When the road narrows

This is another lesson from the Edgbaston Tunnel, which I first used as a metaphor way back in October 2016.

The rather narrow Edgbaston Tunnel

When I first cycled through the tunnel, I was shocked at how narrow it was – there are literally a few centimetres between your handlebars and the wall on one side and the fence on the other. But then after a few turns of the pedal,  maybe 30 metres or so, it seems to get easier.

This isn’t because you are getting used to the tunnel. No, the path widens by a significant few centimetres about half way through, making the second half of the journey far less hair-raising.

But that doesn’t hold true on the return journey. Then, you enter a seemingly vast space and you cycle along with confidence at good pace, until suddenly there is a narrowing of the path and you lurch into this claustrophobic questioning of will I crash or not… it’s really quite scary.

Sometimes the things we do are like that. We start them. They seem easy at first, but then something happens that we hadn’t expected and it makes us lose our confidence. Maybe we have to stop completely and walk slowly to the end. Maybe we carry on blithely and crash. Or maybe we are lucky enough to stay sweet and straight to the end of the tunnel.

What I’ve found is that with practise you can easily cycle through the Edgbaston Tunnel. And at a good pace too. The trick is that you have to keep looking at your destination – the end of the tunnel. don’t think about the wall, or the fence or the handlebars, or what your feet are doing. Let your body live in the moment and keep looking to the end of the journey. It’s a bit like life really.

#28daysofwriting Day 15

Focus on where you are going, not what you’re doing.

The rather narrow Edgbaston Tunnel
The rather narrow Edgbaston Tunnel

This is the Edgbaston Tunnel. It’s on my cycle route to work. The distance between the fence and the wall isn’t very large and on my rather clunky bike there are only a few centimetres to spare on either side. It would be easy to hit the wall or the fence as I ride through it.

I’ve found that if I keep focused on the end of the tunnel – if I keep my attention straight ahead it’s fine – I can get through with no problem. However, should I look down at my hands to see how far I am from crashing into the fence, I have to screech to a halt as my bike starts to wobble. Focusing on what I’m doing does not actually help me with what I’m doing. Strange that.

In teaching it’s easy to get distracted with the mechanics of the job. Will my lesson plan cut it? Is my voice control good enough? Have I thought about every nuance of classroom management to ensure that the lesson runs as smoothly as possible?

But actually it’s more healthy to keep the focus on where you are going – where do you want the children to be by the end of the lesson / week / term / year?

Of course practice is important. If I hadn’t practised riding my bike on wide paths I wouldn’t be able to ride through the narrow path that is Edgbaston Tunnel. But now I have sufficient skill to do it, focusing on my practice doesn’t help me as much as focusing on where I’m going.

One of the great things about my new job is that there is an implicit trust that I have the skills of teaching sufficient to do the job well. Now I can focus on where I am going with the children. I think too many schools try to refocus their teachers on the minutiae of their teaching when actually their teaching would be better served by focusing on the big picture of where they are going with their students.

And for that the key question is set by the ambition of the school – do we want our students to:

  • have great individual lessons in which progress can be demonstrated by the end of them?
  • have great units of work?
  • make great progress over an academic year?
  • do really well in a test?
  • become great citizens who can contribute to society?

Teachers who then are released into seeing the big picture will only by limited by which of the above questions is closest to the ethos of their school.

What I’m enjoying about my new school is that it is definitely the kind of school where the big picture is closest to how can we make our students great citizens who can contribute to society.

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