Posts Tagged ‘Education’

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Time to Engage Our Students

January 17, 2011

It is as big a challenge now as it ever has been to engage our students.  Programs which treat children like robots and show a preference for rote skills and the dissemination of facts rather than debate, creativity and self-expression are limited, turgid and a thing of the past.

It was refreshing to read an article from The Guardian that encourages schools to get more creative:

But there is a long-standing debate in education about creativity and the need to inject more of it into teaching. Can it really be taught?

At The Chalfonts community college, a non-selective school in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, they believe very firmly that it can. As part of an “enrichment curriculum” all key stage three students spend whole days learning how to use video, animation and digital imaging with industry professionals as part of the school’s push to develop creativity across all subjects.

“The aim is to develop personal, learning and thinking skills (PLTS), creative thinkers and team workers,” says Greg Hodgson, a senior leader at Chalfonts who also mentors students in the arts.

Digital technology such as digital imaging, film, animation, graphics and game-making is also a critical element in the school’s GCSE art curriculum where it has, says Hodgson, enabled otherwise under-achieving students and apparently non-creative students to blossom by harnessing their fascination with gaming.

“One student, one of the lowest ability boys I’ve ever taught, couldn’t really read and write properly and staff spent more time talking to him about his behaviour than his work. He particularly flourished when I gave him control of the tools and told him that he could actually teach himself.

“He was coding and writing action scripts using interactive Adobe Flash animation, which is a really high-level skill. One lovely piece of work featured moral dilemmas with the story of a girl who had the opportunity to steal. An angel and a devil both appear in the ether around this girl’s head and the reader/viewer has to choose: does she steal a chocolate bar or not? In fact, this is the first stage of gaming: the interactive viewer clicks and decides which line of a story to follow.”

ICT is constantly changing and digital technology is becoming more geared to assist us in the classroom.  Yes, it is difficult for teachers to learn, and I am as terrified by technological advancements as the next teacher.  But it is not just an important skill in today’s age, but also an opportunity to bring greater creativity to our classroom.

After all, students learn so much better when they are engaged and have the chance to think creatively.

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Posted in Technology in the Classroom, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Teacher Myth #2

January 14, 2011

Teacher Myth 2:

Teachers have the right to keep parents at a distance.  Since the parents aren’t experts, it’s best they leave it up to professionals.

Teachers, over the course of their careers, will frequently confront angry and difficult parents.  It comes with the territory.  Then there are those parents that are overly anxious and extremely insecure (the ones that provide you with a 100 page dossier on their child before taking them on an overnight camp).  As much as it is tempting to want to shut the door on some parents in particular, and demand that they stay out of the affairs of the classroom, this is not wise.

Teachers have the responsibility to work with all types of parents and to ensure that the parents are well-informed and updated.

Think of it this way.  You have a person who invested most of his savings in shares through a stockbroker.  The person is nervous, and worried that perhaps one day his shares will crash drastically, causing him to lose his nest egg.  So he calls his stockbroker regularly, seeking updates, assurances and reassurances, sometimes more than once weekly.  The stockbroker isn’t a fan of the constant phone calls but sees this as part of his job.  After all, his client is making a big investment.

Now compare that to a parent.  They have entrusted to the teacher the greatest investment any person can make – their own flesh and blood.  Of course, being bugged and badgered by a parent is not much fun, but it is part of the job.  It makes any financial investment drift into irrelevance.

I am certainly not advocating hostile or abusive parents and I believe there are times when teachers must assert themselves against disrespectful and insensitive parents.  But teachers must also be mindful of the rights of parents.  After all, the data is pretty clear – the experiences a child has at school are a great indicator of how they will grow up.  Negative experiences at school can offset all the good work parents do at home.  You can have a tremendously loving home, but if it isn’t complimented by a supportive and nurturing school, the child could grow up with self-esteem issues.

The following are some methods I incorporate in my own teaching to keep parents informed:

1.  I write a newsletter every week which is low on gloss and high on content.  I write about what we covered in class in Maths and English and some of the activities that proved particularly popular or useful.

