesson down a different route to the one planned. Or I might have a sudden brain wave how something might work better. This is not losing control over the lesson, it’s called being flexible.
Take this morning for example, I have a new mixed ability yr 9 class. They don’t get poetry but I have to teach them Other Cultures poems. This isn’t a problem as I’ve mentioned somewhere that I like teaching poetry. But this class struggles and I have to teach them the poem Limbo which I actually find quite challenging. It’s about slavery and although I’ve taught it many times, I knew that I had to change the way I teach it to this group. So, before I went into the class, I had a free lesson and I remembered that I had a copy of the film ‘Amazing Grace’ (about William Wilberforce), so I searched the film for an appropriate scene to try to get the class to understand the point of the poem. I found a particularly affecting scene when a freed slave explains to Wilberforce in graphic detail what was done to the slaves. So that was how I began the lesson. I showed them the scene, then used my usual Socratic method to discover how much the class understood. I was pleasantly surprised how much they had grasped.
The thing is, this was a last minute change of plan. It wouldn’t have been in my scheme of work as it wasn’t in my plan. But it worked and I have no doubt that it made the lesson much better as it made a difficult poem far more accessible to the students.
This happens all the time.
When I began teaching The Winter’s Tale to my sixth form, I had a lesson in which I intended to look at the language Leontes uses in the first acts. It developed into a discussion on the nature of madness and what paranoia is. It was wonderful. The students began to look at words and see evidence of what they’d discussed (paranoia), so what developed into a psychological study actually then became an analysis of language. Again, unplanned. But completely successful and totally valid.
My results have always been good and I believe that one of the reasons for this is because each of my lessons is a bit of an adventure. It keeps the class on their toes and keeps me fresh.
I was trained (when Noah was a lad in the seventies)at a time when teachers were trusted.
I know how to do my job but I don’t know how to jump through hoops and if the senior team feel that to be able to teach, one has to write detailed minute by minute plans, as without these, I am clearly incompetent, then it becomes very clear what my next step is to be.
It will break my heart.
On Friday I said good bye to my wonderful Yr11 class. It was their last lesson before study leave. The next time I see them it will be in the exam hall when they take their GCSEs.
It was a bitter-sweet hour.
We spent the first half doing some quick revision then came the white mice.
Yes, that’s right , white mice.
This is a tradition that I borrowed from a friend at university, who, when he was impressed by something you’d said, would clap you on the back and shout, “Hey, white mouse for effort there….!”
Strange, but true.
So I adopted this, and whenever someone in an examination class said something right, or clever, or just plain brilliant, I would call out, “OK, that’s definitely a white mouse for that..”
After the initial confusion, the students cottoned on and many a class observer or visitor from then on would be flummoxed by students demanding, “Come on Miss, that has to be worth at leas half a white mouse…!
So for the last lesson I brought in a box of white chocolate mice and began by chucking single mice at individual students accompanied by some ‘accolade’ such as: “Andy, white mouse for putting up with Adam for two years….” “Nat, for growing in confidence, have a white mouse…” “Aliyah, have a mouse for making sure that Shakespeare never dies …” and so on, until everyone had been thanked or praised. Then I just handed them out by the handful.
I then watched as they hugged each other, wrote in each other’s diaries and let each other know in various ways how much they liked each other.
I had a lump in my throat which became almost impossible to swallow when one girl, sobbing openly, came up to me and said, “I know I’m not supposed to, but it’s our last lesson and I want to hug you…”And she did. Which opened the floodgates. All of a sudden I had a queue of sobbing girls who wanted to hug me and tell me how much they’d miss me. Then came R, who said that if the girls could have a hug, then he wanted one too!
As they all trooped out, sucking on their mice(!) they were all desperately keen for me to go to their Leavers’ Prom that evening. So of course I had no choice.
It was amazing. Gone were the kids and in their place, was a bevy of assured, beautiful young women in fabulous evening gowns and slightly awkward young men in borrowed finery looking a little awed at the transformation of their ‘mates’ into elegant, sophisticated women.
I’m glad I went. I felt privileged to witness their rite of passage. I also felt proud – “my” kids looked and behaved brilliantly. And I couldn’t help feeling that I had some little part in the way they had turned out.
I can’t guarantee what will happen in the coming exam, but I am very hopeful. But what ever happens, they definitely all deserve my thanks for being a fabulous class…and of course, more white mice.
On Friday I said good bye to my wonderful Yr11 class. It was their last lesson before study leave. The next time I see them it will be in the exam hall when they take their GCSEs.
It was a bitter-sweet hour.
