Results

Posted on by
Reply

The best reaction to giving someone results is definitely “you’re joking.” This can be of the whole cohort, or individual students. “Read it again,” is also lovely. The traditional “YES” is also good to hear.

I am, of course, immensely proud of the individual students who have defied expectations and achieved awesome grades, leading our department to celebrate 95% A*-C grades, including 35% A*/A. I’ll blog more about what the department does throughout the year, but suffice it to say, for now: they are magic.

I’ve received a lot of misplaced congratulations. Lovely as it is, having been in a school a single year does not make these results mine.

The results are first and foremost the students’: an incredible group of young people who worked incredibly hard. Then their teachers, who have worked hard for five years to put the kids in this position. Then, I think, the Headteacher. These year 11s were also her first year 7 cohort as a new Head. The great education they have received has everything to do with the kind of school she has run and the expectations she has of the students. And of course my predecessor line manager, who teed the students up in the previous years, built a fantastic team and then supported me throughout this year.

As crucial as it is to acknowledge a job well done, we have to look forward. I’m a huge fan of American Charter Schools, some of which are operating in areas of nearly 100% of students on free school meals and sending whole cohorts of students to prestigious four year university courses. Closer to home, schools like King Solomon Academy, whose students achieved astonishing results which have the capacity to transform their life chances, provide an inspiration and benchmark for what we aspire to. Even 100% A*-C in a single subject would be a failure of sorts; students need to achieve Bs in a host of subjects in order to have the door to A-levels and thus top universities open to them. We have to learn from successful institutions and allow ourselves to dream big; to perhaps “fail” again, but to (hopefully) fail better.

fail better

Teaching memoirs

Posted on by
1

I love a good teaching memoir. During my first year in the classroom, I relied on the Teach for America memoirs (which are legion) to provide hope that I would prevail, despite current adversity. I’ve also included some organisational biographies and books of leaders which I’ve found especially inspiring.

1. Taught by America, Sarah Sentilles

This is the first Teach for America memoir I read. Sentilles joined TFA as a member of the 1995 corps and was sent to Compton, a city south of Los Angeles. Her beginning days as a teacher will sound comfortingly familiar I think:

I woke up before 5am each school day, made myself breakfast and packed a lunch, drove to the nearest copy shop to make copies for that day’s lesson, and then hightailed it to Compton. I taught thirty-six students all day, and then I cleaned my classroom, graded papers, planned the following day’s lessons, drove home, opened a can of something to eat for dinner, and practically fell into bed. I often cried myself to sleep. The next morning it started all over again.

If nothing else will, these American teachers will make you grateful for your school copier (even if there’s a huge queue after 7:30am and it jams five times a day). The issues of unsettled homes are writ large in this book: Sentilles contends with an ever-changing register of names as children leave and move into the area. Despite these struggles, there are some truly heart-warming moments in this book – although the ending can be hard to swallow if you’re a hardened teacher (I won’t give it away here).

2. Hands up! Oenone Crossley-Holland

This is the sole Teach First memoir of a participant I have been able to find (if you know of another please do let me know). Crossley-Holland’s placement school was alleged to be the one near my own placement, and a girls’ school as well; I thought I’d find plenty to learn from here. I wasn’t disappointed. The writer takes you through several “typical” days, and some of the challenges (both external and emotional) of working in a “Teach First” school. I found the style of the book warm and the writer extremely likeable. Her dialogue is convincing and the students warmly depicted, with a real sense of them as humans, often flawed by factors not of their own making, and eminently lovable.

3. Whatever it takes, Paul Tough 

This isn’t a memoir, but rather a biography – yet it is also informative of the challenges facing our students, and inspiring in one man’s quest for educational equality, crusading outside a classroom. Geoffrey Canada, a teacher by trade, took it upon himself to transform the life chances of children growing up in Harlem, creating the “Harlem Children’s Zone”, and Tough chronicles his movement in this book. This book is a must-read for any would-be education-reformers, as well as anyone with an interest in the backgrounds of the students they find in their classrooms. Depressingly, it also shows us how vast the issue of educational inequality is; at the same time, one might also conclude that more people with Canada’s dedication can do much to turn the tide.

4. The Best Job in the World, Vic Goddard

I’ve never tried to hide it: I am a massive, massive fan of Educating Essex (any international readers: this is a Channel 4 series which documents the year in the life of an exceptional school in Essex, England). Goddard, in the series, is seen in headteacher-guise; a very human headteacher, but still one with all the confidence such a role illuminates. His autobiography shows us that such certainty is created, not inborn, and Goddard takes us through the highs and lows of his career, whilst simultaneously repeating his rallying cry to those new to the profession: become a headteacher; it is the best job in the world. There is much to learn here, both about teaching, learning, behaviour management and, especially, leadership.

5. Teaching in the Terrordome, Heather Kirn Lanier 

This is another TFA memoir, one about an English teacher. It is suffused with genuine humility, such as Lanier’s retelling of her first lesson with her students, where she wants them to see reading as a door to new and undiscovered worlds:

‘See! It looks like a door!’ I close the cover to illustrate, then open it again. I nod. “A book is a door! Reading is a doorway into a new world!’ I raise my eyebrows, I smile. They stare back blankly. They show no signs that they are enthralled by the prospects of visiting new lands via literature. No music plays in the background, and I win no one over.

The sheer belief you have in your students is often met with complete and utter apathy at first; in Lanier’s disfunctional school in Baltimore, she overcomes challenges I could only imagine, and reveals more about the disfunctional American system than perhaps any other memoir I have read.

6. Work hard. Be nice. Jay Matthews

This is another biography of an organisation, this time KIPP: a chain of hugely successful charter schools which have gone on to inspire many of their UK counterparts. This is the story of Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, two of my heroes (and it is well worth following both on Twitter); of their initial experiences in the classroom (both were not born teaching prodigies, comfortingly) and their unstoppable drive to change education for the better for as many children as they could. The story is peppered with anecdotes which show the human and reflective side of the educators; my favourite is the one of the student who can’t finish her homework because she is addicted to television (something I sympathise with). Feinberg visits her home and asks the mother for the television set. She protests that it is their only one, and he responds:

That’s fine, but you tell me you are powerless to stop your daughter from watching it, so it seems to me the only way to make sure she doesn’t watch TV is to take the TV out of the house.