2.  Together with my newsletter (which I print in hard copy to ensure that the parents read it) I attach a personal student report for each child.  The mini-report features different boxes to either tick or cross off depending on whether or not the child has performed in that area.  The indicators include: behaviour, respecting others, homework, understanding concepts etc.  As well as that, it has room for a comment so I can elaborate and explain why I marked the child the way I did.

This mini-report distributed with the newsletter every Friday allows me to deal with social disagreements, homework not handed in and behavioural issues straight away.  The students know it’s coming and the parents know that they wont have to hear about an incident months later.  My students get very disappointed when (and it happens very seldom) I don’t have the time to include the student report, because they know that their reports usually feature compliments and words of encouragement which they are very proud to share with their parents.

3.  I include parents over the course of the year in selected classroom activities so they feel part of the goings on in their child’s class.

Does this take a lot of my time?  It sure does.  But it’s worth it because the parents trust that I know what I’m doing and they are properly informed about the progress of their child and the skills and concepts being taught in class.  It works brilliantly at cubing the amount of complaints and enquiries I get.  By saturating (and perhaps even boring) parents with information, they stopped feeling the need to ask questions.  Because some teachers don’t disclose such information, it leaves it to the parents to guess.  Guesswork can often lead to negative conclusions.

Again, no teacher should tolerate abuse from parents.  However, teaching involves interaction with a diverse range of students and parents who have their own unique personalities and character traits.  And the key is to function in a way that’s going to benefit all stakeholders.

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Posted in Dealing with Parents, Teacher Myths | 6 Comments »

The Education Version of Groundhog Day

January 14, 2011

In the classic 1993 Bill Murray film Groundhog Day, Murray was forced to relive the same day over and over again until he learnt from his mistakes.  Whilst only a light-hearted comedy on the surface, Groundhog Day was a timely reminder that mistakes and there consequences are repeated over and over again until they are learnt from.

Every time the curriculum changes I think of Groundhog Day.  I’ve only been a teacher for a short time, yet already I have seen the curriculum change 3 times.  First it was the CSF, then it became the CSF 2, followed soon after by VELS. And the curriculum is about to change yet again!

Why do they do it to us?  Just when you get used to one curriculum, they change it from another.

The cynic in me says the Government is bereft of ideas.  They know that education outcomes are underwhelming, that there isn’t much satisfaction in the quality of schools and performance indicators are not painting a rosy picture.  Yet, they don’t have a clue what to do about it.  They neither have the money, vision or gumption to make any real change, so they go for the obvious alternative – perceived change.

When asked to reflect on their achievements in Education, the Government will proudly point to overhauling the curriculum.  In Australia’s case, they will triumphantly declare that by introducing a national curriculum, they have been able to do what previous administrations couldn’t.

But they will know the truth all along – you can’t change the fortunes of a countries academic performance by altering and renaming a curriculum.  In fact, from my experience you can’t expect any change at all.

Even if my cynical take is wrong, and there is some good intention behind this new curriculum, it wasn’t evident in the released draft, which like its predecessors, didn’t seem to be adding anything of substance.  A bit more grammar, a deeper focus on handwriting and a greater emphasis on history sounds good.  But when it comes down to it, it is just like my boss said both this time and last time, “Don’t worry. It is going to be very similar to our current curriculum.”

From reports the states don’t want their current curriculums meddled with. Critics like Chris Berg from the Sydney Morning Herald have slammed the draft curriculum:

The plan was to have the curriculum rolled out in the 2011 school year, but only the ACT will meet that deadline.

New South Wales and Western Australia have decided to delay the curriculum to 2013. The Victorian government announced recently it would do the same. But there are problems with what’s in the curriculum too. //

Take, for example, the history syllabus. After a full quota of compulsory schooling, Australian students will be none the wiser about the origins and central tenets of liberalism: the basics of individual rights, representative democracy and the market economy, and the importance of civil society.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are the absolute fundamentals of Western civilisation. And they are missing from the national curriculum.

One need look no further than how the curriculum purports to teach ”struggles for freedom and rights”, a ”depth study” for year 10 students.

The struggle for liberty against tyranny is one of the most important themes of the history of the past 500 years. From the English Civil War to the American and French revolutions, the proclamation of the rights of individuals has given us a rich inheritance of liberalism and civil liberties. That, at least, is how you’d think it would be taught.

