Education – Page 30 – frogphilp.com

Using words for the first time

I used the phrase ‘paradigm shift’ in my post ‘The lie of the leadership pyramid.’ It was the first time I had ever used the phrase in writing and I caught myself wondering if I really knew what it meant. I used it to mean a complete 180 change of perspective. I think that’s right but as I right this I’m off the gridin North Devon and have no way to check.

I think this happens quite often. I’m pretty sure that I understand something and so I go ahead and talk about it as if I’m 100% sure. As a teacher you get used to speaking with authority about stuff. It’s an authority I can get used to, rely upon or even become downright lazy with. But when it is challenged, I find myself in an interesting predicament. How do you explain what you’re not quite sure about?

Worse if no-one challenges you and you continue making the mistake that you first made.

It reminds me of the story of ‘hirsute’ man – which I’m not sure is urban myth or fact.

Apparently there was this bloke who used the word ‘hirsute’ to mean ‘therefore’. He would say things like “Hirsute, we can solve the problem by…” and “I am becoming rather thirsty, hirsute I will need another cup of coffee.”

Unfortunately ‘hirsute’ doesn’t mean ‘therefore’.

‘Hirsute’ means ‘hairy’.

When, he found this out, the man who was in his 40s was so mortified by his years of erroneous word-use he promptly killed himself.

A tragic tale, but one with a salient point for those of us who are prone to a high degree of barely accurate verbosity.

What film inspired your teaching?

Why Tampopo makes me a better teacher.

For those who don’t know, Tampopo is a Japanese film about a single mother who runs a Noodle bar and has to overcome many trials and tribulations to become the best bar in town. I think of it as a cross between the Food and Drink Show and Monty Python, with a hint of Western and ‘The A Team’ thrown in. Although I am sure that there are many better ways of describing it.

Anyway, here’s why it makes me a better teacher:

It links between food and transcendant experiences with ease – I think being able to rapidly ascend and descend Maslow’s heirarchy is a key to engaging children in education.
Not only do the bullies lose, but they make friends with the lonely child. That’s hope on a stick.
It demonstrates you can learn things from unlikely people.
The experts in it are young, old, male, female, rich and poor – the heart of the unconference.
It shows that the links between people are as important as the actual knowledge they hold.

So what film inspires you?

The lie that we can’t learn new attitudes.

Old dogs, new tricks

‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ is the old line, but there’s a consensus that it isn’t actually true. The actual statement may still stand, but I’m no dog trainer so couldn’t say for sure.

In humans though, it has been shown that a very high percentage of the brain’s ability to learn new things remains far into old age. We refer to adults as life-long learners. We have silver surfers and tweeters (or twits) in their 90s (the oldest died recently aged 104).

Old dogs, old attitudes

Learning is three things – knowledge, skills and attitudes. OK that’s a pretty broad statement, but I think those three words cover most of what we try to do in UK schools. I think we’re happy that new knowledge can be learnt at any age, and the ‘old dogs’ disproval would indicate that we’re also happy that new skills can be learnt at any age. However I think we’re not so assured about attitudes. In other words, old dogs are stuck with their old attitudes.

Unsure about attitudes

In fact if you check your own experience of school, I’m not too sure that we’re really sure how to change. influence or teach attitudes at all. What do we do? – we have a school ethos with some rules attached to it. We punish non-compliance and reward compliance. We may have other strategies such as circle time, but what proportion of the timetable do we really allocate to attitude shifting?

And what attitudes are we really teaching. It seems to me that for the most part, we rely on the educator in front of the children.

And at what age are children most likely to learn positive attitudes to life and learning? And at what age do they stop?

My teaching experience goes up to the age of 11, and I’ve certainly seen attitude change there. This year, a girl who had very little confidence in maths (yet high ability in English) turned it round to become a brilliant problem solver. The change was more down to a change in attitude rather than new skills she learned. I’m sure secondary colleagues also have stories where they have seen students’ attitudes completely change around.

Stuck with adults

I’m sure you’ve heard adults say things like “I can’t draw” or “I’m no good at maths.”

Somewhere along the way, we must get the idea that we’re stuck. We can’t improve our attitudes. We believe things like our intellience is fixed and we’ve reached our limits, or we can’t learn a new language because we just don’t think that way. It’s about the difference with being fixed and being flexible.

