Glass half-full

I am definitely more of a pessimist than an optimist. It means my self-publicity is not fully operational.

I am constantly surprised when parents say things like "I am so glad you are my daughter's teacher".

All this means I don't believe my own hype. I don't ever believe I am a good teacher. I can't describe anything I do as being inspirational.  I had a meeting with a member of senior management today and she asked me how things were going. All I could say were the bad things. 

Is this a good thing? Or is it possible to change?

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Location:United Kingdom

Why tweet?

I don't usually like to write blogs posts about twitter. It all gets a bit circular when your main audience for the blog are people you connect with via twitter. However, over the weekend I have been gradually feeling the need to put something in writing.

Why are we tweeting? Really, honestly, deep down, why do we feel the need to go on to social media and make a comment?

I started with the TES forums. I was looking for a new job and miserable in my current role. I was also quite lonely. So I would read the job hunting forums and pay and conditions. I then grew to know members of the community and they became my "friends". Then I registered for a facebook account. This type of social media I do like; it helps connect me with my family (who are far away) and the friends I don't see very often.

I am not sure why I moved to twitter. I tried it because my partner was using it, but I didn't like it. Then I decided to have another go and found cleverfiend and teachingofsci, who I recognised from the TES forums as helpful people. The community of science teachers and other teachers grew.

The twitter community is on the whole very positive and it is full of teachers who want to improve their practice. But I am a glass half empty sort of person and I find it hard sometimes to deal with those who seem to self-congratulate and self-publicise.

But am I doing that too? Am I one of the twitter users who does it for personal gain?

I hope not.

My aim is to connect science teachers and make science teaching the best it can be. This is on a personal level, school level, regional level and national level. Because I am a science teacher and believe in teaching balanced science to all English school children.

It is bigger than me.

Twitter allows me to connect with the people I need to even be able to start to reach my aim, but it isn't the only thing I do because I am a member of the science teacher body the ASE and that is much more important that retweeting the thoughts of someone I believe will give me a "leg up".

So today I look at two sets of hashtags. The one that I feel part of #asechat and think that yes, I am making a difference and supporting science teachers (as they are definitely supporting me). The hash tag is a community. The people there are tweeting to share what they know and add to the knowledge floating in the ether, and in the knowledge that when they need support the community will give back.

And I look at another and think, why tweet? No community, no support, not adding anything new to the educational knowledge of followers, nothing but sound bites being put into a computer database, (adding to global warming). A lot of contributors tweeting for the sake of self-promotion.

But then, I am missing the point. Twitter is a microblogging site. It is there to allow you to say. "I am at a cafe drinking coffee", and the teachers collaborating was never the intention.

When ideas and resources come back around...

Over the past few days I have been sorting my paper resources and last night I was doing some planning for the term ahead, thinking about what I would be teaching and looking through my "soft-copy" resources. I found quite a few that I like and posted them on twitter directly and via tumblr.



One reply that I received was from my partner. The conversation is above. This is true and I didn't mean to take credit for designing the resource, only physically printing and laminating it. Oops, sorry Richard.

I understand why Richard would be possessive of his resources. We have both been very happy to share our work with each other over the years. Between 2002 and 2005 his school (let's call it school B) re-wrote their key stage 3 units and between 2004 and 2007 a school I worked at (let's call it school D) re-wrote ours. A lot of Richard's resources ended up in my scheme of work.

In 2008 I moved to a new school (lets call that school C) with a different scheme, so I just shared my resources created in school D, with the department in the folder "Helen". So now three schools have access to Richard's resources. Although in school C they were only used by a few people as we had a far more "innovative" curriculum and resources. (For "innovative" read "poorly thought out and rushed").

Richard then didn't work in the science department of his school (B) for a couple years as the school cancelled key stage 3 science (and most other subjects) in favour of a whole school project based year 7 and 8. Richard's resources were no longer required and were lost.

In 2011 a teacher who was working with me at school C applied and was appointed as key stage 3 science coordinator at Richard's school. At the same time project based learning was scaled back and Richard was now required in the science department again to make up numbers for the timetable.

The teacher who moved from school C to school B was required to over-see the re-write of key stage 3 science and took with him the folder named "Helen" containing resources made by Richard. (As you can imagine as there was now a key stage 3 science course where there hadn't been one in the previous few years).

The first I know of it is when Richard is checking out the resources in the scheme of work written as an example by his new key stage 3 coordinator and he is being slightly rude about a resource made by me!

Then a colleague came to him asking for support with how to interpret and use a resource that has a great big code over the corner. (This code was added in school D by me, but in the corner not over the content of the resource - blame Word for that movement). The colleague did not realise that Richard was in fact the original author of this resource.




This whole post was inspired when I noticed that an ex-colleague from school C who had "favourited" one of my tweets with a photo of one of my resources from the aforementioned "Helen" folder.

While at school B they have and are re-using all the resources that Richard and I have created and collected over the years at school C they are not.

I think that the whole complicated blog post and story shows that you can never be sure where ideas come from and they might even just be there under your nose.

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Location:Rudgleigh Ave,,United Kingdom

Great, so now we all have to cheat!

I haven't read the ofqual report. I think that I will though!

However I am furious over the comments in the newspaper by the head of ofqual.

We did our controlled assessments under controlled conditions. Probably too controlled. But the work was 100% our students. The moderation report came back saying our marking was on target. Great!

But, when our results came back the controlled assessment grades were way down on the exam grades.

I noticed that the OCR gateway controlled assessment average grade was well below the average grade for the exams.

Reading Ms Stacey's comments: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/damning-report-reveals-gcse-marking-scandal-8274749.html I am
deeply upset.

I seems that me and my students have been punished because Ms Stacey and her colleagues at ofqual believe all schools, or very nearly all schools, were cheating in their controlled assessment.

What about those of us who didn't?

Some advice for Ms Stacey: find evidence of centres cheating and punish them. Do not force those of us who didn't cheat to cheat by telling us we are a minority and punishing us because our raw marks were lower. (and breath).

To say I am furious is understating it.


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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!