But according to the national curriculum, the struggle for individual liberty started in 1945. Because that’s when the United Nations was founded.

To hinge the next generation’s understanding of individual rights on such a discredited institution is inexcusable. And it says a lot about the ideology of the curriculum’s compilers: as if individual rights were given to us by bureaucrats devising international treaties in committee.

At the end of the day, all we are really left with is a bad case of Groundhog Day.  The results wont change, yet the same mistakes are being made over and over and over again …

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Posted in National Curriculum | 3 Comments »

Time to Show Support for Teachers

January 12, 2011

Something tells me 2011 is not The Year of the Teacher.

After the disappointment of the New York Supreme Court ruling that teachers alleged to be underperforming can be named and shamed by the media, an unfortunate trend is becoming clear –  teacher blame.

Teachers I am told, are the most bullied of all professionals.  They are subjected to bullying from a variety of sources; their superiors, parents, colleagues, students and as we see from New York, the Government regulators.  For a profession desperately looking for fresh, talented and passionate recruits, teachers have never had it so bad.

Today I read of the rise in bullying from parents through the use of social media such as Facebook.

The NAHT (National Association of Headteachers) says it receives hundreds of calls every week from teachers who are being ‘cyberbullied’ – and the majority of complaints are about parents using the web to criticise teachers or heads.

In 2009, research by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) and the Teacher Support Network suggested 15% of teachers had experienced cyberbullying, and it is believed this figure is growing.

One English teacher in the West Midlands told the ATL: ‘I found teaching stressful already but when it got to the point where I was getting home and finding messages about me on social networking sites, or horrible photos on my computer I couldn’t cope.’

The ATL says that one teacher had a fake Facebook account set up in his name containing false sexual allegations.

Another teacher suffered stress after a video of her teaching appeared on YouTube.

The 2009 ATL research showed that 63% of teachers who had suffered cyberbullying personally said they had received unwelcome emails. Over a quarter had had offensive messages posted about them on social networking sites such as Facebook and 28% described being sent unwelcome text messages.

A 24-hour counselling helpline called Teacherline set up in October 1999 for stressed teachers in England and Wales now receives thousands of calls a month.

Teacherline reports that teachers are four times more likely to experience stress at work than employees in other professions.

It is true that not all teachers are good at what they do.  Many are way below standard.  But it’s not an easy profession and it usually isn’t the career path a person just falls into.  People usually take on teaching because they have an affinity with either child, subject or both.  Instead of bullying teachers, how about we call for greater support of teachers.  Help them improve with a positive framework rather than negative cajoling.
How about starting pro-teacher Facebook pages?  Facebook pages which call on Governments around the globe to stop using teachers as scapegoats and stop stirring mass hysteria about the quality of teachers through the media?  How about Facebook pages that seek to empower and revitalise the teacher rather than tear them down even lower, and inadvertently, tear down the fabric of this great profession with them.

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Posted in Bullying, Cyber Bullying, Teacher Welfare | Leave a Comment »

That’s Right, Blame the Teachers

January 11, 2011

New York, what has gotten into you?  What are you doing?  Why whenever there is a problem in education do we denigrate and disgrace our teachers.  Where is the school administrators in all of this?  How do they get to escape the blame?  What about Government?  What positive vision have they offered up in the last decade?

Reading about the recent decision by a New York State Judge to release the performance ratings of thousands of New York teachers to the media, I could only shake my head in sorrow.  Teachers are but one cog in a broken system, and by naming and shaming them you are doing far more damage than good.

The judge, Cynthia Kern of the Supreme Court of the state of New York, wrote in a nine-page decision that the UFT’s argument “is without merit,” adding that the court of appeals “has clearly held that there is no requirement that data be reliable for it to be disclosed.”

The data attempt to measure the progress made by students in fourth through eighth grades under specific teachers by comparing their state test scores in math and English in a given year with the previous year.

The Department of Education has such data applying to 12,000 teachers; overall, there are nearly 80,000 teachers in New York City.