And if, as teachers, we pass on a fixed way of thinking to our children then they you will become stuck at some point in the future.

Our behaviour isn’t fixed. We can learn new attitudes.

The lie of the leadership pyramid.

So many people use the word ‘up’ when they talk about leadership. It is so much part of our language that even people who understand what leadership really is, still use the word ‘up’. I still use it, so this post is as much to me as anyone else.

Metaphors like ‘career ladder’ and ‘rat race’ don’t help. They indicate being ahead of other people – higher up than others.

So what do people mean when they say ‘I moved up into leadership’? Is it helpful to refer to leaders with expressions like ‘the great and the good’?

Of course there are some real ‘ups’ in leadership. Pay for one. There is a real financial pyramid – a few people earning incredible amounts at the top of the pyramid with progressively more earning less and less until you reach the bottom of the pyramid where most people earn less than the national average. I’ll write about this more in the lie of averages.

Money, I suspect, is a big factor in why we use the word ‘up’ so much in leadership. It leads us to the pyramid image. In most organisations there are one or two leaders at the top, maybe a few middle managers and then the ‘workers’. But is that the ideal way to be? The pyramid model is limited because a pyramid can’t grow any bigger unless you de- construct it and start again. That can be a lot of hard work, especially if you’re starting with a particularly large pyramid. Even in small pyramids, like my primary school for example, the pyramid can be hard to change if the people who make it up have a fixed concept of how everyone fits together. Change can feel painful, because it feels as though the pyramid is being torn apart and rebuilt each time something new is brought in.

However a paradigm shift can ease the pain.

What if we turn the pyramid upside down? Then it’s kind of like a bucket. Admittedly it’s a rather square cornered impractical bucket, and not one that would be very useful in my garden, but one that will serve as a metaphor for this paradigm shift I’m talking about.

Now we’ve got an upside down pyramid we can make it bigger. We can add a new layer to the top of it and presto it can hold more stuff. We can build capacity with ease just because we can think about it differently. I blogged about practical ways of building capacity here.

The job of the leader is key now. She/he is at the bottom of the upside-down pyramid – at the bottom of the bucket if you like. This leader has to hold all the links together. Foster a supportive network, encourage and motivate, spot the potential for new links, develop new leaders or ‘bucket builders’.

If anyone has any better metaphors for describing this ‘bucket’, please do leg me know.

The lie that you shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel.

“There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.” Have you ever said that? Or heard it said? While I agree with the sentiment behind it, I’m going to argue that to learn stuff, you do need to reinvent the wheel. Or at least refine it considerably.

The sentiment

I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. What people mean when they say “there’s no need to reinvent the wheel” is “there’s no point in working harder than you need to.” The wheel analogy is the wrong one for this sentiment

The actual wheel

The wheel itself, in its primitive form of logs rolling canoes down go the river, or indeed the giant stone monoliths to places like Stonehenge, was invented and reinvented at different times and different place across the globe.

It has been reinvented many times since: for chariots, carts, carriages, cars; as cogs, gears, cams, brakes, measuring devices, energy storage, recording media; it’s a symbol of life in Buddhism; it’s even a military manoeuvre.

The metaphorical wheel

The most frequent occasion that I hear the line ‘there’s no need to reinvent the wheel’ is in reference to planning. Planning is the lifeblood of good teaching, but teachers are desperate not to have to work too hard at it. I think there’s a whole raft of reasons for this, not least that nobody should have to work too hard at anything. Working too hard is the enemy of productivity. It is demotivating. There are other reasons too, such as the culture behind the planning – does it just tick boxes and ensure coverage, or does it serve the needs of the children and the teachers?

While planning should not be onerous or time-consuming to produce, it does need to be reinvented. This is because in order to take ownership over the planning, we need to re-categorise it into ways that make it meaningful for us. My planning will take on a different from from anyone reading this post, because we all think differently. Even if you are continuing the same classes, you’ll still need to reinvent parts, to make it more relevant, to keep up to date with new technology or merely to stop it from becoming tedious.

This is not to say we have to start from scratch – it is good to build on previous successes – and it is good to reinvent. It helps us innovate, create and develop.

So the next time I have a huge amount of planning to do, I will say to myself: “It is good to reinvent the wheel.”