After the incident, Feinberg humbly admits he has overstepped the mark, yet there is something heroic in the anecdote I think we can all gain from.

7. Radical, Michelle Rhee

If ever there was a truly “Marmite” educational reformer, it has to be Michelle Rhee. She is known to many through her appearance in the documentary “Waiting for Superman”, wherein she becomes chancellor of schools in Washington D.C, said by some to be the most malfunctioning system in the states. Her central aim is to put students first; unlike my educational inspiration, Dr Irene Bishop (CBE; Superhead) who contends that to put students first you must look after your staff, Rhee often accomplishes this aim by firing “inadequate” heads and incentivising the best teachers financially. Although this sits uncomfortably with me, her invective against mediocrity is compelling. We must always be familiar with what we disagree with. And I don’t disagree with her aims, her intentions; only at times her method. Rhee’s style is powerful and she really takes you on her journey through education, as well as leaving you will an irrefutable call to arms.

This post is un-finishable; I have not explored There are No Children Here or In the Deep Heart’s Core, two of my very favourite books, as they mainly reiterate concerns above – but I would urge interested readers to read both; the first set in Chicago, the second Mississippi.

Finally: readers, please direct me to more teacher memoirs; share your favourites and, most importantly, go and write your own so I have more to read.

Self-evaluation: a year in review

Posted on by
Reply

For any of you who do not know, this has been my first year as Head of English. Having previously trained on the Teach First programme, I would still maintain that the first year of Teach First is the hardest. But this year has felt more like that year than I had expected it would.

I’ve become used to people asking me: “were you Head of English in your last school?” At the start of the year I heard this question several times a day. I saw it as a challenge, and felt defensive when explaining that I wasn’t. I see now that the questioners were nervous about their school; English (along with Maths) is a great driver of a school’s success, and they didn’t want some idiot at the helm of it. Now, when people ask me this, I see it more as an opportunity to be proud of what I have done in this first year, as it has less the tone of “and do you have any idea what you are doing?” and more with the tone of “and you have done it for a whole year without me yet asking if it was your first?”

I’m still worried that I’m also apparently Head of Media Studies, although you wouldn’t think it from the two fantastic Media Studies teachers in the department. They have run the subject together, and the synergy between them is absolutely gorgeous. Constantly co-planning, sometimes co-teaching, always refining what they are doing and turning (unprompted) all of their amazing lessons into wonderfully transferrable Schemes of Work, I know I have to do better by them next year.

The walk to and from school has never seemed more important. As a teacher, and especially as a trainee teacher, I took for granted being able to moan, whine and cry to those in my immediate vicinity. Making mistakes this year has often meant upsetting or inconveniencing those people, and so moaning, whining or crying to them would be particularly misjudged. I’ve taken the walking time to try to put the day in perspective, but too many times I have marched home in anger, or shlepped home in defeat.

It took me a long time to recover my vision, which had seemed crystal clear at the end of last year. In those first weeks and terms, I felt like I was stumbling from crisis to crisis without a long-term view. Two aspects helped me regain this: one was my line manager’s vision (more of which below), which seeped into my bones through constant repetition, and the other was blogging, taking assemblies and speaking at events, where I have been forced to clarify what I am doing and why.

I have been nothing but blessed in the incredible team of teachers who form my department and make it work. My overwhelming disappointment is that I have not harnessed their talents at too many points this year. As the year has gone on, however, we’ve started to move as a unit, which is the only way to make a department work. They have picked me up at my lowest points and been more lovely than they had to be to me throughout this year. Sharing an office with them means no day passes without true, belly-laughter and feeling awed by the generosity of humans, who are brilliant teachers, who give infinitely more to their students than any contract stipulates.

Apart from these crucial colleagues, I couldn’t have survived the year without:

  • Dance – I’ve made a core group of dance friends who have often picked me up after a hard day, made me laugh and talked through my many problems selflessly. I can also continue to attest to the necessity of having a hobby where you can lose yourself and become a completely different person, if only for a short time. This has been central to retaining my sanity.
  • Twitter – This is where I go to be inspired, and to also be challenged in the work I do – is my direction right? What are other people doing? Wow – other people are doing that? How can I do that? Is that better than this? I have also loved the warm exchanges I have had with so many countless Twitter-ers this year.
  • My own students – each of my classes have made this year easier for me. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I haven’t worried about them, because you always worry about your students, but I’ve never had such a reassuring bunch of classes. They have all ticked over, being quietly amazing, and have made my life as a teacher incredibly easy. My kids this year have believed I teach them well, even when I have had a million other priorities; they have been beautiful in lessons and have made incredible progress because they believed in themselves and worked very, very hard. I’m lucky to carry two of these classes forward to next year, and desperately sad to be losing my adorable year 7s, who have always made me laugh and smile.
  • My line manager – at times this year, too many times admittedly, I’ve been standing in the middle of a metaphorical road transfixed by oncoming headlights and he has gently pushed me in the right direction. He listens to all my ideas, and gently guides me towards the better ones; always refining, and challenging me to refine, my thinking. The clearest visionary I have met, he asks of everything: “is this the best thing to serve our children? Are we doing right by our children by doing this?”
  • My family – by which I mean my parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles – from near and afar their support and love has never meant more. They have always supported me, and their belief has helped me through the darkest of times.

Next week will be a calmer one, with around 50 year 6s at our summer school, and following that I am resolving to take a chunk of time off. Although already I am desperate to begin formulating plans and shaping ideas, I know from experience now that too little rest will undermine my best intentions. Happy Summer, teachers!

The “Summer Dip”: an assembly

Posted on by
1

The “Summer Dip”, or “Summer Slide”, is the term we use to refer to learning lost over the long summer break. It is a phenomenon almost every teacher, and many a parent, will be well aware of; however I wondered if students knew? Furthermore, I wondered if they knew that they could “beat the dip” by reading a few books? I decided to do some research, and from that research grew last week’s assemblies.