We spent the first half doing some quick revision then came the white mice.
Yes, that’s right , white mice.
This is a tradition that I borrowed from a friend at university, who, when he was impressed by something you’d said, would clap you on the back and shout, “Hey, white mouse for effort there….!”
Strange, but true.
So I adopted this, and whenever someone in an examination class said something right, or clever, or just plain brilliant, I would call out, “OK, that’s definitely a white mouse for that..”
After the initial confusion, the students cottoned on and many a class observer or visitor from then on would be flummoxed by students demanding, “Come on Miss, that has to be worth at leas half a white mouse…!
So for the last lesson I brought in a box of white chocolate mice and began by chucking single mice at individual students accompanied by some ‘accolade’ such as: “Andy, white mouse for putting up with Adam for two years….” “Nat, for growing in confidence, have a white mouse…” “Aliyah, have a mouse for making sure that Shakespeare never dies …” and so on, until everyone had been thanked or praised. Then I just handed them out by the handful.
I then watched as they hugged each other, wrote in each other’s diaries and let each other know in various ways how much they liked each other.
I had a lump in my throat which became almost impossible to swallow when one girl, sobbing openly, came up to me and said, “I know I’m not supposed to, but it’s our last lesson and I want to hug you…”And she did. Which opened the floodgates. All of a sudden I had a queue of sobbing girls who wanted to hug me and tell me how much they’d miss me. Then came R, who said that if the girls could have a hug, then he wanted one too!
As they all trooped out, sucking on their mice(!) they were all desperately keen for me to go to their Leavers’ Prom that evening. So of course I had no choice.
It was amazing. Gone were the kids and in their place, was a bevy of assured, beautiful young women in fabulous evening gowns and slightly awkward young men in borrowed finery looking a little awed at the transformation of their ‘mates’ into elegant, sophisticated women.
I’m glad I went. I felt privileged to witness their rite of passage. I also felt proud – “my” kids looked and behaved brilliantly. And I couldn’t help feeling that I had some little part in the way they had turned out.
I can’t guarantee what will happen in the coming exam, but I am very hopeful. But what ever happens, they definitely all deserve my thanks for being a fabulous class…and of course, more white mice.
It’s coursework moderation time and I, like every other English teacher in the country, am drowning in essays. So as I’m in the process of getting my Yr 11s to polish up their poetry comparison skills by looking at Other Cultures poems, it seemed like a good idea to do some peer marking.
Lesson one was to divide the class into small groups of not more than three students. I then told them to choose any two poems from the Other Cultures section of their Anthologies. They were then to spend the lesson brain-storming the two poems, making note of similarities and differences; looking at poetic devices and techniques and comparing themes.
The next lesson, I handed out sheets of A4 paper and told them to nominate one student from each group to be the scribe while the other members of the groups dictated to them what they wanted in the essays. This took two lessons. Then today, the fourth lesson of the sequence, I collected the completed essays then distributed them back to the class, ensuring that no group received their own work.
I then gave each group a copy of the mark scheme for poetry comparisons and asked them to mark the essays strictly according to the criteria given.
Some forty-five minutes later, I asked each group for the grade awarded and their justification for giving it, then asked them to read out what they believed was a good paragraph that demonstrated the reason for the given grade.
It was fascinating. They were really hard markers!
I then asked the class whether or not they agreed with the mark awarded, then gave them my opinion on the paragraphs chosen, either agreeing or disagreeing with the markers’ view. As it turned out, they were pretty accurate in their assessment, and as self-appointed moderator of the groups, I allowed the marks to stand.
What was useful in this exercise was that the students were forced to look for specific points in the essays then to understand exactly what constituted an A or A*(one essay was awarded the highest grade and when a sample was read out, the class agreed unanimously with the mark)or any of the other grades. They got to see what the difference between “recognising”, “understanding” and “analysing” poetic technique was and by the end of the lesson, most of the students could judge pretty accurately whether or not an essay made the grade.
The students worked their little socks off in this exercise, but then so did I. This isn’t a lesson in which a teacher can just sit down and let the kids get on with it. Quite the contrary. For all four of the lessons, I raced around between each group, discussing their ideas, then in the final lesson, discussing their opinions of the work that they were marking.
I found it an interesting exercise and the impression I got was that the students learned a lot, both from the initial three sessions when they shared ideas and from the marking exercise, where they learned to recognise analysis, something which, hopefully, they will remember in the coming exams and be able to put into practice.
It’s that time of year again: revision time. Woohoo!