Luke Skywalker and the Rebel pilots.

There’s that scene in Star Wars, A New Hope when Luke Skywalker and the other Rebel pilots are being briefed in the plans for attacking the Death Star. It looks like an impossible task. The Death Star is as big as a small moon and is bristling with defences. The Rebel pilots have tiny x-wing fighters, a bit like attacking a rhinocerous with butterflies.

To make matters worse, when the Rebel pilots have evaded the enemy tie fighters and the Death Star’s defences, they must fly into a narrow trench and hit a 2m wide target.

One of them points out that it is impossible.

But Luke Skywalker isn’t locked into the spiral of negative thought. He remembers his own abilities and experiences, declaring; “it’s no bigger than hitting a womp rat back home.” his confidence changes the mood and inspires hope. And guess what – they do it, they destroy the Death Star. Someone should make a film about it.

So the next time you’re weighed down by negativity and overwhelmed by the cynicism of others, when the task seems impossible and it looks like everyone is about to give in, remember your abilities and experience and be the one that speaks hope into the situation. You never know, you may just change something.

They may even make a film about it.

Mathematical graphics or play? Does it matter?

The focus of HEI day 3 at Edge Hill University was on the Early Years. Although the theme of the morning was developing children’s mathematics, much of the talk was about getting ‘play’ right. The implied assumption then is that if you get play right, children naturally develop mathematical graphics correctly… By the end of the day I had worked out that we had been treated to two of the top experts on Early Years education in the UK and possibly beyond. Much of their practice has informed recent government policy. The two in question were Maulfry Worthington and Elizabeth Curruthers. They have an website that explains much of their work called the Children’s Matehematics Network. Here’s my tweeted journey through their lectures, with a spot of explanation.
Tweet 1: ‘Early years experience should build on what children should know and can do’ #masthei3. What you be the connectivist equivalent?

Aside from the fact that this comment reveals I can’t spell when I’m typing fast, it struck me again that all current ‘best practice’ is based on constructivism. For those who aren’t sure, or who have forgotten what it is, it is pretty much summed up in the above statement. Constructivists would say that all education should be based on what children should know and can do. The seminal writers on constructivism were first Piaget and then Vygotsky, I’ve blogged about them recently when challenged to keep a diary of my daily teaching experiences. You can read those blogs here:

Constructivism has always been rivalled by behaviourism (and a little by cognitivism – but I am really unsure of what that one is about), but there is a new theory on the block – connectivism a concept defined by George Siemens in 2005. It is summed up for me by the statement ‘the pipe is more important than the contents of the pipe’ – it’s all about how we connect with each other as sources of knowledge, skills and attitudes – getting the connections right is more important than actually having the knowledge in your head.

So in my round about way I’m coming back to the question I asked – what would be equivalent statement about early years experience based upon a connectivist view point? ‘Early years experience should build on who the children know and how they relate to each other’? It’s a possibility. The thing is I’m not entirely a connectivist – I believe connectivism is the best theory to be applied for gaining knowledge, but I think constructivism is more appropriate for skills and behaviourism is the best way of describing how people pick up new attitudes. Mainly. I think. But that’s the pub theorist in me again.

Tweet 2: Maulfry at #masthei3 says there is no place for worksheets in foundation stage or KS1. Contentious? Wise? True also for KS2?

Maulfry (which, incidentally is the best name I’ve heard in a long time) Worthington came up with this statement at the end of her talk on mathematical graphics. It resulted from her explanation that chat children need to learn to represent maths in their own way first, developing from making sense of their own play, before being taught over-prescriptive ways of recording maths. She did go on to say that direct teaching of skills was important, but child-initiated play is to be a significant part of the day for early years children with teachers acting as gentle guides.

Tweet 3: Elizabeth Curruthers at #masthei3 says that her children’s centre has a postmodernist perspective. Prof. G. Lynch says there’s no such thing

Bizarrely, as I write this I’m going to stay with the inestimable Professer Lynch at his small family home in London. Something of an expert on culture, he once told me that post-modernism was a myth. I have no up to date knowledge myself on this front, but I’m sure he will educate me in a few hours time.
Tweet 4: Warnings about superficial play at #masthei3. Not just a prescribed roleplay area but plenty of materials and resources for free-choice.