I began the assembly by re-capping my previous assembly on reading, boiling those ideas down to three points:

  1. Every book will teach you something – whether it is something about the world you live in, about you as a person, or just about the kind of books you do or don’t enjoy;
  2. Books give you access to emotions and experiences you’ve never had – so, you can go places you’ve never gone, and be people you’ll never be;
  3. Reading makes you smarter.

I recapped the National Literacy Trust’s table with the cold hard figures: of students who read every day, nearly a third were achieving above their expected little. Of students who never read, over a third were achieving below their expected level.

I then introduced the idea of the “Summer Dip”. Admittedly, most of my research is American-based, and so imagines a summer holiday which is, inconceivably I know, even longer than British schools’ ludicrously long holiday (6 weeks for any international readers out there). That said, I think obfuscating this worked well, as clearly students do lose learning over the summer, and my message wouldn’t have been as useful if I’d caveat-ed every statement to year 7 with “however, we should allow for the data being slightly unreliable because…” I find assemblies deal better in certainties.

That said, this document does uphold the evidence that children make the most progress during the Summer term, and the least in the Autumn term. Terrifyingly, it also tells us that “In reading, nearly 40% of children go backwards between the end of year 6 and the beginning of year 7,” though this of course may well be a by-product of the expectations of teachers and modes of assessment changing between primary and secondary school. Nonetheless, anecdotal evidence tell us that, for most teachers, the student who is comfortably on a 5c at the end of the year does not usually begin the following year on a level 5. The scary American research puts the learning lost for students at between 2.5 and 3 months. Obviously, I opted for the latter, asking students to imagine that everything learned between April and July would just… Disappear. Terrified faces looked back at me.

Now came the kicker: research, albeit research conducted in the states, has shown that reading as few as four books over the course of the summer can help to prevent the dreaded slide. Four books! Some students looked genuinely relieved, and I iterated my understanding that many of the students before me would read far more than four books over the course of the summer.

But how? I showed them a map of the libraries, and shared the link to their opening hours. I explained that for building your own library (I think I put it: “for books you can take home with you forever, and hug them and love them”), the Oxfam bookshop nearest us sold second hand books for only £2.50 each; and the (admittedly slightly evil) online seller Amazon sold books for one penny, meaning that including postage you could have a book of your own from their for £2.81.

I diverged for a couple of minutes from reading to share some ideas for staving off “achy hand syndrome” – you know, the first week back when you can’t even finish the date without it hurting (or for teachers, when the first set of books to mark takes an unreasonably long time).

But then back to reading.

I shared with students 5 of the books I’m hoping to read over the summer, which allowed me to refer to many of the reasons we choose books to read. I began with Plainsong, which a sixth former recommended to me. I moved onto The Edible Woman, which a parent governor had told me to read. I referred to Murakami’s After Dark, explaining that as someone who had never visited Japan, I loved the opportunity to walk Tokyo’s streets through Murakami’s prose. I mentioned Will Grayson, Will Grayson, as the book-du-jour my year 9s are all reading. And then poems by e.e. cummings, explaining that I need to read more poetry (and giving me the opportunity, in alluding to cummings’ peculiar views on punctuation, to share my favourite cummings quote: “since feeling is first/who pays any attention/to the syntax of things/will never wholly kiss you.”

To finish the assembly, I shared tailored recommendations for each year group for reading, which were also on a hand-out given to tutors. And for the final piece, I read the first page of one of those books to the students (some thing I have written about before and do weekly with my own classes). I will never grow used to the reverent silence of children when being read to. The power of the story is a beautiful thing.

And the results? So far, so promising. My own children bounced up to me, proudly saying they liked the assembly and would definitely be reading four books at least over the summer. I hoped as much, given they have also had me banging on about reading to them four to five times a week. What I love, though, is the students I don’t know coming to talk to me about reading. It allows me to know a much larger proportion of the student body. I even had a student say she was going to see if she could volunteer in her local library over the summer, which was especially wonderful, and another student who raced straight to the library to take out Wonder, the book I had read to year 7 from.

Summer Dip

What education means to me

Posted on by
5

I’m a huge fan of Chris Hildrew’s blog, and browsing around recently I stumbled over this post on his experience of education. It really inspired me, and caused me to write about what education means to me.

The story, as with so much of what makes me who I am, starts with my Mum. One of seven children, my Mum was the only one to end up in her local grammar school. And she didn’t even pass the eleven plus; the teachers at her new school just thought a mistake had been made when she got there and referred her on.

Grammar school was great for my Mum, and she has always spoken fondly of it. But there are times when her stories have a wistful tone: only one other girl in her year spoke with the same “Suffolk accent” my Mum had (the rest of her side of the family still sport amazing accents; Mum has since dampened hers greatly), and girls used to make fun of the council houses to the extent that my Mum was sometimes ashamed and avoided telling her classmates she lived in one.

At that school, it was discovered she had a huge talent for sport. A coach took her under his wing and opened up a world of opportunity for her through athletics. He even bought her a pair of spikes so she would be able to compete at a higher level, and invited her to dinner at his family’s house, where she experienced a whole different kind of life. Passing all her O-levels well, the teachers pleaded with my Mum to stay on and do her A-levels there. Mum, who had never been outside Suffolk, chose to join the army and to see the world.

She had some experiences in the army that make me feel very proud to be her daughter, and learned a lot – none of it examined, all of it priceless. But when it came to my education, I think she had started to feel like she wanted something different for me. On leaving the army, she found that the world was a very different place, and education was gaining a top billing. I remember my parents arguing when I was around 9 about how they’d be able (or not able) to pay for me to go to University one day. Hugging me after, I reassured Mum: “I’m not going to go to University.”

Soon after, Mum set about finding a way for me to get a better education. At my current school, I was sat at the back of my English class with a textbook, working through it, as the teachers didn’t seem to know what to do with me; in other lessons, like Science and Maths, I was pitifully behind, and tended to mess around to avoid doing the work.

