Misbehaviour and Disengagement

I read this tweet from Joe Bower, a Canadian teacher and it struck a cord with me.

I recall the start of my second year of teaching and the introduction of a new deputy head. I was working at an inner city school with very low GCSE results, lots of behaviour problems and poor leadership and management. During my first year the management had made it clear that any bad behaviour from students was because our lessons were not engaging enough. I had passed my NQT year and everyone was telling me good things, but I wasn't very confident that my teaching skills were good enough to "engage" the worst behaved students. On top of that ofsted were constantly being mentioned and I didn't feel that I could teach anything other than an unsatisfactory lesson due to the afore mentioned poor behaviour. Our school would go into special measures, which would be hell, and it would be my fault.

Up stepped our new deputy who used his first address to the staff to tell us all that the state of the school was because the teachers were not putting in the effort and he was appointed to sort us out! Not really a confidence booster.

The school was turned around. Not by this deputy head, but by a new building, new management team focusing in on student attainment in year 10 and 11 and a suitable curriculum that included vocational courses. An appropriate curriculum.

While I was working at this school there were members of staff who tried to put in place an appropriate curriculum. It was obvious to them that GCSEs were "failing" the students and they needed different courses and forms of assessment.

It was plain to us that the students were disengaged and badly behaved often because they couldn't access the curriculum and didn't have the skills to be successful. But our students were anything but stupid. They knew that they weren't doing very well, so didn't want to try for fear of failure.

I have a brilliant partner who is a teacher and has spent the last twelve years working in this school through difficult times for the school and difficult times for him. Through it all he has made it his mission to ensure that his students feel confident to learn and make progress. In recent years he has used APP as a tool to help students. I watched him during one difficult year where his timetable was made up of maths - a subject he doesn't have an O-level in - struggle to support two very challenging groups and improve their behaviour by increasing their confidence and therefore improving their engagement with their learning. He didn't do this by making lessons exciting or performing to them, but by helping them overcome academic difficulties.

If a student has behaviour problems it isn't always possible to solve all the problems they have. It is important to remember that there is no magic bullet. Just small steps.

ASE West of England Newsletter

I am not sure if this will make it to the ASE members in the West of England. Just in case it doesn't here is the issuu version:

Open publication - Free publishing - More ase

Difference between attainment and achievement

"attainment is related to standards, achievement to progress"

Thanks Linda! 

As physics - developing thinking skills

We have completed our first test and I have decided on an aim for the future iterations of my physics schemes of work. I must include more opportunities for the students to work on problems of the type they might encounter in an exam.

I use the teaching advancing physics resources, which do have problem solving activities. However we follow the edexcel specification, not the OCR advancing physics, so not everything is covered by the tap resources.

My students are good at wrote learning, so have picked up the formulae and facts well. However, as with many As students, they are struggling to workout how to answer questions.

I believe I need to help them visualise the problems and workout what relationships are needed to extract the answers. I am confident once the students have an idea of what they need to do they will be able to.

My students don't speak English to a technical level so I need to ensure my activities allow them to think internally without relying heavily on English. At least at first.

Another aim to add to my action plan.

Location:Quintrell Downs,United Kingdom

Head's Roundtable?

I will be very interested to see how long this interest lasts.

About 7 head teachers and 3 others are trying to set up their own body to represent their views. Their aim: "We are a non-party politcal group that wants to influence national education policymakers so that education policy is centered upon what is best for the learning of all children."

Perhaps the heads think they will be listened to? But I imagine that if they feel the need to set something like this up then they are not be listened to at the moment.

I hear that the government are not listening to any organisations or looking at the positives of English education. What can a few heads and 1000 followers on twitter achieve? Getting something trending on twitter does not fix the problem.

Do these heads genuinely have a shot at getting the ear of Gove and making a difference? Only time will tell. I do predict it will be difficult though.