Elizabeth’s lecture was more about the pedagogy of play, not so much about the theory. This was good for us teachers because we like to see how all these high-falutin educational theories are put into practice. She warned us not to limit play to a roleplay area, but not make it broader and messier. Messier because it requires putting the resources out and clearing them away again. In other words play that’s worth it is hard work (for the teachers).

Tweet 5: Support early maths development by timetabling big chunks of time for play with teachers supporting and guiding.

She actually specified an hour and a half in the morning and more again in the afternoon. That’s a lot of play.

Tweet 6: #masthei3 other good tips: real equipment (spirit level) tech for food (mixers), food room, growing number lines, numbers on trikes

This speaks for itself – make the play real (not plastic), use real things that the children would see at home, do stuff with things the children already know a lot about (like food) and develop it – don’t just stop your numberline at 10, give it space to grow over a few weeks. Number the trikes like racing cars and make the numbers get bigger as the year goes on ans the children get more confident with number. It’s the constructivism principle working out in practice.

Tweet 7: Pedagogy is to build on children’s interests at #masthei3. Could be one child, a group or sustained themes I’ve a period of weeks (should have said ‘over’)

Elizabeth gave an example of a non-English speaking family who ran a restaurant in the city they were in. On a home visit, the teacher was amused by the child treating her like a paying customer, waiting on her and writing down a series of marks and shapes that (to the child) indicated the order that she was going to take. Back in the nursery, the teacher gave that child a chance to carry out that roleplay further and involved other children in the play, so that one child’s graphics soon started influencing others.

Tweet 8: Adults who really listen to children and their play, then co-construct learning are Insiders vs edgers vs outsiders

Elizabeth defined three positions an adult can take to play – as an ‘insider’, an ‘outsider’ or someone on the edge of play. It seems obvious by now what position an adult should ideally take to make play worthwile – that of ‘insider’. I can’t remember much about the distinction between being an outsider and someone on the edge, because I was thinking about my own children and how important it is for me to be an insider in their play. So today we played with the Brio together for the first time in ages and I listened to them as they made up stories about the different trains going round the track. Then we proceeded to make high towers, only for the youngest to knock them down, but it was still fun. For me too!

Tweet 9: Adults interactions: scaffolding, sustained shared thinking, co-construction, participant observer. (bruner, blatchford, jordan)

Elizabeth stated some different ways that adults as insiders have been defined. She talked about the co-constructor being the most powerful. She went on to quote from someone else in tweet 10: ‘Acting and thinking with others drives learning and at the heart of the process is dialogue’ (Stephen 2010).
Tweet 11: Conversation thoughts at #masthei3. Talking more important than reading or listening for developing maths. ‘Talk time’ is a strategy to use.

Elizabeth defined what a good conversation looks like and played us a video of her nursery angaging in ‘talk time’ a freeflow activity where everybody starts together with some artifacts and stuff to talk about. Children can wander off or back as they pleas, but the teacher is there to guide and be a part of the conversations. The children know that that particular time and space is for talking. I’ve been wonbdering how I can structure that into my Year 6 class, but I’m not quite sure how to do it.
Tweet 12: Discussion at #masthei3. How do we encourage child-initiated learning beyond the early years?

One of the things that was becoming obvious to me was that adults were vital for child-initiated learning because they have to guide it. However as children get older, generally staffing levels are reduced, so there is often less space for child-initiated learning. I personally believe this is where technology comes into it’s own. If you look at the work of @deputymitchell, @oliverquinlan or even my own work with my CATsEYES film-makers (to name but a few), then it is clear that child-initiated learning can still exist for older children through the use of technology. Not that any of this is maths based per se. Not yet.
Tweet 13: Maulfry says she has never seen any evidence that worksheets help develop mathematical thinking.

OK I seem to be repeating old-ground here – but it is quite a contentious statement. Worksheets are such a time-saving device for teachers that is it really fair to say there is no place for them? Ideally I would like to see my school without them, but practically… It might take a few years.
Retweet 13: @timstirrup: who agrees? RT @frogphilp: Maulfry says she has never seen any evidence that worksheets help develop mathematical thinking.