Despite a difficult financial situation as a newly single mother, Mum found a way. She’d heard of Assisted Places, which would cover almost all the fees of a private school, and she was determined I would win one.

I sat an entrance exam for our local private school. I failed it. Something tells me my Mum intervened, and before you know it the Headmaster, David Kidd, had me in the school’s library looking through my paper with me.

“Your English was brilliant,” he told me, “but you’ve scored almost nothing on this Maths paper. What happened? Did you rush it?” I shrugged. He decided to take me through the questions I’d answered incorrectly.

“How about this one? What’s the perimeter of the field. How do you find out the perimeter?” I looked blankly back at him. I had literally never heard that word before. He explained to me, patiently and kindly, what it was, and I answered correctly.

He did that for every question I’d answered wrong, without once making me feel stupid or inadequate. It took a considerable length of time.

I’ll always be grateful for Mr Kidd. Years after I left the prep school, he’d greet me by name in passing. That day, he went to my Mum and told her: “she can do it, but she hasn’t been taught it.” He also put me in the top set for Maths. The level of belief in my potential is something I’m still coming to terms with. The woman who went on to teach me Maths for the next 5 years, who sat me at the front and made me focus, who told me off without raising her voice above a whisper, has inspired me hugely in my own teaching career (Mrs Meadows-Smith: I don’t know how I got an A, but I know it is 100% down to you).

The pitfalls of my own education, however, ran parallel to my Mum’s. I didn’t have siblings to feel estranged from, but I knew that my old friends viewed me differently, especially when my accent changed. Well-meaning friends from my new school who came to my house were often surprised at how small it was, just as I was equally astonished at the vastness of theirs. Although I made some of my best friends at school, I can’t help but feel there is a chasm between us – the only difference being their safety net, perhaps.

I have to stress: I was never made to feel different at school because of my background, either by teachers or by students. But I was, and I felt it keenly, and I wonder today if what I gained in academics I lost in feeling like an ill-fitting piece of a puzzle for so much of my time at secondary school. Like Chris Hildrew, I went on to study English at University; unlike Chris, it was not Oxford, though I sorely wanted it to be. I wanted everyone to see that my transformation was complete: I belonged in that elite world.

At university, I felt even more out of place; there didn’t seem to be anyone like me. Everyone who had gone to a private school didn’t have my financial concerns; everyone who had gone to a state school assumed my background was very different to theirs. I started to feel ashamed of where I had gone to school, as if I was somehow at university by virtue of my privilege – which is also exactly right. It was a privilege fought for, tooth and nail, by my ambitious Mother.

When I heard of Teach First, I knew what I had to do. Education had put me where I was: one amazing teacher had taken a shot on me, and I’d done well. I dreamed of a world where all children, regardless of background, go to a fantastic, local school, as wonderful as the one I attended. I wanted to make that a reality for everyone. We are all entitled to learn and achieve, and we are all entitled to fit in to both our school and our community.

Shapiro at the Sam Wanamaker

Posted on by
1

Having reflected last week at Wellington Festival on my lack of departmental emphasis on subject knowledge, a visit to one of the Globe’s Shakespeare at 450 lectures was well-timed to put my mind at ease. I think we are blessed in English departments across the land to be able to expand our subject knowledge at leisure; certainly, all the English teachers I have met read plentifully, visit theatres and yes – attend lectures.

Arriving, as is my wont, incredibly early, I realized too late that I was standing next to the man himself – a Brooklyn accent caught my ear, and before I knew it he was being whisked into the room. A fellow nerd looked over to me, and I saw my own ridiculous grin reflected in his. “He was right there!” we murmured to each other, in a life-affirming exchange that should warm the hearts of Shakespeare geeks everywhere.

And for the non-Shakespeare geeks, who is Shapiro? Well, he’s fast becoming the celebrity literary critic du jour. Shakespeare will always be in fashion, and Shapiro has maximized his influence through some blockbuster tomes (1599; Contested Will) as well as notable television appearances. Having seen Shapiro’s recent BBC documentary on The Duchess of Malfi, I was especially excited to view the inside of the Globe’s relatively new indoor theatre, the Sam Wanamaker.

Neither disappointed, though the seats were about as comfortable as you would expect from a theatre created by the Globe. James Shapiro came onto the stage to silence an excited applause with a single hand, before explaining how the evening would go: he had, he said, a lecture prepared; he didn’t want to give that to us. He said he fed off such audiences; he wanted to know what we were interested in and that would drive his scholarship. We could ask him any question, on the condition that we stood to ask it, and it “was actually a question, and not a statement with an inflection at the end.”

And there began an evening of audience members asking any random Shakespeare question, and Shapiro answering it. The audience contained a large American contingent, which is still perplexing me but for which I imagine there is an excellent reason. One questioner asked about the reception of history plays in the US as opposed to the UK; Shapiro notes that only Richard III had been staged with success in the USA. The reason? For the UK, the history plays “are never about the past” – they are about now. They tell us as much about the politics of today as they do the politics of the Jacobeans, or indeed of Bosworth Field. Shapiro went on to advocate the importance of relevant Shakespeare, noting he would like to see a production of King Lear referencing the segmenting of Iraq.

On considering alternative “Globe theatres” (apparently they are all over the world), he noted that in an “increasingly godless age”, these outdoor theatres provide a space for us to “celebrate communally.” He also remarked that we’ve probably got the spec wrong for the current Globe – rather than 100 feet, it was probably 75 feet in width; however, as “we’re all fatter now” he still believed it was an authentic experience.

Exploring the theatre-going audience, Shapiro did some magic maths (London: 200,000 people; capacity of theatre being 1,000 people; number of plays a day/week; discounting for elderly and infants) to show that everybody went to the theatre all the time. He described the Jacobeans as “the most educated theatrical audience ever.” Later stories of interest include Ulysses S. Grant’s being cast as Desdemona in an 1840s Texan production of Othello. Despite not going on to play the part, Shapiro mused over the question of his having so directly explored the “mixed” marriage prior to the civil war.