Teachers are not perfect and there are a fair few substandard ones out there. but there is only one proper way of dealing with teachers that are not performing.  You give them support, not disgrace them on the pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Yes, support!  Why hasn’t anyone in Government thought about supporting teachers, empowering them, giving the direction and improving their confidence.  If Governments nurture their key stakeholders instead of pressure them and turn them into scapegoats, you might just see improvements.

Sure, if after receiving the support, some teachers still show no sign of improvement, kindly tap said teachers on the shoulder and tell them their time is up.  Even then, the media should be well out of the picture.

It is easy to lay blame and cause hysteria.  It won’t work and perhaps the plan was never intended to.  The plan buys Governments time.  Time that will be spent doing nothing of any value for the needs of schools, teachers or students.  Meanwhile, even good teachers will be fretting about performance data and the new style of invasive education.

Just the way to go about recruiting great teachers.  Scare them away from the profession before they’ve even signed up.

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Posted in Teacher Welfare, Teachers Stress | 3 Comments »

A Sensitive Issue that Drives Male Teachers Away

January 11, 2011

I don’t like talking about it and neither does many of my male colleagues, but it is a major reason for why there are so few male teachers in Primary/Elementary schools.  The fear of being maliciously and unfairly accused of inappropriate conduct with students drives male teachers away from the early years.  I wrote a post just last month which showed that “the main reason (Canadian) men avoid these young grades is they don’t want to be accused of being pedophiles.”

Recently, a new training video urging teachers never to engage in physical contact with pupils, even when adjusting the position of a child’s hand on an instrument was released.

The film, called Inappropriate Demonstration, shows a violin lesson in which a pupil fails to play the right notes. The teacher explains the technique by placing a hand on the pupil’s shoulder and holding his fingers in the right position on the violin. He then explains it a second time by demonstrating on his own violin the correct position. The pupil then plays the correct notes.

The film advises teachers: “It isn’t necessary to touch children in order to demonstrate: there’s always a better way.”

Thankfully, Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education in the UK, condemned the video.

That approach “plays to a culture of fear” among children and adults, he said, as he ordered schools to abandon “no contact” rules between teachers and pupils. It was “positively right” for teachers to comfort distressed pupils by putting an arm around them, or demonstrate sports skills through physical contact with a child, he said.

The mother of one of my best friends is a teacher who was maliciously accused of improper conduct with a student because she touched the students hand in an attempt to guide him in correct handwriting technique.  It’s scares me personally, because as careful as I am to stay professional and squeaky clean, it is much easier (in  this respect) teaching older kids.

To make matters worse, the kids are used to getting hugs from, and sitting on the lap of, female teachers.  I literally have to tell my students on the first day that under no circumstances can they hug, pat or touch me.  They don’t understand, but thankfully they comply.

I believe that the fear of an inappropriate teacher is a natural one.  The media reports on a new  “monster” every day, who takes the privilege of teaching children and abuses it in the very worst way.  I believe that the prime responsibility is to safeguard the children.  Their safety is far more important than my working conditions and pressures.

However, all things said and done, when you are told that you can’t readjust the grip of your music student, you are reminded why male teachers look elsewhere for a career.

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Posted in Male Teachers | 7 Comments »

Cell Phone App to Take on Bullying

January 9, 2011

It was always going to happen.  Marketing and advertising executives were always going to try to find a way to cash in on the unfortunate bullying issue which is prevalent in schools worldwide.  Here are two new products invented to ward off bullies:

1. Cell Phone App – For $10 a month a parent can buy an app for your child’s cell phone. It will scan texts and emails for language that might indicate bullying is going on, and if it is found the parent receives an alert. It is available at www.websafety.com.

2. The Backpack with Alarm – The iSAFE backpack is marketed as something a child can use if they feel their safety is in danger because of a bully. It comes with a cord the child can pull that sounds an alarm. It costs about $60.

I don’t feel comfortable with companies profiting from bullying.  That cell phone app should be free of charge.

And the bag? Can you imagine how much worse the bullies are going to become when they find out their victim carries a bully bag?  I can just hear them now:

“Oh, your mommy bought you a bully bag!”

The true reason why this is all so sad, is not just that executives in fancy suits are starting to equate bullying with dollar signs, and it’s not just because some of these ideas are going to incite bullies rather than tame them.  No, the saddest part of this story is that there are desperate people out there so deeply afflicted by bullying and so desperate to make it go away.