Tim Stirrup retweeted this onto #mathchat and into his own network on Twitter. I’m yet to see any response from this, but it would be interesting to see it come up on the #mathchat forum sometime.
Tweet 14: Maulfry talks about language for thinking and language for communication at #masthei3. Reminds me of @ewanmcintosh’s talk to CCE back in Feb

Ewan McIntosh at the CCE conference in February had talked about a new language that children had to learn – the language of technology. He explained how it overlapped with the language for thinking and the language for communication. Myself, I’ve not really though too much about these areas, but just recognising that there is more than one seems important.
Tweet 15: Maulfry says that recording maths is not the emphasis at #masthei3. Mental methods and thinking are mor important

This backs up some of the earlier points. Just learning how to record maths without thinking is not successful.
Tweet 16: #masthei3 only 36% attain FSP point 8 in mathematical developing. Do some children ever get it?

This made me think back to the previous days lecture by Nick Dowrick when he said that 6% of children do not achieve a level 3 at KS2 and 40% of children do not get a C grade at GCSE. FSP point 8 reads ‘The child solves or attempts to solve problems and challenges by applying mathematical ideas and methods. The child explores problems such as missing numbers, grouping, sharing and estimation, and responds to questions such as ‘What could we try next?’ or ‘How shall we do it?’’. Do some children ever get this? Do all adults have it? I’m not sure.

Tweet 17: @timstirrup: @frogphilp the day sounds interesting, but where/what is #masthei3? I have tried many google searches with no luck.

I’m really gald that Tim stirrup was getting interested enogh in my tweets to ask where I was coming from. This programme is part of a two years Masters level study course that, if passed, should gain the participants 60 points towards a Masters degree. The programme came out of the Williams Review of maths in Primary Schools, which is a good read, I reckon. There are 10 HEI days with lectures given at Edge Hill University and the day I’m writing about was the third of them.

Tweet 18: I need a subject and a title to do with primary maths for my master level assignment (2500 words). Any ideas? #mathchat

It suddenly struck me that there’s a whole network out there who could give me some good ideas for an assignment – thanks if you’ve already made a suggestion – any more suggestions gratefully received.

Tweet 19: #masthei3 is over. On way back home with 2 Birmingham maths consultants. Next stop #gtauk…

Just a word for my consultants, Muriel and Ian -they have been marvellous. Not only did they gave me a lift back to Birmingham from Ormskirk, but they have also fully engaged with the course, had a go at some of the modules and been really positive about it. I’m sure everyone in the Birmingham group would agree they’ve done a cracking job.

Mathematical masters study for grumpy teachers

Perhaps spending the first days of your summer holiday at a 2 day conference on maths is not the perfect thing for many teachers. I have certainly heard some teachers expressing opinions other than perfect happiness today. In fact you could say that some of them are downright grumpy. I’ll proceed to explain why towards the end of the post, but first for the important bit – my learning.

I’ve experimented a little today. as I have attended lectures, rather than taking notes I have tweeted what I think have been the key points under the hashtag #mastHEI2 (that stands for Mathematical Specialist teacher Programme Higher Education Input Day 2). Now I’m going to go back over those tweets and see if I can explain the learning.

Tweet1: Ian Sugarman lectures on subitising. Introduces Mayan numbers.

In Ian’s lecture he introduced the concept of ‘subitising’, which is defined as: ‘Instantly recognizing the number of objects in a small group, without counting,‘ according to mathsisfun.com It is important because it is the step between counting and recalling number facts that leads to really confident calculation skills. He showed us how Mayan numbers use this concept by having up to 4 dots in their number system (apparently it’s hard to subitise more than 5). Mayan numbers are logically – a bit like Roman Numerals or indeed the Arabic number shapes that founded our own number signs: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.

It’s useful when you see groups of things. Take a group of 7 dots for example. Do you actually count each dot? Children do, when they are first starting out, but then they learn to do something else. At least most of them do. Some children seem to miss that bus and need a chance to catch it again.

Tweet 2: Ian Sugarman says we are aiming for automacity of recall at #mastHEI2

Of course what I meant to say was ‘automaticity’ but my fingers didn’t quite go fast enough. so we don’t just teach counting. We teach subitising too. Then children have a chance to have really quick recall of number facts – they can just see them in their minds eye, and eventually even turn that visual concept into an abstract one. Ian has written some software called ‘Numbergym‘ that helps develop this concept.