It’s time we revisited poetry so I told my lovely Yr 11s that they had a week in which to prepare dramatic presentations of any poem they wanted.
I divided them up into pairs or threes (depending on friendship groups), gave them lesson time to brain storm and to try out their ideas on me, then left them to it.
This week, armed with my book of criteria and a pencil, I sat in a corner and let the games begin.
It was astonishing.
Each group had devised something unique.
One pair turned Browning’s “Laboratory” into a Jerry Springer show, with the crazy would-be murderess explaining her motives to ‘Jerry’ and the audience. Another, using “Education for Leisure” as a stimulus, had a meeting between a psychiatrist and a seriously scary psychopath. Then there was the gently melancholic reminiscences of a traumatised Iraq war veteran as he tried to explain to himself and his counsellor what killing was like (Thomas Hardy’s “The man he killed”)
Each performance was as inspired as the first, but the most chilling was two students standing over a ‘body bag’, purportedly the body of their child as they read a suicide note from their offspring then defended their actions as the ‘ghost’ of their child challenged their version of the truth (We remember your childhood well). For once, I could find nothing to say, I just put down my pencil and listened. It was awesome in the true meaning of the word.
I know my Yr 11 is a good group, but today I found out just how good.
If they can maintain that wonderful original way of thinking, that imagination and that skill, they will make brilliant adults.
At Christmas my head of department retired. It may seem selfish, but I was sad to see her go.
Irene, after the departure of head of special needs a couple of years ago (Thank You), was my last connection with the ‘old’ regime.
I’d known Irene for a long time and had worked with her before she was promoted to head of department after Kim’s (Even teachers cry) retirement.
Irene is a fiery haired Northerner who believes in calling a spade a bloody shovel. Blunt and bolshie, she created what I believe is a superb department.
The department is a singular one where every free moment is an impromptu inset session, where every member of the group shares ideas or concerns, be they professional or personal. Irene created this atmosphere of cooperation and trust by paying each member of the department the best compliment any teacher can receive: she trusted us. Not for her the set schemes of work carved in stone that every one would follow slavishly. No, what she did was decide, with us, what would be taught, and then she would let us get on with it, trusting in our professionalism that we knew what we were doing and that we would get the job done. And that well.
And of course, knowing that the responsibility lay with us, we got on with it. The result of this freedom is a cohesive department that achieves superb results, at all key stages.
Irene was a brilliant man-manager, and the respect and trust she showed us was repaid in spades.
Much as I admired Irene as a professional, I also liked her as a person.
We shared a past. Together we would moan about incompetence in other departments, the attitudes of the younger members of the department and the fact that yr 7 students were a bunch of annoying ankle biters! All good natured of course!
When my confidence was low for some reason or other and I felt that I was in the wrong job, it was Irene who would, after her initial reaction of ”You daft mare,” spend the next hour telling me how indispensable I was. If one of us did what she felt was something unwise, she would tell us what she thought in the privacy of her office, but defend us to the hilt in public.
With the students she acquired a reputation of having a temper that matched her hair, a reputation that was actually deliberately cultivated to create a specific effect and which was in fact, totally undeserved.. A threat to send a pupil to the head of English was enough to turn most stroppy students into meek, acquiescent model pupils and this delighted her. Watching Irene turn a nasty, foul mouthed, vicious student into an eager-to -please puppy was a joy! She was actually never really nasty, she just, as I said earlier, called a spade a bloody shovel. But then, she was also generous with praise. If a student did well, worked hard to achieve or even simply to behave, they would get a pat on the back that was worth more than fulsome admiration from anyone else. And of course praise works with adults too. After an observed lesson, no praise was greater than to have Irene say that she really enjoyed that lesson, that the kids were fully engaged and did I mind if she nicked my idea! Ultimate accolade! Even as an old hand at this job, it’s always good to be told that you’re good at what you do. She told me that my classes were always different, that she could always tell, when speaking to a student or reading an unknown pupil’s work if they were one of mine as they were always individual and had a distinctive sense of humour, and that she liked it. She told me that she liked the fact that I encouraged my classes to think, that my students would get good grades, not because I slavishly followed rules, but because I got them to argue with me. And it’s something she did too. She liked students to argue, to not accept that teacher was right simply because they’re teachers. She liked bolshie kids who argued with her, as long as they weren’t doing it just to be awkward.
When I walk through the head of department’s office now, it still seems strange not to see that mane of fiery hair. It’s strange not to see the raised eyebrow or hear the feigned long-suffering sigh at a particularly ‘witty’ remark made by one of her troops…
I know things must change.
But I don’t have to like it.