My recommendation to every boy and girl subjected to constant bullying is to buy the backpack and hand deliver it to your Principal.  The message needs to get through loud and clear.  This is not good enough!

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Posted in Bullying | Leave a Comment »

Teacher Myth #1

January 7, 2011

I’m excited to start a new series of posts on the theme of teacher myths.  Every week I will be examining a teacher myth.

Teacher Myth 1:

A Teacher’s Job is to Teach, Not to Concern Themselves With the Social Dynamics of the Classroom

I remember a student I encountered during my second round of placements as a student teacher.  The boy (I will refer to him by the name Max), was a teacher favourite.  He was well-mannered, courteous to others, bright, hard-working, loved learning and a very good listener.  Max had a glaring problem that didn’t seem to worry his teacher one bit.  As soon as the bell would ring for recess he would go out with the other kids, make a bee line straight for the line-up area, and sit himself down on the line waiting for the inside bell to ring.  And there he waited all by himself, desperate to do away with playtime and stick to what he was good at – working in the classroom.

The first time I noticed Max striking a lonely figure at the line, I did nothing about it.  What could I do?  I reflected on it that night and decided that if it happened again the following day I would try to help him in whatever way I could.  Sure enough the very next recess saw Max sitting at the head of the line-up area, waiting for the bell.  I approached him and sat next to him, saying nothing to him so as not to make him anxious.  I just sat there until he gave me eye contact.  Instead of advising him to go out and play with friends and reminding him about obvious details like the quality of the weather and the importance of exercise, I opened the conversation by enquiring about his interests, hobbies, what his parents did for a living etc.  After a few minutes we were engaged in a wonderful conversation.  So good was our chat, that Max’s classmates started to become curious and soon enough there was a group of students at the line-up area listening and contributing to my conversation with Max.  You could tell how surprised they were to find out how interesting this loner was and how different he was to their past perceptions of him.

Here is a kid who gets good grades, great reports and glowing feedback from his teachers based on his academic performance, yet needs as much help in school as the struggling student sitting next to him.

Good teachers know that if you limit your job to the dissemination of facts alone, you are letting down your students.

It’s very important to improve the academic skills and convey facts and concepts to the class, but in my view it is of equal importance to ensure that your students are well looked after, are managing socially and have a positive sense of self.  If school was just about academic achievement it would have to be viewed as in institution designed for many to fail.  There are students in every class who will not find learning maths, science etc. easy at all.  They are not natural academic.  This is more than alright, because with the right attitude and a patient teacher they can progress beyond their wildest dreams.  School is not just about academics, it’s about finding a place in a group, contributing for and co-operating with others.  So much of ones youth is spent at school.  If there isn’t a great deal of time put in to helping the children gain a sense of self and a place where they harness their diverse skills and qualities, then sadly it is a huge opportunity lost.

That’s why I am not surprised that anti-bullying programs have proved ineffective.  You cannot deal with the problem through a peripheral program, you have to make the self-esteem and quality of life of students paramount.  Equal to their academic performance.  After all, your students in time will probably forget about the important dates during the Civil War and will have long ago lost a knowledge of single-celled organisms and The Fibonacci Sequence.  What they will however take with them is memories of positive and negative interactions with teachers and students during their school years.  Unfortunately, for way too many, those interactions have been particularly negative and destructive.

The best teachers (for which I can only aspire to be one day), are not content with academic performance within the classroom.  They want much more from their students.  They want their students to have an appreciation for themselves and others.  They want them to develop a selflessness and to harness their ability to find compassion for others and make constructive life choices.  If my students don’t become lawyers or doctors (not that there is anything wrong with that), it won’t worry me one bit.  I just want my students to grow up to live happy and constructive lives, to look out for others and to carve out a legacy for themselves.

If you have a child who is floundering socially or is being harassed at school, it is more than appropriate, in fact it’s advisable that you alert the teacher.  And if that teacher shows a lack of interest in the matter, then he/she isn’t doing their job properly.