Tweet 3: Andy Tomkins talks about search strategies at #mastHEI2.

A little bit dry for me and stuff that I already knew, this short lecture covered ground such as Boolean operators and the * for making searches. He went into detail around academic searches for online journals and the like. However the journal that he experimented on, I subsequently found on Google Scholar a few moments later, so my question is – do universities still hold information that you can’t get hold off anywhere else? Or is everything accesible via the web? That is why I tweeted this: Tweet 4: excited about amount of academic info available through Edge Hill’s online databases – but are they rivalled by Google scholar?

Tweet 5: Sharon Pieroni speaks about Harvard Referencing at #mastHEI2 Got to get this right – don’t want to be accused of plagiarism..

So in a few months I have to write an assignment. I haven’t done that since 1996. This was a short lecture that reminded us of the basics of how to reference something and then include that reference in your bibliography.

Tweet 6: Nick Dowrick speaks about Every Child Counts at #mastHEI2 6% of KS2 children don’t achieve level 2. 40% don’t get C at GCSE. Hence ECC

It seems that some of our children just aren’t getting it in maths. Every Child Counts is a 1:1 intervention over the course of 3 months that tries to help 5, 6 and 7 year olds catch up. It is led by a well-trained specialist teacher and seems to be doing an excellent job. It’s ironic that with the first lecture being about the importance of subitising, this one referred to counting so much. I wonder if there will be an intervention programme called Every Child Subitises? It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Tweet 7: Numbers count programme focuses on lowest attaining children rather than targeting the children who are just behind.

‘Numbers count’ and ‘Every Child Counts’ are both terms that seem to be used interchangeably by the lecturer, Nick Dowrick, although there is probably some subtle difference that I didn’t quite get.

Tweet 8: Numbers count programme focuses on lowest attaining children rather than targeting the children who are just behind.

I felt this was important. So many of our interventions and foci in school are on those children that are just behind the average. If we could get them to achieve, then we would be making a significant difference to our performance figures with minimum effort. It was refreshing to hear someone talking about a meaningful intervention for the lowest achievers, and one that actually works too.

Tweet 9: Nick says ‘the floor is a natural place to do mathematics’ referring to the fact that many of our lowest achievers are kinesthetic learners and just need to get on with doing maths in their space and at their level. This leads on to Tweet 8: ECC isn’t filling the gaps in the wall, it’s knocking down the wall, re-laying the foundations and rebuilding the wall fr scratch I’ve met so many older children in primary schools who have holes in their conceptual understanding and they’re desperately trying to plug them or they have just given up. We need to recognise that for some children we need to start some of their concepts again from scratch. An example is my friend (whom I won’t name) who at the age of 24 was getting many subtractions wrong. For example trying to work out what he was doing 6 years ago, he would go 24-6 and then get 19. He did that because he counted the 24 when he counted backwards. I taught him to count the jumps (the gaps) not the numbers themselves and he got it. At what age should he have learnt this concept?

Tweet 10: ECC gain is over a year in just 3 months

The data from Every Child Counts is very encouraging. In just 3 months each child had made over a year’s progress, however: Tweet 11: ECC problem in Year 3 for lower attaining children who make only 3 months progress in 6 months. Is this consistent for all in Y3? indicates that all is not a complete bed of roses. Those children who had ECC intervention late (at the end of Year 2, when they were 7) slipped back, making only 3 months progress in 6 months when they got to year 3. Why? No-one yet knows. But the lecturer finished by saying that it could be down to an attitude change – first of all changing attitude to one of confidence and positivity by being part of the ECC program, then having to change attitude again when met by barriers of the broader curriculum experienced in the new Key Stage at Year 3. Tweet 12: Nick Dowrick at #mastHEI2 says a successful intervention should be indicated by a complete sea-change in the attitude of a child.

I finished my lecture-tweet extravaganza by attending the course rep meeting. I hadn’t intended to be a course rep, but the person who was doing it went on holiday and asked me to step in. This is where I experienced some of the grumpiness. Tweet 13: Now acting as Birmingham course rep for #mastHEI2. People disgruntled about workload, but hey, that’s Masters study. The thing is people were complaining that the course has demanded too much workload, but I think this is down to different levels of communication between the course, the LAs, the government who set the course up (who are no longer in power), the headteachers and the teachers – lots of different groups. I’ve got no personal frame of reference for how much study a third of a masters should be, and I suspect neither do many other teachers on the course.