The central message of Shapiro was that “all of Shakespeare’s plays are infused with the politics of the time”, and that we do him most justice when we also infuse him with our current concerns and politics. Asking the question: how did he walk the political line to not be punished for his representations, Shapiro noted that Shakespeare’s preservation came from “asking questions and not giving answers.”

On the authorship controversy, Shapiro noted that for 99% of Shakespearean scholars it simply does not exist. He noted that his own book on it was actually about “why smart people think dumb things,” and shared his joy at rhetorically beating to a pulp the director of Anonymous at its premiere; also delighting in its box office disaster. Shapiro closed this conversation saying he had written this book to “take one for the team”, writing it so that Shakespeare scholars “don’t have to waste another minute” considering it.

Looking forward to his next book, 1606, he mentioned he had felt uneasy about the “Elizabethanisation” of the age – half of Shakespeare’s output is Jacobean, and yet there are not even any critically acclaimed biographies of this king – we know too little about him and his reign.

A final question pivoted him back to the night’s major issue: how did he feel about “modern vs period Shakespeare”? Shapiro warned against the “fetishization” of Shakespeare – concern with doublets and sword-fighting detracts from what we should be concerned with, which is the lines: “the plays speak not only to the distant past but also to Shakespeare’s moment and also to the moment being staged.” He ended with a call to arms to directors everywhere to be always expanding the number of people interested in Shakespeare and who accept him as a part of their lives.

After this tour de force, the audience left buzzing with enthusiasm about the conversation that had just occurred, for with an audience packed with scholars bowing to a great one, the humility of the speaker had been empowering. I noted as I left the theatre, unaccustomed as I am to venture forth on a weeknight, that Shapiro had moved to the foyer to continue the conversation with individuals who were still milling around. A living critical legend.

Wellington Festival

Posted on by
Reply

Having suffered from the genuine man flu all week, I certainly was not looking forward to a 5:40am wake-up call on a Saturday. Yet by the mid-morning I was already regretting not requesting a Friday off to have attended both days of the education extravaganza that is the Wellington Festival of Education. Here’s my round-up of the best Saturday I’ve had in months:

Arrival

Being met at the train station by a courtesy mini-van was a lovely touch, and crammed inside a school van really brought on some nostalgia. Upon entering the hallowed gates of Wellington College, however, it was clear that this was schooling from a different planet: it was like entering some kind of National Trust facility; all manicured lawns and ancient turrets. A few friendly chats as we signed in assured me this would be one of those “share and have the chat” days. The relaxed atmosphere, strengthened by hay bales and plentiful coffee stands, made it feel more like a day off than I had expected.

Session 1: David Starbuck: Growing a love of learning in your school

Mocked mercilessly by my friends for insisting we arrive super-early for this session, I watched as the room filled to standing room only. I had really wanted to attend this session, as I’m a fully paid up member of the Mindset club; however much of the session was explaining what mindset was rather than how to grow it on a whole school level. If nothing else, though, the slick delivery of this engaging session assured me that sessions like this do help to convert teachers, and really – you have to get the teachers first. Starbuck was also good enough to provide some interesting resources from his own school on this topic, which I greatly appreciated.

Session 2: Alex Quigley: Twilight or Middlemarch?

I think this was the session I was most looking forward to. I’ve followed Alex’s blog religiously and been very inspired and influenced by his thoughts, yet never met him. This session was moderately interactive, but mostly Alex shared his new KS3 curriculum and the thinking behind it. Even though I’m sure I’ve seen it on his blog before, there was something about it up on a big screen that made me just think: wow. This is an inspiring curriculum. He explored some of the tensions in creating a curriculum: what makes a piece of literature “great”? How can we practically engage with literature in the limited classroom time we have? How can we foster subject knowledge in our departments? I especially liked such gems as teaching spelling through stories, teaching “She Stoops to Conquer” to year 8 to explore comedy, and the four threshold concept AOs – reading about this hadn’t convinced me, but in person (and again that massive screen) I really got it, and that is the beauty of hearing people talk about their ideas rather than just reading about them.

Lamenting after that I was hugely jealous of Quigley’s curriculum, a friend said: “just steal it.” I sighed. The thing isn’t actually the curriculum itself; it’s the deep knowledge he has of his school, the excellent relationships within a motivated department, and the skill he has in leading people to consensus that has resulted in this curriculum. More than anything, I felt like this was a curriculum made by a team, and you can’t just “steal it” and expect it to work. Alex reminded me I have far still to go in moulding a department.

Session 3: Kris Boulton: How a codified body of knowledge could make teaching a profession

I won’t hide that I really really like Kris as a human being, so my view on this session may well be biased. Beginning with the awesome words: “I’m just a teacher”, he proceeded to wow the room with his confidence and well-thought-out schemes. He began by pointing out that the very fact that there is a debate over whether teaching is a profession undermines it as a profession. The decision to come at the argument from the perspective of a parent of a child was masterful; we must always keep our key stakeholders at the forefront of any thinking we do on our profession. Through his talk, I was brought back to my first fretful year of teaching, not quite knowing what to teach or how – as Joe Kirby mentioned later, you study English at university, but you’re not teaching Foucault; you’re teaching how to read sometimes. A degree is certainly not enough.

One of the highlights of this session for me was the questioner who brought up sharing and developing subject knowledge in department meetings, something I have embarrassingly never even considered doing but will now be pursuing in full force (especially as my department adore English and all read plentifully in their free time – there is a vast well of untapped knowledge there to share!).

Session 4: Geoff Barton: The Habits of Literacy

 Mr Barton is the Headteacher of a wonderful school in my hometown, and is also a bit of a local (and increasingly national) teacher celebrity – I knew I would have to call into his session, if only to tell my Mum (a huge fan of his frequent columns in the Bury Free Press – bastion of local news). Barton began by exploring the word rich/word poor dichotomy, and explaining we needed to “make the implicit explicit” in order to help the latter develop the skills of the former. He also noted “language carries power”, and it is of course our duty as teachers to ensure this power is more fairly spread. He moved on to share some useful strategies: ask questions and give students a chance to “orally rehearse” their answers, explicitly teach students how to make their writing “not boring”, share great examples of great writing and talk about what makes them great, demonstrate the process of writing in all its messiness (I felt for the first time superior and not ashamed of my board-writing: so messy as to be almost-but-not-quite illegible), and naturalise the process of reading.