Teachmeet Clevedon - what I found out

I rarely feel "inspired" or have the inclination to describe something as "inspirational". The verb and adjective are both overused in education in my opinion. I often feel like replying to someone who says "such and such is/was inspirational" and asking how? and why?

However, parts of teachmeet Clevedon 5 did inspire me. (I won't say everything did for the reason given above).

The first teachmeet I went to was also at Clevedon and it was less formal than 20th October. The presenters were varied quality and the transitions were less slick. I enjoyed it though, the atmosphere was overwhelmingly positive and that makes a change from some schools and re-energises you.

"Learning Rocks" however, was a very slick evening, the transistions between presentations were improved by having a running order and someone off screen queuing the presentations so your PowerPoint was ready for you as you arrived at the podium to begin your talk. Time limits for presentations were kept to close as possible to 5 minutes so that the evening ran to time and stayed good natured.

The slightly different format of the evening included a seminar slot between the key note and the presentations. 

I missed the keynote presentation by Vic Goddard from Passmore's school, the one featured in Educating Essex. The opinion in the room was that he spoke very well and many were enthused by what he had to say.

I did arrive in time for my seminar slot. I went to hear John Wells the Head Teacher of Clevedon School speak about the journey the school had been through. It is clear from the talk that John has a clear vision for the improvement of the school and he doesn't lose sight of the things that have gone before. Being someone who likes diagrams I liked the way that the improvement of the school could be represented as concentric circles showing the layers of pedagogy that have been introduced in the school. I do always wonder with these things if everything is as well embedded as the senior management say it is, but I liked that idea that pedagogy (and not curriculum change) was at the heart of the school improvement.

Then we moved onto the presentations. I had volunteered to do one on the 5Es of lesson planning. You can find the presentation elsewhere on this blog as well as other posts about them. On entering the hall I discovered I was 16th out of 17. A lot of time to get nervous!

Gavin Smart spoke first @gavinsmart about the use of an expert (his Grandad) talking to the class. The project went well and the students and his Grandad enjoyed it. This has given me confidence, because while I cannot skype my Grandad from my year 7 science class, I would like to get real scientists more involved in what we do at school. It is something on the back-burners at the moment, but a real aim.

Dave Gale spoke about the ultimate maths faculty - a meeting of like minded maths teachers who use a hashtag to communicate via twitter. Again, I was pleased to hear that and feel that we have that supportive community already built up and using the #asechat hastag. I hope other science teachers joining twitter can feel confident about joining in too.

I was inspired by Dave Stacey's presentation. He talked about re-booting his teaching. I can really empathise with that. I have been a better teacher in the past and I know how to be a better teacher, I just need to find the focus to do it and maintain it. It was great to hear from Dave that it is possible to improve your practice and you aren't stuck as the teacher you are at the moment for the rest of your career.

I always enjoy Kat Crocker's presentations about what you can do during tutor time and I have already used the Guardian Eyewitness site with my tutor group.

Alessio's presentation about priezi was not only entertaining but also thought-provoking. How can we use presentations during lessons to support thinking and not just a quick way of giving information. This is something I will consider during the holidays.

A lot of the presentations were about on-line ICT, which we just can't use. But that is what I like about teachmeets, there is something for everyone.

Great evening, and well done to Mark Anderson and the Clevedon Team.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Church Rd,Bristol,United Kingdom

When colleagues leave...

A fantastic colleague of mine is leaving today and I feel really sad. Usually I am not emotional about these things, perhaps it is my age but I think it might be due to the circumstances. She is leaving because her husband's job takes her to a new country and the whole family are to relocate.

When I move from a school it is because I am ready to leave and it means I am looking forward to the next steps in my teaching career. And the same has applied to people who leave my school; I am pleased for them as they are going to bigger and better things.

This is different. Not only is my friend and colleague moving to a distant continent, but I don't feel she reached her potential in our department or impacted on it the way that she might have done. It feels unfulfilled.

However, I wish her and her family well and hope that they have a smooth transition to their new lives.