After the meeting I bumped into a couple of teachers, who were beyond disgruntlement, or even grumpiness, one could even be said to have been angry, or even mildly furious. He said he had got nothing out of the day of any consequence at all.

“Subitising,” I could have said, “Strategies for engaging lower achievers”, even “Mayan numbers.” But no I just listened. Then he confessed to having got very drunk on the previous night and was worried about making his ferry to France the next day – both factors that may have affected his concentration and enjoyment of the day I suspect.

The Squirty Cream Assembly

School assemblies can make or break a day, week or even a term. They set the tone. They can bring schools together around a common purpose, engendering teamwork and a positive attitude to learning. Conversely they can be so dull as to lower expectation and turn subsequent lessons into non-learning events. I’m writing this entry in response to @andyross75 who’s after a good assembly to start off his first headship. I’m not suggesting this particular assembly is the answer, but if you have an alternative suggestion , get in touch with him on Twitter.

The squirty cream assembly begins with two tubes of squirty cream, a sloping surface with some kind of covering (I normally use an old roll of backing paper draped down a table that I’ve positioned at a jaunty angle so the assembled children can see what’s going on) and two game children.

You tell the children that they’re going to have two races. The first is to squirt the cream out on the table in an unbroken line from top to bottom. You can even mark a start and finish line if you want to. With suitable drama you then let the race commence and within seconds the children have squirted cream all over the table, preferably in the line that you described and with no breaks. You then declare one of the children a winner.

You the tell them that the second race is to get the cream back into the bottle. Without giving them time to think, you countdown and let them start trying to scrape the cream back into the tube they started with. Of course they can’t do it and you stop them after a suitable length of time and before too much mess is made.

After the drama has died down, you then tell the school that the cream is like words. It’s easy to say a whole load of words, but it’s difficult to get them back in your mouth.

Depending on the context you’re in, you can then take it in different ways – when I was new in one place I made the link to new people not knowing exactly what to say and sometimes saying things that didn’t fit with the way people talk and therefore being tolerant and forgiving of each other.

At a different time, when there had been a spate of unfortunate verbal bullying type events, I used the same assembly to raise the corporate awareness of thinking before you speak and not saying the kind of words that you would be ashamed of afterwards. The assembly went down very well in both instances.

If it’s right for your school, you can even make the link to a Bible verse or two – James chapter 3 verses 4-6 are pertinent. This worked for me in one school (a voluntary controlled church school), but has not been appropriate in my current school. There may be other relevant passages from faiths other than Christianity, but I do not know them myself – if anyone reading this does know bits of scripture concerning this subject from a range of different faiths, I would be very interested to find out more for the next time I use this assembly.

Albert Rosenfield and Compassion in ICT

“Now you listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchetman in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I’ll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method… is love.” Albert Rosenfield, Twin Peaks 1990.

I’ve been able to quote those words pretty accurately for the past twenty years but have only just made the link today between those words and the increasingly positive ICT environment at my current school. It took the help of a blog from @colport entitled ‘I am the ICT co-ordinator, not the technician‘ to do so.

The above blog mentions various twitter comments concerning the rather inept use of ICT by some ICT-illiterate teachers and the consequential effects on over-worked ICT co-ordinators. I too have experienced my fair share of inept ICT use – being urgently called to the other end of the school to rescue an ICT disastor only to find a button hasn’t been pressed or a power lead plugged in. What got me thinking though was that I seem to be experiencing far less of those issues now than I was a few years ago. But why?

Well let’s go through Albert’s words carefully:

1. Now you listen to me.

It has to be said that I am not only ICT co-ordinator, but also a senior leader in the school. That helps with getting things done and changing attitudes. It helps me because I am in the kind of position where people have to listen to me.

However I’ve been in less senior positions in the past and got people listening and my way of doing it is presenting irrefutable data about efficiency savings to governors and SLT meetings. For example, walking into a school and discovering that there was no follow up plans to support the £20000 the governors had invested on the new ICT system, I pointed out (using an interactive excel spreadsheet) that all that equipment would be broken or obselete within 5 years. Therefore the minimum maintenance cost would be 20% (i.e. £4000) per year without taking into account inflation or the need to buy newer better technologies in the future. It’s a powrful argument. Especially if you use different colours on Excel. And graphs.