To say I was inspired is an understatement: at the close of this talk, my close friend both agreed we needed to quit teaching because we’d never, ever be this good. (After lunch we had cheered up and resolved to just try a bit harder.)

Session 5: Joe Kirby and Katie Ashford: Our School System is Unjust

Again here, I am going to flag up a severe case of confirmation bias: I am entirely on board with what Katie and Joe said on this front. This session was beautifully engineered, with Katie and Joe tag-teaming perfectly, and again starting with the children. The premise of this talk is that students from wealthier backgrounds have a double-advantage: they are supported at home to be school ready, and then go to better schools. There were some strong words about the training provided by Teach First, which didn’t surprise me but did interest me – on being asked as a block of audience “do you think Teach First prepared you as well as possible to start teaching?” I was too shy to be the only person putting up my hand, but I definitely should have. Admittedly, I did try to supplement the training by reading a lot of books (as both Katie and Joe did, I’m sure), but part of me feels that the only way to be a great teacher is to do it a few hundred times. Yet Joe’s argument against this might be that children are too important for us to try, fail and reflect – we must get it right the first time around for them. Hard to argue with that.

The conversation segued into some exploration of what texts to teach – Joe mentioned being told to teach Cirque du Freak, and rebelling in year 2 to teach Oliver Twist instead. I empathise with this, as similarly I was uninspired in my first year (I might even have taught Skellig, but I’ve blocked that from living memory) and went on the following year to photocopy the entirety of Animal Farm in a desperate bid to be a better teacher. I’d actually argue it’s easier to teach richer texts – have you tried analyzing the language in the AQA GCSE language paper? There’s nothing there.

Session 6: Gary Wilson: Boys will be brilliant

You might know that I have only ever taught in girls’ schools, so my attendance at this session was part of an effort to up-skill myself in the other. Wilson began by noting that Scandinavia is the only place in the developed world where boys achieve on a par with girls, which is of course shocking. Noting that only a barely believable 4% of the teaching profession is male and under 30 (and the majority of those in secondary schools), Wilson remarked that we cannot wait for male teachers to join en masse and lead by example. Explaining how he had taken a group of “at risk” boys and engaged them in peer mentoring in local primary schools – but cooking, reading and dancing with the primary school boys – Wilson heightened my awareness in the other part of schooling – we’re not only there to get results. We have a greater duty to these children. Much of what Wilson said concerned combating sexism and labeling of “troubled” boys, and made a lot of sense.

Other highlights:

  • Reuniting with an unexpectedly large crew of teachers from my last school, and remembering why I loved working with them so much.
  • Meeting my first Leadership Development Officer (Teach First Mum) again, and her telling me I hadn’t changed (“at all”).
  • The Mr Whippy van at lunchtime.

Embassy Adventure

Posted on by
1

Receiving an email from my ex-Leadership Development Office (Teach First speak for your mentor over the two year programme) is always a delight; however, during half term I received a message unlike any other. The email explained that Teach First and Teach for All (a partner organization which umbrellas all the “Teach for” set-ups globally) were running a joint event at the American Embassy in London, and they were looking for someone to come and talk about education from a teacher’s perspective.

Now, I talk about education so much that the lady who does my eyebrows spent our last session trying to convince me to come and set up a school in her home country with her. But the prospect of something so immensely scary as this made me pause.

Then I remembered: I’m Jo. I do scary things. This has to be my new tagline, as, admittedly easily scared, this year I have done more scary things than you could shake any stick at. I’m basically walking around, continually petrified.

I arrived at the Embassy in good time, and soon a group of attendees and I were waiting patiently to go through security. Nerves had taken me over, and I struggled through polite conversation with some extraordinarily fabulous people. I would like to apologise to all of those people.

While we watched on, the almighty Wendy Kopp (founder of Teach for America and a massive idol of mine) waltzed effortlessly in. The woman has power.

Eventually in, after the Ambassador had charmed us all with some informal quips (none of which I remember due to being a puddle on the floor), Wendy stood up and told the story of Teach for America and Teach for All. Shaheen Mistri, the CEO of Teach for India, spoke next. It is safe to say 1. I was in extraordinary company, and 2. I was in no way cognizant of what was going on. After an awkward pause, I realized that it was my turn to speak. I was meant to be representing the “teacher voice.” But would I have a voice? My only hope was to not entirely embarrass myself.

I began by exploring the critical difference in outlook embedded by the “Teach” organizations. Though this is not an attitude exclusive to teachers trained in this way, I am not sure other training routes prioritise and indeed dogmatise this value to the same extent; that is that all children, regardless of background, have the potential to achieve. And I began by recounting a conversation with a colleague which ended with them asserting of a student: “they’re just not smart.” I find this a dangerous comment with the capability of writing off potential, and argued that instead of focusing on targets, statistics and expected progress, we needed to change the conversation to explore what measures we could put into place to help children achieve; what more we could do.

Keen to not cover up the depths of my ineffective first few weeks (months? Terms?) of teaching, I reminisced on my first “tricky” class.

In my first year as a teacher in an inner city school in one of the most deprived areas of London, my year 10 set 5 class taught me a lot about resilience. Our first lesson together started well. I even had them packed up, standing behind their chairs, and dismissed in an orderly manner. It was the Teaching Assistant who let me know that I had sent them off 10 minutes too early. Once they had clambered back to me, trust in my capability to even tell the time shattered, the uphill struggle began.

In the two years I taught this class, I grew to love each student dearly; despite some difficult interludes, there is not a single student I don’t think of fondly. They were patient with me, they who should have been least patient because most in need of decent teaching.