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Posted in Bullying, Teacher Myths | 10 Comments »

I Urge You To Show This To Your Kids

January 7, 2011

Teachers and Parents, I would like to share with you an extremely powerful and effective clip, teaching kids via a dramatised cautionary tale about the importance of staying safe when using their social media pages.  It advocates the use of privacy settings and warns against giving up private information on a page which is accessible to the public.

I think this is an essential clip to share with your children/students, particularly if they are aged between 8 and 16.  With so many kids on Facebook and My Space, I think it is absolutely vital to inform them about the importance of privacy and discretion.

I found this clip so effective.  What do you think?

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Posted in Cyber Safety | 7 Comments »

Time to Take Better Care of Our New Teachers

January 6, 2011

My school recently employed a teacher straight out of University.  He will commence teaching his first ever class in February.  As I moved out of my classroom, so he could move in, I spotted him staring at the room in adulation.  I asked him what was going through his mind, to which he replied, “This is it.  This is my classroom!”

I know how he feels.  Whilst I was going through the rigours of teaching training, I would drive past schools along the way and be filled with envy at the teachers already able to ply their trade.  I so much wanted to skip the rest of my course and move straight it to my first classroom.  People told me I was an idealist and those feelings towards teaching would erode two weeks into my first school year.  It didn’t.  It still hasn’t.

This leads me to a very important issue.  If young teachers like my colleague have such a love for the craft and such a desire to become effective teachers, why is it so hard for them to get jobs?

I was reading an article which illustrates the plight a teacher has to face, to get their first solid job:

LAST year Melbourne Magazine named teacher Michael Stuchbery one of its top 100 Melburnians for using social media to revolutionise the teaching of civics.

His year 8 students at Caroline Chisholm Catholic College, many of whom previously could not name the electorate in which they lived, transformed into political animals, using blogs and Twitter to follow the federal election, and were interviewed on Channel Ten’s The 7pm Project.

But instead of being rewarded for his innovation, Mr Stuchbery, along with thousands of other Victorian teachers on short-term contracts, is out of a job.

January is a fraught month for teachers employed on fixed-term contracts – about 18 per cent of the workforce – who are faced with job interviews and uncertainty about their future.

”A lot of positions are filled in January, which is why contract teachers are nowhere near the beach right now,” Australian Education Union state president Mary Bluett said.

Annual surveys by the union repeatedly show contract employment is the top reason beginning teachers give for why they do not see themselves teaching in five years.

It took me a year to get my first job.  I had the hunger, the good University grades, I was well read, an excellent communicator – but not what they were looking for.  Each application required extensive responses to a set of about 8 Key selection criteria. It took me a day to respond to each schools criteria (as each school had different selection criteria I couldn’t cut and paste).  Most of those applications didn’t even land me an interview.

Why is this the case?

A number of reasons.

1.  The University training offered is completely and utterly inadequate.  The training is so useless, I can’t recall an important fact or skill I learnt from my training.  Schools know they would be employing a very raw teacher that will require a lot of patience and support.  They are too lazy for such an undertaking.

2. With initiatives like the My School Website which ranks every school against each other on how they perform in the national test, the NAPLAN, schools are careful not to select a teachers they don’t have confidence will show their worth from the outset.  They have their reputation to uphold.

3. Parents tend to be weary when a first-year teacher gets appointed to teach their child, in the same way a patient prefers to see some wrinkles in their surgeon.  Schools like to avoid parent intervention by making safe, low risk choices.

All these factors are completely beyond the prospective new teacher’s control.  They have no say in the strength or weakness of their course, the can’t control Government initiatives like the NAPLAN and My School Website and if a school wants to avoid risk, there is nothing they can do about it.

This reality is a crying shame.  I would have thought that the best, most vibrant staff rooms feature teachers of all ages and experience.  Surely, the horrendous plan to make new teachers “school cloggers” by shipping them off to a under-funded and under-performing rural school is exactly not how to deal with the problem.  The answer is for schools to show some backbone and create a framework where these teachers feel welcome, supported and mentored.

The new teacher that enters their classroom for the first time with a sense of joy and calm.  Isn’t that what it’s all about?

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Posted in Naplan, Teacher Training, Teacher Welfare | 1 Comment »

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