While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchetman in the fight against violence.

OK it’s not violence I’m talking about now, although I would like to think that in the right context I would be a naysayer and a hatchetman in the fight against violence. I suppose my fight is against ICT apathy. The solution here is actually a range of solutions… Let me explain:

If you have always have the same response to each ICT problem then teachers will not develop. Sometimes I respond immediately, dash down and fix the problem. Other times I give them some suggestions and trouble shooting tips. Sometimes I’ll ask their line manager to sort it out (my fellow senior leaders are not as adept as I at ICT, but are refreshingly keen and give it a go). I try to be emotionally intelligent about my response – consider the person, the way they asked, the time of day, the impending nearness of any observed lesson, that sort of thing. However, I do find that I’m not near the top of the emotional intelligence league at my school. This could be something about being a bloke in a female-dominated environment but that’s another post for another day.

Following the event if it’s a one-off I may leave it, but if it is happening persistently I’ll sit down with the person and give them some top tips on trouble shooting. Incidently, years ago when I worked for a now-defunct engineering firm I was taught the three rules of fixing things in British engineering and I do find they genearrly work for Microsoft-based things:

Switch it off and switch it on again.
Switch it off go away and have coffee, then switch it on again.
Switch if off, kick it, then switch it on again.

I pride myself in taking a punch and I’ll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King.

I have a dream that one day all staff will be aspirational with their ICT use. That PCs will live side by side with Macs and that all staff will use the best tech that suits them to achieve the educational goals they have for their children.

No but seriously, the punch is that 2 minute dash to someone else’s room to fix a problem that leaves you that little bit unprepared for your next lesson – it’s that half-drunk cup of coffee at break or the five minutes you get home later that day because of the extra conversation you’ve had about effective ICT use. It’s worth it, because it’s building something bigger.

My concerns are global.

They are. I really do want the whole school to do well, not just my class. At some times of the year other classes are more important than mine – for example at the moment, teaching Year 6 pretty much solely revolves around the leaver’s production, whereas the Reception class are preparing for that important transition to national curriculum. Their learning is more important to the whole school than year 6’s interesting rendition of ‘Say Goodbye’ (by S Club 7)

I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation.

I am quite sarcastic as a person, but have found that with fixing stuff I need to curb my sarcasm. People respond better and they learn to do it for themselves. I still have bad days though and need to work on this.

The foundation of such a method… is love.

Love is quite a contentious word, so I prefer compassion. I must remember that some of my colleagues aren’t geeks. They don’t spend their time nailed to a blog or researching something new. I want the gap between my skills and their skills to narrow and marvellously on the way I can learn stuff from them (like how to be more emotionally intelligent for a start…)

Albert Rosenfield himself

The technician is crucial.

For those of you who don’t know Twin Peaks, Albert Rosenfield was the expert coroner / scientist type chap who supported Special Agent Dale Cooper’s investigations. He was first introduced as a rather abrasive and dismissive expert who has no sympathy for the paucity of knowledge of those who live out in the sticks. In fact he says at one point: “Oh yeah, well I’ve had about enough of morons and half wits, dolts, dunces, dullards and dumbbells… and you, you chowder-head yokel, you blithering hayseed. You’ve had enough of me?” That does slightly remind me of some ICT technicians I’ve met (some, mind – I’ve met loads of great ones). Anyway, as the series develops Albert becomes more and more a crucial part of the team, supporting the investigation and even becoming firm friends with the ‘yokel-sherrif’ he had once despised.

The parallel with our own ICT technician is very similar. He hs become a crucial part of our team. He is my chief buyer and adviser of the best tech to purchase. He has no fear of talking to the sometimes highly rigid LA ICT people, in fact he has led on the development of our Moodle platform, organising training and suggesting the best way to go forward at a strategic level. And that’s on top of the day-to-day operational stuff he does. We only buy him in for half a day a week too. Even more so than any interactions I have made with the staff over the last few years, it has been the interactions we have had with him that have reduced those annoying time-wasting ICT problems that we used to have. We still have them, but things are getting better, not worse.