After two years with them, I wasn’t sure I’d actually taught them anything. I wasn’t sure I’d done all I could. I certainly hadn’t done all they deserved of a teacher. Yes, I’d marked books and planned lessons and delivered intervention; but after a difficult exam (the one with the “radio script” – my poor confused children, and equally I, had no idea what to do with this) and results’ day morning’s news that English results across the country were down, I was not hopeful.

The class did themselves proud. In that year our English department achieved the phenomenal result of 94% of students achieving an A*-C in English. But what made me even more proud were the individuals in my set 5. One student, who begged me to sit the higher paper, had achieved a B grade despite being entered for foundation. And two students, Roselyn and Rosina, both on track for D grades according to their “expected progress”, left with an A grade each in English. Those students, with their hard work, their continual effort and their refusal to give up, I hope provided a valuable lesson for every other set 5 student in years to come: just because they are in set 5 doesn’t mean they can’t achieve.

For me, that moment was humbling. I had predicted Rosina an A; I knew she would achieve it (though perhaps not that doom-ridden morning). But Roselyn? I predicted her a B. I didn’t believe an A grade could be possible. Those two taught me I should never put a cap on the ambitions I have for my students.

When I was invited by Teach for All to their Chicago conference in 2012, not only was I made more aware of the multiple challenges facing teachers around the globe: of teachers in Pakistan operating without tables and chairs; of teachers in India pleading with parents to let 11 year old girls attend school after it had been decided that their place was in the home.

I was also taken to visit Charter Schools, each containing powerhouse teachers who were quietly changing lives. Every day my expectations of what was possible were shattered. At Gary Comer College Prep, with 94% of students on free or reduced lunches, an average incoming 9th grader on a 5th or 6th grade level, and a proportion being unable to read or write, by the time of their graduation from the school 100% had gained acceptance to a 4 year college course. 100%. Like Roselyn and Rosina, it was humbling; and like with Roselyn and Rosina sometimes you have to see it to believe it.

After three years in my Teach First placement school, I interviewed for a Head of Department role in a school serving a deprived community in North London, and I spoke of my belief in the possibility of all students achieving at least a C grade in English. 100%. I wondered if this would be seen as wide-eyed naivety. But there was a wonderful moment when the deputy head called me up to offer me the role, saying that he too was a Teach Firster, and he was excited that together we could try to achieve this.

As Head of English, I have been privy to much more information about the lives of the children we are responsible for, and some of that information is heart-breaking. Yet it cannot break us.

And this was my rallying cry: every barrier our students face must make us more tenacious for their success. I know that success against the odds is more than just words because I have seen it; I know that with hard work, resilience and that belief that every child can succeed, it is a reality.

Teach First is a contentious training route, and I don’t wish to debate its efficacy or ultimate value; I only speak from personal experience. I couldn’t have asked for more from them as an organization, as a trainer, as a supporter of teachers throughout their career. I have received countless opportunities through them, but more importantly that that, I fully believe that my experience has irreversibly changed me. I certainly did not expect to be teaching beyond two years when I signed up.

I know that there are many young people around the country about to embark on their Teach First “journeys”. It will be hard. Oh, so hard. I hope they know that change is possible, gruelingly hard, but possible. No – probable. These are children with a well of potential. We can never forget that. 

The American Greats

Posted on by
1

It was with a heavy heart that I saw exam boards wave goodbye to American literature last week. Oh, I know, it’s “literature from other cultures,” but, to be frank, I’ve only ever taught the American contingent of that qualifier, and oh – how great it was.

The government has strenuously denied having “banned” American favourites, such as Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird, from our teaching; yet it cannot be escaped that the new categories for study required from students do not admit for these great texts to be taught. For all the hand-wringing and outcry at exam boards, wondering why they hadn’t been included in surplus, we must also consider: the exams will be harder. They will require different skills, such as navigating in a closed-text scenario. The exam board to direct teachers to teach more texts would not be one chosen by schools with one eye on their standing in the new, and again more rigorous, league tables.

So here we are. And as all the beautiful blogs I have read on this topic have expressed the views I would tend to share in (see below for links), I’ve decided to simply give the American Greats the airing they deserve, never to be taught in an American Literature GCSE coming to no school near you.

Arthur Miller

Is Miller the American genius? This was the question running through my mind as I watched the Young Vic’s astonishing interpretation of A View from the Bridge last Saturday. For a play described by many as “Greek” in its core themes, it resonated effortlessly. Only an American playwright, though, could so skillfully tap into ideas of identity and acceptance in the era of mass emigration; the wistfulness and disgust at the homeland; the rational and irrational behind romantic love. Miller’s Greek can be seen from his exploration of such taboos as incest and rape. And what of The Crucible? A play so crowded with lust and hysteria, it seems to pelt at the pace of Shakespeare’s best comedies, whilst including high drama, human sacrifice and, indeed, deepest, most touching tragedy.

J.D. Salinger

The first time I read Catcher in the Rye was also the first time I heard an authentic voice in a novel I could really relate to. Holden Caulfield expressed everything I felt, and it is with sadness that I can no longer find that teenage connection when I re-read this slim tome of surprise suffering. Franny and Zooey, on the other hand, continues to endure for me; existential questions, literary questions, psychological and religious questions abound, and all drawn with a realist’s best hand.

Sylvia Plath

Does a young nation inspire youthful literature which attracts young readers? Plath’s obsession with her father and her inner, troubled psychosis are eminently relatable for many a young person. Reading poems such as “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy”, one can hardly doubt her poetic genius, her ability to clinch an argument on a half-rhyme, and to surprise and delight while disgusting her reader.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The original party-boy writer, whose life-long personal struggles precluded a Hemingway-sized output, but whose approach to writing could never have yielded results if dealt with in so mercenary a fashion. Fitzgerald’s ability to draw what he saw renders his prose so current it can’t ever quite feel historical to me. The 1920s are now; his characters are timeless; his prose like water – flowing, fluid; endlessly quotable.

Philip Roth

If ever an author took up every key theme in American literature and made it his business to beat them all into word-shapes, it is the masterly Roth. Each book heaves with the weight of a displaced people, with families torn apart, with humour and despair. His characters dance, and groan as they dance, and yet are never as memorable as the themes.

William Faulkner

I have often wondered if I would be more amenable to Faulkner were he a poet. His works require intense concentration and repetitious reading, but that effort can be paid off for the reader. His experimental style can occasionally obscure his message; at times style triumphs over all. And yet… The pathos evoked by Jewel and his horse in As I Lay Dying is, for me, unparalleled in any other novel.

I could go on, of course; and of course most of these authors were never likely to make it onto any syllabus, let alone within the strict confines now laid out by central government. I have already blogged on Of Mice and Men here, and how this text can provide a ready gateway for high achieving students. Looking at my year 12 class’s understanding of Gatsby, I do wonder if they would have had a similar reaction without any grounding in the literature of the USA. After all, this nation pervades our own; it takes over much of the television watched (both by teachers and the young people we educate), and its history draws on our own in very many ways. Our scholars do need to understand the literature of other cultures, and what more fertile ground for understanding than America? So like, and so unlike us; the literature of America can take on melodrama, history, taboo, suffering and humour… And win us to reading.

You should definitely look at these views on the new English curricula:

http://learningfrommymistakesenglish.blogspot.co.uk/

http://blog.geoffbarton.co.uk/site/Blog/Entries/2014/5/25_Get_him%2C_Lennie.html

http://www.networkedblogs.com/XcCRe

http://www.huntingenglish.com/2014/05/27/whose-canon-anyway/

23 books which changed my life

Posted on by
1

The original title of this document was “10 books which changed my life.” It was rapidly clear that I would not be able to cut down my selection so easily.

 I made this list as a parting gift to my year 11 class. Having only taught them for one year, I am racked with the guilt of having done little more than push them through two courses, re-do coursework, and rehearse exam technique; throwing only a handful of reading lists at them along the way. Each student in my year 11 class deserves more from their education in English, and I will always regret this lack.

I have utterly loved teaching them: I’ve never bonded with a class so quickly, which is absolutely down to their warmth, energy and boundless personality. They accepted me, and trusted me; in return I put them in the best position I could to pick up a few GCSEs. I’ll also, strangely perhaps, miss their parents: the support and encouragement and gratitude I’ve heard down the phone on my Thursday evening quests for contact have made a huge difference in my students’ commitment and effort this year.

Huge regrets. If any of them go on to study English at A-level, which a surprising number have hinted they might, I hope they find more inspiration and love of literature there.

A number of students came to see me and have the list, but the year group was granted surprise study leave at the final hour, and so not obliged to come into school yesterday. In the unlikely event that one of my most dear children ever stumbles over this post, I’ve pasted the entire list below as I would have given it to them on Friday. Year 11: you are truly amazing humans. Here you go.

*  *  *

With very few exceptions, each of these was read between the age of 16 and 19. I think those three years are formative, and what you read then will leave an indelible mark on you. I encourage you to read, read, read now – as much as you can.

J.D Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye

This short novel seems to me to epitomize everything it means to be a teenager. It is the rallying cry of disaffected youth.

 Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray

This story is part horror, part humour; wholly Gothic in setting and yet eerily familiar. The ending will never leave you.

 J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter

This writer reminded me that the best books to read aren’t always the ones being taught at school or university. Pure pleasure reading!

 Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot

This play made me think more than any book I had ever read before. What is it all for? Why are we here? What are we waiting for?

 Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman

I’ve never cried so much before or since because of a book. This play explores a truly human tragedy; one we can all relate to.

 Ted Hughes: Birthday Letters

This was the first book of poems I had read cover to cover, and it seems to tell the story of a once bright love crumbling, leaving only remorse.

 Jane Austen: Emma

I dreaded studying Austen – I thought it would be hard, and boring. It is, in fact, hilarious and touching.

 Shakespeare: Othello

This is my favourite play. Not only one which explores ideas of prejudice, but also one which reveals how we tick, and how we can be ingeniously manipulated.

 John Steinbeck: East of Eden

More than Of Mice and Men, this epic tome brings the suffering and hope of the 1930s West Coast of America into sharp focus.

 F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

An epic tragedy. Love, regret, carelessness and humanity, along with some of the most gorgeously expressed prose imaginable. 

E.M. Forster: Maurice

My favourite book by one of my all-time favourite authors. A beautiful romance, told beautifully and feelingly.

George Eliot: Middlemarch

The whole of human life is contained in this novel: through the microcosm of a Victorian village, we see into the minds and souls of humans.

 Thomas Hardy: Jude the Obscure

This book was the first which brought home to me the tragic inequality of society. For all his sins, Jude is a man doomed from the outset by an accident of birth.

Vera Brittain: Testament of Youth

An autobiography of a nurse in the First World War; no war book I have read has come close to creating the emotions and experiences of that time.

 William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying

Experimental and modernist, this text is raw with suffering and emotion. Told by one family about a dead body being transported to her final resting place.

Virginia Woolf: Orlando

All of history and gendered experience told through a single character who seems to live every life.

 John Milton: Paradise Lost

A poem which retells the Old Testament. Especially powerful on the fall of Satan from Heaven, and luxuriously worded.

 Patrick Marber: Closer

A play which seemed to me to reveal what relationships were really all about. Also quite tragic.

 Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace

All of the characters are immaculately drawn individuals, believable and perfectly recognizable.

 Nancy Mitford: The Blessing

Although pessimistic, I felt at the time of reading this novel that I understood what makes marriages work. I’m no longer sure of this assertion!

 Alex Garland: The Beach

The first book I loved. A group of individuals founds a “perfect” commune away from the “real” world. And yet, the real world cannot be escaped…

 Daphne du Maurier: Rebecca

The gift of this novel is the way the narrator hooks you in. It is only after you finish that you begin to wonder if there is an alternative version of reality hiding in the pages.

 Haruki Murakami: Norwegian Wood

Murakami makes real for me a country I have never been to, and in an other-worldly unfolding of events also reveals true, human emotion.